Elizabeth A. Beckmann

Learners on the Move: Mobile Modalities in Development Studies

Many careers involve mobile lifestyles, yet require specialised postgraduate qualifications for career progression. Mobile technologies offer new opportunities by providing more choice in when, where, and how students learn. Experiences in an Australian postgraduate development studies program illustrate the choices. Three key issues are explored: the implications of variable Internet access and quality; how students use their mobile devices; and how mobile learning allows consistent engagement with peers, despite geographical, cultural, or socio‐political isolation. The outcomes demonstrate that mobile technologies offer opportunities for ongoing access to distance education that can be pursued off‐campus and transnationally with the same peer‐centred approaches available on‐campus, enhancing authenticity of both content and context. Offline, laptop computers and digital audio players provide portable lecture theatres, libraries, and study areas, while online they offer discussion spaces, research portals, and simulation environments. Mobile learners stand to benefit from the expanding access offered by new technologies, but the spotlight must remain firmly on pedagogical intentions rather than on delivery modes.

Leadership through fellowship: distributed leadership in a professional recognition scheme for university educators

ABSTRACT Researchers in the field of teaching and learning in higher education have identified concerns with top-down leadership models. Distributed (or shared) leadership approaches may provide more successful engagement with institutional change agendas, and provide more options to reward and recognise staff leading teaching and learning initiatives. Through empirical research, Jones and colleagues have conceptualised the key criteria, dimensions and values that constitute effective distributed leadership in the Action Self-Enabling Reflective Tool (ASERT), together with benchmarks through which action taken to enable distributed leadership can be evaluated. Opportunities for distributed leadership were incorporated into the design of an Australian university’s professional recognition scheme for university educators. Through analysis of this case study in the context of the ASERT attributes and the benchmarks for distributed leadership, this paper explores the potential for systematic professional recognition of university educators to build institutional leadership capacity in the context of university teaching and learning.

Forums, Fellowship and Wicked Problems in Teaching

Many of the concerns of university teachers constitute ‘wicked’ problems—wicked not in the sense that they are evil, but rather in the way that they resist definition and analysis, are presented differently by different stakeholders, and at best are ‘resolved’ rather than ‘solved’. This could explain why there are no globally-, nationally- or even institutionally-accepted ‘right’ ways to teach in any discipline, and why communities of practice have become important mechanisms for pooling and sharing the knowledge, experiences and skills of university professionals who are focused on teaching and learning in a given context. Can the encouragement of shared reflective thinking as a tool of inquiry in a fairly transient community of practice (CoP) provide these university teachers some respite from the constant search for ‘the’ right answer by helping them understand the realities of finding ‘an’ answer? This chapter reviews the characteristic CoP interactions that occur among participants in online discussion forums that augment face to face professional development and professional recognition workshops about teaching and learning at an Australian university. Even though these online interactions are relatively fleeting, cross-disciplinary, and constituted by diverse groups of participants, empirical analysis suggests they provide adequate evidence of the nine thematic signals of effective communities of practice described by Wenger (Communities of practice: A brief introduction, 2012), and illustrate the kinds of wicked problems with which university educators grapple on a daily basis.

Designing, implementing and evaluating a consultancy approach to teaching environmental management to undergraduates

What are the benefits of engaging undergraduate students with authentic, inquiry-based curricula that develop transdisciplinary research skills? Internationally, many educators believe that research-active curricula help students better understand how scientific and technological concepts underlie the complexities of our world, especially in the context of natural resource management and sustainability. This paper describes the outcomes of a “consultancy approach” (CA) to teaching an undergraduate water resources management course in an Australian university over the past 10 years. Using the documented experiences of staff, students and clients, this paper demonstrates how this research-based curriculum has engaged students in authentic field-based research in ways that are student-centred, address diverse learning motivations and demonstrate the realities of being a practising professional. In addition, by providing environmental managers with a depth of research knowledge applicable to decision-making at individual sites that they would otherwise be unlikely, even unable, to acquire, the CA to teaching addresses the ongoing need in Australian communities for reliable scientific and environmental data on which to base complex land management decisions.

The plant detectives: innovative undergraduate teaching to inspire the next generation of plant biologists

Encouraging more students to embrace plant science research is a global priority. We have evolved a second year undergraduate course from a standard lecture/practical format into an innovative research-led learning design that gives students hands-on experience of cutting-edge plant science research and specialist instrumentation. By making tangible the links between plant genetics, biochemistry, physiology and function, the active learning curriculum extends students to their limits, and gives them insights into the multi-faceted nature of plant science research. Using genetically-mapped mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana, we challenge our students to apply their conceptual learning immediately to identify “unknown” genetic mutations affecting plant form and function. By exposing students early in their student careers to the challenges, rigors and excitement of plant science research, we have helped them grow quickly into astute researchers who truly deserve the title “Plant Detectives.” Many have become motivated to continue their studies as plant biologists in research-focused honors (pre-doctoral) and doctoral programs.