Using content analysis and staff interviews, this study evaluated the impact of an action plan that aimed to assist in integrating information literacy skills into teaching and learning practices of eight first‐year core business courses in the Division of Business and Enterprise (BUE) at the University of South Australia (UniSA). The action plan involved a series of professional development meetings with these eight staff, library liaison staff and learning advisers. In order to evaluate the success of this action plan, comparisons were made between two groups of academic staff: those eight first‐year BUE core course coordinators who had experienced the action plan and another eight BUE first‐year staff who had not. An analysis found that there were no statistically significant differences to changes in information literacy teaching and learning practices over the 12 months between the two groups. It was therefore concluded that the action plan had not delivered the intended outcomes. This finding was partly attributed to a large number of inhibiting factors as well as to the short time over which the action plan was conducted.
This paper is based on a case study of an Australian university involved in the delivery of transnational programs in an educational environment that has been increasingly characterized by commercial considerations. The researchers conducted focus group interviews with both general and academic staff to ascertain the personal, academic and administrative issues affecting the delivery of educational programs in Asia that arose as a result of one particular crisis in 2003: the SARS epidemic. The findings indicate that both administrative and academic staff felt personally and professionally challenged by the complexity of the issues involved in interrupting the pattern of transnational teaching. Potentially conflicting rationales emerged through the focus group discussions, with administrative staff expressing concern with maintaining services, while lecturers articulated a preoccupation with the safeguarding of assessment standards.
This paper reports on a preliminary investigation into the instructional preferences of students from Confucian‐heritage backgrounds studying in a transnational Master of Business Administration (MBA) program of an Australian university. This is part of a long‐term undertaking to ensure that teaching and learning arrangements in the MBA program are improved. The teaching and learning environment of the program is characterised by an intensive teaching regime which utilises a mixed mode of face‐to‐face and online delivery which promotes independent and collaborative learning. The aim of the investigation was to provide lecturers with an understanding of the students’ instructional preferences so that, where possible and appropriate, they can better assist the students to meet the learning objectives of the MBA program. Questionnaire data was collected from students studying the MBA in English (EMBA) in both Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as students studying the MBA in Chinese (CMBA) in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. The findings demonstrate that whilst students ranked teacher‐directed, face‐to‐face instructional delivery highly, some students also indicated that an independent, online learning environment had advantages even though it was their least‐preferred approach to learning. These findings provide lecturers with insights into their students as learners and this is particularly useful in terms of informing planning processes for how to best assist students to work productively and successfully in the face‐to‐face and online teaching and learning environment.
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