Archive for September, 2009

As we draw toward the last quarter of 2009, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on some of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) highlights of 2009.  I will concentrate on our research achievements in my final communication for the year in November.  This one will concentrate on teaching and learning.

2009 has been a year of intense activity in Teaching and Learning development.  We are delighted that our recently introduced courses including Criminology and Psychology continue to attract good student numbers, and are very optimistic that 2010 will be a bumper year for FAS.  UNE Council has approved a suite of new courses for 2010 - including Bachelors of Pharmacy, Exercise Physiology, Exercise Science, Sports Science, Zoology, Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics with Honours and Master of Urban and Regional Planning.

Trevor Brown assumed the position of Acting Academic Director in April, following the departure of Kerry Dunne.  Trevor has been very active in his role, culminating in the Teaching and Learning Seminar held on 19 August.  For the first time this was part of a broader T&L focus across UNE. The School Awards for Excellence in Learning and Teaching were presented at the T&L Showcase.  This is the first year of these awards that are initiated and funded by the Academic Board Teaching and Learning Committee.  The awards recognise UNE members of staff who have shown ‘exemplary commitment to excellence in learning and teaching and/or who have developed, promoted and/or implemented strategies to achieve excellence in learning and teaching at UNE.’  Another motivation for these awards is to identify staff for nomination for the Vice-Chancellor’s Learning and Teaching awards and ultimately for Australian Learning and Teaching Council citations.

School of Arts.  There were three nominations from the School of Arts that addressed different aspects of learning and teaching - each providing clear evidence of excellence.  

• The Music Team: Andrew Alter, Hugh de Ferranti, Jason Stoessel and Stephen Thorneycroft.
• Paul Adams
• Jane Southwood

School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences

• Anthony Marks.

School of Environmental and Rural Sciences

• Rex Glencross-Grant.

The Faculty also continues to offer strategic T&L Funds on a competitive basis for the development of new courses, upgrade of existing courses and advancement of online teaching.

We pride ourselves on our excellence in Teaching and Learning - including recognition of excellence in 2008 at the domestic undergraduate level in the discipline group of Science, Computing, Engineering, Architecture and Agriculture.  An event to recognise the 2008 Australian Learning and Teaching Council Awards was held in Booloominbah on 12 February.  FAS winners were Kerry Dunne and the German team, and Isobel Tasker.  Kerry provided the vote of thanks on behalf of all of the winners.  Significant numbers of FAS unit coordinators and contributors regularly have units rated as excellent by students, and we received the following Inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Staff Awards.   Excellence in Learning and Teaching: Ms Therese Burton; Dr Nigel Andrew, Outstanding Interdisciplinary Innovation: Associate Professor John Scott; Dr Robyn Bartel, Dr Darren Ryder, Outstanding Performance and Service:  Associate Professor John Scott.  The website http://lectureroftheyear.com.au lists ten UNE academics of whom six are in FAS - Adam Harris, Gerd Schmaltz, Mark Evered, Suzie Gibson, Janelle Wilkes, and Anne Pender, and congratulations to Jackie Reid who received the VC Award for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the Sciences, Medicine and Health Graduation on 27 March and to John Malouff on his Australian Learning and Teaching Council Citation for outstanding contributions to student learning.  UNE’s Bachelor of Engineering Technology degree, under the leadership of Rex Glencross-Grant received a number of accolades at the Newcastle Division of the Engineers Australia Engineering Excellence Awards on 8th May, and last but certainly not least, congratulations to Associate Professor Wendy Beck who received UNE’s first ALTC National Fellowship for teaching valued at $100,000.  

Many of the FAS courses are accredited and the visit by Engineers Australia for the Bachelor of Engineering Technology degrees took place on 21 and 22 April.  The degrees are a collaborative venture with USQ and are coordinated for UNE by Rex Glencross-Grant.  In relation to this the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australia met at UNE on 6 May. The group was instrumental in supporting the establishment of the new degrees.  The School of Science and Technology has received accreditation from the Australian Computer Society from 2010 for a range of courses.  These include those on offer from Armidale via both internal and external mode and via our partner the International School of Business and Technology (ISBT) in Sydney.

Activities related to teaching and learning include the Primary Industries Centre for Science Education (PICSE).  The fifteen students who participated in the 2008 - 09 UNE PICSE program gave excellent presentations on the outcomes of their experience at a gathering in Booloominbah on 9 February.  UNE academic staff, parents, school teachers and industry collaborators associated with the project attended the event, that was introduced by the Chancellor and wrapped up the Vice-Chancellor.  The event was organised by the UNE PICSE Coordinator Susanna Greig. John Stanley represented UNE and FAS at the AgriFoods Jobs Summit held in Narrabri on 3 July.  The meeting included growers, agricultural support industries, training providers, skills accreditation and job network providers.  It was useful in opening discussion on the expectations of the various groups in relation to the opportunities available and in understanding and exploring attitudes and constraints.

The Hon Richard Torbay launched the UNE-NSW Parliament Rural and Regional Parliament Internship Program on 9 April.  The program allows students to gain first hand experience of working with Parliamentarians via the unit WORK 300/500, and is managed by Belinda Beattie. A workshop for Arts and Education Indigenous students was held on 8 and 9 May at Austin College.  Organised and facilitated by Ms Junette Bell, an Aboriginal research student based in Armidale, the workshop presented academic skills information and related student based learning activities to UNE’s Indigenous students.  A small group of Gumbangarrie Aboriginal Elders attended providing a community presence to support UNE’s Indigenous students.

The launch of the UNE Charles Tesoriero Lectureship in Classics took place on Friday 24 April.  The lectureship is funded via a bequest from the late Charles Tesoriero, a UNE academic in Classics.  Cuncun Wu organised a Chinese Calligraphy exhibition  - Flying Brush, Dancing Ink - that commenced on 30 June.  The exhibition showcases the work of students enrolled in the unit CHIN 211, and also that of Cuncun herself - an accomplished Calligrapher.

These are just some of the recent FAS teaching and learning highlights.  Our intent is to build on this success as we move toward the e-university in 2010.

The Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) at UNE consists of a range of interoperable systems which provide the functionality that underpins the on-line delivery of courses at UNE. The current systems have ‘grown like topsy’ since the implementation of WebCT in the late 1990’s as functionality requirements have evolved and been added to the suite of products available to staff and students.

Following on from recommendations in the Rebbechi report, in 2008 it was agreed that a more structured approach would be desirable as the University increased its commitment to the on-line environment. As a consequence a project to review the environment was established by the Academic Board Teaching and Learning Committee with initially Damon Ferris and consequently Vicki Tan at Project Manager. The project to date has included:

• The establishment of a high level Steering Committee
• A desk audit of learning management systems in Australia and overseas
• Surveys of staff and students to obtain feedback on issues associated with the current environment and suggestions for improvement
• Consultation with each School to identify their functionality requirements
• The development of essential and desirable requirements for functionality
• The establishment of a Working Party with representation from across the University to provide feedback, assessment and analysis of information
• Demonstrations to the Working Party against the selection criteria of the identified learning management systems
• Collection of financial information on all systems for installation, implementation and continuing maintenance

There is still considerable work to be done including:

• Demonstrations to all available staff and students of all systems
• Assessment of the systems against the ICT architecture of the University
• Further consultation and analysis of information collected as part of the above processes.

Recommendations regarding the systems which are the best fit for UNE based on the functionality, technical infrastructure, organisational capacity (both vendor and university), cost (implementation and life cycle) are due to be provided to the Steering Committee before the end of 2009. Following receipt of the recommendations planning and implementation projects will then be necessary.

 I would encourage all staff to engage and contribute to the process as it progresses to ensure your requirements are taken into consideration as it is essential that any decision meets the majority of the needs of staff and students into the future.

Feedback can be provided through the VLE Review blog at http://blog.une.edu.au/vlereview/ or contact Vicki Tan x3280 or vicki.tan@une.edu.au

Colleagues, I’d like to explore the current language of research funding and performance, as employed by the Commonwealth Government.  It is a language populated by acronyms that mask some rather complicated underlying processes for deciding how universities will be funded for research in 2010 and beyond by the government,.  I thought it might be useful to unpack some of these acronyms and indicate what they might mean for UNE.

ACG refers to Australian Competitive Grants for research.  It refers to any research grant income obtained by competitive means in accordance with rules set by the Commonwealth Government.  Each year, DIISR (Department of Industry, Innovation, Science and Research) publishes an updated list of all research grant schemes that qualify as ACGs, including ARC (Australian Research Council) grants and many other types of grants.  Such grants are also called ‘Category 1″ grants.  In 2008, about 34% of our total research grant income was from qualifying ACGs.  The remaining 66% was from other research grant funding sources, including other public sector research income (Category 2), industry and other research income(Category 3) and CRC research income (Category 4) [collectively known as non-ACG].

RTS refers to the Research Training Scheme.  This is the pool of research funding to be used to support research training for domestic students undertaking Masters and Doctoral degrees by research.  This funding amount is calculated using a combination of research income, publications and HDR (Higher Degree Research) completions.  There are no planned changes to this scheme.

JRE refers to the Joint Research Engagement scheme.  It is the new version of the old IGS (Institutional Grants Scheme).  When calculating IGS income for a university, funding from all four research grant categories was counted, as were publications and HDR student load.  The JRE is intended to reward seeking of funding from sources that enhance collaborative research engagement with industries and end-users of research.  Accordingly, the plan is that JRE research income will be calculated from category 2, 3 and 4 sources; ACG income will not be counted.  We already do fairly well in these non-ACG categories of research income and our rural and regional and applied focus in a number of areas should enhance our outcomes here.

ERA refers to the Excellence in Research in Australia initiative.  We have already had two practice encounters with the ERA this year with respect to the PCE (Physics, Chemistry and Earth Sciences) and HCA (Humanities and Creative Arts) discipline clusters.  It is the scheme the Commonwealth Government will use to assess research quality in the university sector.  Volume of research activity, publications against ranked outlets, citation analyses, peer review and research income figure prominently in ERA as do a limited set of applied measures.  Next year, the full set of 8 discipline clusters will be assessed and it is likely that some esteem measures will also be included (this last is currently out to universities for consultation).  ERA outcomes will help inform the research funding decisions to be made by the Commonwealth Government.  Unfortunately, the weak point of the ERA scheme, insensitivity to a range of non-publication related research outcomes, will not do UNE any favours.

TC refers to the Transparent Costing scheme.  It is the system (not yet finalised) through which universities will track and the Commonwealth Government will assess the allowable indirect costs that a university claims it incurs in carrying out ACG activities and in meeting other research performance targets. This assessment will then feed into the calculation of the “Excellence” portion of SRE funding (see below).  This process should help to remove some impediments to seeking ACG research funding because indirect costs could not be recovered.  Universities will receive some funding in 2010 to help in designing their TC systems to support this reporting scheme.  The more ACG funded research we undertake, the better our return on TC should be. 

SRE refers to the Sustainable Research Excellence initiative.  It is the planned evolution of the government’s system for calculating and allocating research infrastructure block funding to universities and is intended to help universities to better meet the indirect costs of research.  The plan embodies three suggested (not yet finalised) components: (1) 20% of funding would be calculated using the current RIBG (Research Infrastructure Block Grant) calculation formula; (2) 13% of funding would be identified as “Incentive”, linked to how much ACG income a university generates up to a cutoff point of $2.5 million dollars; and (3) 67% of funding would be identified as “Excellence”, linked to how much ACG income a university generates beyond the cutoff point of $2.5 million dollars, a university’s report on its TC for research and on targets identified by the ERA scheme.  Access to the Incentive and Excellence funding pathways is conditional on the university agreeing to participate in both the TC and ERA schemes - UNE will certainly agree to these conditions.  The SRE initiative will form an essential component of mission-based compacts, which each university will negotiate with the Commonwealth Government each year from 2010. 

One important implication hidden in amongst these acronyms is the increasing tension that will result from pursuing ACG funding to enhance outcomes in the TC and the SRE schemes on the one hand and pursuing non-ACG funding to enhance outcomes in the new JRE scheme on the other.  We certainly live in ‘interesting’ times!