Increasingly postgraduate courses are delivered online to meet professionals' demands for life-long learning. The research examined the efficacy of students critiquing each other's seminal work, by either direct exchange or via online fora, as a structured part of their formal assessments. A total of 377 students across three experimental and two…

The opening up of online education in the Australian tertiary sector has made higher education accessible for a wide range of students, including those living in rural and regional areas. While student numbers continue to grow as a result of this opportunity, there are increasing concerns regarding low student retention and progression rates for…

This study explores the process of Community of Practice (CoP) building for language teachers' professional development through the support of a WeChat group. WeChat is an instant messenger app that provides a multimodal platform for one-on-one and group interactions through text, audio and video. In order to support the implementation of flipped…

With the increasing diversity of pedagogic models of delivery in higher education, universities are continually exploring practises of learning and teaching designed to enhance student experience and retention. The number of courses provided online continues to grow through, among other reasons, an escalation of higher education (HE) students…

Early career academics around the world frequently see themselves as being in need of targeted career support to navigate the years directly following PhD graduation. The growth of discussion groups on Twitter that target these users raises questions about their potential usefulness to address career development support needs. This paper reflects…

This article documents the experiences of three early career academics trying to establish a network of early career academics (ECAs) in a middle-ranked university in Australia. The changing context of academia means that ECAs face considerable challenges in understanding and negotiating effective career paths. Some of the issues encountered…

It is argued that online discussion is a useful tool for creating opportunities for learning in teacher education. In a project designed to improve the practicum in rural areas, researchers placed pre-service teachers (PSTs) in two different moderated online discussion forums: an unstructured personal blog space and a structured threaded…

A large proportion of students in higher education report feeling bored during lectures, for example, Mann and Robinson (2009) put this figure at 60 per cent. This short article reviews our experiences of using a simple, free Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) service, Skype, to enhance the interest and engagement of students by holding a…

This article reports on part of the author's PhD action research study. It examines the complexity of features that social media and Web 2.0 offer when combined with face-to-face teaching and learning. Action research was used to help redesign the learning programs of XXX's thirteen Middle Years classes over an eighteen month period. These…

Asynchronous online discussion forums are increasingly common in blended learning environments but the relationship to student learning outcomes has not been reported for anatomy teaching. Forums were monitored in two multicampus anatomy courses; an introductory first year course and a second year physiotherapy-specific course. The forums are…

Evaluation of "e-Learning", or arguably "e-Delivery", is difficult. One reason is that comparisons are often made between different courses delivered using various delivery modes, making such comparisons hard to justify. The Business School at a university in the United Kingdom reportedly delivers the same postgraduate course…

In this article, we describe a project on reasoning about socio-scientific issues (SSIs), involving French and Australian pre-service science teachers engaged in on-line discussion and development of a wiki. In the research, we developed frameworks for looking at the quality of reasoning about "socially acute" sustainability questions.…

Notions of what it is to be knowledgeable and skilled in one's profession have evolved in recent decades. For instance, medical practitioners are expected to think critically and creatively, communicate effectively, and to be a professional and community leader. While these attributes have always been well regarded, it is only relatively recently…

In response to an exponential growth in enrolments the "Tutorial Support Management" (TSM) model has been adopted by Open Universities Australia (OUA) after a two-year project on the provision of online tutor support in first year, online undergraduate units. The essential focus of the TSM model was the development of a systemic approach…

This paper reports the results of the first phase of a mixed methods study investigating the attitudes of students enrolled in a distance education MBA program towards interacting more with other students online. It grapples with the issue of whether students enrolled in a successful distance education program grounded in instructivist and…