Rosalie J Goldsmith

• PhD; MA App Ling; MA Int. Devt; Grad Dip Ed; BA Hons
• Associate Professor at University of Technology Sydney

CONTEXT

In response to the ongoing need to support all students’ academic language development throughout their university studies, the academic language and learning team at an Australian university has established the Academic Language Development (ALD) program. This program screens all commencing students at the university and offers an innovative whole...

Widening participation and the internationalisation of universities have led to initiatives to more explicitly develop academic practices, including language and literacy practices, which students need to successfully undertake their degrees. However, for some students for whom English is an additional language , more support is required. This pape...

In this paper, we present and illustrate four principles used to develop discipline-specific academic language tutorials for students who enter university with low levels of academic language proficiency. The tutorials are part of a university-wide language support program following a post enrolment language assessment (PELA). The principles respon...

In order to graduate as professional engineers in Australia, engineering students undertake internships as part of their degree programmes. The heart of a productive internship programme is the relationship between the workplace supervisor and the student, yet there are significant gaps in the knowledge about the nature and type of professional lea...

Academic Language and Learning (ALL) practitioners support the post-entry academic language needs of students in higher education, often by advising and collaborating with discipline academics on language and literacy matters. Existing studies into the identities of ALL practitioners, and those within the parallel field of English for Academic Purp...

There is a considerable body of literature on the challenges that are encountered in the transition from technical engineering research to engineering education research. These challenges include conceptual difficulties, shifts in identities and in paradigms, and changes of cultural and social capital. Many of the studies in this area emphasise the...

Academic Language and Learning (ALL) practitioners support the post-entry academic language needs of students in higher education, often by advising and collaborating with discipline academics on language and literacy matters. Existing studies into the identities of ALL practitioners, and those within the parallel field of English for Academic Purp...

Methodology of evaluating a university-wide language support program

University engineering programs integrate internship components to strengthen graduate employability, in addition to preparing students for the future world of work and what it takes to become a professional, responsible engineer. Successful mentoring of the future workforce relies on a mutually beneficial partnership between students, university a...

The Embedding Academic Language Framework, designed and implemented by the Academic Language & Learning team at University of Technology Sydney (UTS), is intended to provide whole-of-institution, contextualised academic language support for commencing students in undergraduate and postgraduate coursework degrees. The development of the framework wa...

Unprecedented changes in higher education in the 21 st century both in teaching and learning practices and in student cohorts have contributed to the development of transition strategies and pedagogies for first year undergraduate students. However, there has been little acknowledgement of the need for similar approaches for commencing postgraduate...

Engineering practice requires engineers who have strong spoken and written communication skills, but the development of these skills, notably writing practices, is often invisible in the engineering curriculum, and rarely embedded. Decades of reviews of engineering education have identified the gap between the engineering curriculum and engineering...

Engineering practice requires engineers who have strong spoken and written communication skills, but the development of these skills, notably writing practices, is often invisible in the engineering curriculum, and rarely embedded. Decades of reviews of engineering education have identified the gap between the engineering curriculum and engineering...

Engineering students are expected to graduate with high level written and oral communication, yet these expectations continue to fall short despite re-peated calls by industry and by accrediting bodies such as Engineers Aus-tralia for engineering faculties to address this issue. One explanation for this ongoing challenge is that the prevailing prac...

CONTEXT The issue addressed is the need to develop engineering students' independent learning and their understanding of the range of professional engineering activities within the context of a large introductory engineering subject in a revised academic calendar with reduced teaching weeks. Thus a project was created to redesign the subject to tak...

Writing practices are seen to be essential for professional engineers, yet many engineering students and academics struggle with written communication, despite years of interventions to improve student writing. Much has been written about the importance of getting engineering students to write, but there has been a little investigation of engineeri...

Written communication is neither systematically developed nor practised in the engineering curriculum, despite expectations by universities and employers that engineering graduates will be proficient communicators, and despite interventions to develop students' writing. The gap in the development of students' written communication calls for an inve...

When used effectively, reflective writing tasks can deepen learners’ understanding of key concepts, help them critically appraise their developing professional identity, and build qualities for lifelong learning. As such, reflecting writing is attracting substantial interest from universities concerned with experiential learning, reflective practic...

CONTEXT Two consecutive offerings (2015 and 2016) of the same subject, Concrete Technology and Practice, prompted opposite reactions from students. The academics involved in 2015 and/or 2016 sought to explore the similarities and differences between these consecutive offerings in reflecting on the learning and teaching practices in their classroom....

CONTEXT Competence in written communication is regarded as a critical requirement for engineering graduates and engineering educators alike, but the development of writing within the engineering curriculum is frequently invisible, and occasionally non-existent. This is despite repeated calls from EA and employer groups for Australian engineering fa...

When used effectively, reflective writing tasks can deepen learners' understanding of key concepts, help them critically appraise their developing professional identity, and build qualities for lifelong learning. As such, reflecting writing is attracting substantial interest from universities concerned with experiential learning, reflective practic...

Although writing is still the main form of assessment at university, the practice of writing continues to be marginalised, particularly in technical disciplines such as engineering, notwithstanding decades of reports identifying gaps in graduate communication abilities in these fields, and diverse interventions to address these gaps. The assumption...

Writing practices are seen to be essential for professional engineers, yet many engineering students and academics struggle with communicating in writing. This is despite the best efforts over many years of engineering educators and writing experts to develop writing strategies within or adjunct to the engineering curriculum. Much has been written...

CONTEXT It has become almost a cliché that engineers, (and by association engineering students) don't, won't, can't write. In order to redress this gap, there have been many excellent (and some successful) attempts in recent decades to develop the writing of engineering students, both in Australian universities and elsewhere. Yet the problem remain...

Concern about student retention and success remains paramount in universities both in Australia and overseas, especially in the light of the ongoing massifcation of higher education, yet current strategies are not necessarily dealing successfully with the changing demographics of student populations. This is particularly so in the realm of developi...

Communication has emerged as one of the key threshold learning outcomes in the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC)-funded project (2010-2011) which established academic standards in a number of disciplines in Australian higher education institutions. However, it is far from clear what is meant by the term "communication" in any of the d...

As a precursor to a new national regulatory and quality agency for higher education in Australia, the Australian Teaching and Learning Council (ALTC) has been commissioned to work with clusters of discipline communities to begin to specify how Threshold Learning Outcomes (TLOs) particular to each discipline might be used as a basis for academic sta...

While there have been improvements in Australian engineering education since the 1990s, there are still strong concerns that more progress needs to be made, particularly in the areas of developing graduate competencies and in outcomes-based curricula. This paper comments on the findings from a two-day Australian Learning and Teaching Council funded...

This paper examines the use of reflective writing as a learning activity intended to enhance the development of students" lifelong learning skills and the formation of their identities as professional engineers within a new industry focused capstone mechanical engineering design course. Within the literature, educating engineering students to succe...

This paper examines the use of reflective writing as a learning activity within a new 4th year project-based mechanical engineering design course. The learning activity was a continuation of the use of critical reflection as a pedagogical model first introduced in a Faculty-wide common first year engineering design course. In the new course, the pe...

From the excitement of common1 st year engineering courses and other design-build/project-based learning units, there is a massive drop in student engagement with the engineering curriculum as the students enter the 2 nd /3 rd year barrier courses, and a concomitant high rate of attrition or lack of progression. The early excitement is often never...

Despite repeated calls for curriculum renewal in engineering education in Australia since at least the 1990s, examples of Faculty-wide best practice in teaching engineering are the exception rather than the rule. As part of an ALTC-funded project to move towards an outcomes-based Engineering Design curriculum in Australian universities, this study...

While there have been improvements in Australian engineering education since the 1990s, there are still strong concerns that more progress needs to be made, particularly in the areas of developing graduate competencies and in outcomes-based curricula. This paper reports on the findings from a two-day ALTC-funded forum that sought to establish a sha...

Although there are many Academic Preparation Programs designed for international postgraduate students, the importance of establishing “the role of the researcher” is rarely the focus of these programs. This role is a fundamental “threshold concept” (Meyer & Land, 2006) for postgraduate success which has the potential to be transformational at both...

While there have been improvements in Australian engineering education since the 1990s, there are still strong concerns that more progress needs to be made, particularly in the areas of developing graduate competencies and in outcomes-based curricula. This paper reports on the findings from a two-day ALTC-funded forum that sought to establish a sha...

Metaphor can be a powerful tool in communicating the purposes and pro- cesses involved in learning as the use of metaphor enables new and complex ideas to be presented through more familiar forms. A considerable range of literature recognises the role of metaphor in learn ing and teaching both as an analytical tool and as a medium for conveying mea...