Teaching and Learning

Background: Suite of Strategies

On the 16th May, the Dean of the Faculty, Professor Carole Kayrooz, held the first of a series of Student Forums with student representatives from each course grouping across the Faculty. The Heads of School and teaching and learning champions also attended. The Dean advised that the Faculty of Education, Health and Science was committed to raising its standards in teaching and learning. There were pockets of excellence but as a responsible University we needed to bring the standard of all sections of the Faculty up to an overall high level.

The suite of strategies that the Faculty had adopted comprises a staff forum, a student forum, introduction of moderation processes, assessment criteria and grade descriptors. In an annual course review, course co-coordinators will discuss what worked over the year, what didn’t and review and adjust accordingly. Professional development workshops conducted by the TLDG will be tailor made in consultation with teaching and learning champions and delivered to individual schools. Web based resources were being developed to support academic development in assessment.

The purpose of the student forum was to gather student opinion of the quality of the courses within the Faculty and to make recommendations for improvement. Students had been selected from each course advisory group to provide feedback. Suggestions arising from the student forum will try to be followed up either immediately or in the following semester.

Positive comments from group

The students overwhelmingly supported the teaching and learning in the Faculty. The students were impressed by the level of flexibility, responsiveness, feedback, and dedication of the lecturers. Increasing the staffing levels had allowed greater access for staff and greater structure for students. In Palmerston, lecturers are excellent, library is great, customer focussed, and administration is effective. Generally, the students feel quite lucky, it is a friendly, welcoming community which very much adds to the learning experience. Social Work has benefited from lecturer stability and it is the rich field experience of the Social Work lecturers which enhances the learning experience. Lecturers in Education were very flexible; access was easy and students were known face to face.

Suggestions for improvement from the group

Conservation Land Management: required access to a functional Laboratory which needs upgrade. The students were advised that a vehicle would be provided for the course. Air-conditioning needs to be raised at Palmerston.

Access to journal articles and interlibrary Loans in the Library is particularly poor. Some students were not able to access articles only abstracts. Some interlibrary loans have not turned up. This is a critical point as CDU is remote and requires good electronic / online databases.

In the School of Education, Databases are complex and not very user friendly (our end)
In Science and Primary Industry: Databases are difficult and more resources are needed

Books: Science books are only available in off peak times. When there is an assignment due, it is difficult to borrow the right books from the library. One solution volunteered by the group is to put the book on closed reserve.

The Bookshop does not order enough books- they always underorder causing some students to miss a vital component of the teaching and learning experience.

Course Material,  Often students don’t get their course material on time. The solution may be attributable to poor admin circumstances or a mixture of problems? This lateness can also be caused by late student admissions. This is a reccurring problem. Learn line is a potential solution and a great resource but it should not be the only resource. You can really miss out on vital staff interaction and the wealth of personal knowledge staff can impart in person. Mixed mode is a much better option for learning.

Space Utilisation: We need to look at how space is used across the University. Social work has been trying to get access to a room with a two-way mirror and there is one at the University although the room, which is used for viewing, is filled up with boxes rendering the mirror useless. This has since been cleared.

Staffing / Assessment criteria

Staffing: Often Units have many lecturers. Sometimes the understanding of assessments differs from lecturer to lecturer. They should all have the same criteria and assessment, which are established well in advance of start date of the course. One unit in Education changed their assessment practice during the conduct of the unit. The specific subject in question needs to be immediately addressed.

Assessment Amount: Most schools believe the number of assessments is good for each subjects, however, sometimes there are far too many assessment items for a unit.

Handing back of Assignments: Lecturers are encouraged to hand back assignments in class although they have been handed back in pigeonholes in public spaces.

Student Evaluations: The response rate is very low for SELTS and CEQ. The students had filled out very few of these. Often they are not conducted or conducted on the last class of term. Its better that it’s done in class and organised by the student representatives for every unit. On the whole, SELTS hasn’t been happening in the units. A recommendation is that it is done in class and the student representatives then sends them to the required area. The system can then go further and integrate results into performance reviews.

SATAC: There have been problems for people enrolling via SATAC. One student has two numbers. Another could not re-enrol in her course because a delayed mark transferred to SATAC as incomplete, rather than not submitted.

Student Forum administration:
Advise early about next Forum so that students have sufficient time to gather opinions.
An email needs to be sent out at the beginning of the year / unit about who the representative is and how to contact them with problems. This could be put in the website too!

Overall

1. The staff are the Faculty’s greatest resource. Majority of lecturers are extremely accessible and flexible and offer excellent, immediate support to students often going above and beyond their requested duty. Lecturer expertise has been attributed to rich experience in the field and lecturers seem to care for the student as an individual.
2. An increase in resources available through the Library and an easier, more reliable system to access to these resources is needed. As a remote University access to on-line resources such as journal articles is critical. Students can’t just go to another University’s library and find the info.
3. Students have difficulty with multiple concurrent systems of operation within a University; and often it is not their fault! SATAC and the University enrolment system are not yet totally compatible causing enrolment difficulties and student tension.
4. Occasionally when multiple staff teach the one unit, the criteria for assessment is understood differently with each lecturer. This means students get conflicting information about unit assessment. 
5. As a Faculty we need to more effectively and intelligently utilise our room resources and have a long term strategy for our growing space needs

 

 

School	Student Name	Discipline/Area of Study
School of Health Sciences	Norelena bin Judin	Nursing
	Annette Mageean	Social Work
	Tracy Unger	Psychology
	Anthony Fagan	Welfare
School of Environmental and Life Sciences	Sonja Saar-Kalleske	Biomedical Science
	Jerry Kuo	Spatial Science
	Andrew Raith	Environmental Science
	Robyn Spry	Conservation and Land Management
	Emma Phillips	Agriculture/Rural Studies
	Anna Durbridge	Horticulture
	Jeff Whitmore	Aquaculture
	Chris Andreou	Pharmacy
Centre for Access and ESL	Leilani Castillo	Tertiary Enabling Program
	Makaileah Figuera	Applied Linguistics
	Huyen Phuong Le
	Amelia Turner	VTE
	Bethsaida Hingston
School of Education	Pam Johnson	Teacher Education
	Debbie Wilkinson	Teacher Education