Teaching & Learning Update, May 2010, Issue 2
The first semester has flown by and I hope everything has gone smoothly for you. I have continued to meet with as many staff as possible and I can hardly believe that it's nearly one year since I first arrived at Massey.
Over the last few weeks it has been great attending various Massey graduation events and ceremonies. It’s rewarding to see the pride and excitement of graduates and their families. The experience underscores for me the importance of teaching and the value students place on an internationally recognised qualification.
Thanks to so many of you who took the time to respond to the recent survey to inform the Shared Services proposal from this area. Your comments and suggestions have been extremely helpful. Some of your suggestions we can pick up quite quickly ‐ for example, staff in the International Office are currently preparing a newsletter which is something that many of you have asked for.
There is a lot of information in this newsletter and I hope that you will find it useful. You are always welcome to contact me with ideas or suggestions and I look forward to meeting more of you over the coming months.
Best wishes Ingrid Day
Assistant Vice Chancellor: Academic and International Phone: +643505297
Email: [email protected]
Important Announcement – A/Prof Mark Brown
I am delighted to inform staff that we have expanded our support for Blended and Distance Education through Stream by purchasing institution wide licences for three software products:
• Adobe Acrobat Pro
• Adobe Presenter
• Adobe Connect
This is a major investment by the University. The link below takes you to an online presentation describing each product and some of the ways we can use them to enhance the student learning experience. It also provides information of how to access the software and underscores the importance of working with our CADeL consultants to fully exploit the teaching and learning potential of these tools. I hope you find time to watch the presentation.
http://connect.massey.ac.nz/adobeannouncement2010/
Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Awards
Congratulations to the winners of the Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Awards. This year the awards went to Dr Angie Farrow (School of English and Media Studies) and Dr Neville Honey (Institute of Molecular Biosciences) for Sustained Excellence.
Dr Eva Heinrich (School of Engineering and Advanced Technology) and Dr Craig Prichard (School of Management) were joint recipients of the Darrylin O’Dea Award for eLearning.
Dr Bevan Catley (School of Management) for Excellence in Teaching First year Students, and Lois Wilkinson (Student learning Development Centre) for Excellence in Academic Support which is a new award.
More information about the recipients may be found in the press release: Massey's 2010 awards for teaching excellence.
Other Awards
MEDIASITE AWARD
Matt Alexander from Information Technology Services accepted the Excellence in Education Award on behalf of the University for outstanding achievement in enhancing learning and outreach through rich media at the recent Mediasite user conference in the United States.
DEANZ AWARDS
Massey staff won two separate awards at the recent Distance Education Association of New Zealand (DEANZ) Conference hosted at Te Papa, Wellington. Dr Ben Kehrwald accepted the major award on behalf of a team of staff in the College of Education for a project entitled Implementing Blended Learning: Bringing Distance Education Techniques into the Mainstream. The award recognised the design and implementation of the new 4‐year BEd (Tchg) primary programme, including the first group of staff to formally pilot the use of Moodle at Massey for blended delivery. In a separate award, Dr Ute Walker from the School of Language Studies accepted a DEANZ Commendation for an international collaborative teaching and learning initiative involving students in New Zealand and Germany. Dr Peter Coolbear, Director of Ako Aotearoa (National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence), presented both awards.
Digital Learning Resources ‐ Rebecca Argyle
As previously announced, two digital learning resource pilots were undertaken in Semester One: (i) online administration guides and (ii) student annotated digital learning resources. Both pilots involved a formal evaluation and large Reference Group of key stakeholders. After an analysis of the findings the University is following up with further pilots in Semester Two which take account of the outcomes of the evaluation.
ADMINISTRATION GUIDE PILOT
In Semester One this pilot was focused on the development of internal Administration Guides. It involved the design of Administration Guides for 177 papers converted into a digitised format in Stream. Based on the findings of the pilot, and mainly positive feedback from staff and students, the initiative will be expanded for Semester Two with a number of improvements, including a more integrated design and ‘look and feel’ within Stream. Staff involved in the development of online Administration Guides in Semester Two will have been contacted either by their School Administrator or Tracy Corbett (Team Leader, Materials Production, Student Management). An outcome of the current initiative will be the development of a common Administration Guide template for use across the University. A small working party has started to design the template and further consultation will occur through Directors of Teaching and Learning and the Digital Learning Resources Reference Group. We anticipate wider implementation of online Administration Guides using the common template will occur throughout 2011 and more information will be available as soon as possible.
STUDENT ANNOTATED DIGITAL LEARNING RESOURCES
The second pilot focused on supporting digital Study Guides and Readings for seven papers that were able to be annotated. These resources were placed in Stream as PDFs alongside two online annotation tools: (i) Adobe Acrobat and (ii) a server‐based solution called A.nnotate. A proposal to expand this pilot to further papers using several other delivery and annotation options for Semester Two is currently under consideration.
If you have any questions about these initiatives please feel free to discuss them with your Director of Teaching and Learning or Rebecca Argyle, the Digital Learning Resources Project Manager.
Massey to monitor and guide student academic achievement ‐ Maggie Stewart
Massey University plans to introduce regular monitoring and guidance at the end of each semester for students who may be experiencing difficulty with academic progress. The new scheme will be based on grade results from study and will offer regular guidance and support to students to ensure future success with their studies. Students identified as experiencing progression issues will be invited to take the opportunity to discuss these with student learning advisors/counsellors, with the aim of directing students to University resources targeted at assisting with getting studies back on track. Students will also be invited to participate in an academic review action plan which would encourage students to take immediate action in accessing study support and services available at the University. While this is important for every student, it is especially so in the case of international students, who are required as a condition of their student visa that they maintain satisfactory progress and attendance.
There are three key reasons for the introduction of the monitoring scheme. Firstly, it is about improving student study skills and performance, but is also about raising student awareness of access to relevant University support and services, and the establishment of a regular dialogue between the student and the University that specifically addresses study progression issues earlier than previously has been the case.
The benefits of end of semester grade results follow‐up are expected to be that students will receive targeted support and advice, which will encourage students in their studies and provide guidance to students to achieve satisfactory results.
Development of our Academic Integrity framework ‐ Malcolm Rees
A Working Group convened by the Teaching and Learning Committee has for some time been working on an improved framework relating to the way we deal with academic misconduct. The overall theme is to move more towards academic integrity, educative actions and teaching and learning, rather than focusing primarily on discipline and misconduct. In essence procedure and policy documents are being developed to
operationalise the existing disciplinary regulation that has been in place since 2005.
A specific aspect being explored is the creation of college or departmental Academic Integrity Officers who will be responsible for managing many of the cases currently seen by HoDs whilst still allowing individual staff the latitude to deal with the day‐to‐ day issues. The frame work hopefully provides guidance through the use of specific criteria to allow this all to occur. Another important aspect is the creation of a database of the outcomes so that we can begin to understand the scope of the issues we face; this will also provide us with the ability to escalate outcomes in instances where students reoffend.
Underpinning this is also the concurrent development of an educational framework, for both students and staff, that we will need to have in place once the documents have been through the College board consultation and approval process.
It is intended to run a pilot of the new approach as soon as the documents have been approved by Academic Board and, following on from that, to roll out the new framework to the entire university.
CADeL Update ‐ Gordon Suddaby
LUNCHBOX SESSIONS
CADeL has, this year, initiated a regular Lunchbox series. These events are held every second Friday between 12 midday and 1:00pm and are proving very popular. Although the presentations take place in the Rangitane Room on the Manawatu campus, they are available live via Adobe Connect and people may participate from their desks. For access to the meeting room, click on: Lunchbox online meeting room.
The current focus of the events is on topics related to Stream, although later in the year we anticipate the emphasis will be widened to include more general academic and professional development themes. Face to face sessions may also be shared across campuses with online access available to all staff regardless of their location.
Topics so far have included the use of Adobe Connect, findings on a research project looking at student perceptions of Stream, the use of the Adobe presenter etool, the services provided by the Library in relation to Stream, eAssessment tools, and a scan of the digital horizon. The sessions are advertised on the CADeL website and by email.
ONLINE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
We have recently launched a new series of online, self‐paced professional development courses in Learning Technologies. The seven courses were developed in partnership with 17 other universities. Eventually we hope to customise the courses for the Massey context but in meantime we encourage staff to explore this new professional learning resource. More information is available via ‘Latest News’ on the CADeL homepage or at the following link:
What professional development is available?
PROJECT UPDATE
CADeL over the past few years has been involved in leading and supporting a number of projects related to teaching and learning. Currently the Centre is involved in two major initiatives, both funded through Ako Aotearoa’s National Project Fund:
• Engaging effectively in science, technology and engineering: the pathway from secondary to university education is led by Professor Tim Parkinson from IVABS. This project is drawing to a close and the findings, relating to the issues that affect student choice for and retention in science at university are due shortly to be presented to Ako Aotearoa.
• Help or hindrance – Blended approaches and learner engagement is led by Dr Lynn Jeffrey explored student perceptions of a blended approach to teaching and learning. It is anticipated that these projects and their findings will be topics of Lunchbox sessions later in the year.
AKO AOTEAROA NATIONAL PROJECT FUND
As mentioned above, teaching and learning projects are funded through the Ako Aotearoa National Project Fund, and the criteria for the 2010 round have just been announced. The details are featured on: Ako Aotearoa website.
Planning workshops to give further information and detail regarding the application process and the 2010 changes to the NPF criteria will be held on:
8 June 1.30pm Massey University, Wellington Campus, Executive Suite, 5B14.
14 June 12.00pm Massey University, Turitea Campus, Rangitane Room, Bernard Chambers A,
Please RSVP to Christina Crews by Friday 21 May: ([email protected]) or phone 06 952 7001 ext.70985
Completions Project ‐ Fiona Coote
Fiona Coote has joined the AVC (AI) team on a project looking broadly at improving qualification completion rates by identifying students close to completion or in discontinued programmes and transitioning these students to completion.
Fiona will be working with the Colleges on mapping possible transitions for students enrolled in programmes that have been discontinued. Some work has already been done on this and Fiona will be supporting and advancing this work with helpful guidelines and procedures that will extend beyond the project timeline of 14 months.
Fiona will also be working on identifying students close to completion but who may have stalled in their study.
This will involve developing recommendations regarding the best pathway to completion for these students and then working with College staff to implement agreed actions.
The aims of this project are to provide a service to both students and Colleges to ensure a transparent and cohesive system for completions is in place to meet current and future needs; to work out the best fit for programme completions and to advance our understanding of why students don’t complete the programmes they embark on. The project is linked to the wider Academic Reform and further information is available from Fiona who can be contacted by email ([email protected]) or phone extension 7833.
50th Jubilee of Distance Learning ‐ A/Prof Mark Brown
In April, Professor Terry Anderson, Canadian Chair in Distance Education, presented a well attended public lecture in which he differentiated between first, second and third generation approaches to distance education.
The audience was challenged to rethink the traditional place bound nature of much education provision and knowledge transfer.
The 50th Jubilee was a major theme throughout Graduation week on the Manawatu Campus. Highlights of the week included the Jubilee Cake at the Graduation Dinner and the address by Sir John Daniel, President and CEO of the Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver at the Thursday ceremony. In his address Sir John, previously Vice‐Chancellor of the Open University (UK) and past President of the International Council for Distance Education, congratulated Massey and noted that
“...many countries and institutions have looked with admiration at the Extramural studies programme. You are one of the oldest and most successful examples of combining campus study and distance learning in the same institution”.
He also paid special tribute to Emeritus Professor Don Bewley who had earlier been conferred an honorary doctorate in recognition of his outstanding contribution as Director of Extramural Studies over several decades.
International Symposium – Bruce Graham
Planning is underway for an International Symposium on each campus in July. A key objective is explore what internationalisation means at Massey as we develop a new International Strategy for the university. This is an
excellent opportunity for staff to hear about the functions and services available through the International Office, what international activities are already underway or in place in Colleges, and to contribute to future international initiatives. Case studies of existing programmes and initiatives will be presented and there will be an open forum opportunity for staff to contribute. All interested staff are invited to attend and we suggest that you diary these dates now.
Subject to final confirmation, the symposia are to be held on the following dates and registrations will be made through CADeL once details are finalised:
Albany – Friday 16 July (pm) Wellington – Friday 23 July (pm) Manawatu – Friday 30 July (pm)
Personal Profile ‐ Maggie Stewart
I have been at Massey since early 1981 when I took up a position in the then Faculty of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences, working in the Dean’s Office which in those days preceded the current College Office. Professor Alan Frampton led the Faculty in his role as Dean at the time. I was completing a Masters degree in Animal Science and when offered the opportunity to work in the Dean’s Office at the University, it was an excellent option.
At the time of taking up that first role here, I had already previously been a student at Massey for several years, having initially completed a Bachelor of Agricultural Science in the days when ‘terms’ meant compulsory attendance at all laboratory classes and examinations were 100% dependent on a final 3‐hour examination which tested the whole year’s work!
Between undergraduate study and postgraduate study, some years working at the Horticultural Research Centre, Levin and for the Pork Industry Council in an advisory role had been early, varied and interesting work experiences.
My early years were spent in Christchurch, subsequently moving to the Wellington area around primary school age, then to the Horowhenua district for secondary years, where I very much enjoyed life in the countryside, close to coastal beaches and with the Tararua ranges as a dominant feature of the landscape. This area offered great outdoor opportunities, and I experienced a very rural upbringing rather typical of New Zealand in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. From very early, an intense interest in the natural world and in sciences generally, sparked an ambition to study these things at Massey University, where the flagship programme in agriculture was taught.
The years at Massey have passed remarkably fast, characterised by a changing number of roles with different challenges and responsibilities, supporting changes and new aspirations at the University which went through enormous growth to evolve into an impressive research and teaching institution.
Within Massey, I have been fortunate to pursue interests in a wide range of administration functions, at various times managing student admissions, student records, scholarships, timetabling and publications including the University Calendar, and database systems development, and as well participating in mergers with other institutions, involving the coordination and transition of qualifications from the former College of Education and the former Wellington Polytechnic and also expansion into the Albany campus. Roles past and present in Faculty, Extramural Studies, Student Affairs, the Academic Registrar’s Office, and in the Assistant Vice‐Chancellor’s Office, have led to a strong commitment to service improvement, to quality, and to excellence in university endeavours.
In the years at Massey some of the highlights for me were roles leading the conversion from a points system to a credit system of papers and programmes at the University, as well as leading the development of a single database for capture and quality assurance of academic information. Another exciting project was leading the initiation and successful establishment of Massey Kids Club, the on‐campus after school care facility at the Manawatu campus. At the time, after school care was problematic for most families and establishment of the centre made a significant difference in the lives of students and staff working at the University, as well as giving the University a reputation for being ahead of any other university in New Zealand at that time.
The future ahead promises new challenges in learning and teaching that will offer rewarding opportunities for change and further developments to meet the needs of students and staff. I look forward to my role in being part of the developments in tertiary education, and contributing to innovations at Massey University.
