Commissioned Strategic Projects - Office for Learning and Teaching

3.1 Building upon existing work funded by the OLT and its
predecessor bodies
There is a considerable body of work funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC)
and more broadly, either completed or underway, which can support and complement this next phase
of higher education teaching development. Projects have developed systems and resources for peer
review and have examined the impact of teaching awards. Other projects have devised methods for
evaluating the effectiveness of teaching development programs, including tertiary teaching programs,
and have distilled principles for successful leadership of sustainable improvement in learning and
teaching. The teaching practices of award winners and teaching fellows are a rich source of case
studies and exemplars. These have not yet been collected and analysed in any systematic way.
The final report should include:
a summative evaluation, describing excellent teaching practice, and what constitutes
successful teaching and how these capacities might be developed in new and experienced
academics
literature reviews, which provide an international context about what constitutes effective
kinds of teaching.
case studies of:
- award winners and teaching fellows, including students' comments and evaluation data
(available from the nomination documents) about effective teaching; 2 particularly in
differing teaching and learning environments such as workplace learning, Web 2.0
environments or online
- early career academics nominated by award winners or fellows, to obtain a mix of
established and new practitioners’ experiences about effective teaching in contemporary
higher education
- teachers who have demonstrated pedagogical diversity in their teaching of students from
diverse backgrounds, including rural and remote, low SES, Indigenous and non-English
speaking.
A possible framework for the case studies, based on the teaching awards criteria, follows:
1. approaches to teaching, supervision and assessment that likely influence, motivate and inspire
students to learn the knowledge intended through their courses
2. development of curricula and resources that reflect current and comprehensive accounts of the
discipline or field of what is to be learnt
3. the enactment of curricula and use of resources that directly assist students experiencing of the
knowledge of the discipline or field that is to be learnt
4. the selection and use of teaching strategies and pedagogies that are well aligned to enrich
students’ learning and are appropriate to specific individual/cohort needs including equity groups
such as Indigenous students and students from a low SES
5. approaches to assessment and feedback that foster independent and interdependence in learning
6. orientations and approaches to teaching that respect and support for the development of
students as individuals
7. engagement in scholarly activities that have influenced and enhanced learning and teaching
experiences.
2 permission to review and publish material from nominations would have to be obtained from recipients and institutions as
ALTC/OLT does not own the IP in these documents.
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