<P class=abstract>This study identifies and explores a range of themes, issues and questions that commonly confront adults contemplating enrolment in university, and why they persist. The study focuses particularly on issues facing prospective adult distance education learners. From a range of interviews, six themes were identified including fears, motivation, support from home, academic preparedness, suitability of programs, and identity change.</P> <P>It is argued that the more effective we become at information provision, guidance and preparation of adult pre-entry open and distance learners, the more likely students will experience a smooth transition to study, thus improving both student satisfaction and retention rates. Successful intervention with prospective distance education learners at this early point should aim to assist the process of informed decision making, which could result equally in an individual deciding not to pursue university study. The findings in this study should be particularly useful for those academics, course advisors, student counsellors, teachers in preparatory programs, and university information and support officers, and others who provide adult distance students, with pre-enrolment information and advice.</P>
Higher education institutions have rigorous internal accreditation processes for new courses and typically require thorough course reviews every 5 years. Courses such as nursing must also be accredited by professional registration boards. However, in the years between initial accreditation and formal reaccreditation cycles, the risk of a widening gap between the accredited curriculum and the taught curriculum is real when there is no process to monitor the changes that individual unit assessors make to their subjects as they teach them. This curriculum drift may interfere with the intended development of graduate attributes and the taxonomic structure of assessment tasks across the course. This article describes the implementation of a formative continuous curriculum review process that prevents curriculum drift and enhances the quality of a bachelor of nursing curriculum.
BackgroundIn Australia, mental health services are undergoing major systemic reform with eMental Health (eMH) embedded in proposed service models for all but those with severe mental illness. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service providers have been targeted as a national priority for training and implementation of eMH into service delivery. Implementation studies on technology uptake in health workforces identify complex and interconnected variables that influence how individual practitioners integrate new technologies into their practice. To date there are only two implementation studies that focus on eMH and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service providers. They suggest that the implementation of eMH in the context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations may be different from the implementation of eMH with allied health professionals and mainstream health services.ObjectiveThe objective of this study is to investigate how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service providers in one regional area of Australia used eMH resources in their practice following an eMH training program and to determine what types of eMH resources they used.MethodsIndividual semistructured qualitative interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 16 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service providers. Interviews were co-conducted by one indigenous and one non-indigenous interviewer. A sample of transcripts were coded and thematically analyzed by each interviewer and then peer reviewed. Consensus codes were then applied to all transcripts and themes identified.ResultsIt was found that 9 of the 16 service providers were implementing eMH resources into their routine practice. The findings demonstrate that participants used eMH resources for supporting social inclusion, informing and educating, assessment, case planning and management, referral, responding to crises, and self and family care. They chose a variety of types of eMH resources to use with their clients, both culturally specific and mainstream. While they referred clients to online treatment programs, they used only eMH resources designed for mobile devices in their face-to-face contact with clients.ConclusionsThis paper provides Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander service providers and the eMH field with findings that may inform and guide the implementation of eMH resources. It may help policy developers locate this workforce within broader service provision planning for eMH. The findings could, with adaptation, have wider application to other workforces who work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients. The findings highlight the importance of identifying and addressing the particular needs of minority groups for eMH services and resources.
A community-engaged vertically integrated teaching and learning model has the potential to increase participants' confidence to teach in small groups, and create a more positive perception of registrars and students teaching in general practice. The concept would benefit from further longitudinal research with a wider sample.
Tourism and hospitality educators face particular challenges in meeting current national and international pressures and requirements for accreditation of their curricula within national standards frameworks.Conventional curriculum design and review processes may not suffice in meeting these challenges. In other disciplines and subject areas innovative models of continuous and collaborative curriculum design processes are responding to these challenges, yet the literature on this topic is absent in tourism and hospitality education. This case study investigates academics' experiences and perceptions of a continuous and collaborative curriculum review process introduced in a School of Tourism and Hospitality Management (STHM) at an Australian regional university.The study found that academics valued the opportunities the process afforded to improve the curriculum from a whole-of-program perspective. The collaborative nature of the process, the opportunities for scholarship of teaching outcomes and the building of multidisciplinary relationships were also seen as positive outcomes. Concerns included a lack of clarity regarding procedures for acting upon matters identified during review and challenges associated with collaboration across multiple campuses.
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