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Vol. 9 No. 2 (2012)

Published: 1 September 2012

Articles

  • Editorial 9.2

    Geraldine E. Lefoe

    With this second issue of Volume 9 of the Journal of Teaching and Learning Practice we bring a warm welcome to new members of the Editorial board. The board will be strengthened by their contributions. The Senior Editors are Associate Professor Geraldine Lefoe, University of Wollongong, Australia and Dr Meg O'Reilly, Southern Cross University, Australia. Our editorial board includes members of the host institution (University of Wollongong), Dr Lynne Keevers, Ms Lucia Tome, Associate Professor Greg Hampton, Dr. Michael Jones, Associate Professor Anne Porter, and Dr. Dominique Parrish. Our external board members include Ms Jude Carroll, Associate Professor Andrew Furco, Professor Terence Lovat, and Ms Carolyn Webb. We have particularly appreciated the support of the University of Wollongong’s Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic) Professor Rob Castle who has recently retired. His patronage and support of our journal has seen it move from a small internal journal to a much larger international journal. He has been a great champion for teaching and learning in the local and national arena and his contributions to the institution and to the sector have been greatly valued. We wish him well in his retirement and know that he will continue his contributions to the sector in the years to come.

    Read article: Editorial 9.2

  • From Tinkering to Meddling: Notes on engaging first year art theory students

    Kit Messham-Muir

    This paper considers the two-year-long process of redesigning Art Theory: Modernism, the initial core art theory course at The University of Newcastle in Australia, with the aim of increasing the academic engagement of first year fine art students. First year students are particularly vulnerable to dropping out if they feel disengaged from the University. This paper does not present any grand solutions for teaching today’s first year students. It does, however, consider ways of designing authentic assessment items that acknowledge the new conditions of pedagogy today. This paper offers ideas for engaging first year students, by creating multidimensional resources that include online material that supports yet provokes students; by challenging them with assessments that demand students produce knowledge and not simply retrieve information and; by reconsidering how faculty present information in lectures. The redesigning of the Art Theory: Modernism course was informed by current and ongoing research in teaching and learning and guided by student feedback administered by the Planning, Quality and Reporting unit at the University of Newcastle.

    Read article: From Tinkering to Meddling: Notes on engaging first year art theory students

  • Teamwork in First Year Law Units: Can It Work?

    Tracey L Carver, Amanda Stickley

    There is an abundance of literature on the importance of teamwork in undergraduate degrees; how to teach it, how to assess it and how to manage it. However, there is also much recorded about students’ dislike of teamwork, especially where an early experience is unsatisfactory and builds resistance against such assessment. Accordingly, despite the revolution of embedding skills into undergraduate university courses, this article commences by examining the issues which commonly arise as impediments to implementing teamwork in this environment – both generally, and in the context of the particular discipline of law. It then examines how the teaching and assessment of teamwork was embedded into a first year law unit at the Queensland University of Technology (‘QUT’). Finally, student perceptions of the model implemented are described. These show that, despite the odds, students generally considered that the model had an effective and positive influence upon their learning experience and outcomes.

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  • Developing Animated Cartoons for Economic Teaching

    Yu Aimee Zhang

    Purpose – A picture is worth a thousand words. Multimedia teaching materials have been widely adopted by teachers in Physics, Biotechnology, Psychology, Religion, Analytical Science, and Economics nowadays. To assist with engaging students in their economic study, increase learning efficiency and understanding, solve misconception problems, encourage in class discussion, and increase final performance for students (especially for international students and RA students), some animations and cartoons are developed to explain basic economic concepts for both macroeconomic and microeconomic concepts, issues and events. Methodology – Two surveys were first conducted to collect first year and international students’ requirement and suggestions. Cartoons and animations were then designed and developed to solve the major misconception and misunderstanding problems facing first year students or international students in their economic studies. Qualitative interviews were conducted to collect feedbacks for the cartoons developed for this project from economic lecturers, tutors, students and other teachers and students without economic backgrounds. Learning efficiencies from animations and text materials are also compared by the length of learning time in this paper. Findings – Surveys in this study support the view that different students have different preferred learning methods. However, practice case studies are the preferred learning method for both first year university students and international students. The animated cartoons developed in this research received strong positive feedbacks from peer colleagues in Economics, teachers from other faculties, tutors in Economics, first year students, international students and RA students with dyslexic problems. Utilisation of these resources can improve learning efficiency, help students in their understanding and long-term memory of the subject, engage students in their studies, and increase interest in undertaking economic studies amongst all other students. Value – The results of this study could be used in any Economics subject, as well as for self-study by Economics students and others. As part of the Teaching and Learning Project, these materials are capable of being further used in mobile applications to assist in engaging students in their learning.

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  • The effectiveness of oral presentation assessment in a Finance subject: An empirical examination

    Shyam S Bhati

    The purpose of this paper is to study the effectiveness of oral presentation as an assessment tool in a Finance subject. Assessment data collected from a postgraduate Finance subject in an Australian university over a period of five years from 2005 to 2009 was analysed statistically to determine the relation between students’ performance in oral presentation and other forms of assessments. The sample consists of assessment records of 412 students and 98 group presentations. From the study of correlations between oral presentations and other assessments, it is concluded that students perform better in written assessments compared to oral assessment. The study of effect of gender on students’ performance leads to the conclusion that female students perform better than male students in all forms of assessments except oral presentations where male students perform better although difference between males and females in oral presentation is not very large. The study of students’ performance based on their nationality leads to the conclusion that domestic students perform better than international students in all forms of assessments. Based on the study of student’ performance in oral presentation, it is found that students did well in the development of content of presentations, quality of their analysis, group coordination and organisation of presentation. There is however a general tendency to treat group work as a sum of parts instead of treating the group work as a single task. This study is limited by the fact that effectiveness of oral presentation is studied in only one Finance subject. This study makes an original contribution to the literature as the effectiveness of oral assessment in Finance subject is being studied for the first time. The conclusions arrived in this paper have many implications for policies and practice of learning and teaching in Finance.

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  • What constitutes effective feedback to postgraduate research students? The students’ perspective

    Martin East, John Bitchener, Helen Basturkmen

    Many Western universities are experiencing considerable growth in the numbers of postgraduate research students, both local and international. This increase and diversification bring with them challenges for how to make these students’ research studies successful. In particular, what students may wish to receive by way of supervisor-student relationships, and feedback within those relationships, may differ from what supervisors give, thereby creating potential tensions in the relationship and hindering effective learning. This article looks at what research students report they receive by way of feedback from supervisors, and what they say they find most effective. Evidence from questionnaires (n = 53) and interviews (n = 22) is used to draw some conclusions about how effective feedback is conceptualised from the students’ perspective. Analysis includes similarities and differences in response for students who speak English as a first or additional language.

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  • Impact of a College Freshman Social and Emotional Learning Curriculum on Student Learning Outcomes: An Exploratory Study

    Ning Wang, Stephen C. Wilhite, Jeannette Wyatt, Thomas Young, Geraldine Bloemker, Emily Wilhite

    This study investigates the impact of implementing a social and emotional learning curriculum for college freshmen on student learning outcomes, including social and emotional competence and academic performance. Through the use of a quasi-experimental design, the growth in social and emotional competence of students who participated in the social and emotional learning seminars is compared with that of students who were enrolled in other freshman seminars. This comparison is complemented by a qualitative analysis of students’ self-reflections in relation to specific dimensions of social and emotional competence. The results of this study suggest that exposure to a social and emotional learning curriculum during the first semester at college may contribute to the development of social and emotional competence in students. Because of the potential relationship of social and emotional competence to academic success, this study also reports a comparison of the grade point averages (GPAs) of students from the social and emotional seminars with the GPAs of students from the other freshman seminars, while controlling for other predictors of academic success. The results indicate that students exposed to the social and emotional learning curriculum had higher grades than other students across the four semesters following the completion of the seminar.

    Read article: Impact of a College Freshman Social and Emotional Learning Curriculum on Student Learning Outcomes: An Exploratory Study