Quality of Teaching

6.0 Applicability

In this Section a few strategies for enhancement or examples of good practice (which are frequently the same thing) that arose from specific areas of the University are outlined, and ways in which they might be applicable elsewhere are suggested.

For example one 'good practice' on the student support area in Section 3.4.5 involves

This strategy is clearly applicable to Architecture or Design, but there seems no reason why it wouldn't be a very useful device in any area. Students could be required to accumulate a specified set of essays (or assignments or even the outcome from problem-based learning tasks) into a portfolio across the Course, and be required to comment, in their final semester, on the ways that the entries demonstrated their development over the period of their degree. This strategy could be applied even where students have considerable freedom in Subject selection. The comment could be part of the formal assessment for one of the final Subjects in the Course.

In a similar mode the strategy of extending the involvement of Advisory Committees in curriculum development or review (see, for example Section 5.3.2) to being a 'window' to external needs, has relevance to all programs. With innovative choice of external members, such bodies could be usefully involved in identifying possible monitoring procedures or commenting on information gained from monitoring.

One of the techniques instanced as good practice in activities designed to encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning (although it could equally have been listed under other headings) is 'reflective journalling' (Section 3.4.2). This tends to be found in the more qualitative areas of study, but there are well documented examples of the success of the technique for tackling perceptual and attitudinal problems in the 'hard' sciences. So the concept seems to have a very wide potential, particularly where students are encountering new and difficult concepts - and that sounds like university education in general.

Another type of transfer of ideas arises from the 'good practice' of teaching that builds on students' experience (Section 3.1.1) which is frequently mentioned in relation to postgraduate coursework programs, where there are multiple benefits; both the individual student and the Subject as a whole gaining. However, as any problem-based program testifies, the same general idea can be applied with benefit to any undergraduate Subject, where some of the appropriate techniques can have the added bonus of assisting staff to identify the conceptions that students hold about key ideas covered in the Subject.

In general it is possible to believe that any useful strategies for enhancing performance are applicable to most areas of study and to most approaches to teaching. As noted at the end of Section 1: