University of Tasmania, Australia

Teaching Matters 2013

Conference Theme: “Open UTAS to the World”

28th to 29th November, 2013 - Sandy Bay Campus

Openness in Education has been receiving global attention, especially in the last ten years, as the demand for opening up resources, curriculum, and governance increases in all aspects of education, particularly “higher education”. Inspired by this trend, the theme of Teaching Matters 2013 is Open UTAS to the World.

A key task for Teaching Matters 2013 is to address the benefits and challenges related to opening up education, and how this impacts on learning and teaching at UTAS. We are keen to learn the strategies that UTAS staff have in place to gather and use learning resources outside the university to enhance learning and teaching. How could these strategies facilitate opening up education? How would openness impact on current educational practices, assessment and learning design?

We would like to invite University of Tasmania staff to join us for discussions on how we can Open UTAS to the World. This will also be an opportunity to celebrate and share our latest achievements in learning and teaching internationally, nationally and locally.

Presentations and posters linked to at least one of the four sub-themes are invited. These are:

• Open Educational Practices (teaching and learning): In this sub-theme we invite you to reflect on your teaching practices and approaches to open up learning not only to UTAS students, but also to learners spread across the globe. This is also an opportunity to explore how open we (the educators) are to new teaching practices, including the use of educational technologies, the use of a diverse range of educational resource and different approaches to learning (networked learning, collaborative learning, connectivism). What are the challenges that these new practices bring to our work as learning and teaching practitioners?


• Opening up Learning Design and Assessment: Here, we invite you to examine innovative, inclusive and flexible ways to design the curriculum of your discipline and the assessment of students’ learning outcomes. We also would like you to consider how educational technologies (including online) and the adoption of external learning resources are shaping curriculum design and assessment. What are the implications of opening up curriculum design and assessment?


• Open Beyond the University: Considering the diverse student cohort and increasing numbers of enrolments, we would like to invite you to discuss the educational strategies you adopt to ensure students’ and industries’ expectations are met and that your students will continue being active learners after graduation (lifelong learners).


• Sharing Practices: This sub-theme invites you to share with us the institutional and personal strategies that you adopt to conduct your scholarly work, particularly research related to learning and teaching. We are interested to learn how you disseminate your teaching practices and research outcomes, if you work collaboratively with international, national and local communities; that is, how you Open UTAS to the World.