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In this paper, we present a novel approach for semiautomatic question generation to support academic writing. Our system first extracts key phrases from students' literature review papers. Each key phrase is matched with a Wikipedia article and classified into one of five abstract concept categories: Research Field, Technology, System, Term, and Other. Using the content of the matched Wikipedia article, the system then constructs a conceptual graph structure representation for each key phrase and the questions are then generated based the structure. To evaluate the quality of the computer generated questions, we conducted a version of the Bystander Turing test, which involved 20 research students who had written literature reviews for an IT methods course. The pedagogical values of generated questions were evaluated using a semiautomated process. The results indicate that the students had difficulty distinguishing between computer-generated and supervisor-generated questions. Computer-generated questions were also rated as being as pedagogically useful as supervisor-generated questions, and more useful than generic questions. The findings also suggest that the computer-generated questions were more useful for the first-year students than for second or third-year students. (Contains 12 tables and 4 figures.)

Effective and continuing development of tertiary students' academic literacy during their undergraduate years has become a crucial issue for Anglophone universities into the 21st century. Research into pedagogies aimed at supporting students' academic literacy development has pointed to the inadequacy of generic approaches delivered as remedial support services, and has called instead for the integration of the teaching and learning of academic literacy into discipline content courses. Successful models tended to require collaboration between discipline and communication specialists. However, reluctance by discipline specialists to engage with language in favour of content teaching, and financial implications of collaboration represent two major barriers to the uptake and scalability of curriculum-integrated academic literacy development. This paper describes a collaborative approach to genre pedagogy that has the potential for overcoming the content-language dichotomy and also the cost barrier. It provides a method for the discipline lecturer's progress from initial dependence on the literacy specialist's expertise towards learner and teacher autonomy. The pedagogy is demonstrated by two Models of Engaged Learning and Teaching (MELT) that are derived from the Research Skill Development framework. This paper describes the two models and their potential role in overcoming barriers to curriculum-integration of academic literacy development.

Most Australian universities articulate some policies around the integration of graduate learning outcomes in courses. This paper draws on a Federal Government funded project that adopted a developmental approach to students' acquisition of course learning outcomes, through the embedding of academic literacies in course curricula. The project was part of a Higher Education Participation and Partnership Program (HEPPP), which focused on courses with a high proportion of students from a low socio-economic status (SES) background. However, the project took an inclusive approach to curriculum development by focusing on the needs of all students. In describing this project, the paper aims to explore the challenges and advantages of collaborative curriculum development. The findings, which are based on individual interviews with the project partners suggest that increased collaboration between course team members and professional staff, and the opportunity to reflect built the capacity of all staff, specifically their understanding of academic literacies. Evaluation of the project helped to confirm that a curriculum renewal process needs to ensure that members of course teams have time to fully engage in collaborative reflection. The evaluation supported a move to a more cooperative approach to curriculum development.

Teachers are now experiencing the age of quantitative test-driven assessment, in which there is little weight accorded to teacher-based judgement about student progress. In the Australian context, the NAPLaN test has become a driving force in school and teacher accountability. The language of NAPLaN is one of bands and numerical scores and comparative performance, measuring schools against other "similar" schools and against a national average. The consequences of this are troubling for all teachers. For EAL/D teachers whose specialised professional knowledge relates to building the academic English language of EAL/D learners, NAPLaN is highly problematic because it takes no account of second language factors which might impact on test performance. Yet, NAPLaN data do offer rich yet largely unexploited opportunity to highlight the validity of teacher judgement in the classroom. This paper will use ESL Bandscale data in an analysis of the NAPLaN performance of EAL/D students to show how teacher judgement (captured by the ESL Bandscales) is valid and aligned with NAPLaN performance. I will demystify the power and the fallibility of large-scale assessment like NAPLaN: to identify in which contexts large-scale data analysis is useful, and its limitations in micro-settings which include the classroom. The second goal of this paper is to stress the utility of teacher data, measured quantitatively, but based on qualitative observation, when it is grounded in teacher professional knowledge. Ultimately, such arguments serve to highlight the importance of remaining grounded in strong TESOL pedagogy, despite the intense pressure to follow mainstream English (as first language) literacy responses to NAPLaN testing.

Academics often treat students' discipline-specific literacy as unproblematic. In doing so they may underestimate the difficulties for university students as they move between subjects of study that may involve different disciplines, language genres and academic practices. This paper describes an initiative aimed at supporting students in reading academic articles in preparation for completing an essay for an assessment task. This initiative involved a structured and collaborative two-week tutorial exercise that provided students with practice in using a framework to extract the main ideas from academic readings. Students were surveyed after this exercise, and their reflections of its value are described in this paper. The findings of this study will inform further stages of the project which aim to develop and investigate practical ways to develop student's academic literacy across several business disciplines.

This paper explores some of the ways in which our insights into the pedagogy of postgraduate supervision may benefit from understanding some of the attributes of psychotherapy. It proposes that psychotherapy involves teaching and learning processes that can be fruitfully compared with the idealised pedagogical model of the dialectic. It develops insights into postgraduate supervision as pedagogy by interrogating the intersection of teaching and learning with some aspects of psychotherapy. In doing so, it shows how those pedagogical aspects of psychotherapy can enable a deeper understanding and richer practising of postgraduate supervision. This paper works within a model postulated by Gregory Ulmer. In his development of an idea that there is in academic writing the self and the researched, the conscious intellectual semiotic and that arising from storytelling, Gregory Ulmer surveys the idea of "mystories." This word encompasses the self, the story and the mystery of this. I propose my own version of this as the "subjective academic narrative." (A bibliography is included.)

This paper revisits a successful short-course in academic literacy that was conducted for 50 "disadvantaged" students enrolled in the first year of an education degree at an Australian regional university (see Hirst, Henderson, Allan, Bode & Kocatepe, 2004). Based on a sociocultural approach to learning and drawing on a conceptualisation of tertiary literacy as a social practice, the short-course disrupted deficit views of individual students and worked to help students expand their literate repertoires. However, recent discussions about learning have helped to problematise academic literacy and its place within an increasingly plural, multicultural, multilingual and textually multimodal society (Gee, 2003, 2004; Kalantzis & Cope, 2004; The New London Group, 1996). Rather than accepting academic literacy as the metaphoric opening of a "significant gate to economic success and sociopolitical power" (Gee, 2004, p. 91), recent views suggest that a homogenisation is at work and that courses in academic literacy serve to enculturate students into particular--and possibly outdated--social and literacy practices. Gee (2004), for example, argues that academic language represents a family of "old literacies" and that the take-up of language "once thought to be central to what counted as a "schooled" and "intelligent" person is now at best a necessary, but not sufficient condition for success in society" (p. 94). Drawing on Gee's (2003, 2004, 2005) discussions of learning principles in multi-mediated contexts, and his preference for the notion of affinity spaces over communities of practice, this paper reframes academic literacy, then considers whether the short-course described above--which was judged as successful--has the potential to work with the increasing diversity of tertiary students' learning and life experiences as well as to prepare them for successful participation in tertiary education contexts. (Contains 1 table.)

This paper critically evaluates the pilot of a Thesis Writers' Circles program offered to Education PhD and DEd students at the University of Melbourne in semester 2, 2005. The analysis focuses on the needs of those students that were felt to be well-met by this model of support. Broadly, the paper identifies two distinct but inter-related themes: firstly, the challenge of developing writing skills to a level sufficient to meet the demands of preparing a research thesis; secondly, the importance for research higher degree students of building confidence as apprentice academic writers. In relation to the latter theme, the paper identifies the benefits of community participation and peer-collaboration in working towards the aim of consolidating a thesis-writing identity. It is in this capacity, we argue, that thesis writers' circles have distinct advantages compared with other forms of candidature support, making them a valuable supplement to both conventional supervision practices and generic English language and thesis writing programs. The paper affirms the importance not only of equipping international and non-English speaking background (NESB) students with writing tools and strategies, but also of creating opportunities for all postgraduate research students to receive (and offer) non-judgmental feedback on work-in-progress within a discipline-specific learning and discourse community.

Much current debate about undergraduate student research involves a focus on 'students as partners' and co-constructors of knowledge (Healey, Flint & Harrington 2014, 2016). This debate reveals interesting tensions between student freedom and the role of structuring frameworks. Undergraduate lecturers and research supervisors might feel we are in a quandary concerning how far we can help manage a balance between supportive frameworks and the independence that student researchers need to develop. Will the use of the Research Skill Development (Willison & O'Regan, 2006/2018) framework and other frameworks at every step of the undergraduate research journey form a constraint, or an essential scaffold? This paper considers frameworks, scaffolds and the need for freedom and creative co-construction of knowledge to enable successful undergraduate research within the context of final year research and writing at undergraduate third year (UK), honours (Australia) or senior/fourth year (US and Canada).

The C-Test as a tool for assessing language competence has been in existence for nearly 40 years, having been designed by Professors Klein-Braley and Raatz for implementation in German and English. Much research has been conducted over the ensuing years, particularly in regards to reliability and construct validity, for which it is reported to perform reliably and in multiple languages. The author engaged in C-Test research in 1995 focusing on concurrent, predictive and face validity. Through this research, the author developed an appreciation for the C-Test assessment process particularly with the multiple cognitive and linguistic test-taking strategies required. When digital technologies became accessible, versatile and societally integrated, the author believed the C-Test would function well in this environment. This conviction prompted a series of investigations into the development and assessment of a digital C-Test design to be utilised in multiple linguistic settings. This paper describes the protracted design process, concluding with the publication of mobile apps.

The purpose of the study reported in this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of an implementation of teaching rounds as a practice-based approach to pre-service teacher education in mathematics. The teaching rounds implemented in the study utilised the NSW Quality Teaching model pedagogical framework as a tool for learning about and reflecting on teaching practices. The evaluation was conducted through a mixed methods approach using a combination of surveys and analysis of student assessment tasks. The major findings of the study are that pre-service teachers found practice-based experience and the subsequent reflections using teaching rounds very valuable compared to other learning experiences. We also found that pre-service teachers undertaking a Masters teaching degree were significantly more insightful about planning for and reflecting about teaching practice than those undertaking an undergraduate degree. We believe these two facts have implications not only at our institution but also at a global level for policy makers in other institutions providing pre-service education.

Pre-service teacher education programs are required to graduate students who meet externally determined standards in literacy and numeracy. However, little is known about the literacy, numeracy and ICT knowledge and skills demanded of teacher education students as they complete assessment tasks on which successful completion of their teaching degrees depends. This paper reports on the initial phase of a project that involved collecting and analysing assessment tasks across all subjects in a Bachelor of Education (Primary) program at a regional university in order to determine the range of task types. The findings of this project indicate that student teachers would be better equipped to meet assessment demands if provided with more support as they strive to respond to assessment tasks. Such support would also contribute to the ability of student teachers to meet externally determined standards of literacy and numeracy and information and communication technology required of graduate teachers.

This paper develops the concept of articulated learning and relates it to the role of Academic Language and Learning (ALL) academics in facilitating the progress of international and other English as an additional language (EAL) students from program to program, between generic, academic and disciplinary skills and from their studies to the work environment. It also describes the ALL role in the development of reflective learning practices which are essential to enable students to problem-solve both academically and professionally. We combine these two elements to extend the theory of articulated learning and explore its value in the internationalisation of higher education. Although it is impossible to detail the vast array of ALL contexts and practices in Australian and international contexts, the case study exemplified in this paper by the Introductory Academic Program enables a clearer definition of the role of ALL practitioners and how they, along with disciplinary counterparts, can best facilitate student learning and achievement. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Concern about student retention and success remains paramount in universities both in Australia and overseas, especially in the light of the ongoing massification of higher education, yet current strategies are not necessarily dealing successfully with the changing demographics of student populations. This is particularly so in the realm of developing student academic literacies. This paper argues strongly for a shift in approaches to the development of academic literacies, adopting current trends in peer learning rather than relying on the deficit model of study skills which is frequently employed at Australian universities. We present an overview of the innovative PASSwrite model, utilising the principles of peer-assisted study sessions (PASS) to create a peer-led informal environment in which students can develop their academic writing abilities in a collaborative, discipline-specific context. We posit that such an environment can better address students' learning needs across a wide spectrum, from understanding the specific discourse of their discipline and receiving timely feedback on their writing, to developing confidence in their ability to navigate successfully a path through the maze of academia. We provide an outline of a PASSwrite session to demonstrate how this can be achieved, along with the anticipated outcomes. As the project is at an early stage at the time of writing, no firm conclusions can be made, but it is envisaged that these will be presented as the project matures.

The authors report on a project in which a new experiential form of professional learning combined ethical thinking processes with a collaborative meeting technology known as the Zing team learning system (ZTLS). A new software program called "Working Wisely" was built by the completion of the project. The ZTLS in combination with "Working Wisely" facilitates communities of practice (Fleer, Edwards, Hammer, Kennedy, Ridgway, Robbins, & Surman, 2006; Wenger, 1998) focused on ethical issues. The participants in the pilot project included 10 staff members of an early childhood education facility (long day care centre) who met for a series of professional development sessions in a learning community that combined industry, university, and commercial stakeholders. By the end of the project, participants were able to move their knowledge from individual tacit knowledge to shared articulated knowledge with an ethical focus. This paper focuses on the facilities that were embedded in the software to develop thinking and discourse processes. The authors faced challenges in translating paper-based thinking processes with numerous steps into simple methods that could be undertaken on an information communication technology (ICT) platform using the ZTLS. These were resolved by the development of miniature and iterative dialectical thinking processes within thinking steps that facilitated discourse. The use of dialectical and ethical discourse in this community of practice led to positive outcomes and has considerable potential in many other areas of academic endeavour. We have called our new type of interaction Ethical Dialectical Discourse. (Contains 3 figures.)

An important aspect of advanced academic writing is the ability to incorporate source material. Yet this ability often poses considerable challenges for international ESL students. Although a number of scholars have called for the explicit teaching of how to acknowledge and incorporate source materials, research evidence on whether explicit instruction is effective is relatively scarce. This paper reports on a classroom based study which investigated the efficacy of such instruction. Using ESL learners' performance on two integrated tasks (pre and post instruction), the study investigated whether learners' use of sources improves in response to instruction. The study found that instruction seems to lead to a reduced reliance on the language of the source materials. However such decreased reliance on the language of the sources may lead to greater inaccuracies in the attempted interpretation and incorporation of ideas from the source texts. The findings suggest that the ability to incorporate source materials may follow a gradual developmental path and this in turn has implications not only for instruction but also for the development of appropriate descriptors to assess the ability to incorporate sources. (Contains 2 tables and 5 examples.)

This paper documents the approach taken by an Australian University to enhance student study skills, development of academic language, and writing skills. The Curtin Business School (CBS) has the only fully faculty-based student learning support centre at Curtin University in Western Australia. Called the CBS Communication Skills Centre (CSC) it has seven academic staff charged with enhancing learning outcomes, intercultural communication and study proficiency for a diverse student cohort having a large proportion of international students. Described here is the CSC approach to using a suite of targeted services and collaborative practices in multiple academic disciplines to assist transnational learning. Challenges faced by international students using learning support services, and by staff designing and delivering those services in an Australian University form part of this discussion. (Contains 1 table.)

The increase in numbers of international students who have English as a second language (ESL) and are studying in English-medium universities has renewed the emphasis of English language development in higher education, particularly concerning academic writing. Much of the discussion has concentrated on developing best practices in providing support via Language and Academic Support (LAS) programs. However, the main challenge in recent years has focused on integrating disciplinary and language learning. What has been largely missing from the discussion are the views of lecturers and students regarding the strategies they use to develop academic writing in the discipline. This paper addresses this issue. The analysis reveals that academic writing within the disciplines is largely an individual endeavor for both lecturers and their students. Lecturers focus on explaining what skills students are required to demonstrate in their assignments, but students are more concerned with understanding "how" they can develop these skills. The implications are discussed concerning the development of a whole institutional approach for integrating language and disciplinary teaching. (Contains 2 tables.)

Murdoch University's public relations program attracts a significant number of international students. Up to 60% of students in some units come from Singapore and Malaysia. While many spend at least one year in Australia as part of the three year degree, students in both countries may complete the entire degree offshore from 2007. The authors rewrote a second year public relations unit with the aim of making it more relevant for local and international students. This posed particular challenges in terms of pedagogical and conceptual approaches. For instance, there are cultural and linguistic issues which influence the ways students learn, and which have particular implications for a unit which expressly aims to consolidate students' professional writing skills. There are also implications for public relations theory, which tends to be dominated by Western concepts and models, and public relations practice, which varies in different countries. This paper offers a reflection on the issues we addressed in the redevelopment of the unit, as well as some suggestions for future teaching and learning practices.

The position of this paper is to further the discussion on what constitutes academic assessment in the PhD by artefact and exegesis. In doing so, it explores some of the ideas that arose in setting up the PhD in creative writing at Swinburne University of Technology. Thus, I: (1) survey some of the questions that arise about the journeys made by the candidate, supervisor and examiner of the PhD in creative writing; (2) introduce discussion about what constitutes academic knowledge with particular reference to the PhD in writing at Swinburne University of Technology, Lilydale Campus; (3) bring to the fore multiple possibilities in understanding possible conceptualizations of legitimate scholarly, intellectual and cultural research; and (4) survey some ideas about research and/as creativity. In doing so, I provide the basis for discussion of the dynamic nature of research, and situate this discussion within the framework of assessment.

The incidence of plagiarism, according to the literature, is increasing. But why do students plagiarise and why the increase? Is it due to laziness, opportunity, ignorance, fear or ambivalence? Or do they know that there is little chance of any significant penalty? The literature suggests that all of these apply. Given this, are universities and, by implication, staff, rather than students culpable for such attitudes and are they guilty for the "soft" consequences? This paper addresses the question of student and "staff attitudes" towards plagiarism and suggests that if the teaching faculty view plagiarism as a serious problem, they have an obligation to actively change student attitudes by demanding system wide support. The authors argue that exhorting students not to plagiarise and appealing to their moral compass are not sufficient to reduce the frequency of plagiarism and neither are these enough to change their attitudes. Instead, active education is required leading to a situation whereby students are taught, in the most practical sense, the skills expected of them when submitting academic writing. Equally, staff need adequate understanding of what might be happening when plagiarism occurs, and to be able to address the issue consistently in a supported, non-threatening institutional environment. To achieve this, a gradual release model is proposed as a path to a convergent approach to plagiarism.

While the Internet has been described as fundamental to higher education students, social and leisure internet tools are also increasingly being used by these students to generate and maintain their social and professional networks and interactions. Rapid technological advancements have enabled greater and faster access to information for learning and education. As such, we sought to integrate interactive, online social media into the assessment profile of a Public Health undergraduate cohort at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The aim of this exercise was to engage students to both develop and showcase their research on a range of complex, contemporary health issues within the online forum of Wikispaces (http://www.wikispaces.com/) for review and critique by their peers. We applied Bandura's social learning theory (SLT) to analyse the interactive processes from which students developed deeper and more sustained learning, and via which their overall academic writing standards were raised. This paper outlines the assessment task and the students' feedback on their learning outcomes in relation to the attentional, retentional, motor reproduction, and motivational processes outlined by Bandura in SLT. We conceptualise the findings in a theoretical model, and discuss the implications for this approach within the broader tertiary environment.

Institutional repositories have been established by most university libraries but their level of success has varied. Determining what belongs in such repositories has been the subject of some discussion but research would suggest that a broader rather than narrower compass is a positive approach to adopt. By seeking out a variety of content types, the library is able to initiate, renew, or redefine its relationship with faculty, departments, and administration, generating critical support for scholarly communication and repository initiatives. This paper provides examples of successful IRs and their scope. (Contains 1 chart.)

Reading is a complex skill, vital for the postgraduate student. However, many international postgraduate students experience considerable difficulty when applying their reading practices learnt in their own countries. This paper, part of a larger study, aims to provide insights into the reading practices of Indian/Bangladeshi postgraduate students while studying at an Australian university. Data were collected through case studies conducted in India and at an Australian university. Significant differences were found between the reading of general-interest text and academic text and differences were also found between the reading practices undertaken in first and third semesters. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

The importance of reading for academic study cannot be overemphasized. At the postgraduate level, students are faced with complex text interpretation processes. Yet, while concerns have been expressed regarding the English as a second language literacy (Fitzgerald, 1995), few international students have been asked for their views on their learning, specifically their reading approaches. This paper, part of a longitudinal study, using metacognitive and framing theories, explores aspects of framing and metacognition used by a cohort of Thai postgraduate students when reading at an Australian university. Through the use of individual interviews and pair think aloud protocols it was found that there were significant changes in the students' reading practices between first and third semesters. However, it was shown, too, that incongruent background knowledge could lead to misinterpretations. The participants' reflections provided some explanation for the differences in their cognitive and metacognitive strategy use.

This paper considers the relevance and application of Writing About Writing (WAW) (Downs & Wardle, 2007; Wardle, 2009) and Threshold Concepts of Writing (TCW) (Adler-Kassner & Wardle, 2015) in the Australian higher education context. These approaches to literacy and writing curriculum development have been developed in the United States context as a critical reinvention of the first-year composition curriculum and as resolving what has been termed the "content problem" - the lack of a consensus about what the discipline of composition should teach in first-year writing classes (Seitz, 2005). Without a strong tradition of first-year writing or an offering of academic writing subjects as credit-bearing parts of the curriculum in Australia, it is not surprising that the discussion or consideration of these ideas has been minimal in this context. However, as this paper will argue, to the extent that such courses or programs are becoming more common in Australian higher education, academic literacy educators face new demands from institutions and students while continuing to respond to perennial misconceptions of their field as being merely a remedial grammar or student support service on the margins of the main teaching and learning work undertaken in disciplines. Insofar as WAW and the TCW literature help to clarify the disciplinary status and goals of literacy programs, the paper argues that they suggest a way forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the partnership forged between Women on Farms Gathering and the Museum Victoria in Australia. The intent of their participatory-action research project is to challenge the mainstream discourse of Australian rural life and women through collecting oral histories and other memorabilia representing women farmers. The author discusses the role of museums in shaping cultural history and the empowering effects of reclaiming personal histories. The museum collection also serves to bring issues of rurality back into public discourse.

The University of South Australia and Purdue University (Indiana) launched the 'Grammar Gang Blog' in June 2008, as a collaborative forum for talking about language. The blog reaches a far-flung community of learners from Australia to the United States, Brisbane to Bangalore and Ghana to Germany. The Grammar Gang - where Owls meet Possums - started as a practical way to share knowledge about the function of grammar in academic writing at university. Two years later, the collaboration has grown to include the University of Adelaide. The Grammar Gang demonstrates how social software has given us an easy pathway to interact globally with those who have a common love of language. This paper discusses the way in which social software can be used for learning and global community building between students, university staff and their institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre-service teacher education is marked by linear and sequential programming which offers a plethora of strategies and methods (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005; Darling Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Grant & Zeichner, 1997). This paper emerges from a three year study within a core education subject in pre-service teacher education in Australia. This 'practitioner' research (Zeichner, 1999) engaged the problematics of authentic and meaningful learner-centred teaching and learning through an arts-based curriculum. Over the period of the study, two hundred and eighty pre-service teachers participated in a 'dialogical performance'(Conquergood, 2003) of pedagogy about curriculum and assessment through the construction of art about curriculum and assessment. The possibilities of an arts-based pedagogy in pre-service education were affirmed by the research. An enacted epistemological move by the teacher-educators led to similar shifts by the students. This opened a space for the reappearance of learner through engagements with identities, positionings and agency. This was an act of 'putting theory to work' (Lather, 2006, 2007) and invoked transgressive practices of academic discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Survey research was carried out with academics ( N=205), from a large regional Australian university, to explore their views about publishing or not publishing in refereed sources and their perceived worth of this activity. Several open-ended questions were included in the survey to elicit information about the factors that either encourage or discourage these academics from publishing. Additionally, questions were posed to allow the respondents to discuss ways that the University could further support them in their endeavour to produce at least some or more scholarly publications. The responses to these questions were content analysed to discover key categories and frequencies were calculated on the most salient categories. The results of this analysis are reported and comparisons are made on the responses of male and female academics. The implications of the results for higher educational practice are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]