Guidelines for Staff

Staff teachings in an engineering curriculum have the responsibility to ensure students acquire clear, accurate and timely information concerning relevant program structure, practice, teaching quality and learning outcomes. In every implementation of new learning and teaching model, it is always a challenging task for staff to change their pedagogy practice to a new learning and teaching model. The readiness of staff for PODBL is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Staff - PODBL framework guidelines

With initial interest, and existing experience in learning and teaching, staff are encouraged to implement and practice PODBL in their respective program units called “Curriculum alignment”. In PODBL, staff practice- engineering design in meaningful practice oriented tasks and assessment.

4.2.1 The Role of Staff in PODBL

Excellent learning and student engagement is a positive experience and also a result from quality teaching. Over many decades, researchers believe students will engage more deeply and learn more thoroughly when their teachers care about them to educate, learn, communicate and be innovative in the classroom. Academics need the perspectives of students’ to analyse their experience in practicing and learning a particular approach. It also helps teachers to understand the level of expectation of students in their area of expertise. A teacher must ensure that course design, program structure, teaching and learning assessment should help learners to learn. The role of staff in PODBL is

 Developing and presenting consistent & creative resources for student learning.

 Implementing Project Oriented Design Based Learning approach to learning and teaching engineering course units.

 Communicating with students to meet their objectives and expectations for self-directed learning.

 Enhancing learning outcomes and teaching methods by actively engaging students.

4.2.2 Professional Development

In academia, students and staff are supposed to work together in order to achieve a balanced learning and teaching process. By using different teaching and learning approaches, teachers are aware of escalating the student knowledge to fulfill current technology needs. In many cases, academic staff are responsible for setting high expectations in their classrooms. Sometimes staff are expected to teach subjects outside their expertise and in some cases, academic staff may experience a lack of confidence in their ability to teach such subjects yet are unwilling to seek professional development (Biggs, 2006). These professional development opportunities provide staff with valuable opportunities to enhance their personal teaching qualities, which helps them to achieve and follow a successful learning and teaching process.

At Deakin University, staff are encouraged to practice teaching and learning approaches that influence, motivate and inspire students to learn. Deakin Learning Futures provides a range of opportunities, events and services for staff to enhance their capability to be effective educators. In order to enhance and continue the engagement of students in learning and create active learners in the classroom, teachers need to teach each other through professional development workshops ward (Eliot & Howard, 2011).

Peer review of teaching is a well-established practice in many academic environments. In Australian universities, the aim of peer review teaching is to enhance learning and teaching. In peer reviewed teaching, staff members obtain an opportunity to share their professional responsibilities that enhance learning and teaching approaches. The benefits of peer reviewed teaching for individual staff members is shown below:

 Improving professional relationships with colleagues.

 Developing teaching practices from peer feedback.

 Sharing broader knowledge of curriculum and implementing new teaching ideas.

 Enhancing student assessment and learning outcomes. 4.2.3 Leadership for Learning and Teaching

Teachers have various levels of curriculum leadership qualities. A number of values and personalities make certain individuals ideal for leading teachers. An active teacher is an open minded and respectful person who obtains optimistic relationship with peers, students and parents. Teachers are always practicing how to improve their teaching techniques. Persuasiveness, open-mindedness, flexibility, confidence and expertise are fundamental attributes of a good teacher. However, working with other staff members is different from working with students. The ability to collaborate with others is an outstanding quality of leadership. To undertake a leadership role, people need to be an expert in curriculum planning, peer mentoring, assessment design and data analysis. The teacher leadership qualities are as follows:

 Passionate about learning and teaching.

 Initiating a peer-mentoring program – personal and professional development.

 Researching alternative classroom assessment methods and presenting these to management.

 Lead an initiative to formulate new learning and teaching methods for students.

 Developing procedures for staff to enhance their teaching abilities in the classroom.

 Encouraging best practices for student assessment and support on going changes to assessment practices.

 Developing various approaches to enhance the relationship between staff and students.

 Creating pathways to industry collaboration and encouraging peers to support industry projects. 4.2.4 Course Enhancement

Course enhancement is a systematic approach taken with all courses undergoing the process of creating course learning outcomes and standards. The course learning outcomes describe graduates’ knowledge and capabilities they should acquire and be able to apply, and demonstrate at the completion of their course. Course learning outcomes and standards are derived and instructed by the relevant professional bodies. For example, the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) is the national policy for all regulated qualifications in Australian education and training. It provides all the standards for all Australian qualifications. In the higher education sector, the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency (TEQSA) provides national consistency in the regulation of higher education.

At Deakin University, students undertake common subjects in their first year and then choose a discipline to specialise in. This includes civil, electrical and electronics, mechanical or mechatronics engineering. This format allows students to make a more informed decision and to gain a broader base of knowledge in engineering. These undergraduate engineering courses are designed to meet the requirements of Engineers Australia.

5 Conclusion

Through learning and teaching guidelines, engineering students obtain an opportunity to gain self-knowledge that helps them attain professional skills and qualities as an engineering graduate. It is an interesting and challenging task for staff and students to practice a new learning & teaching process. The teachers find it interesting to implement the system and integrate engineering and technology into projects in meaningful ways. Staff members look at the method of learning through projects as a benefit for all stakeholders such as students, Industry, community and university through project oriented design based learning curricula. In Project Oriented Design Based Learning (PODBL), staff and students practice-engineering design in meaningful ways and can easily adapt to those learning and teaching guidelines.

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Flipping the engineering classroom: an analysis of a Brazilian university