The demand for intensive educational experiences is increasing, necessitating a focus on ensuring quality and providing adequate student support. Increasing opportunities for student collaboration, including teacher/student co-creation of learning materials, has strong potential to increase engagement and support. Given increased interest in…

This research investigated how the bug tracker database of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Moodle is developed as an application of crowd work. The bug tracker is used by software developers, who write and maintain Moodle's code, but also by a wider public world of ordinary Moodle users who can report bugs. Despite many studies of the…

Current research and literature emphasize the crucial role of group experiences in children's learning during early childhood. However, despite the frequent use of the term 'group', little attention has been paid to its position in children's learning and the diverse perspectives that inform it. This study addressed this gap by applying a…

Academic writing groups are acknowledged as a successful approach to increasing research publication output and quality. However, the possible links between the formation and ongoing utilisation of writing groups and improvements in scholarly written research outputs remain relatively undertheorised. In this article, we draw on academic writing…

The National Quality Standards (NQS) as part of the Australian National Quality Framework were developed in 2011 and included several references to the organisation of small and large groups within early childhood settings (ACECQA 2013). The NQS act in tandem with the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) (DEEWR 2009) and are the basis by which…

Although group mentoring is not widely utilised in higher education settings, it has been viewed as successfully helping the research careers of academics (Walkington, Vanderheide, & Hughes, 2008). This paper explores the results of a qualitative and quantitative study about perceptions of one university-based group mentoring programme. The…

Writing groups for doctoral students are generally agreed to provide valuable learning spaces for Ph.D. candidates. Here an academic developer and the eight members of a writing group formed in a Discipline of Public Health provide an account of their experiences of collaborating in a multicultural, multidisciplinary thesis writing group. We…

Despite increasing number of mainland Chinese students studying in western tertiary settings, there is limited information available on their learning experiences and responses to popular educational practices in these contexts. There is an assumption in the literature that Chinese students respond well to the collaborative demands of groupwork…

The invaluable use of ethnography in researching educational settings has been demonstrated through many studies and furthered by many passionate researchers. One of such leading lights is Geoffrey Walford. In this paper, Walford's discussion of groups in two public schools, as depicted in his book "Life in public schools", serves as a…

On the invitation of the principal, health workers conducted a four session programme on "Health Education" in a Country Technical College. This article summarizes the outline of the programme and the development of it through each session, using particularly the technique of small group discussion. (Author)

The purpose of the 1973 Pilot Literacy Project (Victoria, Australia) was to explore the nature of the problem of nonmigrant adults who had attended school but who considered themselves illiterate or functionally illiterate, to discover what sort of people were illiterate and to what extent, and to examine home influences and educational…

This study centers on the difficulties experienced by many students in making the transition from secondary school to university. The experimental program involved assigning incoming freshmen to small groups led by upperclass honors students. The groups met at least once weekly, with the senior student acting as resource person to encourage the…

Many outdoor educators and adventure therapists share the belief that adventure experiences improve participant self-esteem. Recently, researchers have begun to question this widespread belief, suggesting that a mismatch between the level of physical or psychological risk and the level of client readiness may produce negative outcomes. A study of…

Internal, external and managerial functions of husband and wife, father and mother, and child sub-systems of the nuclear family are identified and discussed. The process of becoming a family is explored. In characterizing an optimally functioning family, emphasis is placed on the ability of family members to negotiate and resolve their roles,…

A study of university students in Australia views its subject by three means: commentaries, student profiles, and the author's response. The commentaries describe student life in the 1970's, covering many aspects of university experience such as class, student community life, activism, immigrant students, place of residence, and careers.…