Environmental Health (EH) is an essential profession for protecting human health and yet as a discipline it is under-recognised, overlooked and misunderstood. Too few students undertake EH studies, culminating in a dearth of qualified Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) in Australia. A major deterrent to students enrolling in EH courses is a lack…

This paper investigates the learning experience of Chinese students' learning experience in the business Faculty of an Australian university. Chinese students are often characterized as "rote learners" or stereotyped as "reduced Other". Areas of concern are limited to addressing the differences in learning styles, language, and…

Legal reasoning is a type of problem solving, and is situated within thinking skills, one of the six threshold learning outcomes established under the auspices of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council's Bachelor of Laws Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Statement. The threshold learning outcomes define what law graduates are…

Biology is the most rapidly evolving scientific field of the 21st century. Biology graduates must be able to integrate concepts and collaborate outside their discipline to solve the most pressing questions of our time, e.g. world hunger, malnutrition, climate change, infectious disease and biosecurity. University educators are attempting to…

This paper begins by outlining the "education revolution" policy direction of the Australian federal government, and the ways in which it envisages meeting its goal of having a 40% of the population between 25 and 34 with a Bachelor's degree by 2025, and ensuring that 20% of tertiary students come form LSES backgrounds. This is…

This paper addresses the retention issues presented when large numbers of students from low socio-economic backgrounds and associated disadvantaged educational histories live together on-campus. It reports research in progress on a new approach taken at the University of New England (UNE), Australia, aimed at encouraging the growth of learning…

This article presents a reflection and comparison of two of my teaching pedagogical approaches for the Business Organisations Law curriculum to undergraduate non-law students at Charles Sturt University. The purpose is to compare and evaluate efficacy of a traditional, lecture-based learning (LBL) with a combination of LBL and problem-based…

This paper is an expanded version of a talk given at a Generic Skills Workshop at the University of Wollongong, and was intended for academic staff from any discipline and general staff with an interest in teaching. The issues considered in the paper include the capacity of all to learn, the distinction between learning as understanding and…