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…
Last week I spent time at Victoria University’s new India campus in Delhi, delivering professional learning for colleagues who will be teaching there. While my visit was focused on learning and teaching, being in a new university environment made me think further beyond the purpose of my time there. I began to consider what the…
In higher education, students often complete an assessment, submit it, receive a grade, and then move on. Academics evaluate and mark the work, offer feedback, and focus on the next task. The assessment has effectively fulfilled its purpose: generating evidence, informing judgments, and contributing to the final results. But has it actually contributed to the…
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…
For generations, the unit has been the fundamental building block of higher education. It structures curriculum, determines credit, organises teaching, and provides the framework through which students progress towards a qualification. Whether a university teaches in semesters, trimesters, intensive modes, or blocks, the unit remains the common currency of learning. It underpins course design, staff…