Format: Work-in-progress

The focus of the work-in-progress: HERDSA’s inaugural Mentoring and Coaching Support (MACS) for the career advancement for women was completed in March 2024. A new cohort with a revised program is planned for later this year.

Context/Background: One of the biggest barriers for women seeking leadership roles is the persistent gender bias that exists in higher education highlighting the need for mentoring (Naqbi, 2023). Men are often seen as more competent and capable of leadership than women, even when they have the same qualifications. The issue facing women in higher education in Australasia is that there are fewer women than men in leadership positions as reported in the WGEA Gender Equality Scorecard 2022-23. Even though women may meet the requisite qualifications and experience there is a larger proportion of women sessional staff on fixed term contracts (Australian Government, Department of Education 2022 Staff Data).

Description: In this roundtable participants learn about the inaugural MACS Program and the successes of participants in various stages in their careers. Highlighted are the mutual sharing and support strategies participants implemented. The program included seminars, workshops and structured individual and peer group coaching. Quantitative and qualitative data was collected and analysed. The MACS participants contributed to the design and content of the program.

Intended outcome and contribution to scholarship/practice: The MACS program will be enhanced by participants’ contributions via facilitated discussion to review and revise the program. Participants consider submitting EOIs to participate as mentors or mentees in the MACS program.

Engagement: Results of the MACS program (Naidoo, 2023) is shared to stimulate reflection on mentoring/coaching opportunities. Participants are invited to share their experiences relating to support or the lack thereof in career progression:
• Challenges faced
• Foster a more supportive culture to enable career progression
• Practical strategies to apply immediately?

Format: Birds of a Feather.
Topic for Discussion: TED Talks & ChatGPT.
Context: This research explored the validity of employing ChatGPT to design formative assessments to measure student learning and engagement with TED-talks. After an observed recent reduction of engagement with course readings by student cohorts, proposed solutions included formative quizzes, based on the readings, and including TED-talks as course readings. Formative assessment in 21st century Higher Education typically engages multidimensional approaches enhancing student autonomy, and enabling more diverse opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning. The use of TED-talks as resources has become increasingly popular. They are now common in hybrid or flipped classrooms, offering accessible, nonthreatening, and approachable ways to engage diverse student cohorts.
Description: Transcriptions of TED-talks were submitted to ChatGPT with prompts engineered to elicit maximally valuable formative quiz questions. The research addressed the following questions: Can GenAI develop meaningful assessment questions to assess the level of engagement and/or understanding of TED-talk content? Does more detailed prompt engineering result in more valuable responses? The research found ChatGPT required well-crafted prompts and progressive training to generate meaningful and relevant responses. Providing ChatGPT with a template ensured more useable outputs.
Intended Outcome: This research addresses a highly relevant subject and the findings offer useful advise for HE educators wishing to employ ChatGPT to assist in assessment design and those considering TED-talks as alternative course readings.
Engagement: Although ChatGPT can produce potentially viable draft formative quiz questions, strategic prompt engineering, with detail and context, will produce more valuable results. However, they will still need further human input to make them meaningfully useable to accurately assess student learning and engagement. This discussion aims to guide prospective users of AI with advice from real-world experience.
Pre-Reading: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380295196_Using_ChatGPT_to_Design_Assessments_
to_Encourage_HE_Students_to_Engage_with_TED-talks_as_Supplementary_Course_Readings_A_Prompt_Engineering_Experiment

Format of the roundtable: Work-in-Progress

Focus of the work-in-progress: Triple-Presentation Cycle: Enhancing Presentation Skills through Repetition, Feedback, and Video-Enabled Self-Reflection

Context/background: The efficacy of leveraging video recording and self-reflection to improve presentation skills has been established in educational research. Building upon this foundation, this work-in-progress introduces an innovative triple-presentation cycle in small-class postgraduate business programs. This method aims to significantly elevate students' presentation skills by integrating repeated practice with reflective learning and comprehensive feedback mechanisms.

Description of research/initiative or practice: This pedagogical strategy consists of three structured presentation rounds. The initial round is ungraded, designed to foster a low-stress environment for initial practice, followed by in-depth feedback and personal reflection using video recordings. The second round is graded, with feedback aimed at addressing previously identified areas for improvement. The final round, presented to an external audience, serves as a culmination of the learning process, with students employing refined skills and strategies. This repetitive cycle, enriched by self, peer, and instructor feedback, enables continuous improvement in critical areas such as body language, voice intonation, and the use of visuals, facilitating a deeper engagement in storytelling.

Intended outcome and contribution to scholarship/practice: The triple-presentation cycle aims to demonstrate improvements in presentation skills, providing a model for communication training in small classes. Importantly, the project is in its embryonic stage, with plans to transform accumulated data from three years into a research article. Insights from this roundtable are vital, offering an opportunity to brainstorm theoretical and methodological approaches for effective exploration of this data.

Engagement: Participants will share experiences teaching and giving feedback on presentations. The session will progress to strategizing the conversion of reflective data and video recordings into scholarly articles. The aim is to collaboratively explore strategies that document the triple-presentation cycle's effectiveness and explore innovative avenues for academic dissemination.

Format - Birds of a Feather

Topic - the proposed roundtable topic is student bereavement in higher education (HE), a largely unexamined issue in Australia (Spiccia et al., 2023). The roundtable will discuss the impact of grief on student welfare and retention (Ridgway et al., 2023) while also considering Australian university responses to grieving students via policy and practice (Hay et al., 2022). The potential for creative writing (such as autoethnography) to assist grieving students will also be explored (Ridgway, 2023). Most of all, the event provides a valuable space for attendees to convene and collaborate, united by their goal to bring about change for grieving students in Australia.

Background – there is extensive international literature on prevalence, impact and responses to student bereavement in higher education, with the US acting as a notable leader in this space (see Balk, 2011; Servaty-Seib & Hamilton, 2006; Cupit et al., 2021). During the roundtable, this literature will be shared, along with examples of evidence-based, best practice models of support to explore possibilities for the Australian context.

Description - the author will briefly use her lived experience of grieving during her PhD (based on her publication in HERD) to open the conversation. She will then facilitate the discussion with the following themes acting as conversational prompts: grieving students' needs; HE policy responses; HE support systems; examples of best practice; system limitations/gaps; additional needs of marginalised groups; ways forward/future thinking.

Intended outcome and contribution to scholarship – the roundtable will explore opportunities for system change and future research on this essential topic while also providing the opportunity for a research and practice network to emerge.

Engagement – the roundtable will include a range of provocations to challenge current Australian approaches to student grief in higher education and explore audience solutions to this critical issue.

Format
Work-in-progress

Focus of the Work-in-Progress
A discussion of the benefits and pitfalls of designing and delivering scaffolded undergraduate topics

Context/background
Evidence-based practice (EBP) is central to health care provision. Anecdotal evidence suggests that students often fear and potentially loath research methods topics (Wisecup, 2017). Scaffolded learning (supporting novice learners via incremental learning), helps increase confidence and skill development (Kusmaryono et al., 2020), and may improve student skills in this crucial area.

Description
In our college, both formal student and anecdotal research supervisor feedback for stand-alone undergraduate research method topics was poor. In response, we designed a suite of three new research topics. These were scaffolded horizontally to other core topics in the health curriculum to ensure continual opportunities for skills practice in authentic, context-relevant ways, and vertically aligned to progressively build and deepen student understanding of research and EBP.
Students reported improved analytical skills (69%) and confidence in understanding and explaining EBP (89%). Level 2/3 students who felt prepared for their learning based on completion of topics in the suite were significantly more likely to agree that their current topic helped develop their problem-solving and analytical skills.

Intended outcome and contribution to scholarship/practice
While scaffolded undergraduate research topics have been recommended to improve EBP in the workplace (Morrison et al., 2020), few studies have reported the outcomes of such programs, particularly in health. By sharing our experiences, results, and by discussing these with others, we hope to encourage best practice and adoption of similar scaffolded research methods in the curriculum of other institutions.

Engagement
We will provide student feedback from our previous (non-scaffolded, stand-alone) research topics to prompt discussion of attendees’ experiences teaching stand-alone (or scaffolded) topics, and share our experiences of pitfalls and strategies for design and delivery of scaffolded curricula across a degree.

Format:
Roundtable - Point for debate :
Participants will engage in a facilitated discussion, sharing their experiences of how academic leaders negotiate current tensions between the neoliberal managerialism of contemporary tertiary education and pastoral care provision.
Context/background:
This session emerged from the shared experiences of academic leaders, who reported increasing pressure to provide support to students in the form of ‘pastoral care’. Given the limited research on this within the academy, this research project is exploring how academic leaders are seen as a resource within the neoliberal academy, the extent to which the emotional/pastoral work involved in a pedagogy of care is invisible in the academic workload, and the impact of this pastoral care work on staff and students.
Description:
A mixed methods approach has been taken to develop understanding of the different forms of pastoral care provided by academic leaders and the impact of this on those involved. Fixed-period time samples recording type and length of pastoral care interactions with students were collected, followed by interviews with staff and a qualitative survey of students. Interim findings indicate pastoral care is seen by staff and students to positively impact student experience, retention and academic success, however this is not acknowledged by University systems.
Intended outcome and contribution to scholarship/practice: This discussion of the tension in tertiary education between increasing attention to student wellbeing and pastoral care and the workload of staff in academic leadership roles, will explore experiences across disciplines, and encourage further critical dialogue into ways to negotiate this tension at staff and institutional levels.
Engagement:
A robust discussion will be facilitated to explore participants’ experiences of the provision of pastoral care to students, specifically the pedagogical, emotional and social care (Laws and Fiedler, 2012), and perspectives on the impact and recognition of this work in their context.

Context: People in a range of occupations and settings have purposefully integrated humor into their practice, and by addressing multiple purposes. In educational settings, humour has also been used extensively included for the purpose of increasing enjoyment of learning experiences (McCabe, Sprute & Underdown, 2017) and increasing student engagement (Erdoğdu & Çakıroğlu, 2021). However, little is understood about the use and rationale for humour in online Higher Education contexts, or barriers for teachers' use of this strategy.

Description of the research: This research team is in the early stages of investigating the topic. This roundtable is an opportunity for others to share their experiences or ideas of using humour and of how humour could be harnessed within online learning environments. Academics are invited to also share their perceptions on how humour impacts students’ online learning and engagement.

Intended outcome and contribution to scholarship/practice: It is anticipated that the outcomes of pursuing an investigation on this phenomenon include the identification of current uses of humour in online teaching and the rationale behind these practices. It is anticipated that findings will inform some key recommendations as to the value of embedding humour as a strategy in online learning environments, and practical guidelines that educators can use when considering using humour as part of their pedagogy.

Engagement: Facilitators will initially set the scene for the roundtable focus and then invite participants to share their experiences with prompts and questions such as ‘How have you used humour in your online teaching?’ Conversations will then be directed to participants who may be interested in using humour as part of their future teaching strategies, via exploration of areas recognised in the humour literature, such as comfort, connections and concentration (Pabel, 2014), and seeing how these aspects can assist to build strategies for enhanced student engagement.

Point for debate: Do students still need to learn to write?

Context/background: The age of generative AI brings writing tools that will produce and edit text in any language in any context. If higher education is to prepare students to be active participants in the future of work and society (TEQSA, 2023), it is clear that students need capabilities for ethical use of generative AI and be ready to contribute to a positive future that includes generative AI. Given the increasing availability and functionality of generative AI tools, and their widespread use in academic, work and social settings, do students still need to learn to write, and to what extent should we teach and assess writing skills? When considered with reference to foundational principles of a systemic functional model of language (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999), these are questions that go beyond the development and futures of individual students, with potential implications for knowledge practices and the development and future of disciplinary and professional fields – and beyond that, for the future of language.

Description: Participants will share and learn from other participants’ perspectives on the future of academic writing in higher education curriculum and assessment across different disciplines.

Intended outcome and contribution: Outcomes from this roundtable session will be shared with the HERDSA community and beyond through future resources and publications that will support assessment reform in the context of generative AI. Participants will be invited to consider future networking and research collaborations.

Engagement: Participants will be invited to share their own disciplinary perspectives on the future of academic writing and knowledge practices in the context of generative AI. Based on initial small group discussion, participants will explore disciplinary differences and the implications of these, providing a basis for participants to consider implications for their own context beyond the session.

Format: Work-in-progress

Focus of the work in progress: Holistic models of competency development

Background: 

In entrepreneurship education research, most studies focus on a given program or classroom. What is less known, is what occurs ‘beyond the classroom’. This study adopts a more holistic approach to exploring entrepreneurial competency development, simultaneously considering multiple contexts that the students engage in.

Description:

This study introduces an adaptation of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model (PPCT model) to entrepreneurship education to reveal how multiple contexts combine as students develop entrepreneurial competencies. This paper analyses the journeys of students in a year-long entrepreneurship honours program, their interactions and available resources.

Method(s):

Using the PPCT model as a lens, we analyse written reflections by a cohort of the program. Each reflection is required to link an activity to one of 12 EntreComp competencies by the European Commission. The reflections are complemented by post-graduation semi-structured interviews about the learning journey.

Intended outcome and Contribution:

This study clearly confirms how entrepreneurial competency development is not limited to classrooms and identifies parallel contexts in which these competencies are developed such as internships, engaging with users/customers, networking events outside university, and employment. Preliminary analysis also identified specific activities, resources and relationships with stakeholders within the learning environment that contributed to the process of entrepreneurial learning and had significant impact on the competency development.



The ecological perspective encourages researchers and learners to see learning as a process that holistically connects them to diverse stakeholders in their university ecosystems. It enables an appreciation of activities, relationships, and resources involved in developing entrepreneurial competencies. This invites educators to and students to simultaneously explore multiple contexts, relationships and interactions within a more holistic learning ecology that extends beyond the classroom/program.

Engagement:

Discussion on similar theories, feasibility of PPCT and how they might apply PPCT in their disciplines.

Format. Work-in-Progress

Focus of the work-in-progress. Design and implementation of self-selected professional development modules for academic roles.

Context/background. Responses to reenvisaging learning and teaching pedagogy and structural changes have prompted opportunities to reenvisage how staff access and are supported in professional development for their academic roles. While literature supports online resources for learning and teaching development (Eradze et al., 2023; Hossein et al., 2024), there is limited research to guide the development of resources supporting day-to-day academic activities.

In a faculty with 956 academics (including approximately seven new starters a month), the aim of the project was the development of an interactive, self-paced set of professional development modules based on academic roles.

Description. In collaboration with the university’s teaching and learning unit, academic leads and faculty staff, an online learning environment was developed. Each role aligns with a set of self-paced modules that guide the academic in pedagogical approaches as well as day-to-day tasks and activities. While focusing on an appropriate curriculum and assessment design, the modules also attend to policy and procedures to link staff to resources and contacts. The site has been developed with interactivity to maintain active engagement, a sense of "do-ability", and "check-ins" to promote achievement and identification of potential gaps in practice. Future roles are being considered based on initial findings and feedback which will be shared.

Intended outcome and contribution to scholarship/practice. The development of the learning management system site directly contributes to academics' sense of belonging, roles and responsibilities and confidence in learning and teaching scholarship and practice. Insights into the design principles of this academic learning and teaching site will be highlighted.

Engagement. Participants will be invited to share design principles and insights from respective professional development initiatives, as well as interact with a slim version of the site and resources.

Format: Birds of a feather
Topic for Discussion: This research and round-table discussion focuses on the challenges educators face when integrating Indigenous pedagogy into mainstream curriculum, addressing both initial teacher education (ITE) and professional development.
Context: Set against a backdrop of increasing recognition of diverse perspectives in education, this research explores the complexities of incorporating Indigenous pedagogy within ITE programs within higher education for pre-service teachers, including cultural sensitivity and inclusion, within the broader curriculum development discourse. (Funk & Woodroffe, 2023).
Description: The round-table discussion investigates challenges like cultural sensitivity, resource access, education opportunities, and resistance, offering strategies to overcome these obstacles and improve the integration process (Smith & Robertson, 2020). It aims to contribute insights for culturally responsive education (Hogarth, 2020) and inform educational policies and practices.
Intended Outcome: This research aims to identify effective strategies for educators to embed Indigenous pedagogy in ITE programs (Baeza, 2019), fostering more inclusive and culturally responsive learning environments. It also examines how educators can receive education and development opportunities, enhancing student engagement through inclusive teaching practices that celebrate Indigenous perspectives.
Engagement: During the workshop I would encourage attendees to actively participate in group discussions around possible outcomes, framework development and thoughts around the research. As well as ideas around the development of ITE programs and the creation of lesson plans to include Indigenous ways of working for pre-service teachers.

Point for debate: The discussion aims to reflect on the collaborative process between learning designers (LD), student learning advisors (SLA), and topic coordinators as subject matter experts (SME) to co-design an innovative online course.

Context: To dive into the challenges and opportunities inherent in online content co-design, the aim is to gather valuable feedback and insights regarding the constraints faced by the different stakeholders involved.

Description: In the evolving landscape of education, the nature of the third space poses unique challenges and opportunities for co-designing learning experiences. A key aspect of the discussion will be the exploration of a positive collaboration between teams with different skills to design a successful online course. The process involves sharing experiences on building courses, selecting tools, and leveraging technology for optimal online engagement.

Intended outcome: The roundtable explores seeking feedback to assess the effectiveness of co-designed learning adventures.

Engagement:

• Role-play: Participants will be assigned specific roles such as LD, SLA, or SME. Presenters will pose targeted questions prompting each participant to provide insights and answers based on their designated roles.
• Reflection: Participants will have identified at least three key strategies for enhancing multidisciplinary collaboration in educational design and will have committed to implementing at least one collaborative approach in their own educational contexts within the next three months.
• Follow-up: A survey will be conducted to assess the adoption and effectiveness of these collaborative practices, providing tangible metrics for measuring the impact of the roundtable discussion.

These activities foster dynamic exchanges, enabling participants to share experiences and collectively problem-solve and disseminating knowledge among attendees.

The aim is to contribute to ongoing debates in educational design by offering insights into the challenges and successes of multidisciplinary collaboration It also aims to prompt reflection on the importance of multidisciplinary perspectives in co-design.

Format
Work-in-progress
Focus of the work-in-progress
Course redevelopment to engage a high-achieving cohort with fundamental academic skills
Context/background
The B Health & Medical Science (Advanced) cohort at the University of Adelaide are extremely high-achieving students strongly oriented to academic success, but without exposure to formal academic skills training until their second year core course. Historically, students have heavily criticised the course in evaluation, believing that knowledge translation & academic skills training were unnecessary and irrelevant to their future studies and careers. Minor changes between 2022 and 2023 delivery gave some improvement, but evaluations were well below University averages.
Description
Between 2023 & 2024 deliveries, our team (course coordinator & academic literacies specialist; implementation science expert; learning designer; coalface sessional teaching academic) transformed the course from a human-centred design approach over 12 weeks. Identifying key issues (students overestimating academic skills, lowered academic skills at admission, poorly communicated relevance, overly complex course material, limited internal coherence between academic skill and knowledge translation domains) and re-framing the course concept in response to these issues and the goals of this unique cohort guided re-development of all assessment, course structure, and content.
Assessment changes included:
- Distinguishing research and knowledge translation skills in assessment instructions
- Replacing oral presentation with a journal article (with potential to publish)
- Extensively scaffolding assessments and linking assessments to overall project topic.
Intended outcome and contribution to scholarship/practice
This project successfully demonstrates (1) considering cohort perceptions and needs and (2) collaboration between experts with complementary skills and knowledge for high quality course design. Informal feedback from previous cohorts indicates a high chance of success for this project.
Engagement
This Roundtable will include demonstration of a teaching activity, discussion of tools used in our specific context, and exploring potential application of these tools contextualised to attendee's own teaching practice.

Point for debate: Three questions that will be posed.
Background/Context
This research builds on the contributions of Durie,1984; Moeau, 1997; Ramsden, 1997; and others who have sought to improve equity outcomes through the provision of ethnically and culturally appropriate services and practices in higher education.
Description
The focus of the research was on ‘effective’ academic and pastoral care support services and practices for students in higher education settings. The main research question asked was: what supports the effectiveness of academic and pastoral care services and practices?
Effectiveness was defined and evaluated in terms of improved attendance, retention, and achievement, reductions in withdrawals overtime, alongside the equity level of outcomes achieved. Participants were academic/researchers, pastoral care/wellbeing practitioners, and students.
Sub questions addressed were:
a) what are safe ethnic and cultural practices?
b) what are ethnic and culturally responsive services?
c) what is ethnic and cultural competence?
Intended Outcomes
The outcome intended was to illuminate variables contributing to and hindering the provision of equity supporting academic and pastoral care support services in higher education. Findings contribute to scholarship and practice by a) examining the liminality of the terms ethnicity and culture b) challenging common assumptions and c) raising complex questions about culturally safety, responsiveness, and competency in current higher education academic and pastoral care support services.
Engagement
This session will be delivered via an introduction to the research then Socratic questioning prompted debate in a Fish Bowl structure. Three culturally safety, responsiveness, and competency questions emerging from the research will be posed for debate by Round Table participants who will represent the key stakeholders and be given a brief summary of these research participants responses. This engagement approach with the research project by participants, will support the acquisition of new knowledge, re-evaluation of common assumptions, and application of new practices by attendees.