These videos and PowerPoint slides provide an opportunity for members and interested others to hear the presentations and gain some experience of the issues discussed in the Colloquium. The presentations were videoed on a laptop using Zoom as resources for professional technology were not available. The videos are best accessed using headphones. They have been minimally edited. Questions from participants are sometimes unclear but are included because of the usefulness of speakers’ responses.
Videos are on the left hand side and PowerPoint slides are on the right.
Click here for further information about speakers.
WELCOME & INSTITUTIONAL WELCOME
Emeritus Professor Angela Brew, Chair of ACUR
Professor Elizabeth Labone, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Learning and Teaching, Notre Dame University
The 2nd Exchange Colloquium on 1st February was an opportunity for ACUR members and friends to come together to explore how undergraduate research dovetailed with other higher education activities and initiatives. Forty-five participants were welcomed by the Chair of ACUR Emeritus Professor Angela Brew and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Learning and Teaching of Notre Dame University Australia as they gathered on Gadigal Country in the spacious hall of Notre Dame’s Broadway campus.
OPENING ADDRESS
Preparing Undergraduates for Future Life and Careers: Bringing Together Communities of Practice
Emeritus Professor Angela Brew, Chair of ACUR
Synopsis
In her opening address Angela Brew said that a key rationale for the colloquium was the idea that new approaches to undergraduate education could come about through cross fertilisation of ideas and networks. Many universities emphasize student engagement, participation, and inquiry, and initiatives such as students as partners, work integrated learning, and industry-based projects. These initiatives represent a range of intersecting practices with their own advocates and communities. Angela said the questions to be addressed during the Colloquium were: what is the collective contribution of these initiatives? How do the various communities of practice inhabited by these initiatives link together? And how can approaches be brought together to create a higher education that truly inspires students and prepares them for the challenges that lie head? Further, what is the contribution of undergraduate research to these initiatives?
INTERACTIVE KEYNOTE
What Research Tells Us About How to Prepare Students for Employment
Professor Dawn Bennett
Synopsis
Professor Dawn Bennett began her presentation by suggesting that there are three things employers want to know about a potential worker: Can you do the job? Can you do the job here? And do we want to work with you? Dawn then set out the skills and capabilities that students needed to acquire to become employable (The Employability Framework), and showed how the extra things that undergraduates get by engaging in research can easily fit into the capabilities everyone has to have. An extended example from a colleague teaching first year rhetoric showed how a simple shift to a research-based mindset could be achieved.
Dawn then asked Colloquium participants to think about a challenge or an opportunity for action that they wanted to pursue and to discuss these ideas in their groups, creating a plan for making this happen to come back to in the closing session.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Industry-University Partnerships and the Student Experience
Professor Chris Moran, Curtin University
Synopsis
Following morning tea, which was taken outside in the shady courtyard, Professor Chris Moran gave an overview of different kinds of university-industry arrangements. He explained each type, why people do it, where the work is carried out and what the intellectual property payment and other arrangements are. He then went on to look at the opportunities that the various arrangements create for students and the kinds of learning they engage in, stressing that creating opportunities for students is not enough in itself. It’s important that they are able to capitalise on them through great experiences. This depends on the relationships that are established. The kinds of relationships that students have with the company and the university are dependent upon the way the partnerships with industry are established. There needs to be a stated relationship with the company and evidence of that relationship, including an alignment of principles and values, explicitly stated objectives, clear and effective governance, and a stated intent to provide for excellence in student experiences. There also need to be agreed indicators of good experiences, a commitment to having people available to ensure success, agreements on resourcing, and processes finding and managing problems that may arise.
PANEL DISCUSSION
Perspectives of Past ACUR Presenters on how their Undergraduate Experiences Prepared Them
Panel
Olivia Jessop, The University of Queensland
Seak Lin Ly, The University of Newcastle
Chris Kilby, The Cairnmiller Institute
Supreet Saluja, Macquarie University
Panel Chair: Dr Dan Johnstone, Newcastle University
Synopsis
The next session was a panel discussion with past ACUR conference presenters: Seak Lin Ly, Olivia Jessop, Supreet Saluja and Chris Kilby, led by Dr Dan Johnstone (Newcastle University). Dan began by asking the panelists to introduce themselves and tell the audience what they were undergraduate. It was interesting how their varied early opportunities for research had led to further opportunities. They spoke about a range of experiences starting with whatever was available and through a succession of projects moving closer to their main interest. Finding money was a challenge, but they were able to learn what were the right choices for them. Through research they developed skills of judgement and problem solving and gained confidence. Research experiences had enabled them to change how they saw the world.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Exploring the Synergies of Work-Integrated Learning and Undergraduate Research in educating future professionals
Professor Franziska Trede, University of Technology Sydney
Synopsis
After lunch, Professor Franziska Trede explored the links between work – integrated learning and undergraduate research. She pointed to a number of misconceptions about the relationship between teaching, research, work-integrated learning (WIL), and undergraduate research and asked : What are we privileging?; and What kind of knowledge are we talking about?
She said WIL is an umbrella curriculum concept. It essentially describes an educational partnership with industry and community with reciprocal benefits for organisations and students. It goes beyond a focus on employment to deepening a sense of professional responsibility, making a difference for the self and the community in a chosen profession and in society.
As a paraprofessional practise pedagogy, it embodies collaborative, relational, creative, and critical learning. It’s a pedagogy of reflexivity, dialogue, action, using professional judgement and impact. It has to be scaffolded and aligned with career goals, but it involves professional identity development from day one. It offers a chance to explore themes across different subjects exposing students to real world challenges. Essentially WIL is about educating future professionals, preparing them for the multiple career changes which they are likely to go through.
Franziska went on to consider what the role of WIL is into the future. There is, she said, a need to rethink information, to rethink what matters in society. WIL and undergraduate research in this sense share the same context, purpose and context. Both initiatives are about learning to become capable practitioners. Both mean re-thinking the structures of higher education to find new ways of working. The courage to act is what we need.
EXAMPLE OF PRACTICE
Community-based research and Indigenous students
Jennifer Campbell, Griffith University
Synopsis
The next speaker was Jennifer Campbell. She spoke about the Kungullanji research programme at Griffith University which was a summer research experience for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. She pointed out that in order to engage in research as a student you have to know about research. If you’re going to decide to pursue research, and then to find a position in research, you have to know of its benefits. Indigenous students bring social capital and focus on benefits to indigenous people. They need financial support and coaching and flexibility. They need to be able to design their own project and restrictive admission processes need to be removed.
Jennifer ended by asking the audience to think about how Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing can be incorporated into undergraduate research experiences and how we can use existing Indigenous social capital. She challenged us to recognise the strength of Indigenous people outside of academic norms and to examine structures and systems that may present barriers for students to access and participate.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Exploring the Link Between Engaging Students as Partners and Career-Ready Graduates
Associate Professor Kelly Matthews, The University of Queensland
Synopsis
Kelly Matthews began by saying that ‘students as partners’ is a metaphor. So she asked groups to think of metaphors to express the idea: what it is; what it is not; and the fuzzy middle ground, whatever that meant. So this session got of to a sometimes amusing start. Following discussions Kelly suggested that everyday interactions involve partnerships and these are dependent upon building relationships. Partnerships are predicated on spending time together. Students as partners asks us to be aware of relationships between students and staff. Working in partnership with students in this way achieves changed relationships. Human relationships are sometimes hard and changing relationships can be a struggle and there may be resistance, but being in a partnership leads to learning for all. We need to think about the relationships we are cultivating within our institutions. It behoves us to create meaningful relationships with co-workers including students because we spend most of our working lives with them. Higher education should be preparing work-ready graduates with the relational skillsets and mindsets to connect and collaborate. We expect students to engage in a community and participate with others, but we don’t always model that in higher education. Higher education is designed with certain types of people in mind and some students come to it thinking this wasn’t designed for them. So how can higher education become more inclusive? What if students were able to work with us to shape the university into a place where they all felt valued and part of it too. This led to much thoughtful discussion which then morphed into the closing session.
