Undergraduate Research in Australia
South Australia Regional Roundtable
10th November 2009, University of South Australia, Adelaide - Brookman Hall, City East Campus
| Program | |
|---|---|
| 1.00 pm |
Registration |
| 1.10 |
WelcomeProfessor Margaret Hicks, Director of the Learning and Teaching Unit, University of South Australia |
| 1.20 |
The University of South Australia's Student Engagement ProjectAssociate Professor Margaret Peters, Acting Deputy Vice Chancellor: Academic, University of South Australia |
| 1.30 |
Enhancing undergraduate engagement through research and inquiryProfessor Angela Brew, ALTC National Teaching Fellow, Macquarie University. |
| 2.10 |
The Research Skills Development (RSD) FrameworkDr. John Willison, Centre for Learning and Professional Development at the University of Adelaide. |
| 2.50 |
Strengthening the link: Research and practice in the undergraduate curriculumDr. Sheila Scutter, School of Health Sciences, and Dr. Denise Wood, School of Communication, International Studies and Languages, the University of South Australia. |
| 3.30 |
Afternoon Tea |
| 4.00 |
Roundtable discussionsSharing of what institutions are doing/good practice and issues etc. and comments on proposed Communique. |
| 4.40 |
Final plenary discussionTaking these issues forward on a national level. Led by Professor Angela Brew, ALTC National Teaching Fellow, Macquarie University. |
Abstracts
Enhancing undergraduate engagement through research and inquiry
Professor Angela Brew
Professor Brew will discuss the importance of engaging undergraduates in research and inquiry and she will outline the aims and the planned outcomes from her ALTC National Teaching Fellowship. Professor Brew will also highlight some of the practical implications; in particular, focusing on some of the decisions that need to be made about the scope and extent of undergraduate research. Finally, Professor Brew will address what needs to be done to move the undergraduate research agenda forward nationally, institutionally and at the course level.
Research Skills Development (RSD Framework)
Dr John Willison, University of Adelaide
For Australia to enable university students to proceed to employment with critical enquiry skills and increase the number of students progressing satisfactorily through honours and HDR, guidance is needed for academics to realize the development of all students' research skills in content-rich undergraduate and masters by coursework programs. This guidance needs to be 'academic-friendly' because workloads and others' agendas leave little time for those teaching in the disciplines to adapt their curriculum and assessment in ways that are appropriate to developing research skills. Such guidance should complement academics' own agendas, resonate with their understandings of research processes in their disciplines, lead to efficiencies and be sustainable. It also needs to be flexible so that it is adaptable to the university, school, discipline and student contexts.
One contemporary example of this guidance is provided by the Research Skills Development (RSD) framework, a conceptual model being utilised in disciplines as diverse as Business, Dentistry, English, Electronic Engineering, and Vet Science, in a variety of university types, including G8s and ATNs, and year levels from First Year to Masters. Within many disciplines and contexts, academics have been utilizing the RSD framework, to enable explicit, coherent and incremental development of research skills in undergraduate and masters-level courses. The RSD framework typically informs the remodeling of existing assessments so that they are research-focused and designed to develop students' research skills incrementally. Such an approach has a profound effect on the curriculum as experienced by students.
This presentation will outline the Research Skills Development (RSD) framework, and present discipline-specific examples of its implementation, focusing on examples from Business. Long term outcomes for students and for academics will be presented, so that informed consideration can be given to explicit research skill development and assessment of the diversity of students across all disciplines, in order that more graduates will be research-ready for employment and for HDR. RSD Website: www.adelaide.edu.au/clpd/rsd
Strengthening the link: Research and practice in the undergraduate curriculum
Dr Sheila Scutter and Dr Denise Wood, University of South Australia
Previous research has shown that students who are intrinsically motivated have more positive attitudes to research activity, whereas negative attitudes to research are demonstrated by extrinsically motivated students. Although the health sciences are often considered a relatively homogenous group, several studies report that students enrolled in undergraduate medical radiation programs consistently express negative attitudes to research, whereas physiotherapy and occupational therapy students are more positive. Comparable research focusing on differences in student motivations and attitudes to research in the communications field is more difficult to find, however anecdotal evidence suggests there are parallels. It may be, as some researchers have suggested, that some disciplinary fields have a more developed research culture. It is also possible that students selecting these various professions differ in their motivations to study and learning styles. This paper reports the outcomes of research undertaken with students enrolled in undergraduate allied health and communications programs at the University of South Australia to determine whether there is a difference in student motivations to study and learning styles, which could contribute to student attitudes to research. The authors present case studies from both these disciplinary fields to show how they are responding to the challenges in improving student attitudes to research by strengthening the link between research and practice in the undergraduate curriculum.
Biographies
Professor Angela Brew
is a Professorial Fellow in the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Macquarie University, and an Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. She is a 2008 Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) National Teaching Fellow, an elected Fellow of the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) and a Life Member of HERDSA. Her research on the nature of research and human knowing and its relationship to teaching has been published widely and she has presented this work in numerous institutions in Australia and overseas. Her books include: The nature of research: inquiry in academic contexts; Research and teaching: beyond the divide; and (with Judyth Sachs) Transforming a university: the scholarship of teaching and learning in practice. Her latest book (with Lisa Lucas): Academic research and researchers, has just been published by McGraw Hill. From 1999-2003 she was President of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia.
Dr John Willison,
PhD, is a lecturer in the Centre for Learning and Professional Development at the University of Adelaide. His principle research interests centre around the ways that academics conceptualise and implement the explicit development of their students' research skills within undergraduate and masters by coursework curricula. Dr Willison leads a five-university project, funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, called Research Skill Development (RSD) and Assessment in the Curriculum. The conceptual model for this project, the RSD framework, is currently being utilised in Canada, Holland, Iran, Ireland, South Africa and the United States of America. A thread of current interest concerns the explicit and coherent development of research skills from First Year University to PhD and towards early career researchers.
Dr Sheila Scutter,
PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Health Science, University of South Australia, teaching research concepts, statistics and human anatomy. She has also held positions as Dean: Teaching and Learning in the Division of Health Sciences and Dean of Health Sciences, Higher Colleges of Technology, United Arab Emirates. After completing a Bachelor and Honours Degree in Physiotherapy, Sheila completed a Masters of Education at Flinders University of South Australia and her PhD in neuroscience at Adelaide University in 2000. Her interest in the teaching-research nexus was piqued by an invitation to undertake a secondment to the School of Medical Radiation with an aim of increasing research activity in academics, students and eventually the profession. Embedding research in the curriculum became a major focus of this appointment. Sheila is a team member on several teaching and learning projects including two national ALTC funded projects and she has published her findings widely through peer reviewed journal papers and conference presentations. She is currently the leader of the Health Sciences in Higher Education Research concentration in the Division of Health Sciences.
Dr Denise Wood,
PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in the Bachelor of Media Arts program at the University of South Australia. She is also the Teaching and Portfolio Leader of the School of Communication, International Studies and Languages, a member of the Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences Teaching and Learning Committee as well as Co-Chair of the Division's Equity Committee. Her teaching focuses on Web design and interactive media with a particular interest in accessibility and usability. She uses a range of methodologies to enhance student engagement including practice based and service learning, reflective practice through collaborative peer review and assessment, and research activities to encourage problem solving and deep learning. Some of the techniques she's been trialing include Web 2.0 technologies such as 3D virtual simulations, blogs, podcasting, audience response systems (in lectures) and interactive simulations. She is the recipient of a number of teaching awards and ALTC grants and projects including research projects addressing the impact of technology in education which she has published in a number of peer reviewed journal papers and book chapters. She is a principal investigator in two nationally funded projects and a co-researcher in several other research projects relating to the use of technology and 3D virtual worlds for online learning and teaching.