News Archive

Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS)
The PASS program continues to be very popular with students, attracting hundreds of enrolments in the five units offered in semester 2.  Dr Elisa Birch has received a T&L grant to examine the results of those who attended PASS sessions to assess the impact on performance in the relevant unit.  Informal feedback from participants has been very positive.

Professor Larry Michaelson
On August 25, Professor Larry Michaelson, visited UWA as a Distinguished Visiting Teacher and presented two workshops on Team Based Learning and an Integrated Business Experience. Team-Based Learning is a comprehensive small-group based instructional process that is now being used in over 150 academic disciplines and in over 200 schools in the US and in 22 foreign countries.  The other is an Integrative Business Experience (IBE) program that links student learning in three core courses to their experience in creating and operating an actual start-up business whose profits are used to fund a hands-on community service project.

Those who attended the session on Team Based Learning were very impressed with both Larry's presentation and many of his thoughts on this area and group assignments.  A number of staff who attended the workshop are already incorporating changes to the way they set group/team assignments and some are going to trial the team based approach to teaching.  Such was the transformation for most staff who attended the workshop that a website is now being created to ensure the momentum established by Larry's workshops is maintained.

The TBL approach is used with significant success at the University of Sydney and the committee is planning another workshop on TBL later this year or early next year with a facilitator from Sydney.  Those who attended the workshop on the integrated business experience were also impressed by the success of the program and its ability to provide real business experience to students.  Given the increasing demand from employers for work integrated learning the IBE program has much to offer.

Associate Professor Phil Hancock
Associate Dean-T&L