Vol. 4 No. 2 (2007)

Articles

• Editorial 4.2

  H. Carter

  In August this year we were very pleased to see the information on JUTLP in the journal rankings for the discipline of education as researched by AARE and the University of Newcastle. JUTLP ranked around the middle of the group of journals for esteem and performed slightly higher in terms of quality. We were very pleased with this result after only four years in operation and I refer you to the listing if you haven't already seen it: here

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• Demonstrating scholarship and effectiveness of teaching through the application of data collected from concept maps

  R. W. Francis

  College faculty face the ongoing dilemma of balancing the professional emphasis on student learning with the administrative task of documenting student performance related to reappointment, promotion, and tenure. As tools in the undergraduate and graduate programs of an institution of higher learning, concept maps provide faculty with interesting and effective ways to assess learning by students in all academic areas. Concept maps can give students and faculty meaningful information about student performance. These tools are objective, meaningful assessments through which the instructor can monitor student progress, self-evaluate classroom performance, and revise the delivery of instruction in the collegiate classroom.

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• Engaging academics with a simplified analysis of their multiple-choice question (MCQ) assessment results

  G. T. Crisp, E. J. Palmer

  The appropriate analysis of students’ responses to an assessment is an essential step in improving the quality of the assessment itself as well as staff teaching and student learning. Many academics are unfamiliar with the formal processes used to analyze assessment results; the standard statistical methods associated with analyzing the validity and reliability of an assessment are perceived as being too difficult for academics with a limited understanding of statistics. This inability of academics to apply conventional statistical tools with authority often makes it difficult for them to make informed judgements about improving the quality of the questions used in assessments. We analyzed students’ answers to a number of selected response assessments and examined different formats for presenting the resulting data to academics from a range of disciplines. We propose the need for a set of simple but effective visual formats that will allow academics to identify questions that should be reviewed before being used again and present the results of a staff survey which evaluated the response of academics to these presentation formats. The survey examined ways in which academics might use the data to assist their teaching and students’ learning. We propose that by engaging academics with a formal reflection of students’ responses, academic developers are in a position to influence academics’ use of specific items for diagnostic and formative assessments.

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• Keeping pace with current issues in reporting suicide and mental illness

  J. Skehan, L. S. Burns, T. Hazell

  The Response Ability Project, funded under the Mindframe National Media Initiative in Australia, seeks to influence tertiary curricula so that graduates in journalism will be aware of and able to respond appropriately to issues relating to suicide and mental illness. Whilst the initial multi-media resources developed to support journalism educators have been received well, engagement with media organisations and individual journalists under other Mindframe projects have revealed further complexities associated with the reporting of suicide and mental illness. In particular, journalists have indicated that the issues become more problematic when they are required to report suicides in other contexts, such as murder-suicides, deaths in custody and voluntary euthanasia. Similarly, the reporting of mental illness was more complex in the context of crime and in the reporting of the mental health care system. This paper will highlight some of these new complexities of reporting and discuss how the Response Ability project has responded through the development of supplementary resources to allow educators to raise such issues with students.

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• Teaching: more than just lecturing

  C. Roettger, L. O. Roettger, F. Walugembe

  This study focused on effective teaching strategies for university professors. The researchers studied the relationship between teaching effectiveness and the dynamics of student demographics. An examination of the changes in the composition of the college population over the last few decades, based on statistical data, as well as an overview of theories of teaching and learning published in professional books and journals in both K-12 and Higher Education, provided the framework for an assessment of the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching. The final recommendations are based on the conclusions resulting from a comprehensive analysis of various research studies.

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