Stephen Johnson

Boola Katitjin, which translates to “lots of learning” in Noongar, is a newly built, sustainable building that amplifies the Murdoch experience with new places to learn, study and socialise, while reflecting the University’s commitment to both in-person and online learning. With over 60% of the university’s classes able to be timetabled in the building in 2023, the Support for Academic Learning team piloted a team-teaching model to deliver communication skills units to undergraduate and postgraduate cohorts. At the centre of Murdoch University's Perth campus, Boola Katitjin provides a mindful and technology-rich educational experience to learn, connect and belong. Students, staff, and industry alike can meet, work, and engage in the building’s 21 large flat-floor format teaching and learning spaces, technology-rich labs, and immersive industry collaboration facilities. These spaces have been designed to put students at the centre of a social learning environment, enable innovative teaching methods with technology-enhanced features and aesthetic furnishings that encourage active and collaborative learning. Together, we embrace the pedagogical and technology affordances that the new building provides, to deliver memorable and impactful learning experiences for our students. This paper will explore how understanding ways to effectively use the learning spaces plays a significant role in teaching and learning, enabling both students and educators to construct meaning through their interactions with the content, and with one another, within the environment.

This paper reports on an extended orientation program for PhD students, ‘Flying Start’, offered to all early PhD students, both domestic and international, across all disciplines and schools at an Australian University. The aims of the program are to provide additional assistance to candidates to meet the requirements for confirmation of candidature (CoC), as well as helping them to identify additional skills they may need as researchers and to understand some of the broader challenges of doctoral study as a complex ‘rite of passage’ (Kiley, 2009). The program is offered three times a year, each offering consisting of two sets of two-day modules, which students ideally take towards the beginning and towards the end of their first six months. Both modules contain workshop streams related to each of the program aims. ‘Flying Start’ takes a blended learning approach that combines intensive mode teaching (IMT) and the provision of online resources to provide guided introductory and concluding sessions, following which students are able to access resources designed to support independent study and development. A key feature of the program is collaboration between Academic Language and Learning (ALL) practitioners, library and counselling staff, and PhD students, to co-develop and present the workshops streams. The paper argues that by making use of the available resources and by collaborating with other stakeholders, including the students themselves, as well as drawing on their own expertise, ALL practitioners are able to make a significant contribution towards enhancing the transition experience of early PhD students.

This paper reports on an extended orientation program for PhD students, ‘Flying Start’, offered to all early PhD students, both domestic and international, across all disciplines and schools at an Australian University. The aims of the program are to provide additional assistance to candidates to meet the requirements for confirmation of candidature (CoC), as well as helping them to identify additional skills they may need as researchers and to understand some of the broader challenges of doctoral study as a complex ‘rite of passage’ (Kiley, 2009). The program is offered three times a year, each offering consisting of two sets of two-day modules, which students ideally take towards the beginning and towards the end of their first six months. Both modules contain workshop streams related to each of the program aims. ‘Flying Start’ takes a blended learning approach that combines intensive mode teaching (IMT) and the provision of online resources to provide guided introductory and concluding sessions, following which students are able to access resources designed to support independent study and development. A key feature of the program is collaboration between Academic Language and Learning (ALL) practitioners, library and counselling staff, and PhD students, to co-develop and present the workshops streams. The paper argues that by making use of the available resources and by collaborating with other stakeholders, including the students themselves, as well as drawing on their own expertise, ALL practitioners are able to make a significant contribution towards enhancing the transition experience of early PhD students.

This paper discusses collaborations at an Australian university between lecturers from the Centre for University Teaching and Learning (CUTL) and lecturers in the School of Education. These collaborations focus on embedding the teaching and assessment of literacy in the undergraduate teacher education curriculum. The paper describes collaborative practices and outcomes intended to make literacy more explicit in teaching, learning and assessment in two compulsory Education units: a new transitional first year unit and an established foundational second year unit. Central to these collaborations is the strategy of embedding literacy through targeted units – core, compulsory units that mark a major step in students’ progress through the course. The targeted unit approach signals a change in the CUTL focus from working with at-risk students adjacent to their studies, to embedding and integrating academic language and learning (ALL) knowledge and capacities within the curriculum. This strategy reflects the broad shift in ALL practice from adjunct support of some students to an integrated curriculum that benefits all students. The underlying rationale for this practice is the inter-relationship of curriculum content and the skills and capacities required to successfully engage with it. The targeted unit approach focuses on integration with curriculum through a focus on the place and function of core units within courses of study. The implications for collaboration between disciplinary lecturers and ALL practitioners to embed literacy are discussed in terms of literacy in assessment, and a sustainable, targeted approach to the development of literacy across the curriculum.

Academic communication and literacy have emerged as key elements in 21st Century curricula. Indeed, the development of academic communication and literacy skills has been explicitly incorporated into international strategic curriculum change (Blackmore & Kandiko 2012). This cross-institutional symposium will discuss embedding academic communication and literacy within the curriculum and within disciplines in higher education. The main goal of the symposium will be to explore key issues and strategies around embedding, within the broad context of curriculum change and renewal. Although there is growing recognition that the most effective way to promote academic communication and literacy skills is to embed teaching and learning support for these skills into discipline-specific curricula, with academic language and learning specialists collaborating with discipline specialists, the challenges of embedded approaches are also recognised (Arkoudis & Starfield 2007). Apart from issues of funding and resources, a major challenge relates to the process of collaboration itself and difficulties related to differences in teaching philosophies, power relations and institutional priorities (Arkoudis & Starfield 2007). Involving a panel of academic language and learning specialists and discipline specialists from Murdoch, UWA and Curtin, the symposium will explore the opportunities and challenges of embedded approaches through individual mini-presentations and open discussion of key issues. Topics of individual mini-presentations will include: • examples of successful embedding programs, such as Curtin University's Starting University Confidently and Competently English Support Scheme (SUCCESS); • local and national initiatives, including Murdoch School of Education's initiative to develop core literacy concepts/attributes for Education and Carmela Briguglio's 'Embedding English Language Development into the Disciplines' OLT fellowship; •examples of institutional frameworks, such as UWA's Communications Skills Framework, developed as part of its New Courses 2012 initiative (CATL 2012). •Open discussion topics will include: •the role of communication skills/academic literacy in curriculum renewal; •key factors in successful collaborative partnerships between teaching and learning specialists and disciplinary specialists; •exploring shared understandings and the establishment of a common language to speak about academic literacy. A major goal of the symposium will be to engage audience participants in the discussion and to establish the basis for collaborations beyond the forum. It is hoped that the symposium will also contribute to the development of strategies for further promoting academic literacy and communication skills at Murdoch University and other institutions. References Arkoudis, S. & Starfield, S. (2007). In-course language development and support. Australian Education International. Blackmore, P. & Kandiko, C. (2012). Strategic curriculum change: Global trends in universities. London: Routledge. Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (2012). Communication skills framework 2012. http://www.catl.uwa.edu.au/resources/curriculum/embed/framework Dunworth, K. & Briguglio, C. (2010). Collaborating across boundaries: Developing a cross-departmental approach to English language development in an undergraduate business unit. Journal of Academic Language & Learning, 4(1), A13-A23. http://journal.aall.org.au/index.php/jall/article/view/117/85

This thesis explores the potential of a pragmatic semiotic perspective to inform the design of research writing programs in higher education. Increasing numbers of international research students have highlighted the need for effective programs that develop the ability to construct research papers and theses. A particular challenge for international students is research from sources, which requires the use of discipline-based genres and texts, as well as the synthesis of ideas into original and meaningful compositions. New educational methods and technologies – such as the use of portfolios and diagramming software – can help to promote such skills, provided their use is informed by sound understandings of the research writing process. A paradigm shift in educational theory has also brought a range of constructivist perspectives that have challenged traditional approaches in several fields relevant to research writing, including composition studies and educational technology. The two currently dominant theoretical perspectives in these fields are the cognitive-constructivist and the sociocultural perspectives, both of which are largely concerned with the construction of knowledge and meaning. However, neither of these perspectives provides an entirely adequate understanding of research from sources, since they tend to emphasise the individual and social aspects of writing respectively. This thesis, by contrast, explores the potential for a pragmatic semiotic perspective, based on the philosophies of Peirce, Dewey and Deleuze. Although the perspective has had a limited influence on composition studies, it has been promoted as a way of transcending the dualisms in the field. In Peirce's semiotics and Dewey's pragmatism, all knowledge construction and meaning-making is viewed as semiosis, or the action of signs, which is necessarily both an individual and a social process. The pragmatic semiotic perspective has a growing influence in education generally, particularly in connection with the use of new educational technologies. This thesisinvestigates whether it can also provide a more suitable theoretical framework for the design of effective research writing programs.