Would you like to subscribe to the SaMnet monthly newsletter?
Click to receive it in your inbox as soon as it is published!
1. Issue 10 of SaMnet’s monthly newsletter
Click to receive it in your inbox as soon as it is published!
1. Issue 10 of SaMnet’s monthly newsletter
Listen to the newsletter? Now available in
audio as a podcast.
This month's question:
Advice for colleagues about starting
the teaching year well?
2. Conferences & publication
ASELL
National Science Workshop –2-5 April 2013 at The University of Sydney
EOIs for submission of experiments were due
25 January 2013
Registrations for everyone due 5 March
2013
PDF
flyer for the workshop
ASELL
Schools Science Workshop – 26 April 2013 at SHORE School, North Sydney, NSW
Know a high school teacher interested
in improving science experiments and lab experiences for their students? Pass
on this information about the 2013 ASELL Schools Science Workshop.
EOIs for submission of experiments were due
15 February 2013
Registrations for everyone due 5 April
2013
3. Connections/Events
Past: Perth Teaching and Learning forum 2013
– 7-8 February @ Murdoch University
Leadership Development Workshops in
February 2013
February 4 – Melbourne workshop @ La Trobe
University
February 5 – Adelaide workshop @ Flinders
University
February 6 – Perth workshop @ Curtin University
February 11 -- Sydney workshop @ U of
Sydney
February
15 --
Brisbane workshop @ Griffith University.
Each
workshop featured a 1-hour session:
Changing
the Game – the ACDS National Centre for Teaching and Learning for Science and
Mathematics – Liz Johnson, OLT Fellow, La Trobe Uni.
Future: The website for new ACDS Teaching
and Learning Centre is online - http://www.acds.edu.au/tlcentre/.
ACDS
National Workshop – Advancing the Science TLOs
22 Feb. 2013, Melbourne
Match up: Deb
King and Carmel Coady might consider contacting a new member of the SaMnet
community, Judy-Anne Osborn of University of Newcastle. A mathematics lecturer,
Judy-Anne has some
interesting ideas about mathematics at university and the impact of the quality
of high school maths teaching and learning.
4. SaMnet activity
February
Leadership Development Workshops
5 workshops were run in Australian
capital cities. Well attended by SaMnet Scholars, they enabled sharing
progress, ideas and advice about the projects, about leadership, and about
career advancement. Plus, connecting face-to-face with one another and sharing
with SaMnet HQ.
SaMnet
talk at Perth T&L Forum 2013
Manju
Sharma, Will Rifkin, and Mario Zadnik of the SaMnet steering committee
presented “Action learning
projects to build leadership capacity and communities of practice: SaMnet
update”. Liz Johnson, also of the SaMnet steering
committee, provided a session on plans from her OLT Fellowship for the Teaching
and Learning Centre of the Australian Council of Deans of Science.
An article on SaMnet has been published
in the Australian Journal of Education in
Chemistry. Have a read on how your SaMnet engagement is contributing to
collective development of the future of Australia’s university teaching in
science and maths.
5. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
(SoTL)
Reflections on Teaching – R. E. Collins
Richard
Collins of the U of Sydney details “the characteristics of outstanding teachers
and excellent teaching” and “methods of assessment of teaching”, among other
topics in this 2005 article.
Is Surgery Scientific – BBC Radio
Something
a little bit different this month: A broadcast of a discussion investigating
teaching in terms of the development of practices in surgery. The broadcast
addresses the difficulty of developing the “art” of surgery, with clear
parallels to the “art” of teaching! Well worth a listen.
6. Leadership insights
How Great Leaders Communicate – George Anders
Strategies
for using listening to influence. American corporate examples, but the
approaches can be tailored readily to the Australian academic context. Good for
'distributed leadership', as well as 'command leadership'.
A
comprehensive guide to using Twitter for increasing influence in leadership and
teaching particularly directed to university academics. It includes simple
guides, from setting up a Twitter account to maximising impact and
effectiveness.
7. Team in Focus:
Interactive Lecture Demonstrations, Toby Hudson, Chiara Neto,
Michela Simone, Vanessa Gysbers, Siggi Schmid, Kathryn Bartimote-Aufflick and
Adam Bridgeman.
Interactive
Lecture Demonstrations (ILDs) have been developed and implemented in chemistry
lectures at the U of Sydney. We are targeting the perceived decrease in lecture
importance and attendance by students. The developed ILDs were trialled in some
classes in semester 1 2012 and were more widely implemented in semester 2. Data
indicates an improvement in student engagement and also in student learning
outcomes.
In
addition, surveys reveal that students are very positive about demonstrations
and particularly the ILDs where worksheets were employed. All lecturers will
now be provided with the worksheets when they book an experiment.
Interestingly, attendance did not drop in weeks 8-13 as it usually does.
Results have been presented by Siggi Schmid at a New Zealand teaching symposium
in February 2013.
Toby Hudson is a Lecturer in the School of Chemistry. His
research areas include materials structure, network materials and crystal
growth.
Chiara
Neto is a
Senior Lecturer in the School of Chemistry. Her research areas include
interfacial slip in simple liquids for microfluidic applications, functional
micro-patterned surfaces and superhydrophobic surfaces.
Michela Simone is a Lecturer in the School of Chemistry. Her areas
of interest include carbohydrate chemistry, supramolecular chemistry and
bioinorganic and medicinal chemistry.
Vanessa Gysbers is a Lecturer in the
School of Molecular Bioscience. With a background in gene therapy research, she
specialises in methods of gene delivery by viral vectors.
Siggi Schmid is a Senior Lecturer in
the School of Chemistry. His research projects encompass a wide range of both
synthetic chemistry (Inorganic Coordination Chemistry and Inorganic Solid State
Chemistry) and characterisation techniques, in particular X-ray and neutron
powder and single-crystal diffraction.
Kathryn Bartimote-Aufflick is a Lecturer in the
Institute for Teaching and Learning. Her research is in the field of
educational psychology and includes a project on the 'Epistemic stances of
academic staff at large research-intensive Australian universities'.
Adam Bridgeman is an Associate Professor
and the Director of First Year Studies in the School of Chemistry, as well as
the Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching in the Faculty of Science. His
research interests include computational inorganic chemistry, bond order and
the nature of the chemical bond, and using electronic resources in chemical
education.
8. Classifieds
Based in Perth? Want to strengthen your
local ‘community of practice’ in SoTL for teaching science, maths, and related
subjects? Contact Mario Zadnik who is assembling a ‘SaMwest’network -- Marjan
Zadnik m.zadnik@curtin.edu.au.
