2014 Transition Education Grants

Monash College’s Transition Education Grants scheme is designed to facilitate innovative practices in learning and teaching, and to develop our capacity to deliver outstanding programs. Now in its third year, the scheme provides funding for resources to support learning and teaching initiatives that have demonstrated potential to add value to program quality.

This year, we implemented a program of classroom-based action research to support the teachers who received a Transition Education Grant for 2014. Facilitated by Professor Anne Burns, an expert in action research practice, the teachers participated in three workshops during the year to plan, prepare and present the projects. Key features of the program included collaboration with colleagues from Monash University English Language Centre, Monash College Diplomas and Monash University Foundation Year.

Find out more about Transition Education GrantsWe encourage you to read about and reflect on the teachers’ experiences and get in touch with them if you have any questions about their projects. We also encourage you to consider participating in the program.

Visit the Transition Education Grants on the Monash College staff intranet to find out more.

intranet.mcpl.monash.edu.au/hr/outstanding-contributions/transition-education-grants.html

Our grant provided us the opportunity to carry out action research on the prior learning of students in Monash University Foundation Year.

We conducted a series of focus groups with students enrolled in the Foundation Year program at our Melbourne City campus. The focus groups gave us opportunities to explore with students their past educational experiences, and gave students opportunities to tell us about the schools in their home countries. Our research was conducted from February to May 2014 and included students from East, Southeast and South Asia, Middle East and Africa. In total, 29 students participated in five focus groups

We found there is a wide variety of factors that students find challenging to adjust to in Melbourne. The main factors are:

time management

independent learning and research

class discussions

the format of academic writing and referencing expectations.

Students who have not studied in English before find written assessment onerous and the referencing requirements take a lot of adjustment. The freedom of living away from home, coupled with the number and pace of assessments, is a challenging combination for students. Students reflected that the challenges of Foundation Year and studying overseas were difficult, but many appreciated the skills and knowledge they had gained through this experience.

The research essay reference books will serve as an overall academic guide for both undergraduate and postgraduate students in the MUELC Bridging course. The books aim to provide a complete overview of the skills and structures required to produce a concisely written document that responds appropriately to the essay question being discussed. The books are comprised of theory, practical tips and voluntary exercises.

The aims of the research essay books are:

to provide undergraduate and postgraduate students with the key writing skills to cope at university level in Australia including complex sentence structures, varied use of vocabulary, thesis building and grammatical accuracy along with paraphrasing and summarising skills

to increase sophistication in writing

to increase student confidence in engaging in written university assignments and tests

to apply critical thinking skills appropriately in research essays

to apply a functional checklist that highlights the value of revising the finished essay to attain a higher assessment

to plan each stage of a research essay.

Three books were produced. The main resource is the research essay reference book, compulsory reading for students between weeks six and eleven (when the research essay is being undertaken). The second, an online exercise book, contains four weekly lessons focusing on opinion to position, critical thinking based on the Toulmin Model, academic style, quoting and referencing, editing and revising. Aiming to foster self-directed learning, this book is optional. The third book is a solutions text for book two.

Tracey Gibbs and David Feith Monash University Foundation Year

Suresh Perera Monash College Diplomas

Terence Reilly Monash University English Language Centre

Selvarajah Sathiyakumar (pictured), Darren Simon, Nimalsiri Pinnawala, Reshmi Sharma and Hamid Khattak Monash College Diplomas

Uncovering and understanding international students’ prior learning

How do high achieving students’ learn and study different subjects?

Smart technology in transition education

Research essay reference books for MUELC Bridging students (Undergraduate/ Postgraduate)

It is generally accepted that certain study strategies are critical at different phases of learning. Study strategies that were successful in high school have been found to be not successful in a university setting. Recent research of a pathway setting found significant differences in the way high and low achievers learn and study. Specifically, high and low achieving students were found to score significantly differently on measures of motivation, test strategies and selecting main ideas. However research is limited with regard to students’ study habits with regard to pre-class, in-class and post-class learning activities, and their study habits in different subjects, particularly in a pathway setting.

The purpose of this project was to:

identify effective learning and study habits that differentiate between high and low achievers with regard to pre-class, in-class and post-class learning activities

investigate how high and low achievers differ in the way in which they study different subjects.

Previous research suggests that students learn differently with regard to various aspects of learning. For example, studies have found that there are differences between high school students, pathway students and university students in terms of study skills.

1. Do high achievers learn and study subjects differently compared to low achievers?

2. Do high achievers learn and study subjects differently and engage in different learning activities compared to low achievers?

We found that high and low achievers scored significantly different in their activities related to pre-class, in-class and post-class learning activities. Similarly high and low achievers were significantly different in the way they utilised study methods for different units.

Active participation of teachers in the use of smart technology in classroom teaching enhances students’ learning experience in engineering and science subjects. Challenging experiments, which a decade ago required complicated equipment, can now be performed with a couple of touches on a smartphone. Our action research was conducted by a group of Monash College Diploma of Engineering teachers who used smart technology (particularly iPads) in the delivery of engineering units.

Activities were designed to use iPad apps in classroom teaching and Blooms taxonomy was used to evaluate the selected apps.

The main findings of our research include:

students’ attention improved when iPad activities were employed in the classroom teaching

both iPad and Dell tablets have their own advantages and limitations.

The action research helped us explore some of the iPads capabilities, including inbuilt sensors to capture oscillations, magnetic field strength, sound intensity level and force motion. All participants agree that they will continue their voluntary innovative teaching practice with iPads and strongly believe that this action research enhances their confidence and competence to employ pedagogically appropriate smart technologies in future classroom teaching.

The original impetus for the project was to explore methods of feedback used at Monash College, research current best practice, and share the results cross-divisionally.

The initial research revealed an exciting development in the provision of student feedback, expanding it from a one to a three dimensional approach, namely FeedUp, FeedBack and FeedForward. FeedUp explains the goal of the assessment, FeedBack reveals to the student their current progress, and FeedForward provides a means for improvement.

Two surveys were conducted, one targeting Monash College teachers from Monash College Diplomas, Monash University English Language Centre and Monash University Foundation Year (83 respondents), and one targeting Monash College students in the Diploma of Arts and the Diploma of Engineering (63 respondents).

The results from the teacher’s survey showed that they employed FeedUp, and FeedForward, more often than FeedBack, and that online oral (audio or visual) was the most effective method of providing feedback. The results of the student survey revealed that students were mostly given either face-to-face or online written (via Moodle) feedback, but very little online oral (audio or visual). Considering these results, it was decided to investigate the different types of software available for providing online oral or visual feedback, and some suggested solutions are the use of Webcam, Jing, Adobe Pro X and AudioNote, which can all be uploaded to Moodle for timely student access.

Peter Stahli and Hamid Khattak (pictured) Monash College Diplomas

Learning analytics: FeedUp, FeedBack & FeedForward

intranet.mcpl.monash.edu.au/hr/outstanding-contributions/transition-education-grants.html

What is action research?

Action research is “a participatory, democratic process concerned with developing practical knowing. It seeks to bring together action and reflection, theory and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues” (Reason and Bradbury, 2001).

Why action research?

Action research supports teachers to systematically plan, act, observe and reflect on practical approaches to a ‘problematic’ aspect, or issue of concern, of their own teaching, and then share outcomes with other teachers.

It is an approach to investigating our own contexts that brings together two key ideas: action and research. For teachers this means exploring our classroom, program or school. The action relates to doing something differently to enhance teaching or learning, while the research involves systematically investigating what is done.

How do we implement action research?

The action research process begins by identifying what area of teaching and/or learning we want to focus on and then carrying out a cycle of related steps to investigate our ideas further. Action research involves systematically investigating an issue through:

planning teaching strategies to address the issue

observing and collecting data about what occurs

analysing the information collected and

reflecting on what has been learned as a result.

Action research methodology

There are many ways to collect action research data and many of the tools used can double as classroom activities. For example, teachers and students can draw on surveys, interviews, examples of student writing, classroom materials, reflective diaries or journals, self or peer feedback or evaluation, assessment scores, discussions, photographs/videos, maps or diagrams. Teachers can also involve their students as co-investigators.

One of the most important aspects of action research is reflection on practice. Reflection involves analysing the data, but also considering how the research has shaped teaching and learning, and what the analysis tells us about our classroom, our practice and our students’ learning.

1Reason, P and Bradbury, H. (2001). Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. London: Sage.1Burns, A. (2010). Doing action research in English language teaching: A guide for practitioners. New York: Routledge.

About Transition Education Grants1