This month's question:
Feedback for the newsletter – What advice
would you give to the next newsletter? Favourite section? Section could do
without? Reply to samnetaustralia@gmail.com
2. Conferences & publication
EduRe ’14
– The International Virtual Conference on Education, Social and
Technological Sciences will be held on March 13-14, 2014. No need to travel
as collaboration and sharing will occur online. Abstracts due December 10. All papers accepted for the conference will be
published in a peer-reviewed journal.
WA
Teaching and Learning Forum 2014
– University of Western Australia, 30-31 January. The theme is Transformative, Innovative and Engaging.
Submission deadline for refereed papers just closed 24 Oct. Abstracts and workshop proposals welcome
until 14 November.
Future: February 2014
SaMnet Leadership-development workshops. Host one -register your interest - samnetaustralia@gmail.com.
Match up:
Interested in using videos on
the learning process in physics (or another science)? Contact Chris Creah. See a description of her Fellowship effort
below – on just-in-time teaching and peer learning.
4. SaMnet activity
The SaMnet HQ team has been completing the
final report for the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching. We
detail development of the SaMnet community and achievements of the 28 project
teams. We will share the link in the newsletter once the report is approved and
on the OLT website.
Action-learning project teams are still
gathering and evaluating data and using their / your results to influence the attitudes
and teaching of colleagues. Assistance is still available from SaMnet HQ,
critical friends, and your peers.
5. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
(SoTL)
Sam
Wineburg, The Conversation
Do you spend most of your time writing scholarly
work or publications for wider audiences? Which would you prefer to spend your
time on? Where does your university’s administration see your impact? A tricky
balance – no doubt.
Emily
Atterberry, USA Today
The new poster-boy of teaching – flipped
classrooms – is being assessed for effectiveness. The results are only
preliminary, but one study has so far found no difference on learning! Read for
yourself.
6. Leadership insights
Two from a LinkedIn newsletter:
Joel Peterson,
Chairman, JetBlue Airways. Stanford Business School
Anxious about any of the following? (1) Work,
(2) Companionship or (3) Balance between work and family? Advice from the
reflections of business school graduates 40 years down the track.
Deep Nishar
Do you see compassion as an important quality
of a leader? Nishar argues for it and tells you where to learn it!
7.
Project in Focus: 2013 OLT National Fellowship: Work It Out: Enhancing
students’ problem solving skills by modelling how to “Work It Out” in a
just-in-time learning environment. Chris Creagh (Murdoch University)
An OLT Fellowship can take a winding path from
first inspiration to final report, and I know for sure that my path was not
mapped out at the start. I had a teaching strategy in mind, as I had been
thinking about the importance of diagrams and formula in facilitating
communication and understanding in physics. The six-step strategy I am
developing encourages peer learning and just-in-time teaching. It leans heavily
on Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development’ to promote effective learning
between peers and a master-apprentice approach to develop a deeper
understanding of content.
Problematically, there
are many apprentices / novices and not many available masters / experts. So,
videos were created in which the student audience eavesdrops on the discussion
of experts, i.e., me and my tutors, discussing the “thing” that I want to get
across to the students.
The two new videos constitute
a 5 – 7 minute impetus for tutorials, which have associated pre, during and
post video and concluding activities. Once everything is released on my
Fellowship website, they will be open educational resources. Some academics
have already suggested that the videos might be useful for tutor training!
A Toolbox of Diagrams – get some diagrams and stick
them in your toolbox so that you can pull them out and modify them as you need,
to help in communicating ideas.
Chris
Creagh – Dr. Chris Creagh is a senior lecturer in Physics and has a Grad. Dip
in Secondary Education. She has received two Vice Chancellor’s Awards for
Excellence in Teaching / Enhancing Learning as well as a Carrick (Australian
Learning and Teaching Council) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to
Student Learning. At the moment, she is an OLT National Teaching Fellow trying
to find a way to assist first-year university students kick-start / bootstrap
their own learning.
As the end of session is approaching, and you
will be looking forward to time to write, we will repeat our offer from last
month. Publish on aspects of your SaMnet
project – on the learning innovation or a case study of your efforts to drive
change. Let us know in SaMnet HQ what
you are aiming to publish and what data that we have been gathering from your
project, and others (permission needed),
that might be helpful. Your write up
might be suitable for IJISME or
another journal we can identify.
