CAL-laborate Volume 1 October 1997

UniServe Science

In 1994, the Australian Federal Government, through its Committee for the Advancement of University Teaching (CAUT), established, as a three year trial, a nationwide network of "clearing houses", modelled on the CTI project in Britain, for the collection and dissemination of teaching materials throughout the whole Australian university system.

The Australian network is smaller and tighter than its British counterpart, and groups of disciplines are collected in multi-disciplinary centres. A clearing house for all sciences was awarded to The University of Sydney. UniServe Science caters for Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Geography, Geology, Physics and Psychology. The other clearing houses in the network are: Engineering at the University of Wollongong, Health at the University of Newcastle, Law at the Australian National University, Humanities and Social Sciences at R.M.I.T., and a coordinating centre at the Australian National University.

The activities of UniServe Science include:

collecting information about teaching materials, finding out what is being produced in this country and overseas;

preparing catalogues so that teachers can make informed choices about what they might use;

disseminating all this information, by newsletters and electronic means;

organizing to get new packages reviewed by teaching academics, and making these opinions available;

setting up other exchanges of information by means of the Internet;

recruiting representatives from every science department in the country in order to establish a nationwide network of direct personal contacts;

undertaking visits to other institutions and giving talks; and

holding workshops.

Page Maintained By: uniserve@usyd.edu.au
Last Update: Monday, 30-Apr-2012 15:10:29 EST
URL: http://science.uniserve.edu.au/pubs/callab/vol1/uniserve.html