Today we had the ALTC Science Discipline scholars visiting from UTasmania. These folk, Brian Yates and Sue Jones, are the leaders of the Science part of the Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Project run by the ALTC.
The Australian Government has awarded the ALTC $2 million to facilitate and coordinate discipline communities’ definition of academic standards as the higher education sector prepares for a new regulatory environment and the creation of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.
(from http://www.altc.edu.au/standards)
They discussed their project and threshold learning outcomes with a small group of interested folk this morning and then again this afternoon, in more depth, with the design team of QUT's proposed Bachelor of Science degree. It was quite interesting to hear the learning outcomes that they have drafted together so far, that are intended to cover the pass-level outcomes for a graduate of a science degree from fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, earth sciences, mathematics etc...quite broad, so somewhat generic but at the same time "sciency".
I also managed to finally do some work on the summaries from some curriculum renewal workshops that we held. These were workshops with academic staff from around the faculty where we discussed ideas like revitalising practical activities in our courses, streaming students at different learning stages or with different learning intentions (eg international experience vs research preparation, etc), and the concept of an inverted curriculum. These all form part of our plans to put in a swag of ALTC grant applications next year (or possibly one large consolidated one).
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