While the International Baccalaureate's Middle Years Programme (MYP) is growing in popularity in Australia and across the globe, few studies have examined the benefits and challenges of this IB programme for supporting student learning. Using a qualitative case study design of three Australian schools that formerly offered the MYP, we investigated…

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.…

Across the world, higher education is facing new challenges as governments cut subsidies, new technologies enable "massively open" online courses, students are accessed from global locations, and the centuries-old mission of universities is commercialised. In spite of these profound changes, most institutions of higher education have…

Community engagement is growing across higher education. Cooperative education and other internships are well established in the literature as pedagogies with links to experiential and connected learning. Cooperative programs combine business, industry, educational providers and students paid on-the-job. Most studies of work-based learning focus…

During 2009-10 the University of Ballarat implemented the open-source learning management system (LMS) "Moodle" alongside its existing legacy LMS, "Blackboard". While previous IT implementations have been troublesome at the university, notably the student information and finance management systems in 2008-09, the…

In a case study of a large Australian university the metaphor of panarchy is used as a means of describing and understanding the complex interrelationships of multi-scale institutional projects and the influences of a variety factors on the potential success of e-learning initiatives. The concept of para-analysis is introduced as a management…

This paper will detail three projects which focussed on enhancing online learning at a large Australian distance education University within a School of Business, School of Health and School of Education. Each project had special funding and took quite distinctive project management approaches, which reflect the desire to embed innovation and…

This issue--an international overview of cooperative/work experience education--contains ten case studies and four student viewpoints. It begins with an article discussing types of cooperative/work experience programs, including those focused on in the case studies. A second article previews the Second World Conference on Cooperative Education.…

Part of a report of seminar proceedings, six papers on community development in developed nations review the conceptual dimensions, issues, and directions of community development in the United States; pilot programs of social research, training, and consultation in rural Saskatchewan; the community development efforts of the University of New…

A new conceptual framework for comparative analysis of distance higher education systems, called the Systems Analysis, Typology and Shaping Mechanism (SATS), was used to compare the structures and functions of the DE systems of Australia (which includes external studies and open learning components) and China (which includes correspondence…

IN THIS REPORT OF AN AUSTRALIAN TECHNICAL CONFERENCE ON AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION, EMPHASIS IS PLACED ON CASE STUDIES AND RESEARCH APPLICABLE TO PROFESSIONAL EXTENSION WORK, INCLUDING FARMER CONTACTS AND SUCH SUPPORTING ACTIVITIES AS LIAISON WORK AND COURSE WORK IN THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES. THE FIRST SECTION DESCRIBES SERVICES IN EACH STATE AND IN THE…

An evaluation project investigated the Vocational Preparation Programme conducted in 1981 by the South Australian Department of Technical and Further Education (TAFE). The vocational preparation program was designed to increase the employability of young unemployed people aged 15 to 19 by providing them with an understanding of a family of related…

A study examined curriculum policies and practices within technical and further education (TAFE) in Australia. To isolate and explain differences in patterns of curriculum development (CD) within the TAFE sector, researchers administered a set of three-tiered questionnaire information-gathering sheets to curriculum developers and project managers…

The Australian engineering company, Jaques, and Swinburne University of Technology conducted a joint project to write more than 190 operating instructions for the company's 77 employees. First, the university's Workplace Skills Unit (WSU) interviewed 75 production workers to identify their language, literacy, and training needs. The WSU negotiated…

The paper presented in this three-part conference report trace the growth and development of distance education in the Asian and Pacific region. Part 1 provides a general review. Part 2 contains the following case studies: "Distance Education in India" (S. P. Mullick); "Distance Education in Indonesia" (Professor Setijadi);…