Ian Solomonides

Different Disciplines, Different Transitions

There is not just one mathematics taught at university level, nor is there one group of students. Mathematics is taught differently depending on the discipline and the perceived background of the student. There is engineering mathematics for the students heading towards engineering degrees, life science mathematics for those heading towards biology degrees and so on. This paper considers the phases of transitions that students experience as they embark on a course of study and then go on to professional life. We make inferences about the ways the curriculum should be designed to alleviate the difficulties of these phases as well as to take account of the capabilities that graduates will require in the workplace. It is not only where students are coming from that affects their learning but where they are heading to, in combination with their perceptions of that destination.

Time on Task in Intensive Modes of Delivery.

This paper reports on an investigation into how staff teaching in compressed courses can encourage student engagement and enhance student use of learning time, despite significant restraints of time as well as distance. Typically these courses (described here as units) are expected to have comparable learning outcomes to their full-semester counterparts and provide an opportunity for students to either retake failed units or to acquire credit for their chosen degrees in accelerated time. Organising teaching and learning through intensive modes of delivery may require different approaches to curriculum development and pedagogy compared to traditional unit planning and delivery, especially when the intensive delivery utilises online technologies. This paper explores strategies employed by successful intensive mode teachers in the development and delivery units for maximised student engagement. It concludes that many of these strategies are equally applicable in online and distance education regardless of the unit being intensive or otherwise.

Navigating the career transition from industry to academia

Transitions from ‘industry’ to ‘academia’ represent a unique type of career change. Although such transitions are becoming increasingly common in Australian universities and beyond, there is no coherent framework for making sense of the multiple and intersecting factors involved in these inter-domain movements. This form of occupational transition challenges the traditional and increasingly outdated conception of the linear academic tenure track. Thus, in order to revise the notion of the tenure track and gain a fuller understanding of these career trajectories, we must seek to understand the motivations for such occupational movements as well as the short-term, medium-term and long-term social, emotional and professional needs and preferences of practitioner-academics having made this transition. This article presents an attempt to re-think the imagery and language that have come to characterize this type of career movement as well as the attitudes within and between industry and academia. The authors advocate that transitions from industry to academia do not require the dismantling of linkages between the two fields, but rather are made more meaningful and effective when pre-existing professional and personal linkages are maintained and encouraged.

Transformational Learning – Possibilities, Theories, Questions and Challenges

Developing “a culture of transformative learning” is the first of seven strategic priorities of Macquarie University (2013, p. 12). Through PACE and other education programs the university has set out to “develop and lead teaching models that promote enquiry driven learning, and prepare students for productive professional and civic lives” (p. 12). This vision of learning and teaching has implications for: the way the university views itself, relationships between academics and students, and relationships between the university and surrounding community. In this chapter we explore transformative learning in PACE and consider theoretical perspectives on transformative learning, pedagogical approaches, teaching practices, possibilities, challenges and questions.

Peer Review in a Foundations in Learning and Teaching Program

Most universities offer a program to prepare their academics for university teaching. One common focus of these programs across Australia is that of developing academics as reflective practitioners. A variety of approaches and strategies are adopted towards achieving this outcome. This chapter presents a rationale and case study for the pivotal role of reflective capacity in developing the academy through the mandated practice of peer review in a university teacher preparation program.

Changes in student nurses' approaches to studying:

This research identified the approaches to studying preferred by student nurses, determined whether these changed during the Diploma of Higher Education in Nursing (DipHE Nursing), and which approaches to studying were associated with greater academic achievement. Two cohorts of student nurses were sampled. Cohort 1 (n=40) completed the 44-item Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory RASI (Tait and Entwistle, 1996) at the end of the course and was interviewed. Cohort 2 (n=76) completed the RASI twice, once at the beginning of the course and again following the first year. In keeping with research reported elsewhere (Swannell, 1992; Richardson, 1995; Devlin, 1996; Solomonides, 1996), an association between age and preference for the deep approach to studying was observed. It was also found that student nurses changed their approaches to studying during the course to favour the deep approach. This occurred as the theory became relevant to their concepts of nursing. As those students who preferred the deep approach attained higher assessment grades than those who preferred the surface approach, the paper recommends strategies to encourage the deep approach to studying from the outset of the course.

PACE and Online Learning and Engagement

The 2013 Student Experience and Expectation of Technology survey reinforces the impression that the twenty-first century student has a significant digital engagement (Gosper M, McKenzie J, Pizzica J, Malfroy J, Ashford-Rowe K, Student use of technologies for learning – what has changed since 2010? In: Hegarty B, McDonald J, Loke S-K (eds) Rhetoric and reality: critical perspectives on educational technology. Proceedings ascilite Dunedin 2014. Online http://ascilite2014.otago.ac.nz/files/fullpapers/238-Gosper.pdf, 2014). In the survey, 96 % of students had access to a laptop or desktop computer at home, and 82 % had access to a smartphone. In that context, there is a clear possibility that students could use those tools in all aspects of their lives, including their learning. Experiential learning is no different, and this chapter looks at how the online technologies might be used to improve and extend the PACE experience. Drawing on Resnick (Politics on the Internet: the normalization of cyberspace. In: Toulouse C, Timothy WL (eds) The politics of cyberspace, Routledge, Milton Park p. 47, 1998), we think about how PACE might both use online tools and affect the online realm itself. Conceptually, the hardest (and potentially most innovative) engagement, however, is where PACE activities engage with online-only entities and activities, articulating and shaping professional and community experiences which only happen in online spaces.