As the end of the year approaches, we look back at the events and contributions of our membership to transforming education and the student experience in business.
This year our membership grew to 63 members from across the Business School and beyond. As a collective, we have achieved a variety of outputs from journal articles (circa 19 this year), conference papers, case studies and workshops, plus a host of presentations at internal and external events. These include the Business School Learning and Teaching Forum, the University of Sydney Symposium; EduTech 21 Conference; TEAL21 Conference (UK); ALT 2021 Conference (UK); ISSOTL 2021 Conference; AARE 2021 Conference; and ASCILITE 2021 Conference.
Other invited presentations of note include Co-Director A/Prof Peter Bryant at Edugrowth: Innovations to improve the student experience and The University of Warwick Teaching and Learning Festival TEALFest 2021; A/Prof Elaine Huber on Co-Design practices for the UTS Learning Design network.
CDRG members have published extensively in 2021 in a range of academic journals such as Journal of Management Education; Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education; Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education; Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice; and Postdigital Science and Education; Issues in Educational Research and Asian Pacific Journal of Education. Our work continues to be informed and shaped by four pillars of research:
1. Co-design of Innovative pedagogical practices in business education and student experience
2. Evaluation of pedagogical innovation for large group teaching in business education
3. Engaging in strategic pedagogical change in business education
4. Participatory learning, student experience and students as partners in business education
We ran a number of events this year (all online) from seminars of completed projects, to pitch workshops of ideas and works-in- progress. We would love to hear from more members next year.
Research Seminars
February
Unpacking the Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning Experiences – Implications for Business Education
Presenters: Dr Angela Hecimovic; Janine Coupe; Corina Raduescu
March
Evaluating practice – the ‘light touch’ CLaS co-design project
Presenter: Dr Andrew Cram, Lecturer educational development
Authors: Dr Andrew Cram; Dr Dewa Wardak; Dr Sandris Zeivots; Dr Sabina Cerimagic
From data to learning insights: Analysing H5P/Canvas data to improve interactive content
Presenter: Dr Carlos Prieto Alvarez, Senior Learning Technologist (Systems)
Authors: Dr Carlos Prieto Alvarez, Dr Sabina Cerimagic and Dr Matthew Taylor
June
Designing for authentic learning using immersive 360 videos
Presenters: Dr Vickel Narayan, Honorary Associate, Business Co-Design, Louise Luff, Lecturer Accounting
A musical lens on spatial representations of form to support designers and teachers using hybrid learning spaces
Presenter: Dr Stephanie Wilson, Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director CLaS Project, Business Co-Design
Pitch Workshops & Peer Feedback
Semester 1 Expert panel: A/Prof Peter Bryant Associate Dean (Education) and A/Prof Juliette Overland Associate Dean (student Life); A/Prof Elaine Huber Academic Director BCD.
March
Early stage educational design research project – Dr Andrew Cram
Reconceptualising Boyer’s Scholarship for the Creative Arts: A Theoretical Framework – Dr Danielle Eden
May
What does ‘care’ look like to students? – Dr Dewa Wardak
Analysing online discussion in different digital spaces – Carmen Vallis and Dr Carlos Prieto Alvarez
The dual lens of analytics usage to inform learning: It’s all about evaluation – Dr Matthew Taylor
Semester 2 Expert panel: A/Prof Peter Bryant Associate Dean (Education); A/Prof Elaine Huber Academic Director BCD and A/Prof Eliza Wu, Deputy Head of Discipline of Finance (Education).
September
Practitioner Review and Personalised Feedback – Louise Luff
November
Learning Analytics in educational evaluation: Practical tips for collection and analysis – Dr Matthew Taylor
How do you approach a literature review? – Dr Dewa Wardak, Dr Danielle Eden
Research Roundtable Discussion
April
Methodology roundtable: Single Case Experimental Design and Design Based Research (DBR)
Presenters: Professor Peter Reimann; Dr Vickel Narayan
May
Engaged Research Roundtable/Workshop
Presenters: Dr Daniel Gozman Director of Engaged Research; Linsay Meltzer; Dr Adnan Syed Muhammad
Grants
This year members applied for a number of grants in a highly challenging and competitive landscape, two groups were successful:
Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC): Cost-effective, scalable online assessment solutions – CI: A/Prof Elaine Huber
2021 Accounting Foundation Learning and Teaching Grant Scheme: Working with the Practical Connection – CI: Janine Coupe
Projects
Connected Learning at Scale: Improving the student learning experience – CI: A/Prof Peter Bryant and A/Prof Elaine Huber
Connected Learning at Scale is a Business School strategic priority that aims to transform the teaching and learning experience in our large group core and foundation units. It will allow the School to better manage and then take advantage of the scale of cohort we have in the Undergraduate and pre-experience Postgraduate programs.
This research study uses an educational design research approach to investigate the student and staff perceptions, lived experiences and considerations to learning and teaching in large classes. Findings from the study will enable us to develop a set of good practice guidelines and digital artefacts (technological solutions) for teaching large cohorts which can be disseminated widely across other disciplines and the higher education sector.
Work, Live, Play, Learn – CI: A/Prof Peter Bryant and A/Prof Juliette Overland
A research project to collect and embed the student voice at the school through digital storytelling. WLPL. 1.5 is centred on student perspectives and perception of community connection and identity. WLPL. 2.0 is a crowdsourced digital storytelling research project centred on identifying the critical global and local challenges that the School will address through its curricula and identifying what skills will be required by students to address them.
The current project for Work, Live, Play, Learn is CO-LAB which is a student led initiative creating podcasts to share student narratives.
Leading in a Post Crisis World – CI: A/Prof Peter Bryant and A/Prof Juliette Overland
Leading in a Post Crisis World (LPC) is an intracurricular initiative to develop leadership skills, critical thinking and innovative problem-solving skills in a local and global context. The initiative is underpinned by CLaS principles and includes Authentic assessment; Students as Partners in Learning and Peer mentoring to promote and build connections across the undergraduate and postgraduate cohort in the Business School. An innovative online experience utilising transformative masterclasses with current industry thought leaders and experiential workshops, culminated in the development of an action plan pitch presented at the Business Not as Usual Forum. The research project includes developing a community of inquiry; students as partners in learning; experiential learning; authentic assessment and the development of employability skills.
Awards
We save our best news till last, our Co-Directors Associate Professor Peter Bryant and Associate Professor Juliette Overland have been recognised for their outstanding efforts through the 2021 Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence for Outstanding Educational Engagement and Innovation awarded to the LPC program.
We hope to see you next year – if you are interested in joining our Co-Design Research Group, please reach out to us on business.cdrg@sydney.edu.au to join our mailing list and Teams site. Come along to present and/or discuss you ideas with us.
About the author
Associate Professor Elaine Huber has been designing curriculum and teaching adults for over 20 years and is currently the Academic Director of the Business Co-Design team at the University of Sydney.