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in audio as a podcast.
This month's question:
Manju Sharma, the Chief-Coordinator of SaMnet,
has been awarded a National Teaching Fellowship.
The title of the program is “More active
lecture approaches in science and mathematics: using expert cultural capital to
drive change”.
Let us know if you have garnered an award
recently, as these rewards build morale … and influence.
2. Conferences & publication
Australian Conf. on Science and Maths Educ.
2013: “Students in transition – The Learner’s Journey”. Venue: ANU & Uni of Canberra. Submissions
deadline has passed.
Venue: U of
Melbourne. Topic: “Biology Education Futures”.
Day 1: Strategies for Academic Life: Workshop
for early and mid-career academics
Day 2: Biology Education Futures: Includes
showcase for e-learning in biology and assessment as evidence for achieving
learning outcomes.
Past:
SaMnet Skype Meetings to discuss planned ACSME submissions – 3 & 11 June
2013. Very productive conversations!
Thanks to participants.
Future: HERDSA 2013 Conference
– 1-4 July 2013 at Auckland Institute of Technology. SaMnet (Manju) is
presenting on Tuesday 2/7 immediately before lunch. Come to the session, then
have a ‘SaMnet’ lunch together.
FYHE 2013 Conference
– 7-10 July 2013 at Te Papa Tongawera, Wellington. Tell us if you are
attending. We will gather SaMnet
Scholars.
Match up:
Introducing Dr Helen Dalton:
Helen is the evaluator of the SaMnet project, visiting SaMnet HQ on various occasions.
She may contact you in the coming month as part of her evaluation.
4. SaMnet activity
Final SaMnet survey:
SaMnet Scholars will soon find an email with
information for our final survey on Leadership and SoTL. Please complete this online
survey ASAP. That will to enable the HQ
team to begin analysis for our final report to the OLT.
Leadership Reviews with Critical Friends:
Your team’s critical friend will soon seek to arrange
a meeting with you and your project team. That is to discuss the effect of
SaMnet’s support, your institutional context, and your own capabilities in
relation to development of leadership in the team.
Conference Gatherings:
HERDSA and FYHE will be two conferences where
SaMnet Scholars will gather. See section 3 above for more details. If you are
attending other conferences, let SaMnet HQ know so that we connect you with
others and so that we can keep track of your ‘output’.
5. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
(SoTL)
The pedagogical foundations of
massive open online courses First Monday (Online Journal), David
George Glance, Martin Forsey and Myles Riley.
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are said to
be based on sound pedagogical foundations. This paper attempts to validate this
claim through examining the literature for empirical evidence.
Exam Wrappers Tomorrow’s Professor Blog – Rick Reis. From Chapter 2:
Make Exams Worth More than The Grade by
Marsha C. Lovett in the book “Using Reflection and Metacognition to Improve
Student Learning”.
This blog
post looks at an interesting tool called “exam wrappers”, which direct students
to review their performance on an exam and adapt for future learning. New, or a
reinvention of an old idea?
6. Leadership insights
15
ways in which academics harm their own futures, often without knowing it! Can
you afford not to read this article?
Deploying Collaborative
Leadership to Reinvent Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century Tomorrow’s Professor Blog – Rick Reis. From Debra Humphreys in the
journal, Peer Review, Winter 2013, Vol. 15, No. 1.
With
discussions taking place on leadership between SaMnet teams and Critical
Friends over the coming weeks, this article may fortify your understanding of
collaborative leadership in the academic context.
7. Project in Focus: Developing a
shared understanding of criteria and standards for undergraduate mathematics
Cristina
Varsavsky (Monash University), Deborah King (University of Melbourne) and
Carmel Coady (University of Western Sydney)
What do we look for when we mark the work of our mathematics
and statistics students? How do we communicate this to the students? How do we
develop marking schemes for the tutors who have to do the marking?
This
project is engaging the mathematics community in a conversation around these
questions. Not much has changed in assessment practices in mathematics
departments—we need to move away from idiosyncratic marking and grading
approaches that favour procedural mastery towards practices that measure the
quality of all aspects of student work against external anchors ensuring
comparability of standards within and across mathematics departments.
The
project aims to stimulate discussion amongst those responsible for mathematics
assessment and develop agreed definitions of mathematics assessment criteria
and standards expressed in terms of rubrics, together with exemplars that
demonstrate how judgements are made in the marking process.
The
resulting resources will provide a reference framework and toolkit to support
tertiary educators in the development of quality assessment standards and
criteria. As a consequence, feedback and communication of expectations to
students will be greatly enhanced, which in turn will nurture students' self-evaluation
capabilities and enhance learning.
8. Classifieds
The respected
journal, Science, seeks volunteer
writers for their 'Science in the Classroom' project. The project creates
a set of annotated research papers and accompanying teaching materials.
They need one
expert each in the fields of geology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics.
The effort is supported by the US National Science Foundation for 1 Jan
2013 to 31 Dec 2015.
For information
about the effort and sample materials, see - http://scienceintheclassroom.org/
SaMnet’s contact
at Science is Pamela J. Hines <phines@aaas.org>,
senior editor in the area of plant science, developmental neurobiology, developmental
biology, stem cells, and evolution. She also conceived and is editor for
the refereed Education section that appears once each month in Science.
Please reply
directly to Pam Hines, ... and cc samnetaustralia@gmail.com.
Show her an example of relevant work that you have done, and bargain for
a free subscription. ;-)
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