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Monash U at peak brand
There’s new creative for the “Change it” campaign
It points to global dangers of the climate change, politics and pandemic kind, and suggests solving them to save the world.
“It is time for us to act … because if we don’t do something now there is now telling what future generations will face” is the message. The Monash U name appears in a couple of frames but there is no plug for studying or funding research there.
Advertising for when one is very, very confident about brand reputation
There’s more in the Mail
New in Features this morning
Angel Calderon (RMIT) on the reputational challenge for Australian universities and how demonstrating commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals can help.
and Frank Larkins (Uni Melbourne) on the 2020 research spending statistics. Overall outlays were up but universities reduced general funding as international student income fell.
Plus
James Guthrie on the need for a national university summit: who should attend, what they should discuss
Michael Healy, Jason Brown and Candy Ho on career employability support for students – it’s a professional service that universities should properly resource. This week’s selection by Commissioning Editor Sally Kift for her celebrated series, Needed now in teaching and learning.
Risks for med researchers in revealing career disruption
There’s no easy answer on how much to include in funding bids
Adrian Barnett, Susanna Cramb, Carly Dyer (all QUT) and Katie Page (UTS) surveyed research applicants and found “career disruptions will be assessed depending on the peer reviewer, and hence it will sometimes be of benefit to include career disruption and sometimes not.”
This is despite the National Health and Medical Research Council allowing research applicants to include reasons for career disruption; including having children, carer responsibilities, accident and illness. The NHMRC also instructs peer reviewers “to assess research outputs relative to opportunity.”
One solution, the authors suggest, would be independent panels of health professionals assessing career disruptions reported in applications. Applicants could also be invited to report the impact, not the cause of disruption.
Expert Opinion
Corey Bradshaw (Flinders U) is a member of the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts. He explains how the grants process works HERE.
Wendy Ingman did something similar on the National Health and Medical Research Council Investigator Grants in CMM (September 29 2019).
More along the similar lines for other schemes would surely be good for agencies and applicants.
Industrial arguing heats up at Sydney unis
The National Tertiary Education Union is running disputes across town
The Uni Sydney branch had a high-profile strike last week, with another scheduled.
At Western Sydney U, NTEU members voted Friday to take industrial action.
And now the UTS branch will ask the Fair Work Commission for a protected ballot, the first step towards stop-works and strikes.
At Uni Sydney issues include management’s interest in more teaching-specialist positions. At UTS the comrades have had it with restructures. While at Western Sydney U progress on a pay rise is one of the big issues.
Colin Simpson’s ed-tech must reads of the week
14 Equity consideration for Ed Tech from Campus Technology
The process of introducing a new education technology to an institution can be lengthy, needing to balance pedagogical benefits with technological suitability and pragmatic requirements. While care is taken to consider bigger picture needs like accessibility, other factors that speak to the question of “what does this tool say about our institutional values” don’t always get their due. This article from Reed Dickson offers a thought provoking list of questions for implementers to ask about fairness in the selection of tools for learning and teaching.
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Strange research plagiarism from Twitter
One of my doctoral supervisors tweeted this story on the weekend about her finding a recent publication of hers about AI and human learning with a different title and authors (but the same volume of the same journal) sitting on ResearchGate. She shares screenshots of the two front pages and bewildered discussion ensues about what these (fake) people are actually trying to achieve.
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Digital transformation and why it can’t be done without learning technologists from AmmieNoot
Anne-Marie Scott is the Deputy Provost of Athabasca University (Canada) and always has some entertaining thoughts about technology enhanced learning and teaching. In this post, she discusses how large-scale digital change happens in institutions and the ways that IT departments often put their own spin on things. She proposes a greater role in this work for learning technologists – experienced professionals (like me) who act as bridges between teaching and technology.
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Pyscript- Python in HTML from TikTok
This is perhaps nerdy even for this column but I am aware that the programming language Python is often favoured in Higher Ed for its ease of use. A significant development in this language is the recent release of Pyscript, which for the first time allows coders to run Python in web browsers. This punchy TikTok video explains how.
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Clancy@stackoverflow from Simon Terry
I’ve been a sucker for bush poetry ever since my grade four teacher Mr Harris used to regale us with tales from Banjo and Henry on warm afternoons. So it was probably inevitable that I would have to share this updated version of Clancy of the Overflow – ‘Clancy’s gone Web3 coding’ (Thanks for finding this Wendy T)
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Colin Simpson has worked in education technology, teaching, learning design and academic development in the tertiary sector since 2003 and is employed by Monash University’s Education Innovation team. He is also one of the leaders of the TELedvisors Network. For more from Colin, follow him on Twitter @gamerlearner
Appointments, achievements, exit
Lisa Adkins is confirmed as dean of Uni Sydney’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She has been interim dean since October, prior to which she was deputy dean and head of the Social and Political Sciences school.
The 2022 Australian Council of Graduate Research Excellence in Graduate Research Education Awards include, * Lauren Ball (Griffith U): supervision * Dani Milos (Flinders U): leadership * Uni Melbourne’s ARC Centre for Medical Implant Technology, (including, David Ackland, Meg Belmonte, Jia-Yee Lee, Peter Lee): industry engagement
Caitlin Byrne becomes PVC Business at Griffith U in July. It’s an internal appointment.
Uni Melbourne’s Council is in the market for a new chancellor. After six years in the role Allan Myers does not want a new term.