scholarly journals Implementing the Threshold Learning Outcomes for Agriculture at university

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-21
Author(s):  
Tina Acuna ◽  
Jo-Anne Kelder ◽  
Glenn McDonald ◽  
Amanda Able
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Curriculum Mapping ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Minimum Standards ◽  
Graduate Employability ◽  
Australian Council ◽  
Industry Engagement ◽  
The University

The national Learning and Teaching Academics Standards statement for agriculture (AgLTAS) defines the nature and extent of the discipline; and provides threshold learning outcomes (TLOs) that define what a graduate should know, understand and do at graduation. The AgLTAS standards are endorsed by the Australian Council of Deans of Agriculture and can be used to communicate to potential and current students the minimum standards of their degree, but can also be used to inform curriculum design. While the AgLTAS document provides explanatory notes to assist educators to further understand the intent of the TLOs there are no exemplars on how the AgLTAS standards can be implemented. This paper presents two case studies of how academics at the University of Tasmania and the University of Adelaide used the AgLTAS to map their respective agriculture curricula. Curriculum mapping was used to evaluate the links between the curriculum and the target learning outcomes, and to identify gaps and areas for improvement. Results include the curriculum maps but also a survey of academic staff and their reactions to the TLOs, plus a reflective commentary on what we believe are the next steps and implications of the AgLTAS for curriculum development, industry engagement and graduate employability in the agriculture discipline.

Transforming the economics curriculum by integrating threshold concepts

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (5) ◽  
pp. 492-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prashan Shayanka Mendis Karunaratne ◽  
Yvonne A Breyer ◽  
Leigh N Wood
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Student Experience ◽  
Threshold Concepts ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Course Structure ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Entry Level ◽  
Higher Education Economics ◽  
Survey Responses

Purpose – Economics is catering to a diverse student cohort. This cohort needs to be equipped with transformative concepts that students can integrate beyond university. When a curriculum is content-driven, threshold concepts are a useful tool in guiding curriculum re-design. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The evidence for this pedagogic need can be seen in the UK’s higher education economics curriculum framework which is formulated around the threshold concepts of economics. Through a literature review of the application of threshold concepts in economics, the researcher has systematically re-designed an entry-level economics course. This research has been applied to the course structure, the learning and teaching activities, as well as the assessments. At the end of the semester, students students were surveyed on the student experience of the curriculum design and the course activities. The course grades noted the achievement of the students’ learning outcomes. Findings – When comparing the survey responses and the student course results to the previous semesters, there is a significant improvement in student experience as well as student learning outcomes of the course curriculum. Practical implications – This research provides curriculum developers with a benchmark and the tools required to transform economics curricula. Social implications – An engaging, transformative and integrative entry-level economics course is often the only exposure most business graduates have to the economics way of thinking and practice. Originality/value – This is the first comprehensive study that applies a curriculum re-design based on threshold concepts across an entry-level economics course.

scholarly journals Extracurricular Partnerships as a Tool for Enhancing Graduate Employability

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David I Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Public Engagement ◽  
Work Experience ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
The Public ◽  
Graduate Employability ◽  
Key Skills ◽  
Global Demand ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
The University

The world of work is changing rapidly, with an increasing global demand for employees with higher-level skills. Employees need to have the right attitudes and aptitudes for work, possess work-relevant skills, and have relevant experience. Whilst universities are embedding employability into their curricula, partnerships outside of the taught curriculum provide additional, largely untapped, opportunities for students to develop these key skills and gain valuable work experience. Two extracurricular partnership opportunities were created for Bioscience undergraduates at the University of Leeds, UK: an educational research internships scheme, where students work in partnership with fellow students and academic staff on on-going educational projects, and Pop-Up Science, a unique, student-led public engagement volunteer scheme. Both schemes generate substantial benefits for all. They enhance student’s skills and employability, facilitate and enhance staff-student education practices and research, and engage the public with research in the Biosciences. Collectively, they demonstrate the extraordinary value and benefits accrued from developing extracurricular partnerships between students, staff, and the community.

scholarly journals Research into the diversification of university careers in learning and teaching and intentionally closing-the-loop on graduate employability

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-212
Author(s):  
James Arvanitakis ◽  
Madelaine-Marie Judd ◽  
Shelley Kinash ◽  
Trina Jorre de st Jorre ◽  
Trish McCluskey
Keyword(s):  
Academic Staff ◽  
Professional Staff ◽  
Teaching Staff ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Graduate Employability ◽  
Occupational Patterns ◽  
Closing The Loop ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Teaching Positions

 Universities are both a source of employable graduates and careers. This paper examines universities as developers and employers of their own graduates from the perspective of employees and recruited positions. Research questions were: what do learning and teaching careers look like at universities, and; what are the occupational patterns, satisfactions and concerns of the staff in those careers? An autoethnographic account of employees’ career journeys (all of whom were employed in learning and teaching or closely related areas) from five different universities were shared, compared and contrasted. Two of these universities are profiled as having a large proportion of students from target equity groups and therefore have intentionally recruited learning and teaching staff to widen student participation. A desktop review of six months of university employment vacancies from these two universities was conducted. A consistent theme across the autoethnographic stories was a feeling of being an outsider. The authors’ hypothesis is that this is related to haphazard preparation for learning and teaching positions. Of the 322 university vacancies, 84% were for professional staff, 23% of which were in learning and teaching, with the most prevalent role being Coordinator. Fourteen per cent were for academic staff, 64% of which involved learning and teaching, and the most prevalent title was Lecturer/Senior Lecturer. Key takeaways include recommendations for universities to intentionally enhance the employability of graduates who pursue learning and teaching positions within universities, and for prospective university learning and teaching staff to enhance their employability.

scholarly journals Engaging academic staff with reading lists

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 222
Author(s):  
Allie Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Best Practice ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Library Services ◽  
Online Reading ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Reading List ◽  
Library Use ◽  
The University ◽  
Teaching In Higher Education ◽  
The Impact

Following the implementation of online reading list software, Library Services at the University of Worcester (UW) encouraged academic staff to consider the reading list as a learning tool. Using an interactive teaching session timetabled as part of the Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, lecturers are asked to consider how they can maximise the impact of their reading lists and increase library use. The pedagogy of reading lists and student engagement with reading are examined. Participants also discuss the type of content reading lists typically contain and question whether this accurately reflects what the students should be reading. It draws on best practice from academic colleagues at UW, examining (among other things) the effect of list length, structure and lecturer voice and presence.

scholarly journals Partnerships and Pedagogy: Transforming the BA Online

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Lloyd ◽  
Annika Herb ◽  
Michael Kilmister ◽  
Catharine Coleborne
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Learning Objects ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
Learning Platform ◽  
Innovative Learning ◽  
The University

There has been much written recently round the “digital revolution” of universities (Nascimento Cunha et al., 2020). Indeed, in 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the need for universities to adapt and adopt new technological tools for teaching and learning, as both the global world we live in changed, and as students adapted to the continually evolving digital landscape. The BA Online is a new interdisciplinary online presence for the humanities and social sciences, and includes a focus on constructive alignment, innovative learning objects, and social learning. The semester-long courses were built as a supported social learning experience that is purposefully constructed with a narrative. This article reveals how the BA Online project was realised through the use of partnerships, particularly that of the university learning designers who worked very closely with both the online learning platform FutureLearn and academic staff in curriculum design and course transformation.

scholarly journals Competences and learning outcomes: a panacea for understanding the (new) role of Higher Education?

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wagenaar
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Educational Programmes ◽  
Effective Performance ◽  
The One

The competence and learning outcomes approach, which intends to improve effective performance of academic staff and students, is becoming dominant in today’s higher education. This was quite different 15 years ago. This contribution aims to offer insight in the reforms initiated and implemented, by posing and answering the questions why the time was appropriate — by identifying and analysing the underlying conditions — and in what way the change was shaped — by focusing on terminology required and approaches developed. Central here is the role the Tuning project — launched in 2000-2001 — played in this respect. The contribution starts with contextualising the situation in the 1990s: the recession and growing unemployment in many European countries on the one hand and the development of a global society and the challenges the higher educational sector faced at the other. It offers the background for initiating the Tuning project, and the discourse on which its approach is based. In particular, attention is given to choosing the concept of competences, distinguishing subject specific and general/generic ones, as an integrating approach of knowledge, understanding, skills, abilities and attitudes. The approach should serve as a means of integrating a number of main goals as part of the learning and teaching process: strengthening employability and preparing for citizenship besides personal development of the student as a basis for the required educational reform. Tuning’s unique contribution is the alignment of this concept to learning outcomes statements as indicators of competence development and achievement and by relating both concepts to profiling of educational programmes.

scholarly journals How to support mobility students to gain soft-competences: Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva M. De la Torre ◽  
Fernando Casani ◽  
Adriana Pérez Encinas ◽  
Jesús Rodríguez Pomeda
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Student Integration ◽  
City Culture ◽  
Training Activities ◽  
University City ◽  
The University ◽  
Incoming Students

Students participating in mobility experiences have a great learning opportunity, but in many cases they hardly realise about the soft-competences they developed during mobility. In this context, the supporting role of universities is key for students to make the most of their mobility and be able to communicate their learning outcomes. This study analyses the support services that students receive for the development and acknolwledgement of mobility soft comptencies (related with the three dimensiones: knowledge, skills and attitudes or KSAs) in order to define the university strategy in this field. Results show two types of support for outgoing and incoming students: (i) passive initiatives based on delivering relevant information for the mobility period to students; and (ii) active initiatives based on training activities and activities for student integration in the host university/city/culture. No support initiatives on mobility related KSAs for returned students or academic staff have been identified.

Teamwork Development across the Curriculum for Information Technology Students at Liepāja University: Processes, Outcomes and Lessons Learned

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 509
Author(s):  
Dzintars Tomsons ◽  
Anita Jansone
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Learning Goals ◽  
Learning Organisation ◽  
Technology Students ◽  
Information Technology Students ◽  
The University

<p><em>Teamwork skills are key feature for Information Technology (IT) specialists. The university IT curriculum contains both IT specific courses, and comprehensive courses. Due to limited amount of the learning courses and efficient achievement of learning goals, it is necessary to look for opportunities to integrate activities developing social and communication skills courses into IT specific courses. Managing the teamwork that is close to practice, it is necessary to solve the problems of teaching and learning organisation, and assessment of individual learning outcomes and competences. In Liepāja University, the student teamwork has been managed for several years as integral part of Software Engineering courses and study projects. The course management system Moodle has been used in learning process providing possibilities to evaluate both assignments submitted by students and their learning behaviour.  The current paper describes and analyses the experience of academic staff of Liepāja University.</em></p>

scholarly journals Mapping library values and student learning outcomes

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale Larsen ◽  
Shane Wallace ◽  
Lis Pankl
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Teaching Philosophies ◽  
University Of Utah ◽  
Teaching Standards ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
The University ◽  
Work Done

The teaching efforts at Marriott Library are distributed widely across a variety of groups and a range of subject matter. Teaching styles and pedagogical foci are varied and diverse among the librarians in the building. To increase collaboration and raise teaching standards, Graduate and Undergraduate Services (GUS) formulated Guidelines for teaching librarians by using the University of Utah’s Quality Course Framework (QCF) and Marriott Library’s own Four Core Student Library Learning Outcomes and mapping them to the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. To facilitate communication and usability, the Guidelines contain an alignment matrix for librarians to follow through the teaching process. The matrix is also intended to open up new opportunities for conversation and collaboration between librarians and academic staff to better serve student needs. The purpose of this report is to document and reflect upon the collaborative work done by teaching librarians at the University of Utah to create the Teaching Guidelines. The process of this work involved the synthesis and alignment of several models of pedagogical structure as well as the overarching interests and goals of a variety of stakeholders and participants in the teaching environment at the University. The product of these efforts includes clear Teaching Guidelines, alignment with the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy, and an alignment matrix designed to provide a clear map of the teaching philosophies and strategies employed at the library. This report presents the process of creating and implementing the Guidelines and outlines the background of the process, including those institutional, situational, and environmental circumstances which shaped the general course of its development. The report includes an analysis of the pedagogical characteristics of the Guidelines. The report also presents an example of the Guidelines as used in action when developing the library-related content for an undergraduate-level community learning course known as ‘Learning, Engagement, Achievement and Progress’ (LEAP).

Problem-Based Learning at the University of Colorado at Denver

1994 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 432-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Muth ◽  
Michael J. Murphy ◽  
W. Michael Martin
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Traditional Classroom ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Administrator Preparation ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
University Of Colorado ◽  
Student Teams ◽  
Problems Of Practice ◽  
Instruction And Learning ◽  
The University

Three field-oriented, problem-based programs at UCD have provided opportunities and challenges for professors, practitioners and students that differ importantly from traditional, classroom-based administrator preparation. Among the opportunities are involvement of students in planning and conducting their own learning, collaboration among professor-practitioner-student teams in solving difficult problems of practice, employment of multiple modes of instruction and learning, and use of performance-based learning outcomes and portfolio assessments. The challenges include changing professorial roles and relations with the field, implementing new ways of learning and teaching, and developing alternative methods of assessing learning outcomes.

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