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Ten Australians and one New Zealander provide reflections on the influence of Julie Thompson Klein's work on and in inter- and trans- disciplinarity. Even taking into account that this article is based on a small number of contributions from only one corner of the world, the reflections demonstrate the influence of a diverse array of Klein's academic work, the ground-breaking nature of her book "Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice," the meticulousness of her scholarship that makes her voice authoritative, and the added benefits of personal connections. The contributions also demonstrate the value of reflective narratives in providing a more rounded and richer picture of an academic's influence than traditional metrics, including -- in Julie Thompson Klein's case -- non-citable enhancement of thinking and orientation, catalytic effects when her ideas are combined with others, and practical value in making sense of events and circumstances. Most importantly, assembling reflective narratives provides a window onto the unique attributes and contributions of individual researchers, educators and practitioners, illustrating and affirming the richness of differences and the importance of valuing and capitalising on them. Recognition of such diversity is not only essential to help individuals identify the strongest contributions they can make, but also critical for good inter- and trans- disciplinary research, education and practice.

There are numerous calls in the literature for research into the flipped learning approach to match the flood of popular media articles praising its impact on student learning and educational outcomes. This paper addresses those calls by proposing pedagogical strategies that promote active learning in "flipped" approaches and improved practice of educational design in ICT supported learning environments. This paper makes two main contributions. It situates flipped learning strategies within a pedagogical framework, thus linking them to higher-level pedagogy. Additionally, it proposes an approach to both analysing and designing flipped learning strategies. This exploratory approach provides a guide for educators to map how their tactics fit amongst other instances of flipped learning. Examples of flipped learning approaches are provided to illustrate this mapping. The Flipped Learning Matrix, developed by this SoTL inquiry, is a tool for both critical reflection of existing approaches and course design, empowering the educator to design their own flipped version that is pedagogically sound and fit for purpose.

Programme evaluation is essential for quality assurance in education. In this paper, we describe our evaluation strategy for the first year of a new medical programme. Although we used multiple methods in the evaluation, the use of the focus group method was core. This paper reports our experiences of focus groups for this purpose. We describe the implementation of the strategy including the development of topic guides, interviewer training, respondent recruitment, record keeping, template production, transcription, analysis and reporting of results. Using interviewer notes and individual interviews with focus group interviewers and participants, we evaluated focus groups as a method in educational programme evaluation. Focus groups are the most important evaluation method in helping us measure the extent to which we have met the goals of the first year of our programme. Benefits include generating detailed information in a relatively short time. Focus groups are largely valued by participants and appear to be contributing to the development of an "evaluation culture" in our new medical school. They are also building our capacity and capability in qualitative research methods. Challenges include the human resource intensive nature of scheduling, transcribing, analysing and report writing. (Contains 2 tables.)

Abstract Background Mobile learning (ML) is an emerging educational method with success dependent on many factors including the ML device, physical infrastructure and user characteristics. At Gippsland Medical School (GMS), students are given a laptop at the commencement of their four-year degree. We evaluated the educational impact of the ML program from students' perspectives. Methods Questionnaires and individual interviews explored students' experiences of ML. All students were invited to complete questionnaires. Convenience sampling was used for interviews. Quantitative data was entered to SPSS 17.0 and descriptive statistics computed. Free text comments from questionnaires and transcriptions of interviews were thematically analysed. Results Fifty students completed the questionnaire (response rate 88%). Six students participated in interviews. More than half the students owned a laptop prior to commencing studies, would recommend the laptop and took the laptop to GMS daily. Modal daily use of laptops was four hours. Most frequent use was for access to the internet and email while the most frequently used applications were Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. Students appreciated the laptops for several reasons. The reduced financial burden was valued. Students were largely satisfied with the laptop specifications. Design elements of teaching spaces limited functionality. Although students valued aspects of the virtual learning environment (VLE), they also made many suggestions for improvement. Conclusions Students reported many educational benefits from school provision of laptops. In particular, the quick and easy access to electronic educational resources as and when they were needed. Improved design of physical facilities would enhance laptop use together with a more logical layout of the VLE, new computer-based resources and activities promoting interaction.