Welcome

 

Transcript [pdf, 133KB] Links to an external site.

Welcome to Contemporary Approaches to University Teaching. My name is Kym Fraser and I led the group of experts from universities across Australia in the development of this course as part of a National Learning and Teaching Fellowship that I was awarded. We developed the course because we are committed to excellent university teaching. We believe that an introduction to learning and teaching concepts and strategies early in a teaching career, can make a positive difference to those first few years of teaching – for both the teacher and the students.

While the course has been designed to be taken across a semester, it is entirely up to you which modules you explore and when. Possible pathways are discussed in the Course Information page which can be found on the next page.

You will see that the course is designed to start in Orientation Week with the module Teaching your first class which is about teaching the first class of the semester. We haven't scheduled a module for the first week of teaching because it's such a busy time. The modules then recommence in the second week and go through to week 11. It's entirely up to you when you do the modules and which modules you do. We recommend doing all of them. It should take you about two hours to complete each module. The course also includes three specialty modules: Teaching mathematics, Work Integrated Learning and The politics of Australian higher education; and three resources: Sessional staff, Your professional wellbeing and A guide for librarians with teaching roles on the usefulness of each module. All of these resources can be found under Modules in the left-hand navigation bar.

In order to obtain a Certificate of Participation you will need to complete six specific modules and successfully complete each module quiz. More information can be located on this under Optional Assessment in the left-hand navigation bar.

The course has been designed to be relevant to teaching colleagues on different contracts: sessional, contract, continuing, part time and full time. If you are a sessional staff member, you may find it useful to review the resource for sessional staff. This document provides resources specific to the needs of sessional staff. Some colleagues, like librarians and IT specialists, teach students for a couple of hours in a semester. The resource A guide for librarians with teaching roles on the usefulness of each module provides fabulous advice on what to focus on in each module if you teach for very short periods of time.

For those colleagues who have responsibility for providing learning and teaching professional learning opportunities in their university, we have information on the different ways in which universities are using the course, including assessing their own students work in the course and giving them credit towards accredited courses.

There is a glossary located after the modules and resources. If you find a term that you'd recommend that we define and add to the glossary, please let us know through the end-of-module survey at the end of the relevant module.

Again, welcome to Contemporary Approaches to University Teaching. I hope that you find the course useful in the development of your tertiary teaching expertise.

 

 

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