Future of Teaching in Australian Universities

Last week, Professor Genevieve Bell, the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University announced an ANU realignment: Renew ANU, to address budget pressures. Many Australian universities, and those in other countries, are experiencing similar pressures. This is to suggest some ways changes could be implemented to improve the education delivery by universities generally. This follows the broad approach I suggested in a submission to the Review of Higher Education. As with that submission, these suggestions are are my own, and may not represent the views of any organisation I am associated with.

New Courses on Technology and Society

ANU plans for consolidation are more modest that those in South Australia, where two universities are merging (University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia).  The ANU has proposed to include the Fenner School of Environment and Society, the Mathematical Sciences Institute, and Centre for Public Awareness of Science in the ANU College of Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics to create the ANU College of Systems and Society. I suggest this creates the opportunity for new cross fertilization between the schools. Courses and programs could be offered on technical aspects of environmental challenges, between the comping, engineering and environment schools.

Courses on technology and society could be offered as part of conventional degree programs, as well as for microcredentials, and in service professional development. In particular such courses could address a need in the Australian Public Service for staff with technical and policy skills. This could be done using the format of courses such as COMP7310 ICT Sustainability. Originally commissioned by the Australian Computer Society for in service professional development, to be delivered online, the course was modified slightly for ANU computer science graduate students, then modified again for an on campus option (Worthington, 2012). The same approach was applied in 2019 for delivery of part of the ANU Techlauncher program (Worthington, 2019). This allowed a switch from campus based to online delivery when COVID-19 struck in 2020, with no changes in content or assessment (and a switch back to on campus).

Such courses can set context, and pose questions for students to address, rather than provide large quantities of technical content, which require constant revision. These courses can also use small regular assessment items to keep students working between major project tasks.

 Role in Teacher Tech Education

The ANU Centre for Public Awareness of Science is respected for its education of science communicators. This could be expanded to cover the teaching of science and the use of technology in teaching and training. This could avoid duplicating programs offered in training in the vocational sector and university school teaching programs, addressing advanced requirements. This could be in cooperation with the university's existing Centre for Learning & Teaching, in a similar way to the schools of computing and engineering cooperation with the Careers & Employability unit to teach students about careers. The unit's specialist staff would provide subject matter expertise, while the school staff oversee assessment. The teaching would be aligned with professional requirements for engineering and computing, using standards such as the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA).

New Teaching Methods

Immersive Reality

Immersive Reality (XR): that is Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and other forms of technology based simulation, offer ways to enhance the teaching of technical disciplines. Until recently this was prohibitively expensive for most teaching, due to the need for specialised devices, and teaching spaces. However, IR can now use student provided equipment (smart phones and low cost glasses), in standard teaching rooms (Cochrane, et Al., 2022).

The ANU School of Computing's Escape Room provides an example of low cost IR, being essentially a room dressed up with colored lights, but using very advanced pedagogy (Pereira Nunes, et.Al, 2024). The Escape Room is colocated with "The Hive" a simulation of a computer project workspace for Techlauncher Project students (Browne, et Al, 2020). 

Hackerthons and simulations could also be used for education in addressing problems facing society. As an example the Australian Crisis Simulation Summit rprovides a format for a learning activity which just needs assessment added. 

Other Support for Experiential Learning

The ANU provides experiential learning in computing with the award winning Techlauncher program. While valuable for the student, and an essential part of professional accreditation, such programs are difficult to deliver and can be expensive without the right tools and pedagogy. The lessons learned from this program could be passed to other parts of the university. As an example, the use of a reflective e-portfolio in the form of a job application (Worthington, 2019). 

References

Browne, C., Boast, L. J., Blackmore, K., & Flint, S. (2020). Capstone design projects, the project value map and the many eyes process: balancing process and product to deliver measurable value to student and client. The International journal of engineering education, 36(2), 586-599. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=7342405

Cochrane, T. D., Narayan, V., Aiello, S., Alizadeh, M., Birt, J., Bone, E., ... & Worthington, T. (2022). Analysing mobile learning designs: A framework for transforming learning post-COVID. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 38(4), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.7997

Pereira Nunes, B., Kaur, G., Chan, A., Sharpe, S., & Soto Ruidias, R. R. (2024). Exploring Educational Escape Room as an Assessment Tool for Computer Science Courses. In Proceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 2 (pp. 803-803). https://doi.org/10.1145/3649405.3659494

Worthington, T. (2012, July). A Green computing professional education course online: Designing and delivering a course in ICT sustainability using Internet and eBooks. In 2012 7th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE) (pp. 263-266). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCSE.2012.6295070

Worthington, T. (2019, December). Blend and flip for teaching communication skills to final year international computer science students. In 2019 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Education (TALE) (pp. 1-5). IEEE. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9225921/

Australian French Research Collaboration

 

Greetings from the Australian-French Association for Research and Innovation (AFRAN) meeting at the Canberra Innovation Network. Dr Charles Gretton and,l Dr Nian (Jenny) Jiang are talking about how research can have real world impact. Charles talked about both AI research improving industrial processes and Jenny development of new instruments. Charles pointed out 5% of ANU Techlauncher students go on to found companies. Jenny talked about joining Cambridge University just as COVID-19 lockdowns started.

Charles said "There are a lot of batshit stupid ideas being funded, so get your better idea out there!".

The 2024 AFRAN Forum on the  role of research and innovation in industry, policy and public dialogue is at ANU 4 to 6 Nov 2024, and is free.

Better Fitting Body Armour for Australian Soldiers

Greetings from the University of Canberra where Dr Celeste Coltman just pitched on better fitting armour for soldiers. This was at First Wednesday.

Energy, Digital and People Skills for Australia

Australia 4.0 - Energy & Digital Skills Roundtable

Greetings from the Engineers Australia HQ, where I am taking part in the Australia 4.0 - Energy & Digital Skills Roundtable. This is organised by the Pearcey Foundation to work out what skills will be needed for the transition to zero emissions economy, and how to get them. This is recognising that even if you have the technology, you need people who can build and repair it. This is not just people bolting stuff together, but also those programming the systems to run it, thus my interest*.

After a welcome from the acting EA President, we had some statistics of the supply of engineers. Highlights were that Australia is dependent on importing trained engineers and it will take 70 years at the current rate to achieve parity between male and females. This is much the same as the computing profession. There is an obvious way to increase the number of domestically trained engineers: attract more females, but that will require changes to training and jobs. That could also solve another problem with technical training: the need to teach people skills. At the ANU I help teach computer students to work in teams in the Techlauncher program.

It took 30 minutes before AI got a mention in the presentations. This was a relief as for the last few years AI seemed to be in the title of every talk. ;-) The approach taken here was AI enhancing work.

Some of the good news was that engineering skills are transferable. This suggests that engineers could move to renewable industry from others, such as mining. The bad news is the reverse is also the case, with the mining industry in particular having a demand for staff and money to attract them. Also there are about 40% of qualified engineers working outside an engineering role who might be attracted back. Engineers Australia produced a Clean energy workforce capacity study submission (May 2023).

The roundtable switched to comedy with discussion of smart toasters talking to smart fridges. This had a serious side as a way to manage energy use and also as a potential privacy risk. 

A topic I want to raise with the roundtable is the government's recent restrictions on international students: will this reduce the supply of engineers and computer professionals? What can we do to increase the domestic supply? Microcredentials were mentioned and I wonder if they will help people already qualified in engineering or computing to transition to renewable energy. Shortly after I typed the last few sentences the chair invited me to speak, so I said it.

The next speaker proposed an updated energy risk assessment. An example given was the vulnerability Australia has importing the components for building renewable energy systems. Also it was claimed that in a few years there will be no one in government qualified to conduct such a study.

* Way back in 2008, the Australian Computer Society commissioned me to write a course on Green Computing. The ACS and ANU first ran the course in 2009 and it is still offered by Athabasca University in Canada, 15 years later. The course is still on the books at ANU, perhaps it is time to revive it.