Academic Identity & Professional Learning:
Unlearning traditional methods
Communities of practice
Staff development in higher education
Building reflective teaching practice
For the past few years, much of the debate about generative AI in higher education has focused on written assessments. The essay emerged as a key concern because tools like ChatGPT can generate proficient written responses quickly and at scale, challenging many traditional assessment assumptions. We have invested significant time contemplating the implications. How can…
During professional learning sessions with university educators, a familiar phrase keeps coming up: “We have to deliver the content.” It often surfaces when staff describe teaching a unit designed by someone else, especially when the slides, activities, resources and weekly sequence have already been prepared. For sessional educators and less experienced ongoing academics, it can…
Teaching is often perceived and judged as a performance. We walk into a room, deliver content, facilitate discussion, respond in the moment, and manage the energy of the class. When it goes well, it feels engaging, dynamic, and successful. When it doesn’t, it can feel flat, disconnected, or difficult to recover from. In this framing,…
Learning outcomes remain central to our courses. They influence course proposals, underpin accreditation documents, guide course reviews, and enable curriculum mapping across units and assessments. Institutionally, they are vital. They ensure coherence, provide reassurance, and uphold accountability. They enable us to confidently articulate what a graduate of a specific course knows and can do. And…
The beginning of a new year always invites reflection. Fresh diaries. Clean calendars. The quiet promise that things might feel a little different this time around. In Australia, that sense of renewal holds extra significance because a new year also marks the start of a new teaching year. New classes. New cohorts. New groups of…