Design for learning: Adapting the microscopic anatomy laboratory to adult learners

Medical school curricula are undergoing transformational change in response to calls for integrating content across courses and years to enable better retention and application and for individualizing learning to meet the diverse backgrounds and thus differing needs of students. To address the related teaching challenges, faculty can employ solid principles of adult learning and instructional design and use teaching strategies that stimulate different learning styles. We developed laboratory sessions that follow a learner‐centered instructional design model we refer to as “PLHET,” reflecting the steps of preparing, linking, hooking, engaging, and transferring learning, and also applied teaching strategies that reflect Kolb's four styles of learning (accommodative, divergent, assimilative, and convergent). We utilized a group learning format to promote active learning, teamwork, and self‐direction. Preliminary data based on student surveys of laboratory activity show positive responses. In the future, we will test the hypothesis that this design will improve medical students' performance. Anat Sci Educ © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.     

Education research Australia: a changing ecology of knowledge and practice

Processes of national research assessment, such as Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) are a type of audit technology that confronts and steers established institutional identities and traditions. This nexus between policy and practice drives boundary work that diffracts prevailing policy logics, organisational practices, and habits of mind. We use this notion of ‘boundary work’ as an analytical lens for understanding the nature and effects of ERA in the Australian educational research space. This paper explains the methodology that informed the AARE–ACDE research reported in Strategic Capacity Building for Australian Educational Research. It documents the policy logic of ERA and the way it cuts across the established ecology of educational research, revealing social and symbolic work that is remaking the boundaries of educational research. We report on the historical trajectory of Australian educational research, the way ERA codes research outputs, and how educational researchers are repositioning in this shifting research space. We argue that there are specific loci of boundary work where capacity building in Australian educational research can make a difference to future educational knowledge building.     

Who is conducting educational research in Australia and how can their work be supported?

Educational research has long been the subject of lively and agitated debate, not least because of its diversity. Ranging in scope from academic development and broad-scale policy research through to student engagement and discipline-specific research, it includes methods of traditional academic inquiry and investigations and also less traditional modes of research. However, the topography of Australian educational research and the characteristics of the people who undertake this complex body of work are currently unclear. This paper explores some of the complexities of the Australian research community, drawing on the findings of a national online survey of academics who identified as researching in the field of education from within and outside education schools and faculties. The survey attracted 504 responses from 38 of Australia’s 39 universities, and just over two-thirds of respondents were located in a school or faculty of education. We draw on the results to answer the questions of who is undertaking educational research and who how they might be supported. We utilise a conceptual model that ‘segments’ the educational research workforce represented by the survey respondents, and we conclude by indicating strategies that might be utilised to address research barriers indicated by educational researchers.     

E-Book Readers for Full-Time MBA Students: An Investigation in Manchester

This article is an investigation of the use of e-book readers by MBA students at the Manchester Business School of the University of Manchester. In Summer 2010 we undertook a pilot study with a small number of MBA students in order to gauge the effectiveness of e-book readers as an alternative means of accessing their course readings. The findings of this study are presented in tandem with discussion of the drivers behind the project and an overview of similar developments at other educational institutions globally, concluding with the results of our pilot and wider implications.     

Achieving and Maintaining Metadata Quality: Toward a Sustainable Workflow for the IDEALS Institutional Repository

This article documents the steps taken to assess metadata errors within the IDEALS repository. It describes the workflows established to create accurate and consistent metadata, focusing especially on the batch ingest and retroactive metadata remediation processes. It also seeks to address theoretical issues surrounding the concept of metadata quality.