Cath Ellis

Running Race Reconciliation, Nationalism and the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games

This article examines how the idea of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians became entwined with the Sydney 2000 Olympics. It does this by undertaking a critical reading of media stories on the twin issues of Cathy Freeman’s 400 m race, and the fear of Indigenous protest disrupting the games. We argue the Olympic Games helped to reinforce a discourse of reconciliation that best suited non-Indigenous peoples, and that the Games came to be represented as the space where reconciliation could and should take place. We argue that, in combination with nationalist stories, the impending Olympic Games were deployed as a way of disciplining Indigenous people and maintaining a particularly conservative understanding of reconciliation; one that did little to change the unequal power relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

Broadening the scope and increasing the usefulness of learning analytics: The case for assessment analytics

The author offers opinions learning and learning assessment analytics, which are defined as the measurement and analysis of data about learners for the purpose of understanding learning. It is argued that learning analytics have a limited usefulness in higher education because it is based on data generated by student interaction in online learning and social media environments, educational technology whose use remains far from universal. It is argued that the use of data analytics generated from educational assessment will be of more value in higher education, as that is a process in which all teachers and students are engaged.

`You Can't Do That in a Classroom!': How Distributed Learning Can Assist in the Widespread Adoption of Hybrid Learning Strategies

Achieving the widespread adoption of Hybrid Learning in Higher Education is desirable but difficult and to accomplish this requires significant institutional change. This paper suggests that this kind of change can be achieved by the strategic harnessing of Distributed Learning opportunities. It takes as its main point of focus the lecture which, despite significant advances in communication and information technology still prevails as a dominant teaching and learning strategy in Higher Education. It suggests that using screencasting to deliver lectures in a Distributed Learning context can trigger the kind of widespread change required.

Contract cheating: a survey of Australian university students

ABSTRACT Recent Australian media scandals suggest that university students are increasingly outsourcing their assessments to third parties – a behaviour known as ‘contract cheating’. This paper reports on findings from a large survey of students from eight Australian universities (n = 14,086) which sought to explore students’ experiences with and attitudes towards contract cheating, and the contextual factors that may influence this behaviour. A spectrum of seven outsourcing behaviours were investigated, and three significant variables were found to be associated with contract cheating: dissatisfaction with the teaching and learning environment, a perception that there are ‘lots of opportunities to cheat’, and speaking a Language Other than English (LOTE) at home. To minimise contract cheating, our evidence suggests that universities need to support the development of teaching and learning environments which nurture strong student–teacher relationships, reduce opportunities to cheat through curriculum and assessment design, and address the well-recognised language and learning needs of LOTE students.

The possessive logic of settler‐invader nations in Olympic ceremonies

Staging Olympic Games offers hosts a unique opportunity to showcase their nation as a tourist destination. This opportunity is particularly exploited in the opening and closing ceremonies that are able to attract unparalleled international television audiences. Over the first 11 decades or so of the modern Olympic movement, as the ceremonies have become more complex and spectacular, they have developed their own generic conventions of national storytelling. Therefore, it is possible to compare prevailing national ideologies in these ceremonies and ascertain how and where shifts and changes in them are taking place. In this paper, I analyse the opening and closing ceremonies of the 13 Summer and Winter Olympic Games that have been hosted in nations that were formerly part of the British Empire (the USA, Australia and Canada). I analyse the similarities and differences of these ceremonies in order to better understand the discursive construction of settler‐invader national stories that is going on within them. I focus on three aspects: who has the right to welcome visitors, how a discourse of ‘unity in diversity’ is mobilised and how the historical fact of violent dispossession is managed. Informed by the work of Aileen Moreton-Robinson, I propose that these ceremonies can be read as manifestations of the possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty and, as such, that the changes that occur from one to the next tell us a great deal about how settler‐invader nations successfully manage Indigenous challenges to the legitimacy of their national stories.

The Importance of E-Portfolios for Effective Student-Facing Learning Analytics

The field of Academic Analytics offers considerable potential to Higher Education institutions (HEIs), the academic staff who work for them and, most importantly, the students they teach. This approach to data-led decision-making is starting to have an influence and impact on what is arguably the core business of Higher Education: student learning. As well as being nascent, Learning Analytics is, potentially at least, a very broad area of inquiry and development; the field, necessarily, therefore has significant gaps. It is also just one of a large number of changes and developments that are affecting the way that Higher Education operates. These changes include such things as the introduction of standards-based assessment and outcomes-based education, and the identification and warranting of core competencies and capabilities of university graduates. It is also happening at a time when the affordances of a wide variety of eLearning tools are introducing new possibilities and opportunities to the pedagogy of Higher Education in ways that are demonstrably challenging traditional approaches to teaching and learning, something Sharpe and Oliver famously refer to as the ‘trojan mouse’ (Sharpe and Oliver In Designing courses for e-learning. Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age, Designing and delivering e-learning, pp. 41–51, 2007, p. 49). This chapter considers the role that one such eLearning tool—the e-portfolio—can play in the implementation of a student-facing Learning Analytics strategy in this ambitious new approach to conceptualising, facilitating, structuring, supporting and assuring student learning achievement.