Digital education, now common in higher education, is particularly evident in the expansion of blended and fully online offerings at universities. Central to this expansion are educational developers, staff who support teaching and learning improvement in courses they do not themselves teach. Working closely with staff, students, and the…

Internationalisation of curriculum (IoC) practices promote students developing knowledge of other cultures, attitudes, values and ethics. This conceptual article argues that embedding critical reflection in the IoC program -- through integrating insights from both IoC thinkers and critical reflection literature -- may allow educators and students…

We discuss the recent reworking of Murdoch University's Australian Indigenous Studies major. For the discipline to realise its charter of decolonising knowledges about Indigenous peoples, it is necessary to move Indigenous Studies beyond the standard reversalist and unsustainable tropes that valorise romanticised notions of Indigeneity and…

Universities are under stress and pressures to critically evaluate and reform curriculum and the way learning and teaching are implemented. Tensions appear to exist among the external pressures, the organisational structure of universities and their daily operations that are often conflicted and appear to work against coherence and depth in…

Higher education policies are increasingly focused on graduate learning outcomes, which infer an emphasis on, and deep understanding of, curriculum development across degree programs. As disciplinary influences are known to shape teaching and learning activities, research situated in disciplinary contexts is useful to further an understanding of…

Systematic changes to higher education curriculum typically occur within the extended timeframes of formal curriculum review processes. Programmes need to be reviewed periodically for internal and external accountability or to determine whether the curriculum has lost its coherence due to the accumulative effect of continual small-scale changes.…

This paper argues for the use of "developmental" evaluation as a design-based research tool for sustainable curriculum innovation in professional higher education. Professional education is multi-faceted and complex with diverse views from researchers, professional practitioners, employers and the world of politics leaving little…

Taking the Universities Australia report, "National best practice framework for Indigenous cultural competency in Australian universities" (2011) as the starting point for its discussion, this paper examines the applicability of cultural competence in the design and delivery of Australian Indigenous Studies. It argues that both the…

Universities are increasingly offering capstone subjects as part of curricula to prepare final-year undergraduates for employment through consolidating and integrating their knowledge and skills while bridging the gap between academic learning and professional work. This study investigates capstone subjects offered by Australian business schools,…

The recent explosion of Chinese students in Australian universities presents serious challenges for staff in higher education as we try to meet the conflicting demands of our positions. On one hand, we must offer diverse international students opportunity to compete equitably with their Australian counterparts and to receive an appropriate…

Higher education has been actively encouraged to find more effective and flexible delivery models to provide all students with access to quality learning experiences yet also meet institutional imperatives for efficiency and accountability. Blended learning, commonly defined as an integration of traditional face-to-face and online approaches to…

It is argued that ethics should be taught in general and subject-specific curricula in Australian universities and that recent developments in Australia give ethics-enhanced priority. Current initiatives and specific administrative and instructional issues are discussed. An interdisciplinary approach to applied ethics instruction is advocated over…

A study investigated Australian students' reasons for choosing an extra year's study (honors) in economics when good employment opportunities were available without the added training. Factors considered include student background, current circumstances, achievement, course structure, perceived demand for honors graduates, opportunity costs, and…