Good Practice Guides
Assessment has a powerful effect on student learning. Assessment methods should be selected on the basis of their impact on desired student learning behaviours and outcomes, their feasibility, validity and reliability. Developing effective assessment for your course or program involves several steps, including planning how to assess, writing good quality items, using sound marking practices, and reviewing the assessment data.
Griffith University uses the term ‘blended learning’ to describe the use of information and communication technologies to enhance learning and teaching. The defining characteristic of blended learning at Griffith is that ICTs are used to enrich the quality of student learning through interactive learning activities beyond those attainable through face-to-face classroom interactions.
Internationalisation is core to the values of Griffith University, which recognises the importance of preparing its students as global citizens. Griffith has adopted a working definition of Internationalisation as “the process of integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimension into the purpose, functions, or delivery of post secondary education” (Knight, 2003, p. 2-3).
The aim is to prepare our students to live and work anywhere in the world by providing them with the skills, expertise and cultural sensitivity to do so. Best practice for internationalisation builds on principles of effective teaching in higher education and is underpinned by a commitment to cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence can be understood as the capacity and orientation to accommodate and adapt to diversity in open, productive and harmonious ways.
Gathering and documenting evidence of good teaching practice is a key dimension of academic work. It is important for academics at all stages of their career to document their teaching development and achievements for such purposes as performance review meetings and promotion. Evidence of success in the research domain is determined through such criteria as number of refereed journal articles and amount of external competitive funding. However, evidence of excellence and success in teaching is often more complex to define and document, for teaching in higher education is a multifaceted phenomenon.
Research, and the subsequent creation, validation and dissemination of knowledge, are fundamental to the operation of a research-intensive university. The intention of research-based learning is that university academics make positive moves to help students build strong intellectual and practical connections between research frontiers and the students’ own learning.
Student engagement in the first year depends on many pre-entry factors, as well as contextual factors such as student expectations and aspirations, disciplinary context and class size. The following strategies provide a guide for engaging students in the first year. They will be most effective if tailored to your particular context and student cohort.