2010 Projects

The Teaching Development Unit (TDU) is responsive to the key strategic objectives of the university and contributes to a wide range of initiatives. The highlights of 2010 included several institutional studies that focused on student experiences of technology, and the evaluation and impact of formal teaching development programs and projects.

Student Experience of Technology project

In 2010, a major study of UWS students investigated the UWS student experiences and expectations of technologies for learning, social and work activities. The survey design was a collaborative project with Macquarie University and the University of Technology, Sydney. A total of 7,411 UWS students responded which was a 20.4% return rate. Results indicate UWS students are moderately to highly satisfied with the current level of services and supports for learning. Data also revealed UWS students are well equipped, with levels of computer ownership consistent across all age groups and cohorts. UWS students are reported as active users of technology for study with nearly all students indicating they use technology for study from home or campus one or more times a day. UWS students rate themselves as technologically literate with the capacity to learn new technologies.

Despite the private use of social network technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, wikis and blogs, students do not currently prefer these technologies for their university learning experiences. Students would prefer that more and better use is made of core learning technologies; for instance, greater access to online lecture recordings, better use of discussion boards, and tracking academic progress and grades online. Results have been made available to staff at UWS, and the combined results from the three university surveys will be published in the future.

The Foundations Program: Report on the first 3 years

The Foundations of University Learning and Teaching program is a professional development program which is compulsory for all new full-time UWS teaching staff, employed at the Associate Lecturer, Lecturer, and Senior Lecturer levels where the appointment is for 12 months or longer. The report describes the evaluation process and impacts of the program. Three sources of data were used in the evaluation: independently-led focus groups with graduates; individual interviews with three Heads of School (from Schools where a number of staff had graduated from the program); and collated participant survey data from successive programs. The primary impact of the program, acknowledged by both graduates and Heads of Schools, is that graduates have become better teachers.

» Read the Report (opens in a new window) [PDF, 1.06MB]

ALTC Leadership project 'Subject coordinators: Leading professional development for sessional staff'

University of Wollongong, University of Technology, Sydney, Australian Catholic University, University of Western Sydney. Stage 1 of the project was a group workshop at UTS in June 2010 involving 10 subject coordinators from each partner university. This workshop looked at leadership capabilities of subject coordinators and initiatives that could support their leadership and management of sessional staff. Each participant developed an individual action plan which they implemented over Spring session, 2010.

The UWS group investigated a range of activities suited to their own teaching context. Projects included developing more supportive induction processes for sessional staff, using social media to connect teaching and sessional staff, training sessional staff to help set up multiple-choice online quizzes to provide formative assessment on work in large classes, improving liaison processes with external professional sessional staff, and developing strategies to improve moderation of assessment. The outcomes have been very impressive so far and UWS is keen to build on this work next year. The Project Leaders will be running workshops with other universities in early 2011 to further develop the leadership framework, and extend the project to other universities.