Charlotte Brack

Swinburne University of Technology · Learning Transformations

This paper describes students’ experience of participating in a case-based peer-assisted learning (PAL) program in order to examine whether the approach is pedagogically effective and likely to contribute to students’ professional development. It presents the findings of a study which examined the integration of PAL and case-based learning (CBL) in...

This article reports on a programme in which peer-assisted learning (PAL) was combined with case-based learning (CBL) in a second-year radiologic biology unit of study. Our aim is to explore evidence of whether PAL supported the development of qualitative conceptions of learning. The programme involved students in small PAL groups preparing and off...

The benefits of students learning together in peer-assisted learning (PAL) programmes have been widely reported. Implementing and evaluating PAL programmes provide specific challenges for academic staff. This paper explains how action research was used to design, trial and refine a same-year PAL programme to enhance student engagement. The PAL prog...

This paper reports on the use of action research in a case study involving two iterations of an online workshop implemented at two universities in late 2007 and early 2009 to prepare teaching staff for using wikis for student group work and assessment.Workshop participants were immersed in the experience of collaborating in a wiki as learners and t...

Some scholars believe that students should achieve discipline-specific competence before attempting an interdisciplinary synthesis of knowledge. Furthermore, one of the often-cited downsides of interdisciplinary scholarship is its lack of identity with, and consequently its failure to benefit from, membership of a discipline. Monash and Flinders un...

This paper examines the expansion of the Learning Management System (LMS) beyond the Academic Institutions' boundaries. This includes taking advantage of the rapid development of Web 2.0 technologies for advancement of e-leaning in engineering education. The exponential expansion of different internet communication methodologies and its utilisation...

The speed at which new options for online teaching and assessing are emerging is breathtaking and the prospect of keeping up with them may seem overwhelming. If you are interested in the potential of using technologies in your teaching or assessment, but need support to meet the challenge, this book provides a simple introductory framework to guide...

This paper reports on a collaborative staff development activity run across two Australian universities, for academic staff integrating Web 2.0 technologies into their teaching. It describes a three-week long virtual workshop on teaching with wikis, where participants in two groups developed a group project as students and then assessed the work as...

We have used Web 2.0 technology to transform undergraduate group work, in higher education, preparing students for ways in which people will work together in the future. This was implemented within Leapfrog Biology, an intensive four week online program developed for students who have not completed year 12 biology and who are entering first year me...

This paper examines the inputs of two different processes and the linkage between those processes. The processes examined in this paper are e-Teaching and e-Learning. Many conferences and journals are devoted to publishing on e-learning while in most cases they address the issues of e-teaching, which is a different process. In recent years Universi...

Discourse about the scholarship of teaching and learning appears to represent some views about higher education more than others. For example, disciplinary perspectives have been acknowledged, and ideas from critical theory and phenomenography have been presented, with the role of reflection receiving considerable attention. While approaches to e-t...

Within the notion of Web 2.0, social software has characteristics that make it particularly relevant to E-Learning, aligning well with a social constructivist approach to learning encompassing peer production and review of curriculum content. In this chapter examples of the use of social software are described and ways in which they draw on these c...

We have created an online learning environment "The Virtual Laboratory" for the integration into the curriculum of authentic experiences for learners of biology at year twelve level. As part of a 2002 State of Victoria (Department of Education & Training) Science in Schools partnership we collaborated with teachers to design an online environment b...

This paper addresses some aspects of the digital divide affecting teachers and learners in higher education. These relate to divisions arising from variable rates of technology adoption by teachers, which may be especially problematic when students’ uptake of technology is much more rapid than those who teach them, and also to divisions within the...