Unknotting the Teaching Research Nexus
Date: January 11, 2010 - 9:00am to 11:00am
Location: TELUS 217/219
The VP (Research), Provost & VP (Academic), with University Teaching Services presented the symposium: Unknotting the Teaching-Research Nexus.
A seminar and workshop were presented by Dr. John Willison from the Centre for Learning and Professional Development at the University of Adelaide.
Dr. Willison is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Learning and Professional Development, coordinating the Graduate Certificate in Higher Education for academics from all faculties at the University of Adelaide. This work has lead to rich and varied collaborations on various aspects of curriculum design and assessment, within the university at the national level and internationally. John's principle research interest centres around the ways that academics conceptualise and implement the explicit development of their students' research skills within undergraduate and masters by coursework curricula; he leads a five-university project, funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, called Research Skill Development (RSD) and Assessment in the Curriculum. In addition, the RSD conceptual framework is currently being utilised in Canada, Holland, Iran, South Africa, and the United States of America. The close conceptual connection between the skills associated with research in a discipline, the skills required and developed in Work Integrated Learning is a stream of current interest; interviews with students from various contexts are pointing to the value they place on research skills once they are employed.
Seminar Information: Students becoming researchers, researchers becoming renowned.
Date: Monday January 11, 2010
Time: 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM
Location: TELUS 217/219
Explicit and coherent research skill development embedded in content-rich courses in the undergraduate years is proving to deliver substantial short and long term benefits for students and academics alike. This process has been informed by the Research Skill Development (RSD) framework, which has enabled academics in STEM, Health Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities to clarify or renew their intentions for higher education, and communicate these more clearly to students. Student self-assessment of their discipline-specific research skills tends to improve in the timeframe of a one-semester course, as does academics' assessment of student skills. Interviews with students one year after completing a course with RSD embedded in the assessment regime suggest a strong trend to valuing the research skills they developed and finding these useful both for subsequent study and for employment.
Academics have found that feedback-giving processes that are informed by the RSD to be far more effective, satisfying and efficient, when compared to their previous methods, with a decrease in student inquiries before assessments are submitted and after feedback and grades are returned. Moreover, some academics have found that their own perceptions of research in the discipline begins to change as they develop new methods of scaffolding the research skills of students. At the moment, academics who are drawing on the RSD are desiring a payoff for their teaching, expecting students coming through more research-ready for Research Degrees -as well as employment- and that there will be a smoother, more coherent pathway towards Early Career Researchers. The potential advantages for disciplines and research teams is part of the next phase in the evaluation of RSD approaches.
The interactive seminar outlined an extended version of the RSD- the Researcher Skill Development (RSD7) framework and provided numerous discipline-specific examples that portray 10 substantially different approaches to its use. The audience contributed to small-group and whole group discussions and applied the RSD7 to Canadian contexts.
Workshop Information: Ten or more approaches to utilizing the Research Skill Development framework in content-rich courses and in Research Degree supervision.
Date: Tuesday January 11, 2010
Time: 12:30 PM to 3:30 PM
Location: TELUS 217/219
Work with colleagues to apply the Research Skill Development (RSD) framework to an area of your choosing. At the moment, ten quite different approaches have been identified in the ways that academics have used the RSD in content-rich undergraduate and masters courses and in Research Degree supervision. You may find one of these approaches to be suitable for your context, or devise a fresh approach to applying the RSD. Potential directions you may take include:
- Devise an assessment rubric informed by the RSD for an existing assessment
- Reframe the assessment regime of a course of concern
- Analyse the pathway of research skill development across an undergraduate or master degree
- Plan PhD supervision conversations based around the RSD
- Philosophise about the purposes of undergraduate education
Resources
Research Skill Development for Curriculum Design and Assessment http://www.adelaide.edu.au/rsd/