University of Tasmania, Australia

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Research

UTAS Home ›  › Student Evaluation, Review and Reporting Unit (SERRU)  › Research

Research

In SERRU, research is focused on quality assurance at the unit, course, faculty and institutional level and the enhancement and improvement of the university experience for both UTAS staff and students.

Many research areas include collaboration with staff not only from within UTAS, but other universities, both nationally and internationally, thereby building on one of SERRU's goals to collaborate with people internally, nationally and internationally to build partnerships to improve student learning outcomes and the reputation of the University.SERRU has received ethics approval to build UTAS' research capacity through the scholarship of institutional research.  Ethics approval number: H13053

Current Projects

Researching Students Project (2013-2014)

Background: Collecting feedback from students on their university experience has become an important part of measuring and enhancing the quality of learning and teaching (L&T), research and associated support services that they receive while at university.  While student feedback and participation is recognised as crucial to improving the overall student experience, students are becoming increasingly relied upon to provide the university with feedback on their L&T experiences.  Despite this, there has been no research to investigate the implications and ethical considerations associated with the increasing reliance on student feedback.

  • Purpose: The purpose of this project is to investigate the implications associated with increased collection of student feedback.  This project will specifically focus on the collection of student feedback for: 
  1. staff to measure the impact of learning and teaching initiatives and scholarship activities;
  2. students researching other students as part of their assessment;
  3. student participation in discipline-specific research projects.

The primary objectives are to:

  1. Determine the current practices used by university staff to measure teaching impact through student feedback and develop good practice case studies;
  2. Gather staff and student perspectives on the utilisation of students as participants in educational and discipline-specific research projects;
  3. Propose key recommendations to enhance and improve the utilisation of students in the measurement of learning and teaching impact and student participation in educational and discipline-specific research projects.

Methodology: Online staff and student surveys have been developed to gather their feedback about the use of students as research participants, including: measuring the effectiveness of L&T activities, assessment tasks that involve students researching other students, and experimental research conducted as part of a discipline-specific research project.

The surveys will be open until midnight 4th October, 2013.  To access the surveys, please click on the links below:

 

Once data analysis is completed, results will be reported in a Final Report to the University Learning and Teaching Committee (UL&TC) and the Learning and Teaching Evaluation Sub-Committee.  The Final Report will be available for download here.  A copy of the Final Report will also be sent to the TUU to be made available to all students.

 

OLT Strategic Priority Project: Professionalisation of the Academic Workforce (2012 –ongoing)

The Academic Workforce 2020 Project (led by the University of Melbourne) will prepare a national framework and evidence-based resources to support universities in shaping a coherent agenda over the 2013-2020 period to raise the professionalism of teaching in higher education.  Drawing on international knowledge of effective teaching and the introduction of professional standards frameworks, together with exemplary Australian case studies, the project will consult with the sector to propose a Framework for Academic Professionalisation that is theoretically robust and practically attainable.  The project is collaborative, involving four Australian universities; University of Melbourne, Australian National University, University of Tasmania and University of Western Sydney. 

This project is funded by the Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT).