Professor Jennie Shaw - Learning and Teaching News
Colleagues, congratulations on navigating one of the most challenging years for teaching and learning in our history. This week we celebrate the outstanding achievements of our latest university-wide teaching award recipients—and what a fitting way to close 2021.
And there are many others who devoted considerable effort to ensure the teaching experiences, environments and expertise provided for our students were the best possible, whether on our campuses or through University of Adelaide College (both Adelaide and Melbourne campuses), the Alliance between the University and Pearson, PACE, Haide College or our offshore Learning Centres. Many of you also were involved in overseeing internships in a range of discipline areas. Few can claim to have been bored this year, but, admittedly, those moments where we could stop and reflect on our teaching practice have been rare and precious.
Professor Jennie Shaw
Academic integrity moved to centre stage as everyone in the sector thought about balancing the convenience of un-invigilated online exams with maintaining high integrity standards. The creation of the Academic Integrity Practitioners Network has been one of a raft of measures taken to detect, educate and deter.
Multiple teams – Ask Adelaide, Examinations and Results, Faculties, Learning Enhancement and Innovation and ITDS -- worked together to make 2021 exams a success. The vast majority of the 80,000 sittings were held as in-person invigilated exams. Approximately 15,000 online invigilated exams made use of external proctoring services as well as internal invigilators. Students who completed a ProctorU exam were given the option of filling in a survey: in semester 1, 40% did so and, of those, 85% were satisfied with their individual proctor and 70% with the overall exam experience. At the conclusion of November exams, 38% submitted the survey, and 85% (again) were satisfied with their individual proctor and 74% with their exam experience. All professional and academic staff involved in exam design and delivery this year should be proud of their contributions to appropriate assessment of our students.
And the provision of extra-curricular activities has also been admirable. It was an honour this week to celebrate the achievements of the latest 370 students who have achieved the Adelaide Graduate Award and to hear from some inspirational students.
Of course replacement exams and teaching activities continue over the summer, and the impact of organisational-wide restructure is adding stress in many areas, so it’s even more important (please!) to take time to recharge over the break.
Jennie
Professor Jennie Shaw
Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Academic)
Division of Academic and Student Engagement