2. March 18, 2003.
Mary Peat and Sue Franklin (Biology)
"Use of online and offline formative and summative assessment opportunities: have they had any impact on student learning?"
For almost a decade we have been providing a large group of first year, undergraduate, biology students with both offline (paper-based) and online assessment resources to support them in their learning. This paper reports on an investigation of the students? use of these assessment resources, as well as their perceptions of the usefulness of these resources to their learning. The research plan enabled us to investigate any correlations between use or non-use of the assessment resources and final performance in the course. The results show that while the majority of students use and find useful both offline and online assessment resources, use has no differential impact on final learning outcomes.
3. April 15, 2003.
Manju Sharma and Ian Cooper (Physics)
"The use of research based teaching and learning methods in the design of a service course."
In this talk, we describe our approach to designing a service course based on separating two aspects of education research and then combining them to suit our situation. The two aspects are firstly, the design of the teaching and learning environment and secondly, the manner in which the content is addressed. In the design of the teaching and learning environment, one can focus on particular features such as collaborative learning and the use of information technology. In a similar fashion, the content can be addressed by focusing on particular features such as the use of context rich problems and story telling. Of course the two aspects are intimately related. We will use the Agricultural Physics course to illustrate our approach. results of evaluation will also be presented.
4. May 13, 2003.
Tom Hubble (Geosciences)
"Driving curriculum change with PBL: an example from the geosciences."
The curricula of second and third year geology and geophysics courses taught within School of Geosciences have been modified or completely overhauled over the last two years. They were changed in response to a number of factors, one of the most important being negative student evaluations and comments about the style of course delivery. Students indicated that they wished to analyze and interpret data much earlier in their training than we, as teaching staff, thought possible. Students wanted to be challenged by problems that had a real-life, in-the-workplace 'feel' to them. Their comments indicated to us that our traditional approach for educating Geology and Geophysics majors was becoming inappropriate. In other words our focus on rock identification training and teacher-centered methods of delivering content about rock, ore and petroleum forming processes or exploration techniques was alienating our student body. Consequently, the teaching staff reassessed what we felt we should be trying to achieve in our classrooms and have performed major constructive surgery on our second and third year curricula. This has led to the introduction of problem-based and inquiry-led approaches into our second and third-year courses. The issues surrounding and arising from these recent reforms will be outlined and discussed and an example of a soluble, 'real-life geological problem' presented.
5. June 10, 2003.
Don Taylor (Mathematics & Statistics)
"Learning objects and a component approach to mathematics instruction"
In 2001 and 2002 the School of Mathematics and Statistics developed a web-based package for revision of first year mathematics material. The content consists of the vectors portion of MATH1002 broken into small components and enhanced with a glossary, examples and quizzes. The components are intended to be independent, reusable and easily changed. The goal was to create a system that allows authors to write a chunk of mathematics in their favourite system (eg LaTeX) and then check it into the system. In this talk I will demonstrate the prototype system and describe what I see as the future of learning objects and a component-based content model.
6. July 8, 2003.
Howard D'Abrera (Mathematics & Statistics)
"Using EXCEL in an introductory statistics course."
A set of labs using Excel was developed for use in STAT 1021/1022, a course that runs for two semesters and which is given in the Faculty of Arts to students with minimal background in mathematics. The labs are designed to illustrate statistical concepts, to teach the students the general features of Excel and show them to how to use the statistical tables and functions in Excel.Those attending the talk will be logged on as beginning students and have the opportunity to see how the labs work. Any feedback will be welcome.
7. August 5, 2003.
Prof. Peter Reimann (Faculty of Education)
"Supporting Collaborative Science Learning with Web Technologies."
Science education has always been an area that was open-minded about incorporating elements of information and communication technologies. In addition to tools that support individual problem solving and learning, science education can benefit from approaches to net-based forms of collaborative learning. I shall describe a number of approaches and studies that focus on supporting small groups of learners (and one larger community of students) who work on more or less authentic science problems. In addition to the pedagogical rationale some of the technical obstacles will be identified and the effectiveness of the approaches will be discussed.
8. August 26, 2003.
Dr Sue Gordon (Mathematics Learning Centre/Faculty of Education)
"Methodological Issues in Science Education Research -Is Rigorous Research Possible?"
Questions are being raised as to what is scientific research in education. We explore principles underpinning scientific research and how these play out in studies. We look to investigations in the area of public health for models. Why do well designed investigations fail? Practical challenges facing researchers in science education include getting started on an investigation, improving skills as a researcher and publishing research papers. Our discussion will focus on the issues surrounding quantitative methods - data collection and analysis, the communication of results and the role of statistics in the accumulation of scientific evidence.
9. September 16, 2003.
Gareth Denyer (Biochemistry)
"More Generic Skills: Relational Databases for Biochemistry & Nutrition Students."
Several years ago we radically changed our Biochemistry courses so that generic skills were specifically taught and assessed. One of those skills was the construction of spreadsheets, which obviously has high relevance to our experiment-driven discipline. Although we have been exceptionally effective at nurturing Excel skills, our students have come to rely on spreadsheets to solve all their data problems. And, unfortunately, there are some situations where spreadsheets impose severe limitations. Within our field, there are two strong examples: (a) the storage and analysis of data obtained in 'post-genome'/bioinformatic experiments (eg, from microarrays), where the sheer volume of data makes spreadsheets inappropriate, and (b) the computation of diet histories and the nutritional analysis of meals, where the solution needs to be tremendously flexible to account for unlimited subject heterogeneity. In both these examples, a database is most appropriate and, therefore, we have extended our teaching of generic skills to instruction in database skills. Using the example of dietary analysis, we will show how it is possible to take a group of non-database savvy students (ie, nutrition undergraduates) and empower them with database skills. Indeed, over the course of just six sessions, it was possible to raise them to a standard at which they could produce a feature-rich, user-friendly nutritional analysis package. A key feature was that we did not present lists of instructions but, rather, focussed on teaching the concepts - leaving the students, themselves, to produce the 'idiot guides'. The skills are obviously transportable and it is hoped that the students will increasingly turn to databases to solve their professional data recording/analysis tasks. Our next targets are, of course, lecturers who still insist on using spreadsheets to store and compute examination results!
10. October 14, 2003.
Sue Franklin and Alison Lewis (Biology)
"Contextualising Human Biology for Education Students: a Case Study."
Service teaching forms a significant component of the teaching of all tertiary science departments in Australia, especially at the first year level. This form of teaching is often associated with a lack of responsiveness to concerns of and by students, client faculties and providers; a lack of understanding of the client profession; and funding mechanisms that discourage and constrain such teaching. A major problem with service teaching, particularly where students from the client faculty are required to attend mainstream courses within the provider faculty, is the apparent lack of linkage between the service course and the students' professional program.
First year students in the Bachelor of Education Secondary-Human Movement and Health Education degree program are required to study biology for half a year in semester 2. The biology course provided takes into account that most of the students have no biology background and that interest in the biology per se would be enhanced if it were presented in a manner relevant to the students' professional pathway. We will discuss the development of the unit of study in order to contextualise the content, its evaluation by the students and our attempt to identify a transfer of knowledge and understanding from the first year unit to an appropriate second year unit.
11. November 11, 2003.
John O'Byrne (Physics)
"Finding students `at risk' - harder than it looks."
With the support of a Science Faculty Teaching Development Grant we have been attempting to develop a program to make an early identification of junior science students at risk of failure. We have focussed on ways to identify those students during their first semester. This has involved comparing marks from various assessment tasks throughout the semester with end-of-semester exam marks in Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics. Our results indicate that performance in tasks throughout the semester are poor indicators of final marks, suggesting that there is no simple way to identify students at risk early in a semester.
Is the best approach to allow students to self-select? Can we afford to wait until they reveal themselves by failing in first semester? When we do find find them, what can we do with them that is effective and sustainable? Will they come along anyway? Is peer-mentoring more successful than staff-mentoring? Is a formal faculty system necessary to react when students do fail?
Plenty of questions looking for good answers!
Back to SciFER Program for 2003