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This paper reports student reactions to the use of a personal response system (clickers) to provide peer assessment. Trials were conducted in three upper level seminar classes in two different subjects in an Arts Faculty, where students were required to give individual in-class presentations as part of their assessable work. Class members assessed the presenters using criteria based on those used by the tutor, but modified to make them appropriate for student use. At the end of the session some students in the trials discussed their experiences in focus groups. The comments of those focus group participants are analysed to reveal the key issues for the students. Their experience was generally positive, and the comments indicate that using clickers for the purpose of peer assessment can make a significant contribution to student engagement.

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The Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) offers an annual international conference on topical teaching and learning issues with opportunities to meet colleagues with similar interests, exchange ideas about teaching and learning and learn about current developments from experienced researchers and practitioners.

Available conference papers are: Intercultural sensitivity training toolkit: augmenting academic engagement patterns / S. Adapa and T. Hathaway; The academic role: service, compliance, freedom / P. Baron and L. Corbin; Moderation in higher education: four discourses / D. Beutel, L. Adie and M. Lloyd; Crossing borders in preparing doctoral candidates and supervisors for global research contexts / E. Bitzer, V. Trafford and S. Leshem; Blurring the boundaries: the impact of formative feedback on summative assessment / J. Boereboom and K. Moore; Conceptualising global citizenship: analysing intended curriculum in Australian universities / A. Bosanquet, T. Winchester-Seeto and A. Rowe; Perceptions of a 'flipped classroom' approach to teaching and learning: a case study / H. Boulton.

Collaborative learning in networked classrooms: a new landscape in higher education / M. A. Carter, T. T. Toe, A. Bhati and A. Lundberg; Rethinking teaching and learning in higher education: reframing our research priorities / J. M. Case; The critical study on the internationalization of higher education in Taiwan / L. Chiang; Collaborating for knowledge exchange in multi-campus universities in Australia and China / F. Fallon; Graduates, careers and career agency: what we know and what we need to know / J. Ferguson, J. Bailey and T. Marchant; Medical practice in a globalized world: conceptualising creativity as a core component of clinical reasoning / L. Frick and J. Bezuidenhout; Globalisation and deterritorialisation: an example of an academic discipline in the Malay Archipelago / L. R. C. Geerlings and A. Lundberg.

Notion of quality: student perceptions of what needs improvement / P. Halloran, C. Price, B. Tucker and M. Davis; Rethinking higher education research: ontology mapping of higher education systems / T. Hasan, A. Ramaprasad and C. Singai; Globalization and learning across the higher education sector: at the other extreme / O. Hicks; Using the affordance of technology to adjust the design of a flipped learning pedagogy to address the needs of students with complex learning needs / S. Johnston and W. Jarvis; Towards rethinking research on quality in higher education / J. Z. Jordens and N. Zepke; What did we flip?: exploiting technology for students to develop real-world perspectives in the classroom / S. Krishnan, J. Schneider and I. Munro.

Delving into double degrees: the case of Victorian universities in Australia / E. C. Levin and C. R. Perera; Work-integrated learning and the 'inclusive' challenge of preparing a diverse student cohort for the world beyond the academy / J. Mackaway, T. Winchester-Seeto and L. Carter; A multidimensional approach to understanding and addressing digital literacy in higher education / M. McMahon; Creating core conditions for quality teaching evaluation in Vietnamese higher education / L. U. Nguyen; Developing health literacy skills through the use of community based surveys and multimedia productions / K. Pearce; An ontological turn in critical thinking in higher education / V. Pollard.

Engaging academics in collegial online professional development during a course renewal process: intent and reflection / J. Savage and V. Pollard; How do we know what is academic success for international students? / J. K. N. Singh, G. Jack and J. Schapper; Preparing law graduates for a globalised world / J. Squelch and D. Bentley; From bricks to clicks: a new model for higher education / W. van Schoor and G. Mischke; Longevity and the disciplines: what makes university teaching different? / D. Venness; Distributed leadership in higher education: Hong Kong academics' perceptions and practices / S. W.-Y. Wan; A tale of two cohorts: measuring and understanding the learning experience of the double cohort / Y. Zhao and J. Huen. Show less

A substantial body of work exists on the definition of graduate employability and a number of frameworks identify lists of knowledge, skills and attributes that graduates should attain. However, substantial gaps still exist between the expectations of employers, graduates, students and staff about what, when and where requisite student learning should take place. In addition, very little research has been published about discipline differences in graduate employability. The study reported in this paper was part of a large federally funded project on graduate employability. It explored the perspectives of stakeholders from multiple disciplines on graduate employability to identify areas of consensus, misalignment and opportunities for collaboration. The main issue presented here is adequacy of current employability frameworks in an Australian context.

Data were collected through a series of focus groups and interviews and analysed on themes drawn from an existing employability framework. Stakeholders were asked about their expectations, any perceived gaps and existing challenges. The adequacy of the employability framework was then assessed against the student and employer perceptions of employability and differences between disciplines. Employability frameworks vary in organisation, theoretical underpinning and level of detail. The CareerEDGE framework was found to have a good fit with Australian employer views on graduate employability. Participants identified some general and discipline-specific issues/concepts outside this framework, but additional descriptors can easily be added to it. The framework is also easily updated as the conceptions of employability evolve. A further improvement to the framework would be addition of level of sophistication of student understanding.

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Communities of practice (CoPs) are often cited in higher education literature as a successful way of building and sharing a scholarly approach to enhancing learning and teaching practice. However, CoPs operate differently from institutionalised work groups and the leadership, or facilitator role, differs from the familiar chairperson, or unit/course leader, so this role requires in-depth exploration, articulation and capacity building. The 2010-11 [Australian Learning and Teaching Council] ALTC Teaching Fellowship uses an action research approach to identify key aspects of the facilitator role, explore issues around the role and develop resources to build the leadership capacity of CoP facilitators. The facilitators engaged in an interactive theatre workshop to identify and act out critical incidents they face in their CoP facilitator role. Activities are based on Augusto Boal's (2002) 'Theatre of The Oppressed' approach, where participants are engaged in a theatrical game in which a problem is shown in an unsolved form, to which the audience of facilitators is invited to suggest and enact solutions. Participants are guided through the physical process of creating structures of power, examining roles within the community, identifying problems and sharing solutions. Many different solutions are enacted in a single forum - resulting in the pooling of knowledge, tactics and experience - what Boal calls a 'rehearsal for reality'. The authors will explore the leadership role of CoP facilitators and the transformation, growth and emergence of ideas generated by cross-boundary, or 'on the edge' activities, by bringing two groups (CoP facilitators and theatre arts) together in a creative and innovative progression.

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Many higher education institutions have implemented flipped classroom models for improving student engagement in the learning process. In this paper [the authors] present the experiment 'Village Pharmacy', which uses technology assisted case-based approaches for students to learn pharmaceutics and associated professional skills in context. Using an auto-ethnographic approach [the authors] collected and analysed [their] experiences of designing and teaching this course, reflected on peer feedback, student learning experiences and responses. [The authors] present [their] design, reflection and analysis of how learning unfolded in a flipped classroom and the lessons [the authors] have learnt to make improvements for the future. [The authors] believe that [the] reflections will be useful for academics wishing to use technology to flip the classroom for students to develop key professional skills inherent to their discipline.

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The recent trend in higher education policy towards building research capacity places particular emphasis on postgraduate study as the incubator of research skills that drive the knowledge economy. For some humanities disciplines, such as English, this shift from traditional notions of scholarship to transferable skills has posed significant challenges. This paper will assess responses to the introduction of a compulsory research component in the [Bachelor of Arts (Honours)] B.A. (Hons) degree at the University of Auckland's Department of English. Previously conceived as a one-year program undertaken by coursework, the inclusion of a research component in the B.A. (Hons) in English responds to a national regulatory change that reflects a commitment to building future research capacity as measured by higher-degree completions. Supportive of the University's strategic objective to enhance the research experience of postgraduate students but aware of the range of academic abilities reflected in the Honours cohort, English department staff set about designing a platform for supporting staff-defined research projects via a mix of staff-led seminars with a skills-development focus, student peer-group seminars and one-on-one supervision.

This research initiative represents a significant shift from prior graduate research culture. In this paper, [the authors] report on the initial findings of a research project developed to assess the impact of this initiative over a three-year inception period (2008-2010). [The authors'] analysis of data from student focus-group discussions highlights the challenges and benefits that the ascendency of the research skills agenda poses established academic practice in disciplines like English.

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The starting point of this paper is that there are many reasons to develop closer links between research and teaching. To do this, it is argued, we need to move beyond debates that fracture the engagement of teaching with research (or research with teaching) and instead focus on the development of an understanding of what is necessary to bring research and teaching closer together. Opening with a review of the current literature on research-led teaching (RLT), the paper also draws on the views of research-led teaching provided by senior academic managers at a Melbourne university when interviewed in 2006-2007. The paper then looks at the variety of ways in which research-led teaching has been implemented across the university’s ten faculties.

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Critical thinking is one of the key attributes that crops up regularly in discussions concerning the role of tertiary education. In particular, it manifests in discussions about graduate and employability attributes: along with disciplinary content and skills, stakeholders contend that graduates should emerge from their tertiary studies with enhanced abilities in critical thinking, decision making, problem solving, logical reasoning and so forth. Indeed, excellence in teaching is seen to be tied to students’ development of these skills just as much as to their building of discipline-specific knowledge. So, given that the development of these skills is thought to be an essential part of students’ university experiences, what are they, how might we go about fostering them, and how do our students perceive our efforts? What are their perceptions of not only critical thinking, its importance, development and transferability to other subjects in their education or aspects of their lives, but of our attempts to inculcate it in their education as a core value and set of skills?

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There is increasing debate and discussion about the shape of the workforce in Australian universities, which are facing ‘a crisis’ in staffing that will inhibit their ability to undertake teaching and research. The increasing number of reports dealing with staffing issues unfortunately do not disaggregate the workforce by sex. This paper presents a brief analysis of (mostly) publicly available data on university employment, exploring gender segregation in the university workforce, with a focus on vertical segregation amongst both academic and general staff. The paper compares segregation in academia against European Union figures, benchmarks academic gender structures against the Australian Public Service, and critiques a recent study (Diezmann and Grieshaber, 2010) that concluded that women and men are now being appointed in equal numbers to the professoriate. The work is part of a larger [Australian Research Council] ARC Linkage project which will provide a more detailed report on employment in the sector. [The authors’] analysis to date shows that gender segregation has been reduced but is far from being eliminated.

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A whole-of-university approach to student transition is essential, and academics’ understanding of the realities of the student experience is fundamental to any such efforts. However, a review of the literature suggests university transition activities may overlook or gloss over the kind of academic development needed to shape academics’ understandings of transition and thus to effect meaningful organisational change. This paper reflects on work done by one academic development unit to assist academics to improve their students’ transition to university. Analysis of three different initiatives forms the basis for discussion of ways academics think about student transition, and ways academic developers can work with these understandings. The paper concludes with considerations for academic development practice that can make a contribution to a university’s approach to student transition. For academic development to make a systemic difference to the experiences of students entering university, it needs to encourage, support and validate academics’ active, evidence-based understanding of and response to the student experience.

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