SaMnet of Australian university educators
Call for Action-Learning Projects – Expressions of Interest
What is SaMnet of Australian university educators?
SaMnet is a new national network that brings together university academics to collaborate on national issues in university science and mathematics education. It is working co-operatively with discipline networks and universities to develop educational leaders, to foster and spread best practices, and to promote cultural change in university teaching and learning. SaMnet has been conceived to provide a coherent voice on policy related to university science, and it represents a source of expertise for science faculties in areas such as curriculum review. To support more frequent and productive communication and collaborations, SaMnet is coordinating regional and online meetings as well as a national website.
Over the next two years, SaMnet will focus on (1) learning and teaching standards for science and mathematics, (2) dissemination of more effective and efficient approaches to laboratory exercises and inquiry learning, (3) effective use of learning technologies and new media, and (4) leadership training for science and mathematics lecturers.
Collaboration
SaMnet is currently funded by a leadership grant from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council / Learning and Teaching Excellence (DEEWR). It will work closely with the new Discipline networks:
VIBEnet: Vision and Innovation in Biology Education
Charlotte Taylor (USyd), Pauline Ross (UWS), Sue Jones (UTas), Liz Johnson (La Trobe)
Chemistry Discipline Network
Madeleine Schultz (QUT)
Australian Mathematical Sciences Learning & Teaching Network
Dann Mallet (QUT)
CUBEnet: Collaborative University Biomedical Education Network
Phil Porronik (RMIT), Yvonne Hodgson (Monash), Janet Macaulay (Monash), Susan Howitt (ANU),
Peter Thorn (UQ), Louise Lutze-Mann (UNSW)
Physics Education Network
Margaret Wegener (UQ) Les Kirkup (UTS), Manjula Sharma (USYD), Johan du Plessis (RMIT),
Marjan Zadnik (Curtin), Anna Wilson (ANU)
Inquiry Learning Fellowship Project
Les Kirkup (UTS)
SaMnet Action-Learning Projects
SaMnet offers a model for collaborative teaching and learning projects. The team undertaking each project are supported by advice, peer review, and leadership training from SaMnet. SaMnet will assist project participants to disseminate their work and to publish in scholarly teaching and learning journals. In its first two years, SaMnet will work with at least 25 action-learning projects across Australia. There are 21 such projects currently under way, and we are seeking expressions of interest for pursuit of further worthy projects.
SaMnet leaders:
Manjula Sharma (USyd), Will Rifkin (USyd), Stephanie Beames (QUT)
Steering Committee:
Sue Jones (UTas), Cristina Varsavsky (Monash), Andrea Crampton (CSU), Marjan Zadnik (Curtin),
Brian Yates (UTas), Liz Johnson (La Trobe), Kelly Matthews (UQ)
Contact: Email: Web: www.samnet.edu.au
Action-Learning Project -- Expression of Interest
Send EOI to by 9 April 2012.
Selection criteria:
A. Emphasis on changing how a collective teaches
B. Rationale and evidence on why the change is needed
C. Potential for impact on applicant, teammates, school, faculty, and discipline
1. Project title: A multi-faceted approach to teaching large classes
2. Applicant
Team leader – Are you (tick one or more):
Innovative (or junior) academic - Sees the change that is needed
Senior Academic - Understands the challenges of creating change
Educational developer, Academic staff developer, or equivalent -
Knows cases beyond the faculty and relevant concepts from the literature
X Associate Dean (Education) or equivalent - Has faculty–wide insight and knows priorities
Name: Assoc Prof Peter Whipp E-mail:
Discipline: Science Faculty: Science
3. Project Scope (the collective being addressed)
Target Degree programs, Years of study, and Disciplines The use of technology to augment or improve lectures has received attention as an effective and cost-reducing educational tool. Several modalities have been introduced including web-based lectures as well as the use of online blogs and peer feedback tasks. The benefits have been repeatedly shown in several research studies including increased course completion rates, improved retention, improved student attitudes towards subject matter and student satisfaction. However, the addition of technology to current educational structures requires its active and consistent use by students rather than the ‘passive’ (i.e. note taking) and more common approach to learning. For these reasons, this proposal will determine whether the addition of the aforementioned technologies will improve course outcomes including student satisfaction, learning efficiency and information retention while concurrently minimising the lecturer’s workload.
4. Project Description (rationale and evidence)
Aims, Innovation, Rationale, Precedent - What do you want to change (e.g., nature of lab work in second year) and why Australian universities are increasingly expected to enhance learning outcomes while concurrently improving the quality of teaching and minimising the rising costs of instruction. Indeed, these factors are often reported as co-related: increasing quality leads to increased costs, while reducing costs leads to reducing quality instruction (Twigg, 2003). In order to support the ever growing competition and demand for higher learning, institutions must effectively balance cost with teaching strategies and learning outcomes.
For many, the implementation of technology is regarded as a black hole of added cost. Indeed, for those that simply add technology to their existing programs, without altering conceptualisation and understanding of its potential use, the new technology becomes part of the problem of rising costs rather than part of the solution. Furthermore, comparative research studies in the United States show that technology-based courses do not necessarily improve learning in comparison to their former counterparts (Twigg, 2003).
For these reasons, an $8.8 million dollar grant was imparted to 30 American institutions to support their efforts in both cost savings as well as improving quality education using technology (www.center.rpi.edu/PewGrant.html). These institutions focused on large enrolment classes as they had the potential to target most of their students and concurrently generate substantial cost savings. In addition, large classes have the highest failure rates, up to 60% in some community colleges, and heavily contribute to attrition within the first two years of higher level education (Twigg, 2003).
All 30 institutions showed a reduction in course costs by an average of 40%, increased course completion rates, improved retention, improved student attitudes towards subject matter and student satisfaction. The re-designed courses affected over 50,000 students and saved $3.6 million each year. To accomplish these results, several technological-based methods were used. For example, The University of Southern Maine redesigned an introductory psychology course, which enrols ~850 students annually. It was taught in sections of ~75 students with no recitation or discussion and had a ~ 30% failure rate. The course was redesigned to replace half of the lecture time with web-based instruction including: interactive learning modules, quizzes with immediate feedback and various activities centred on a research study that collected data from course students. Web-based activities were monitored by teaching assistants who also could interact with students online if necessary. Pre-post test scores increased significantly by 10% compared to the previous course, course failure decreased by almost 10%, students reported studying 2 more hours each week and were more satisfied with the course. Virginia Tech redesigned a mathematics course replacing forty lectures with computer delivered instruction in laboratories including an electronic textbook, interactive tutorials, computation examples and online quizzes with immediate feedback. The computer lab, which serves the entire student body, is employed by rotating faculty members and teaching assistants who are consistently available to assist those students having difficulties. Most importantly, the changes resulted in a 77% decrease in course costs.
Clearly, the use of technology in today’s educational system is appropriate and well received by today’s, and potentially even more so, future generations of students. As a case in fact, Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford University professor attracted 160,000 students from around the world when he first offered a free online version of his "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" class. Even more surprising, the students who were officially registered the actual Stanford lecture reduced from 200 to 20. These are students who pay upwards of $30,000 USD per annum to attend, yet prefer to be educated via the internet. He has since relinquished his tenured academic position to create Udacity, a free online university that currently includes six courses taught by some of the world’s top academics (www.udacity.com).
The addition of technology to current educational structures requires its active and consistent use by students which has been repeatedly shown to be critical to learning, rather than the ‘passive’ (i.e. note taking) approach common to most lectures (Day et al., 2004). There are several modalities for technological intervention, however for the purpose of this project three are focused: (1) replacing some lectures with pre-captured online videos of lectures, (2) online blogging as a group task and (3) online peer evaluation of written work.
(1) The traditional didactic lecture method is still most commonly used today due to historical continuity and is what is accustomed by most students. However, the use of web-based lectures is gaining interest in higher education centres as it can decrease the in-class time spent on simple information transfer (i.e. note taking) and increase the amount of class time for more active learning. Indeed, several theories support the potential benefits of using this latter approach including the “Cone of Learning” (Dale, 1969) and the “Learning Pyramid” (N.T. Laboratories). Both of these models suggest more effective learning and highest retention of information occurs with active participation while the opposite is true with passive. The use of visual information (lecture capture) as an additional learning tool can improve the retention of verbal information (Mayer & Anderson, 1991) and minimise course attrition rates, as well as improving student grades (Briggs, 2007). For these reasons we propose to supplement 25% (approximately 6 of 24 lectures) in a large sized class in semester II, 2013 which have been pre-recorded in semester II, 2012. Lectures will be posted on a timeline that matches the previous course’s timeline and viewable at the students’ discretion. To encourage students to both watch and be engaged in the online lecture, marks will be allocated to interactive questions (multiple choice) that are posed while watching and are marked automatically. In addition, 3 of the 6 pre-planned lecture times will be replaced by symposiums which will focus on problem solving and expansion and application of the online lecture material. SPOT and SURF scores will be recorded as well as attendance in both the 2012 and 2013 courses. Attendance numbers will be recorded by a still image photo. Final scores will be compared between 2012 and 2013 courses. Pre and post questionnaires will be completed to determine course efficiency, efficacy and satisfaction.
(2) Blogs are increasingly being used as an educational tool in university teaching and offer several benefits including improving student writing (Lansiquot et al.,, 2009), preparing for class (Hemmi et al.,, 2009) and understanding alternative viewpoints (Hemmi et al., 2009, Philip & Nicholls, 2009). The entire student group can benefit from increased motivation (Tekinarslan, 2008), interaction (Farmer et al.,, 2008, Kim, 2008) and peer learning (Strampel & Oliver, 2009). Compared to traditional learning management systems, students find blogs more intuitive to use (Kim, 2008, Tekinarslan, 2008) and help students stay current with course material (Kim, 2008, Kumar, 2009). Blogs can also assist educators to consistently monitor learning throughout semester and detect problems earlier (Hemmi et al.,, 2009). Although the majority of blog research evaluates individual blogs (Philip & Nicholls, 2009), group or class blogs can drastically reduce the amount of marking for teaching staff while students found them extremely helpful (Kim, 2008). Indeed, a recent UWA based study on group blogging in four science communication units found that of the 98 students took part in the blogging assignments, participation rates were high (>86%). Surveys confirmed most students agreed that the blog helped improve their writing skills, this being consistent with previous reports (Lansiquot et al, 2009) and that they were motivated by knowing others would read their posts. For these reasons, we propose to integrate a blogging task into a semester II class. As an example and using a unit that enrols 200-300 students, the cohort will be split into 6 groups of 50 students, and within each group of 50, 5 students will manage a blog on a specific task for the other 45 students. Each week a new set of 5 students will act as blog managers on a rotating schedule. The task each week is set by the blog monitor and will be based on the weekly reading and lecture content. The blog task will be submitted to the lecturer for verification prior to its posting. Blogs will be monitored for cognate accuracy and suitability by the lecturer or an allocated post-graduate student. The success of the blog as a learning tool will be measured by surveying student satisfaction with the assignment and monitoring web metrics (eg. Number of views, posts, participation rates, etc).
(3) Students often require skills for the workplace beyond those taught in the traditional style of learning. Indeed as professionals, they often require the ability to function competently and efficiently in teams and accept and use feedback from others to continuously promote self-learning and betterment. For these reasons, the use of cooperative learning techniques have been incorporated into the classroom repertoire (McGourty, 1994) which promotes interdependence and interaction among students, requires information sharing and often the use of team projects as a base for learning (McGourty, 1998). Indeed, students are often the best assessors of their peers and can provide meaningful feedback regarding all aspects of their team’s performance. Successful implementation of this learning format, however, requires the student to become an active, rather than a passive participant. There are several benefits gained to both the student and the educator by including a formal peer feedback approach within the classroom. First, it can reinforce key learning objectives by providing behaviour-specific information to clarify what is required by the student to perform effectively (London & Smither, 1995). In addition, the use of formal feedback encourages students to self-assess and establish their own improvement goals (Locke & Latham, 1990). Furthermore, it is likely that students will demonstrate behaviour change and acquire skills simply by completing the feedback (Dominick et al, 1997). The quality of the feedback is also important: students that receive timely and detailed feedback can gage their progress over time and are better equipped to have meaningful discussions with their instructors to improve performance. Finally, educators can use feedback for teaching and assessing course outcomes to improve teaching activities to tailor course needs (McGourty, 1998). As such, online self and peer feedback will be incorporated into the class repertoire. A draft version of the weekly assignment will be completed by the students within the groups of five that they are allocated for the blogging task. Marks will be allocated for the quality of the peer evaluation and feedback provided, using a pre-determined rubric housing grade-related descriptors.