At the beginning of my academic journey I held the belief that I would learn to teach simply by teaching. To my dismay, I had underestimated the complicated nature of teaching in higher education and gave little consideration to the ways students learn. Feeling overwhelmed by my situation, I began questioning my teaching practices and student…

In Australia, academic workloads are increasing, and university funding is decreasing. Academics and university managers are engaging in risk adverse behavior and tending to focus on customer satisfaction and student retention, potentially at the expense of academic standards. Conventional approaches to pedagogy minimize adverse student feedback,…

This paper investigates the magnitude of difference of academic achievement scores by language of instruction of prior education and the magnitude of interaction between language of instruction of prior education and students' preferred learning trait on academic performance of a group of international students in two teaching and learning…

Many universities have strategies for exposing students to international experiences, but little is reported on their implementation. One example of an implemented activity is the multidisciplinary research project for undergraduate environment students, at RMIT University, that both prepares students to work in the environment profession and…

Growing pressure to restructure and reform tertiary education is encouraging university academics to use innovative practices that assist students to develop "employable" skills. The hybrid approach described in this paper stimulated students to be self-directed adult learners who maximized their learning of content and skills by means…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that, with a bit of creative thinking, elements of certain university-wide projects (in this case study, establishing an iTunes U site) can be incorporated into student studies and assessment as real-world learning opportunities. Design/methodology/approach: Describes three different approaches…

A problem-based learning approach was adopted for a unit of study in first year agricultural economics at the University of Sydney with the aim of starting development of students' research skills earlier than usual. The novel teaching approach employed a structured and guided problem activity in the first semester and progressed to a more…

Definitions and practical interpretations of the research-teaching nexus are various, but almost invariably the link between teaching and research lies in the direction of transferring research into teaching rather than vice versa. This transfer is achieved by using research to inform teaching and, less frequently, by engaging students in…

Literature on engineering education stresses the need for graduates to have skills such as working globally in a multicultural environment; working in interdisciplinary teams; sharing of tasks on a global, around the clock basis; working with digital communication tools and in a virtual environment. In addition, accreditation criteria include…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 13th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2016), October 28-30, 2016, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS), co-organized by the University of Mannheim, Germany, and endorsed by the…

The adoption of problem-based learning as a teaching method in the advertising and public relations programs offered by the Business TAFE (Technical and Further Education) School at RMIT University is explored in this paper. The effect of problem-based learning on student engagement, student learning and contextualised problem-solving was…

Introduction: New technologies such as the Internet offer an increasing number of options for the delivery of continuing education (CE) to community pharmacists. Many of these options are being utilized to overcome access- and cost-related problems. This paper identifies learning preferences of Australian community pharmacists for CE and…

Engaging students with real-world activities can be effective in supporting the learning of mathematics, "whenever possible, real-world situations will provide a context for both introducing and applying geometric topics" (NCTM 1989). Tool making is a way to bring real-world mathematics into the classroom and using the tool is a way of…

In this article, the authors discuss the use by teachers of "Type 2 tasks" within the Task Types in Mathematics Learning (TTML) Project, i.e., those in which the mathematics is situated within a contextualised practical problem. It is argued that these kinds of tasks have great potential for challenging and engaging students, and showing…

In the past, engineering programmes were developed with separate technical learning outcomes supplemented by generic attributes. The latter were in most cases a standalone set of attributes developed by academic institutions or professional societies overseeing engineering accreditation processes. Although the technical learning outcomes were well…