Griffith Business School/Griffith Institute of Higher Education

In mid 2010 I moved across town to Griffith Business School (GBS) to work as a Curriculum Consultant attached to both the Griffith Business School and The Griffith Institute of Higher Education (GIHE).  Griffith, being one of the largest Business Schools in Australia, offered more scope for me to grow as consultant and change agent.

ALEC: Another AoL data collection and analysis application

Also an AACSB accredited School, and having been directed to have AoL processes fully in place for re-accreditation in 2013, GBS was happy to leverage my experiences of the successful QUT AoL implementation.  They explored adopting the ReView application, but decided to develop an in-house solution, which is now known under the acronym I suggested, ‘ALEC’ (Assurance of Learning Embedded in Courses).  I was able to make a number of contributions to the road map and piloting of this application.

But I didn’t make the move only to work on AoL.  In an organisational structure designed to optimise both local benefits of being embedded in an Academic Group, while retaining the focus and depth available from the scholarship of education and higher education, the Griffith opportunity was also matrixed into a leading institute. In addition to AoL my responsibilities in supporting GBS included working intensively with individual teachers on improving their teaching performance, including but not limited to the integration of technology in their online and hybrid teaching work.  This was done through analysis and reflection of both student feedback and peer observations of the client’s teaching.

Student Evaluation of Course

Student Evaluations of Course (SET) and Student Evaluation of Teaching (SETs) were the student feedback instruments which provided the bases for performance analysis and consultations toward improvement

Peer Review and Observation of Teaching

To address concerns of student bias relating to grades, Griffith Institute of Higher Education was also funded to develop the Peer Review and Observation of Teaching project.  (PRO-Teaching).  I was a member of the grant team and made particular contributions with regard to procedures and protocols for peer review of online and blended teaching.  I am still sought after as an expert observer and have received a citation noting my contributions to the scheme.

Each semester, several dozen new teachers are contracted to support teaching and deliver tutorials in the GBS.  My work included developing and delivering the Induction Sessions for new GBS Teachers coming on board. The Titles slide below links to the full presentation…

Overall, my work as Curriculum Consultant in the GBS involved working with 8 academic departments, and when reviewed, the scope of the work included the following categories:

a. Learning and Teaching Community Development
b. Curriculum Development
c. One-to-One Consulting on Teaching Performance
d. Curriculum Quality Assurance, and
e. Scholarship of Learning and Teaching

My report across the GBS is linked here in my Curriculum Consultant Impact Map, and the results of a supporting survey with feedback from clients across the School with data collection and analysis integrating Kirkpatrick’s Four Level Evaluation Model is here.

Another interesting area in which I worked was involved with the implementation and assessment of group working and group communication skills within curriculum, which is a difficult area in which to engage students and teaching staff.  Back at QUT as a benefit of collaborations with colleagues at the University of Technology Sydney in the Graduate Attributes project, I had begin implementing and supporting an application known as SPARK (Self and Peer Assessment Resource Kit) A link to a recently published research paper describing some of the work is online in the Accounting Research Journal.