Changing Technology Changing Practice: Empowering Staff and Building Capability in Higher Education
1. Keynote Address
Changing Technology Changing
Practice: Empowering Staff and Building
Capability in Higher Education
Professor Bob Fox
10 June, 2017
9.15-10.15
CITERS2017
Empowering Communities, Innovating Learning, Learning to Innovate
2. University of New South Wales
Office of the PVC Education
Professor Bob Fox
Academic Lead Curriculum
University of New South Wales
UNSW Sydney NSW 2052
Australia
Email: bobfox@unsw.edu.au
3. UNSW – research intensive Go8 & U21 University
10 faculties, 50,000+ students, 5,500 staff (3000 academics)
On-campus accommodation 5000+ students
Teaching predominantly f-2-f + some blending v. limited fully online
Quality Indicators in L & T (QILT) – UNSW 4th from bottom
UNSW 2025 Strategy - Research and Education Intensive
• Planned major growth in student #s >90,000 in 2025
• Leveraging profound cultural change – elevating teaching status
• AUD$500m extra ≈ HK$3,000,000,000 - education strategy
• Strategic Funding for Strategic Initiatives
UNSW and the UNSW2025 Strategy
Research and Education Intensive
5. • Digital Uplift: Design, develop, deliver, evaluate 660 online & blended courses/ programs
to provide unique, personalised, flexible educational offerings and experiences
• Digital Assessment System: Trial a small range of existing digital assessment platforms to
inform digital assessment practices and policies
• Scientia Education Academy: Develop a platform to showcase excellence in teaching, and
cultivate a shared community of practice, leadership and inspiration in learning and
teaching
• First Year Student Experience: Develop and implement a plan for a distinguished and
support-driven first year educational experiences
• Students as Partners: Provide opportunities for students to partner in the creation of
knowledge and development of teaching improvements and innovations
• Online Community App: Implement a socially driven student portal to instigate student-led
learning digital spaces
• Summative Peer Review Process: Establish a summative peer review of teaching
process to generate evidence of teaching practice to compliment individual Teaching
Award and/or academic promotion
Inspired Learning Initiative (ILI)– Strategic Funding $AUD 100M - 5 years
Towards an Ecological Response
6. Team Composition
Cross-Functional
• Discipline Expertise
• Educational Technology
• Educational Design
• Educational Media
• Evaluation & Analytics
2017 Courses
70%
PhD
82
8
10
10
19
16
9
10
Science
Engineering
Built Environment
Law
Business School
Medicine
Art & Design
Art & Social Sciences
10
Financial Support
10K Distributed to the Faculty
• Teaching Relief
• Teaching Assistant
Course Assets
• Design and Media
• Freelancers
• Third Party Vendors
20K
$30K
Multidisciplinary Course Design Teams
8. Digital Uplift Examples and the Course Design Tool
Arts & Social Sciences Engineering Built Environment
9. Communities
Internal & external communities for
students/staff
ILI: Students as Partners
Feedback and Dialogue
Opportunities to engage in scholarly dialogue,
provide feedback and receive feedback
ILI: myExperience & Online Community App
Inspired Learning
Thoughtful design of courses & programs
aligned to graduate attributes
ILI: Digital Uplift of 660 blended & fully online
courses aligning to 3+ model, ICF, RASE, UDL
Being Digital
Digital interactions & learning methods
supported by the latest digital advances
ILI: New Learning Spaces, Online
Community App, & Digital Uplift
Scientia Educational Experience Framework
10. 5 April, 2017
Being Digital – awareness raising and capacity build
Being Digital
‘Traditional learning methods will …
supplemented’ … and replaced… ‘by …
digital … opportunities for engaging
students with the global community’.
Scientia Educational Experience Framework
11. Being Digital – examples
Programs/courses designed to:
• use digital technologies to best support
student learning
• facilitate new literacies in students
Blended approaches to be the norm
Digital technologies used:
• to enhance assessment outcomes
• based on evidence of enhancements to
student learning and outcomes
• in administration of programs/courses to
ensure efficiencies
• to facilitate a global experience for
students
A new approach is needed for capacity build of teachers and developers
Scientia Educational Experience Framework
13. (Churchill, 2017)
Changing Teaching – New literacies and the Curriculum
New Literacies abilities:
• Traditional - reading, writing, speaking, listening
• Information - identify what information is
needed and locate, evaluate, use information
• Visual - understand, produce visual messages
• Critical - question, challenge and evaluate
source, meanings and purposes of information
• Media - question, analyze, interpret, evaluate,
and create media messages
• Tool - use tools to manage, consume, create
information
• Digital - use digital technology, communication
tools or networks to work with information and
interact with others
A new approach for capacity building teachers and developers
14. (Churchill, 2017)
New literacies emphasize importance of having skills
to:
• Access information and networks - such as
harvesting, searching, filtering, digging and
plumbing through communities, leveraging
collective intelligences, bookmarking, tagging, and
subscribing
• Consume information - visual, multimodal and
interactive information and information spaces,
copyright awareness, and using digital tools in the
process of consuming
• Design information - blogging, digital storytelling,
representing through multimedia, authoring and
mashing
Changing Teaching – New literacies and the Curriculum
A new approach for capacity building teachers and developers
15. UNSW Integrated Curriculum Framework (ICF)
Courses and Course Components
UNSW 2025 Strategy and
Graduate Capabilities
Program Learning Outcomes
Evaluation
Assessment
Course Learning Outcomes
4 Core Elements
Courses and Course Components
(Fox, 2015; adapted Biggs & Tang, 2011)
16. Resources - e.g., crafted tools and content, enabling
students to learn with, not just learn from resources
Activities - engage with resources - tasks e.g., experiments,
problem solving towards achieving learning outcomes
Support – e.g., peer, tutor and technology support to help
solve emerging difficulties
Evaluation – structured information to guide and enable
student’ self-progress and as a tool for understanding
what else is needed to ensure learning outcomes are
being achieved
+ Range of summative assessment activities
(Churchill, King, & Fox, 2013)
RASE Video
Course Design Model
17. UNSW Integrated Curriculum Framework (ICF)
Courses and Course Components
UNSW 2025 Strategy and
Graduate Capabilities
Program Learning Outcomes
Evaluation
Assessment
Course Learning Outcomes
4 Core Elements
Courses and Course Components
(Fox, 2015; adapted Biggs & Tang, 2011)
18. UNSW 2025 Strategy and
Graduate Capabilities
Program Learning Outcomes
Evaluation
Assessment
Course Learning Outcomes
4 Core Elements
Courses and Course Components
Resources Activities Support Evaluation
(Churchill, King & Fox, 2013; Fox, 2015; adapted
Biggs & Tang, 2011)
UNSW Integrated Curriculum Framework (ICF)
20. UNSW 2025 Strategy and
Graduate Capabilities
Program Learning Outcomes
Evaluation
Assessment
Course Learning Outcomes
4 Core Elements
Courses and Course ComponentsDiscipline-
based SoTL
WIL
Project
Faculty-based
Investigation
Modular Short Course Designs to Meet Specific Needs
Online Micro-
Taught Course
Independent
Project
Micro
-bits
Micro-bits – boutiqued selections of self-contained short course components
21. Degree plus add-on courses
Individual micro-courses
CPD bundling – combined
micro-credentialed courses
Micro-credentialing:
leading to an accredited
award/degree
Micro-Courses leading to
+ course rationalisation ….
25. • 2 x GCULT courses offered online in S1, 2017.
• 2 remaining courses offered in blended mode in S2, 2017.
• 2018 all GCULT courses planned to be offered fully online
Issues
• GCULT - resource intensive program for limited graduating students
(<20 per year)
• Does existing program meet UNSW2025 needs for staff capacity
building in a digital age? Is the program agile enough?
Next step
• Identify GCULT components that address UNSW 2025 needs and
build targeted micro-courses that can stand-alone and/or add to
existing programs based on the UNSW ICF structure
Grad Cert Uni Learning & Teaching (GCULT) progress
27. BTT, FULT programs run primarily by professional staff
with academic staff input from PVCE & across UNSW
FULT to be compulsory for all new teaching staff
Grad Cert, Masters, PhDs in HE programs run primarily by
academic staff in PVCE and SoE
Spiral Curriculum
https://teaching.unsw.edu.au/fult
Existing Structure of PVC(E) Educational Programs
28. HE Quality Assurance and Improvement
Towards UNSW 2025 Strategy
• Scientia Educational Experience
• Inspired Learning Initiative (ILI)
• Student Surveys: myExperience & CATEI
• Development Programs
» LT Fora, Connections, CoPs
» Studies in HE
Studies in HE at UNSW
UNSW staff and associated staff
on successful completion of MEd
(HE) program – HECS payments
reimbursed
29. HE Quality Assurance and Improvement
Towards UNSW 2025 Strategy
• Education Focussed Careers
• Academic Promotion
• Peer Review of Teaching
• Evaluating Learning & Teaching
• Awards Grants and Fellowships
• Designing and Developing Curriculum
– Integrated Curriculum Framework (ICF)
– Learning Outcomes
• Related Services
30. Outstanding – Superior – Current
Successful promotion - 6 points by achieving:
• superior rating in all 3 areas (2+2+2=6)
• outstanding rating in at least 2 areas (3+3=6)
• outstanding rating in 1 area, superior rating in 1
area and a current rating in 1 area (3+2+1=6)
Sustained excellence through:
1. Education
2. Research
3. Social Engagement, Global Impact & Leadership
UNSW Academic Promotions 2017 Onwards
32. UNSW Academic Promotions 2017
Key resources:
• Academic Promotions Toolkit - unpacks ‘Education’ of
which ‘teaching’ is a part (pp.4-16)
https://www.hr.unsw.edu.au/employee/acad/acadprom.html
• UNSW Expectations Framework
https://www.hr.unsw.edu.au/employee/acad/Academic_Expectations
_Framework_2017.pdf
• UNSW 2025 Strategy including ‘exemplary education’
(p.7) Theme A2 – Educational excellence
https://www.2025.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/unsw_2025
strategy_201015.pdf
33. Demands for being agile - now the norm
New approaches & new technologies - stimulus for
trialing & evaluating new practices, new curriculum
frameworks, educational capacity building across
schools, faculties, institution & beyond
New solutions (e.g. MOOCS and micro-
credentialling) – a catalyst for re-examining
blended learning, embedding evaluated program
and (micro)course design models
Changing Technology Changing Practice
Empowering Staff and Building Capability in HE
Thank you
34. • Biggs, J., & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for Quality Learning at University (4th ed.).
Maidenhead: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University
Press.
• Biggs, J. (2014). Constructive alignment in university teaching. HERDSA Review
of Higher Education, Vol 1, 5-22.
• Churchill, D., King, M, & Fox, B. (2013). Learning design for science education in
the 21st century. Journal of the Institute for Educational Research 45 (2), 404-421.
• Churchill, D. (2017). Digital Resources for Learning. Singapore: Springer.
• Fox, R. (2015). The rise of open and blended learning. In D. Wong, K.C. Li, & K.S.
Yuen (Eds.), Studies and Practices for Advancement in Open and Distance
Education (pp. 93-103). Hong Kong: Hong Kong Open University Press.
• Fox, R. (2016). MOOC impact beyond innovation. In C. Ng, M., R. Fox, & M.
Nakano (Eds.), Reforming learning and teaching in Asia-Pacific Universities:
Influences of Globalised Processes in Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. (pp. 159-
172). Singapore: Springer.
Key References