Copyright (c) 2010 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon Recent documents in Rozz Albon en-us Fri, 01 Oct 2010 01:32:35 PDT 3600 http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/12 http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/12 Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:19:24 PDT Contemporary universities are charged with the education and preparation of work ready graduates, evident in the establishment of graduate attributes. One attribute particularly applicable for information systems students, is the ability to work in teams. An examination of teamwork in the literature and in teaching practice indicates that many academics are unprepared or ill-equipped to prepare students for a world of work requiring team players. The unavailability of a comprehensive theory to drive the development of team learning in universities may have contributed to their failure to embrace this as a significant and warranted pedagogy. This paper explores a theory of team learning and pedagogy, critically appraises the enablement of students to acquire this attribute, and considers the research necessary to further shape the theory. Implications for curriculum and academic development are highlighted as these are the mechanisms to assist staff in applying the pedagogy. Rozz Albon http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/13 http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/13 Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:19:24 PDT Acknowledging that an awareness of project management skills was an important outcome for their graduates, the IT faculty of one Australian university developed and introduced a new IT Project Management course into their undergraduate curriculum in 2002. A three stage approach that involved identifying students expected learning outcomes, selecting relevant content and choosing the most applicable pedagogy was applied in designing this course. An integrated case study approach, developed over a five year period which was to be the recipient of many teaching awards is described. However, despite its popularity and successes the course was totally rewritten for the 2008 academic year, reflecting alternative views about what IT Project Management courses should contain, which in turn prompts the question of what project management skills should we be teaching students in preparing them for professional IT careers? Tony Jewels http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/11 http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/11 Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:19:23 PDT The concept of a teaching portfolio in higher education is not new. However, for many teaching staff the concept of a digital or electronic teaching portfolio is very new - a perspective that cannot be ignored. Academic developers have a role to play in their institutions in making the concept of a digital portfolio understood by staff, and making transparent the many and varied options available to them to develop their own electronic portfolio. At one Australian university the elaboration and application of a teaching portfolio as a capstone assessment task has been embedded in a stand-alone Foundations of University Learning and Teaching subject as a way of documenting staff learning about their teaching as they progress through the semesterlong subject. This paper focuses on the processes and application of guiding staff to make the transition from a print-based to a digital teaching portfolio, and makes recommendations for introducing a digital teaching portfolio into a Foundations subject for academic staff new to teaching and learning in higher education. Gail Wilson http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/10 http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/10 Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:21:28 PDT When graduates now enter the professional workplace, their ability to work as effective team members will contribute much to their immediate levels of productivity. Various types of group work are already being incorporated into higher education pedagogies with the stated intention of preparing students for modern workplace environments. Yet preparing for such an important vocational skill is not always so enthusiastically embraced by students. Many students openly state that they do not like working in groups because they believe that they can achieve better outcomes on their own. We investigate in this paper the metacognitive processes that students might engage in to help explain why group activities in an academic environment may be so unpopular. © Copyright Idea Group Publishing, 2007. Rozz Albon http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/9 http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/9 Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:14:07 PDT This research investigated the implementation of an audience response system (ARS) to learning in a multicultural Asian context using multiple case methodology. Four academic staff teaching in four diverse units with different student numbers (n=133) used ARS as one of their teaching approaches with each using it in very different ways. Both quantitative and qualitative data was collected through questionnaires and convergent interviewing of staff and students. Six constructs emerging from the literature were investigated and five are reported. Although some results aligned with other research, some specific issues were identified and appear relevant not only to other similar cultural contexts but possibly all contexts. The paper concludes with questions for further research into ARS in a multicultural Asian context in pursuant of choices for learners and learning. © Copyright Rozz Albon and Tony Jewels, 2007. The authors assign to ascilite and educational non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive licence to ascilite to publish this document on the ascilite web site and in other formats for Proceedings ascilite Singapore 2007. Any other use is prohibited without the express permission of the authors. Rozz Albon http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/8 http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/8 Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:43:53 PDT Acknowledging that an awareness of project management skills was an important outcome for their graduates, the IT faculty of one Australian university developed and introduced a new IT Project Management course into their undergraduate curriculum in 2002. A three stage approach that involved identifying students expected learning outcomes, selecting relevant content and choosing the most applicable pedagogy was applied in designing this course. An integrated case study approach, developed over a five year period which was to be the recipient of many teaching awards is described. However, despite its popularity and successes the course was totally rewritten for the 2008 academic year, reflecting alternative views about what IT Project Management courses should contain, which in turn prompts the question of what project management skills should we be teaching students in preparing them for professional IT careers? Tony Jewels http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/6 http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/6 Sun, 26 Apr 2009 17:13:02 PDT When university students are exposed to new learning environments and complex challenging concepts they find themselves in a state of disequilibrium, part of a process that generates new knowledge. Encouraging students to go beyond their comfort zone is also a challenge for educators: at what stage does the task become too difficult and totally overwhelming for the student. Establishing effective support structures through informal mentoring is one such vehicle to achieve both the challenge and the support required by university students when learning is demanding. Informal mentoring is a lifeline to enable students to move from a state of disequilibrium to a more comfortable state. This paper reports on the preliminary findings of a study which investigates the enabling informal mentor environment which supported students when they were out of their comfort zone. This study involved a cohort of first year pre-service Bachelor of Education students enrolled in a core Educational Psychology unit and an Information and Communication Technology unit. A naturalistic approach was adopted with the use of various data generation tools such as diaries, observations, a questionnaire and a sociogram. Informal mentoring was a powerful medium to accelerate in depth learning. Lina Pelliccione http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/5 http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/5 Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:47:33 PDT When university students are confronted with new learning environments and complex challenging concepts, sharing knowledge may be one approach to assist in finding, discussing, understanding and learning new content. How to encouraging students to reflect on what they currently know and need to know, and to take small risks to find the appropriate new information and skills is a challenge for educators. This paper reports on some of the findings related to informal mentoring, the process and the benefits to students in their learning. Informal mentoring, while it might appear unstructured, is in fact structured into two units of study and is operationalised through a reflective and flexible approach. Opportunities for students to practice reflection are embedded within informal mentoring because of the need to be reflective in a fast paced knowledge based future in which sharing knowledge will be a common feature. This study involved a cohort of first year pre-service Bachelor of Education students enrolled in a core Educational Psychology unit and an Information and Communication Technology unit. A qualitative approach was adopted with the use of various data generation tools such as observations, a questionnaire and a sociogram. Informal mentoring was a powerful medium to accelerate new and on demand learning. Rozz Albon http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/4 http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/4 Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:53:40 PDT For optimum workplace effectiveness in knowledge intensive industries in which principles of knowledge management need to be applied, it is necessary to take into account not only the competencies of individuals themselves but also the competencies of the teams in which they must operate. Although the incorporation of various types of group work into pedagogies is already widespread within institutes of higher education, many examples fail to embrace a rationale for, or the potential benefits of, multiple contributor environments. We present in this article arguments for including the teaching of team competency principles in higher education, supported by an original multi dimensional team competency teaching model, a taxonomy for assessing team competency levels and an example of the implementation of these principles. Tony Jewels http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/3 http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/3 Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:56:43 PDT The literature confirms that learning occurs through discussions. However, the question of ‘how’ discussions are conducted in an online environment continues to challenge educators. Technology has recapitulated a discussion approach to aid learning by building tools to enable discussions between multiple users. There appears to be a short supply of research which considers whether these current technologies used in the common Learning Management Systems (LMS) and computer conferencing (CC) enhance or limit learning. The cognitive processing required of learners when they engage in the common threaded messages on many of the LMS platforms, is laboured and cognitively demanding. The structure and content appears to be driven by the need for e-management and e-administration, relegating learning to a secondary position. This paper discusses the psychological reading process and how, if used to drive the technology, the reading and processing of content within discussions may be accessed more easily and expanded to include debate and compare and contrast focussed discussions, thus minimizing the cognitive work required for reading posted discussions. The level of interactivity and sociability is also examined. The rationale, development, trial and evaluation of the ‘shoutboard’ are reported. Rozz Albon http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/1 http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/1 Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:16:16 PST If, as some people believe, university teaching is all about allowing or enabling students to attain their full potential, rather than merely creating more ‘bricks in the wall’, gifted students provide a particularly thorny problem for teaching academics in the contemporary university environment. Many gifted students, by the time they reach university, have long since established, in their attempts to ‘fit in’, how to hide their special talents. A university environment may well be the final formal opportunity for gifted students to be accepted as such, and most importantly, for them to take better advantage of these capabilities in their ongoing education.Evolving from the findings of a case study approach, the authors propose a model that might be used to help gifted university students reach their full potential. The “I” model for teaching gifted students consists of four functions – having incentive to recognize gifted students, identifying gifted students, suitably involving gifted students in mandated curriculum and the internalization of giftedness by the students themselves. Gifted students may have had little opportunity in their pre-university education to take advantage of their giftedness. It is suggested that for tertiary sector educators to extend this languishing of gifted students in an apparently ubiquitous quest for educational ‘massification’, is contrary to the customary, time-honored nature of any university education. Rozz Albon http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/2 http://works.bepress.com/rozz_albon/2 Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:16:16 PST The call for future oriented curriculum using groups and teams is continually iterated in the literature, but appears to be largely ignored or the attempts have been immobilised due to a proliferation of excuses related to group work. Willingness to take up the challenge and risk take is needed to develop a theoretical model leading to appropriate curriculum and assessment practices using groups and teams. While many academics have embraced group pedagogies many have not yet logically and practically accepted all of the consequences of this option in a future that demands it. There are a number of misconceptions about group or team assessment, and these are often tendered as excuses against its incorporation into teaching. These excuses hide legitimate issues regarding the choice of group work as a learning tool; but their continued acceptance prevents academics from properly engaging with the needs and benefits of group work. This paper lists a number of the more common excuses surrounding the assessment of group and team projects and the real issues that they hide – issues regarding the different nature of group assessment, and the different competencies that are required both of students and staff. This paper does not advocate the removal of individual assessment within the group context, rather, it supports its inclusion only when coupled with a proper understanding of group and team approaches, and when performed with an appropriately constructed assessment tool. It is no longer a question of either/or but recognising the best way to prepare graduates for the uncertain and perhaps, arbitrary prospect of functioning in multi-contributor environments. Rozz Albon Teaching & Learning