1. Issue 2 of SaMnet’s monthly
newsletter
A
network means conversations. So, each month there will be a new discussion
question. Contribute comments, ideas, links.
This
month's question:
Alternatives to exams for first-year students? Click here to add your comments.
2. Conferences & publication
Meet
other SaMnet Scholars at upcoming conferences:
- First Year in Higher Education conference in Brisbane
- Chemistry Education meeting in Adelaide
- HERDSA conference in Hobart
- Physics Education conference in Istanbul
- ACSME in Sydney in late September.
IJMEST call for articles: Special issue -
Quantitative skills in science: integrating mathematics and statistics in
undergraduate science curricula.
Submissions
due January 2013.
3. Connections/Events
Past: Skype meetings in early June for
projects on lectures and new media/ICT (3 projects: 7 participants) and
standards, course design, and evaluation and feedback (6 projects: 8
participants).
Future: Skype meetings in late July / early
August. Invitations coming soon. RSVP to connect with other SaMnet project
teams who share your focus.
Match up: Luby Simson and Jim Wilnough ought
to talk to Deb King, Dawn Gleason, and Michelle Livett as your projects are
both addressing transition issues.
4. SaMnet activity
- Extend SaMnet’s impact
- Address science enrolments
- Develop an evaluation tool that provides compelling evidence of effective teaching
- Link with prominent individuals (e.g., Chief Scientist Chubb).
Coordinators
of the science discipline networks and SaMnet have been invited to
address the Australian Council of Deans of Science conference on education,
mid-July. Have a message for associate deans (education / teaching and
learning)? Tell your discipline network coordinator or us.
5. Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning (SoTL)
Attend
the SaMnet SoTL writing workshop in Melbourne on 16 July. Seats available.
A
model for SoTL in your career? Here is the web page of a physics lecturer who
has published extensively, with links to articles (journals you can publish in). He addresses specific innovations as
well as systemic issues, i.e., why good practices fail to spread.
Charles
Henderson, Western Michigan U. -- http://homepages.wmich.edu/~chenders/Publications/Publications.htm
The Benefits of Making it Harder to Learn, Lang, Chronicle of Higher Education. Resonates? Thought provoking?
6. Leadership insights
Ken
Wilber describes both externally visible and harder to discern internal factors
that can affect how people respond to opportunities for change. He attempts to
integrate across a range of theories from psychology and brain science – http://www.imprint.co.uk/Wilber.htm
Everett
Rogers completed a revealing ‘meta-analysis’ of thousands of studies of how
people respond to new ideas and new technology. A quick overview – http://www.context.org/iclib/ic28/atkisson/
Groysberg
and Slind, Harvard Business Review,
see a change toward “conversational” leadership - http://hbr.org/2012/06/leadership-is-a-conversation/ar/1
7. Team in focus: Chemistry to
Biology knowledge transfer, does it work? U of Wollongong
We have
successfully used a range of student engagement and collaborative activities
along with peer assessment methods developed within a first year chemistry
context and transferred them into second year biochemistry unit. This involved
training and supporting a new set of staff and tutors in order for them to
implement these in their biology teaching. The primary objective was to
restructure the biochemistry unit with active learning workshops so that
student motivation was improved and to reverse the trend of a large proportion
of students under achieving in the summative examination. We are getting
positive outcomes so far according to student surveys, focus groups,
interviews, and feedback from tutors. Our next aim is to analyse data,
disseminate results at ACSME and prepare paper submissions.
Karen
Fildes – Research: ecotoxicological assessment of pesticide effects in native
wildlife; SoTL: group learning in large classes;currently teaching first and
second year cell and molecular biology subjects with 400-500 students.
Simon
Bedford – Supporting online communities – help desks and mathematics support,
blended learning approaches of imparting tacit knowledge – retrosynthetic
analysis, quality enhancement of teaching –frameworks for performance standards
(ChemNet), 15 years’ experience in the UK HEA arena.
Glennys
O’Brien -- Director of First Year Studies, School of Chemistry; SoTL:
supporting engagement with active learning via group work (POGIL), lab
preparation (prelab program) and maths assistance, curriculum development
supported by holistic
mapping of Chemistry subjects, co-director of ChemNet
Lynne
Keevers -- Academic Development Unit; research interests in social justice,
feminist studies, and participatory action research.
Paul
Carr – Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning); research in geology of minerals
and volcanoes.
8. Classifieds
Seek literature on assessing visual /
multi-media works in science. Karma Pearce, UniSA c/-
samnetaustralia@gmail.com.
