Being a Mature Age University Student: 2011 to 2017

Recently I was asked about studying as a mature age student. What inspired me was that as someone teaching at a university in 2011 I was required to undertake a short free course in how to teach. After that I enrolled in the six month follow-on certificate. I ended up completing half at my campus in a classroom and half on-line through another institution.  Seeing the benefits of learning to teach (it made teaching much easier and less stressful) and because of my interest in distance education, I enrolled in Athabasca University's on-line Masters of Education in Distance Education in 2013 and completed in late 2017.  I documented the experience, starting on day 1 in 2011, up to 2017:

Four day introductory course in university teaching

• Lesson 1
• Lesson 2
• Lesson 3
• Lesson 4
• Reflection

Six Month Postgraduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching

• Selecting a certificate
• Progress with On-line Tertiary Teaching for Research-Led Education

Reflections of an Online Student

• Where is the course and when did it start?
• Where are the lessons?
• Student forums
• My tutor replied to my Reflections

Masters of Education

• Selecting a Masters of Education Program
• Master of Education at Athabasca University
• Learning to Design for International Students by Being an International Online Student (conference presentation)
•  Digital Teaching In Higher Education (book)

Masters Level Teaching, Learning and Assessment: Issues in Design and Delivery

This week I received a copy of the "Masters Level Teaching, Learning and Assessment: Issues in Design and Delivery" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). There was a thank-you note from the editor,  Pauline Kneale on the back of a postcard of Cornwall. After a bit of head-scratching, I remembered that I had answered some questions about my masters teaching experience for the book. The postcard was explained by Pauline being PVC at Plymouth University. 

As the introduction to the book points out, there has been considerable research undertaken into undergraduate degrees and postgraduate research programs, but taught masters tend to get forgotten somewhere in the middle. Coursework masters (as they tend to be known in Australia) have been seen by universities as a way to expand the market for their undergraduate courses, with minimal extra investment put into making the assessment slightly more challenging.

As Kneale's book points out, masters students are different to undergraduates and have different requirements. The benefit for the university in considering the needs of masters students will be less complaints and a group of students who are very much easier to teach. 

I am quoted in the book in Chapter 2 "The Diversity of Master's Provisions" (p. 22) and at the beginning of Part 5 "Curriculum Design" (p. 201). But I was a little annoyed to find that these were not formally cited or listed in the references.

Selecting a Postgraduate Program of Study

On Thursday I attended the Perth MBA & Postgrad Studies Expo. This had many of the same exhibitors as the Canberra Expo, I attended two weeks ago. However, there was a greater presence from overseas and on-line educational institutions. This may reflect the lack of local choice in higher education providers in Perth and also the more international orientation of West Australians (where Singapore is closer than Sydney).

My aim was to look for a Masters coursework program to further my interest in the design and delivery of distance on-line education in higher education. The program would preferably be delivered on-line, but it would be good to have a campus near Canberra, which I could perhaps visit.

None of the West Australian, or international  institutions had anything suitable for me. However, curiously University of Southern Queensland (USQ) may. As I had already completed two courses from their program I looked at the USQ Master of Education. However, I was told I had to complete a Bachelor of Education first, as the program seems to be aimed at school, not university teachers.

I dropped into the USQ booth at the expo anyway and was told the useful bit of information that USQ has a second Masters program in the education field: the Master of Learning and Development (MLD)This does not require a first degree in education for entry. I am not sure how I missed this, but may be that one option includes an Early childhood specialization option, which is the opposite end of the education scale from higher education.

The MLD is by coursework, but has the option of a "Research Pathway", with two or three courses replaced with a small research project. For this I have a ready made research topic comparing the delivery of my "ICT Sustainability" course to students at ANU, ACS and Athabasca University and the differences between this on-line course and the classroom courses the same students undertake at ANU (a quick calculation showed an 80% correlation between the students on-line and classroom course marks, suggesting the delivery mode does not make much of a difference). Another area to explore is Software for Synchronised Asynchronous Constructivist e-Learning. For this I would work with ANU IT students who would write extensions to Moodle to make it suitable for real-time learning delivery and I would see how that works with my students.

Good Universities Guide

On Thursday I attended the Canberra MBA & Postgrad Studies Expo and picked up a free copy of Hobsons' "The Good Universities Guide 2014 to Postgraduate Courses: Arts, Education and Social Sciences". The guide is divided into volumes for different groups of disciplines. There is also "Accounting, Business and Law" and MBAs. The arts guide is 214 pages, covering courses offered in Australia by universities (it does not include the postgraduate vocational programs offered some non-university higher education institutions). Also available on-line is Hobsons Course Finder. But I found the on-line guide unusable and the paper guide much better.

The guide offers a very condensed set of information about each institution, campus and course, including ratings. I was looking for a masters in education (specializing in on-line distance higher education). The guide has a section on programs in education and training. This starts with a description of the discipline and possible jobs on graduate. The universities offering programs are listed. A table of university rankings, based on student surveys is provided, but it is not clear if this is just for teaching courses, or all courses. All the offerings in each category of program (Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma, Masters by Coursework and Masters by Research).

The paper guide is useful in that you can scribble notes on it while talking to the education provider at the expo. But the text is very small and hard to read, and it is difficult to narrow down the selection of programs. In my case I wanted a Masters, available on-line, part time, but has to manually cross out all the many face-to-face ones. When I tried the on-line guide I was able to select just what I wanted. Curiously I noticed it had a category of masters not in the paper guide: "Master Degree (Extended)". The on-line guide also included Doctor Degree (Coursework) which was not mentioned in the paper guide.

Unfortunately I could not actually get the online guide to fine me online programs. The interface kept giving the error message "You must choose a State or enter an Institution Name". The state did not seem relevant for an on-line course, but I entered one anyone and kept getting the same error. On a third attempt, resetting all entries and selecting all states, the online I got 36 education programs. Unfortunately the system only allowed me to display the first of two pages of results:

1. Avondale College of Higher Education
   Avondale College of Higher Education - 1 matching course
2. Charles Sturt University (CSU)
   Charles Sturt University - 6 matching courses
3. CQUniversity
   CQUniversity - 2 matching courses
4. Edith Cowan University (ECU)
   Edith Cowan University - 2 matching courses
5. James Cook University (JCU)
   James Cook University (JCU) - 1 matching course
6. Monash University
   Monash University - 7 matching courses
7. Open Universities Australia (OUA)
   Open Universities Australia (OUA) - 3 matching courses
8. RMIT University
   RMIT University - 1 matching course
9. University of Ballarat
   University of Ballarat - 1 matching course
10. University of New England (UNE)
    University of New England (UNE) - 7 matching courses
11. University of New South Wales (UNSW)
    University of New South Wales (UNSW) - 1 matching course
12. University of Newcastle
    University of Newcastle — Gradschool - 5 matching courses
13. University of Tasmania
    University of Tasmania - 3 matching courses
14. Australian Catholic University (ACU)
15. Charles Darwin University (CDU)
16. Christian Heritage College
17. Curtin University
18. Deakin University
19. Flinders University
20. Griffith University

The number of programs listed was too many to be useful. Unlike the paper guide, there was no easy way to scan the results and eliminate irrelevant entries. Also there was no way to further refine the list (for example, eliminating those institutions with below average quality of teaching).

The poor user interface of the on-line Hobosn's guide meant that it was of no use in helping select a course (there would seem to be scope for better such online guides).

But in the end I did not find an Australia institution which provided an online Masers program in distance higher education, so it looks like I will be studying outside Australia.