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In 2005 the Australian Council for Computers in Education (ACCE) was successful in obtaining a grant from National Centre of Science, Information and Communication Technology and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia (SiMERR) to undertake the Computing Studies Teachers Network Rural and Regional Focus Project. The project had five components: (1) Computer Education Group (CEG) Rural and Regional Projects; (2) National Portal; (3) Exploration of New Technologies; (4) National Computing Studies Survey; and (5) National Summit. The goals of the Summit were: (1) increased awareness and understanding of how to ensure equity of learning outcomes for students of computing studies regardless of school or location; and (2) the publication of a discussion paper and recommendations for the future in relation to the issues around the use of technologies and appropriate pedagogies to deliver quality computing studies program to all students, particularly in rural and regional Australia. The goals were achieved by scoping the existing territory in relation to open/distance learning, sharing existing teacher exemplary practice, exploring relevant online delivery systems and appropriate pedagogies to support open/distance learning, showcasing possibilities for the future and, identifying and sharing resources. An integral part of the program was the opportunity for participants in small groups and at the plenary session to discuss issues raised by speakers and to share ideas and possible actions. An underlying current of the Summit was a concern for falling student participation rates in computing studies and how this may be addressed. This paper presents a summary of the major issues and possible actions that emerged during the Summit. They are grouped under the broad areas of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Curriculum Delivery, Resources, Teacher Professional Learning, Links to Industry and Tertiary Sector, and The Technology.

As we move further into the digital age, the acquisition of digital literacy (DL) and computational thinking (CT) skills is emerging internationally as an essential goal for students in contemporary school curricula. As the world becomes more uncertain and volatile due to impacts of artificial intelligence (AI), international unrest, climate change, global economic instability and unforeseen catastrophes such as the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, it is necessary to review, revise and refine school education curricula and policies. The issue of what is essential for students to learn, and how they learn it, is of growing importance to international organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and is emerging as a significant driver for educational reform across the globe. The growing prominence of CT and DL skills across many industry sectors has prompted recent changes to international assessment frameworks such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). This paper will briefly discuss specific examples of alternative approaches to addressing CT in national curricula for the compulsory years of schooling and explain how CT has been adopted as a driver for mathematics curriculum change in Australia.

The Centre for Schooling and Learning Technologies (CSaLT) at Edith Cowan University (ECU) was asked in 2016 to be the Western Australian arm of a national e-exam project. This project used a bespoke exam system installed on a USB-drive to deliver what would have been traditional paper-based exams in an enclosed computer-based environment that was isolated from the internet and any resources other than those provided by the lecturer. This paper looks at the two exams chosen by the Western Australian group for the trial; a programming exam for pre-service computing teachers and an occupational health and safety exam for pre-service design and technology teachers. Both groups were drawn from the Graduate Diploma in Education course at ECU. The paper looks at the nature of the exam environment and the procedure for creating e-exams. It also outlines the exam procedures used and examines the feedback provided by both the lecturers and students involved. Conclusions are drawn about the suitability of the e-exam system and improvements are recommended as well as a discussion about e-exams and digital assessment more generally.

Aim/Purpose: This paper focuses on understanding undergraduate computing student-learning behaviour through reviewing their online activity in a university online learning management system (LMS), along with their grade outcome, across three subjects. A specific focus is on the activity of students who failed the computing subjects. Background: Between 2008 and 2020 there has been a multiplicative growth and adoption of Learning Analytics (LA) by education institutions across many countries. Insights gained through LA can result in actionable implementations at higher institutions for the benefit of students, including refinement of curriculum and assessment regimes, teacher reflection, and more targeted course offerings. Methodology: To understand student activity, this study utilised a quantitative approach to analyse LMS activity and grade outcome data drawn from three undergraduate computing subjects. Data analysis focused on presenting counts and averages to show an understanding of student activity. Contribution: This paper contributes a practical approach towards LA use in higher education, demonstrating how a review of student activity can impact the learning design of the computing subjects. In addition, this study has provided a focus on poor performing students so that future offerings of the computing subjects can support students who are at risk of failure. Findings: The study found that: (1) Collecting data relating to student activity and analysing the activity is an important indicator of engagement, with cross referencing the data to grade outcome providing information to support modification to the learning design of the computing subjects (2) The computing subjects in this study all had the majority of the assessment marks awarded at the later part of the study period; (3) Students that fail subjects are active within the LMS for the period of the subject even when they submit no assessments; and (4) Assessment weight and the time of delivery could influence the out-comes Recommendations for Practitioners: The collection and analysis of student activity in the LMS can enable learning designers and practitioners to better reflect the subject design and delivery to provide more informed ways of delivering the learning material. Recommendation for Researchers: Collecting LA requires a thought-out process, designed well in advance of the teaching period. This study provides useful insight that can impact other researchers in the collection of assessment related analytics. Impact on Society: The cost of education is expensive to those that undertake it. Failing, although expected, potentially can be reduced by examining how education is designed, delivered, and assessed. The study has shown how information on how students are engaging has the potential to impact their outcomes. Future Research: Further work is needed to investigate whether intervention may assist the poor performing students to improve their grade outcomes relative to activity levels, subsequently impacting their retention.

An ongoing problem for teacher education institutions is bridging the gap between theory and practice and offering authentic experiences to challenge preservice teachers' pedagogical decision-making. Preservice practicums simulate teaching and can, at best, offer controlled experiences in familiar settings. This restricts the opportunities for preservice teachers to develop confidence in their own pedagogical decision-making and to adapt curriculum to meet unknown or unforeseen conditions. This paper describes, through a small-scale qualitative case study, a teaching experience in an unfamiliar setting, the persistent actions taken to respond to a specific context and the impact this had on preservice teacher knowledge and self-efficacy. The study found that preservice teacher self-efficacy can be scaffolded in real-world contexts provided sufficient planning, peer support and mentoring is available.

Education policy increasingly takes place across borders and sectors, involving a variety of both human and nonhuman actors. This comparative policy paper traces the 'policy mobilities,' 'fast policy' processes and distributed 'policy assemblages' that have led to the introduction of new computer programming practices into schools and curricula in England, Sweden and Australia. Across the three contexts, government advisors and ministers, venture capital firms, think tanks and philanthropic foundations, non-profit organizations and commercial companies alike have promoted computer programming in schools according to a variety of purposes, aspirations, and commitments. This paper maps and traces the evolution of the organizational networks in each country in order to provide a comparative analysis of computing in schools as an exemplar of accelerated, transnationalizing policy mobility. The analysis demonstrates how computing in schools policy has been assembled through considerable effort to create alignments between diverse actors, the production and circulation of material objects, significant cross-border movement of ideas, people and devices, and the creation of strategic partnerships between government centres and commercial vendors. Computing in schools exemplifies how modern education policy and governance is accomplished through sprawling assemblages of actors, events, materials, money and technologies that move across social, governmental and geographical boundaries.

Work integrated learning (WIL) has been the norm in disciplines such as medicine, teacher education and engineering; however, it has not been implemented until recently in statistics and not for every student in computer science education. There seems to be no literature on the use of WIL for data science education. With the changed focus of universities to making graduates "job ready", university-industry collaboration widened to encompass learning and teaching. Undoubtedly authentic problems coming from industry created opportunities for students to practice their future profession before graduation. This shift in the curriculum, however, brought its challenges both for the students and their lecturers. In this paper, we present a case study and propose an assessment framework for data science WIL.

In Australian universities, mathematics is often an essential core subject for disciplines such as engineering, information technology and science. These first-year mathematics subjects may have large enrolments of which a significant number fail the subject and repeat. While interventions to retain students are common, those who have failed before and are repeating the subject are often overlooked. In this paper, we undertook a statistical analysis based on demographic and performance data of six cohorts of students undertaking a first-year university-level mathematics subject. We found that pass rates for students on their second attempt were significantly lower than pass rates for students enrolled on their first attempt, and that age, degree enrolled in and pathway into university were predictors for who was more likely to repeat. Students in their second attempt were less likely to complete all assessment items and were more than twice as likely not to attend the final exam. We argue for an increased focus on and efforts targeting repeating students; that demographic data are used to predict students likely to repeat before they have failed a subject, and that this group of students, as well as those repeating, are supported to increase their chances to pass.

In this paper, we discuss the role of the educator in terms of designing a learning environment for the student which encourages the student to develop their own academic integrity. In such an environment, there is no need for the student to resort to plagiarism, as the learning and assessment tasks are not conducive to cheating, being unique and challenging for each student, regardless of the number of students enrolled in the particular course. We consider the learning design approach to assessment in the context of high-level vocational education. Educational resources are designed to support work-based knowledge and personal development capabilities. Educators assess to provide for professions, work contexts and individual learning needs. The major focus of this paper is discussion of the design of learning approaches and assessment tasks that disenable plagiarism and cheating, and promote problem-solving skills, academic integrity and creativity. (Contains 1 table.)

Fitts' Law is, more often than not, thought of as standard knowledge in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. However, in many occasions, interface components are being built by professionals with little or no knowledge of HCI principles (e.g., software menus are often being built by software developers with no designer input). How much appreciation of Fitts' Law exists among developers, and how does it affect our collaboration with them and the software they build and we use? To help answer this question, a survey among 65 designers and developers was conducted, as well as an analysis of the Computer Science undergraduate curricula from 94 internationally high-ranked universities. The contribution of this paper is twofold: firstly, treating Fitts' Law as an Open Educational Resource and, secondly, the analysis identified gaps that extend beyond HCI Education and fall in the sphere of Epistemology.

In this paper we have examined the position and roles of Computer Science in curricula in the light of recent calls for curriculum change and we have proposed principles and issues to consider in curriculum design as well as identifying priority areas for further research. The paper is based on discussions within and beyond the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) Education Community since 2012 as well as an analysis of curriculum developments in five different countries. Emerging themes have been discussed with reference to important perspectives from curriculum theory including "powerful knowledge" as a key element of entitlement and management of the growth of expertise. Based on this analysis we have identified areas of consensus as well as constraints, risks and issues that are still subject to controversy. There is an emerging consensus of the importance of Computer Science and the nature of its "powerful knowledge". Furthermore current understanding of the opportunities and benefits for starting to learn Computer Science early in primary schools has identified this early start as an entitlement and equity issue. There is a strong consensus that teacher professional development in Computer Science Education is critical for supporting curriculum change and is currently a major challenge in many countries. Other key issues include understanding how the growth of expertise affects potential structure and sequencing in the curriculum and the balance of content. Further considerations include how new technological opportunities interact with pedagogical approaches and can provide new potential for the growth of expertise.

The subject of computer science (CS) and computer science education (CSE) has relatively recently arisen as a subject for inclusion within the compulsory school curriculum. Up to this present time, a major focus of technologies in the school curriculum has in many countries been on applications of existing technologies into subject practice (both software such as office applications, and hardware such as robots and sensors). Through uses of these applications, information and communications technologies (ICT) have focused on activities to support subject and topic learning (across wide age and subject ranges). Very recently, discussions for including computers in the curriculum have shifted to a much greater focus on computing and CS, more concerned with uses of and development of programming, together with fundamental principles of problem-solving and creativity. This paper takes a policy analysis approach; it considers evidence of current implementation of CSE in school curricula, the six main arguments for wider-scale introduction of the subject, the implications for researchers, schools, teachers and learners, the state of current discussions in a range of countries, and evidence of outcomes of CSE in compulsory curricula. The paper concludes by raising key questions for the future from a policy analysis perspective.

Computer science has been a discipline for some years, and its position in the school curriculum has been contested differently in several countries. This paper looks at its role in three countries to illustrate these differences. A reconsideration of computer science as a separate subject both in primary and secondary education is suggested. At EDUsummIT 2015 it was argued that the major rationales for including computer science as a subject in the K-12 curriculum are economic, social and cultural. The paper explores these three rationales and also a beneficence matrix to assist curriculum designers. It also argues computer science is rapidly becoming critical for generating new knowledge, and should be taught as a distinct subject or content area, especially in secondary schools. The paper concludes by looking at some of the key questions to be considered when implementing computer science in the school curriculum, and at ways its role might change in the future.

This paper investigates computing students' entrepreneurial intentions, motivations, recognisable barriers and encouragements towards entrepreneurship, with a focus on gender. Two universities, one in Australia and one in the UK (n = 247), were used as locations for the research to consider two distinct contexts. In each university there were similarly high levels of interest in entrepreneurship among computing students, however some significant differences in responses were found, especially between male and female participants. Job flexibility was a strong motivation for the UK-based female participants; while female participants at the Australian university identified internal barriers (such as lack of confidence and experience). Enablers to entrepreneurial activity were identified, including access to incubators and academic support. Directing such support towards computing students, while recognising gender differences, could increase interest in, and take-up of, entrepreneurship. Recommendations are made regarding how universities can best support would-be entrepreneurs and encourage inclusive entrepreneurship into the future.

To support teachers to implement Computer Science curricula into classrooms from the very first year of school, teachers, schools and organisations seek quality curriculum resources to support implementation and teacher professional development. Until now, many Computer Science resources and outreach initiatives have targeted K-12 school-age children, with the intention to engage children and increase interest, rather than to formally teach concepts and skills. What is the educational quality of existing Computer Science resources and to what extent are they suitable for classroom learning and teaching? In this paper, an assessment framework is presented to evaluate the quality of online Computer Science resources. Further, a semi-systematic review of available online Computer Science resources was conducted to evaluate resources available for classroom learning and teaching and to identify gaps in resource availability, using the Australian curriculum as a case study analysis. The findings reveal a predominance of quality resources, however, a number of critical gaps were identified. This paper provides recommendations and guidance for the development of new and supplementary resources and future research.

A cluster of research has been conducted in higher education to investigate the affordances (action possibilities) and the influence information and communication technologies (ICT) may have on students' learning experiences and outcomes. Such studies have given rise to the implementation of a wide range of educational frameworks with a great deal of empirical evidence on the benefits of using technologies to improve learning. However, these benefits do not appear to have fulfilled higher education expectations for more meaningful and transformative learning experiences. In this paper, I argue that part of the problem is either the content or teacher-centric perspective of these frameworks and the need to explore the benefits from a more student-centric perspective. Learning is contextual, with learners having different abilities to learn and varying preferences for educational technologies with greater potential to facilitate their learning activities. Drawing on an ethnographic study of culturally diverse computing students and teachers within learning environments that blend online and face-to-face pedagogies, I argue that our understanding of what ICT has to offer for the design and implementation of transformative learning activities is a far more complex issue than is often anticipated, particularly in the design and implementation of learning for computer science programs.

Promoting engagement during lectures becomes significantly more challenging as class sizes increase. Therefore, lecturers need to experiment with new teaching methodologies to embolden deep learning outcomes and to develop interpersonal skills amongst students. Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning is a teaching approach that uses highly structured group work during lessons so that students construct content. Each group member takes on a role for which the other group members rely on, and then the group reports back to the class. This paper describes how group work was adapted for use in a large first year Information Systems course. Quantitative and qualitative results suggest that students are receptive to group work, as the approach creates a relaxed, friendly and trusting community that is typically not present in classes that use a didactic teaching style. We provide a discussion of lessons learned with regard to using group work in a large lecture theatre and give recommendations for how to improve interactivity amongst the class.

Flexible online delivery of tertiary ICT programs is experiencing rapid growth. Creating an online environment that develops team building and interpersonal skills is difficult due to factors such as student isolation and the individual-centric model of online learning that encourages discrete study rather than teamwork. Incorporating teamwork into classes can be problematic due to uneven effort of group members, getting everyone to participate and making sure everyone is actually contributing in the team. Despite this, employers still state that a key learning objective of ICT graduates is the ability to work in team environments as this mirrors work force requirements. This paper presents a discussion of preliminary findings from a pilot study to determine best practices for developing interpersonal skills for students while working in virtual groups using synchronous and asynchronous online technologies.

Collaboration is an increasingly important and difficult skill for graduate engineers to develop. While universities provide some measures of collaboration ability of students on graduation, there is still some dissatisfaction with the level of preparedness of students for collaborative activity in the workplace. This paper presents a case study of a first year engineering cohort of more than 350 students to discuss the value of improving both the measures and definitions of collaborative ability on graduation of engineering students in a blended learning context. Research methods from student approaches to learning research and social network analysis are adopted to provide experiential and mathematical evidence of successful collaboration. The results provide a characterization of groups of students with respect to their approach to collaboration and the features most common in productively collaborative students. The discussion has implications for teaching, course design, and how universities define and measure collaborative ability of students.

First year students face a daunting range of challenges as they make the transition to university life. Their experiences in the first months of university have a defining influence on their success or otherwise in their studies. The purpose of this paper is to report on the results of a case study that tests the efficacy of a student engagement and retention strategy aimed at first year students. The strategy encourages self-reflection and goal-setting by encouraging them to think constructively about their ideal future career. Once created, this idea is reinforced to become a firm goal. The student's perception of university study is thus reframed from being an end in itself to being a means to an end. Instead of perceiving the future as endless assignments and exams, they see themselves moving purposefully towards their ideal career. This paper, therefore, describes a three-stage case study that explores the effectiveness of this engagement strategy with a cohort of 258 demographically-diverse first-year ICT students en-rolled in a Bachelor of IT program. In the first stage of the strategy, the lecturer spends 20 minutes of the first four lectures presenting material across a range of cutting-edge technology topics. In addition to this, the characteristics of high-performing IT professionals are elucidated. The objective of this stage is to paint a picture of a creative, high-performing practitioner who is producing cutting-edge work. In the second stage, an assessment item is set in which the students explore their ideal career using a Web 2.0 digital curation tool; in the third stage, a series of three questionnaires are administered, the results of which are analysed to determine the students' attitude towards the engagement strategy. In the final analysis, 63.4% of students surveyed indicated that the exercise had helped them to become more committed to finishing their degree program. It is suggested that this strategy could be generalised to work with other disciplines besides information technology. The results are sufficiently encouraging for a formal follow-up study to be per-formed in two and a half years, when this cohort are nearing the end of their degree program, to determine what longer term effect the engagement and retention strategy might have had on the students' commitment to their study.

An applied Information Technology (IT) course that is assessed using pen and paper may sound incongruous but it is symptomatic of the state of high-stakes assessment in jurisdictions such as Western Australia. Whereas technology has permeated most aspects of modern life, including schooling, and more has been demanded of education systems in terms of outcomes and participation, methods of summative assessment have changed little and are seriously out of alignment with curriculum, pedagogy and the needs of individuals and society. This paper reports on an analysis of some of the data from a component of a study into the feasibility of using digital technologies to achieve greater authenticity in summative performance assessment in the Applied Information Technology (AIT) course in Western Australian secondary schools. In the first phase of the study a sample of 115 students completed a digital portfolio and a computer-based exam that were both externally assessed using online tools and by two methods of marking, with the results analysed using Rasch modelling software. A traditional analytical method and a comparative pairs method of marking were investigated. The study found that both the digital portfolio and computer-based exam were implemented without significant technical difficulty and were well accepted by the students and teachers. The work output in digital form was readily accessed from an online repository by external markers using a standard web browser. The two methods of marking provided highly reliable scores, with those from the comparative pairs method being the more reliable. A number of questions of validity and manageability were raised and the strengths and weaknesses of the two forms of assessment revealed. It was concluded that it was feasible to implement either form of assessment for high-stakes purposes, with a resulting improvement in alignment and authenticity. (Contains 5 tables and 3 figures.)

Higher education programs need to prepare their graduates for the practical challenges they can expect to face upon entering the workforce. Students can be better prepared if their academic learning is reinforced through authentic workplace experience, where the link between theory and professional practice can be realized. Increasingly, such learning in the workplace is being seen as an integral part of the university curricula as evidenced through the implementation of the Learning the Workplace & Community (LiWC) Policy at Victoria University, Australia. This policy mandates a minimum of 25% content and assessment of all academic programs be related to work-integrated learning. Recognizing the need for authentic workplace experience in the IT undergraduate program, a review found that the existing work-related learning component accounted for only half the required 25% LiWC commitment. Currently, the LiWC component is an industry-based capstone project that spans two semesters in the final year of study. These projects allow students to work on real-life software development tasks where they experience the practical challenges of building software systems whilst appreciating the needs of a business client. In a search of the literature, campus-located industry projects were identified as one of the two most common work-related learning experiences in IT programs, the other being internships sited in the workplace. By retaining the current project-based component, it was decided to add an internship to the program to further bolster the student learning experience and graduate outcomes. This paper details the existing program structure and explores two possible implementations for the achievement of the LiWC policy. The first approach necessitates the addition of one academic year of cooperative education internship to be placed strategically between the current second and third years. Alternatively, the second proposal sacrifices several elective units to accommodate a final semester internship experience. The paper discusses both alternatives against various issues under consideration: staffing and administration, assessment, industry partnerships, professional accreditation and its impact upon differing cohorts of students. (Contains 3 figures.)

This paper reports on an exploratory investigation of the perceptions of information and communication technology (ICT) as a field of study and work in German secondary schools. A total of 160 students from five secondary schools in Lower Saxony participated in the study in February 2007, and four teachers of the students were interviewed. The investigation is part of the research carried out by the authors within the Griffith University Women in Information Technology (WinIT) project, which has been studying the problem of low female participation since 1995. In this paper we discuss German school students' (male and female) and their teachers' views of ICT, its use at school and home, their influences in using technology, and their ideas about working with technology in the future. We drew on the challenges faced and opportunities available to teachers in the study to put this in context. We found that many senior secondary students have not decided what they want to do when they finish school, suggesting that the environment is ripe for them to receive relevant and useful information that may help them to choose to study tertiary ICT courses. By dispelling negative ICT perceptions and allowing students to make an informed choice as to whether to take up a career in ICT, we can hopefully encourage more students into this ever-growing and exciting industry. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

A new classification system for computing education papers is presented and applied to every computing education paper published between January 2004 and January 2007 at the two premier computing education conferences in Australia and New Zealand. We find that while simple reports outnumber other types of paper, a healthy proportion of papers address and answer a research question. We find that more papers deal with programming courses than with other courses, and that more than half of all publications are situated in single subjects. To the extent that differing circumstances permit, we compare our results with those of an earlier study of the SIGCSE conference, and find that the Australasian publications include fewer simple reports and more papers describing analysis and experiment. We note a reasonable number of publications on multi-institutional work, which we interpret as evidence of a sense of computing education community within Australia and New Zealand. (Contains 5 figures and 5 tables.)

While most Information Systems (IS) professionals spend much of their time in the implementation or management of projects, the curriculum of university Information Technology (IT) courses does not always reflect this. While most university IT courses cover some aspects of project management, some do not go into this topic in any depth, and many make this a wholly theoretical exercise, particularly at the postgraduate level. We have found that students, even postgraduate students, often lack a practical frame of reference and so if the material is presented only in a theoretical manner, some of the nuances of project management issues escape them. In the paper we describe and advocate a practical approach to teaching IT Project Management to postgraduate business students from many different disciplines. In particular, we advocate the construction of student assignments designed to make use of project management software to handle the on-going management of projects as well as project planning, the use of online student exercises, and student class presentations as a way of achieving this. The paper outlines the approach used at Victoria University and relates some of the student feedback we have received. The paper is set out in five sections: (1) The Importance of IT Project Management. In this section we examine the importance of this subject area and the need to include it in postgraduate IT and other business courses; (2) Teaching IT Project Management Concepts. Next we discuss some of the teaching concepts and issues involved in relation to a learning model; (3) IT Project Management Subject Structure. This section describes the subject "IT Project Management" taught at Victoria University, detailing the content and the assignments. (4) Student Evaluation. Surveys have been conducted at the end of each semester for the last three semesters on what students thought of the subject and what they thought they had learned. This section describes and analyses this student feedback; and (5) Conclusion. Our approach to teaching "IT Project Management" involves both lectures and practical assignments. It gives particular stress to the use of project management software to plan, monitor and control a project. We conclude that it works well with both postgraduate IT and general business students.

Computer Science (CS) curricula are being adopted worldwide. However, the lack of prior teaching training within this area means that we have an urgent need to provide teacher professional development. Best practice teacher professional development motivates us to construct interactive and sustainable models of professional development. However, there are challenges in doing this at the scale that we need and with the resources that are available. In this paper, we describe an ecosystem-based approach to supporting teacher professional development, aligned with best practices and with teachers' and schools' needs. An ecosystem approach operates under the coordination of a governance model, features a central hub and conceptualises the relationships of the organisations as a network. Ecosystems are underpinned by value co-creation, shared logic and can be non-geographical. We believe an ecosystem view of a teacher professional development program supports sustainability, authenticity and flexibility in how teachers engage with professional development, positioning teachers as co-contributors.

For most students assessment guides their study and learning practice. Yet in the literature associated with the first year of study at university, few have mobilised the power of assessment to develop and engage first year undergraduate students. This paper presents a model of assessment for first year students which separates the semester into three overlapping assessment phases: assessment for transition, assessment for development and assessment for achievement. The implementation and usefulness of the model is supported by examples from mathematics, engineering, computing, communication and nursing studies at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). Particular attention is paid to assessments for transition which occur early in the semester and are linked more closely with processes than specific content. Evidence is collated on the success of assessments in improving the participation of students, especially distance education students.

Purpose: This paper narrates a case study on design thinking-based education work in an industrial design honours program. Student projects were developed in a multi-disciplinary setting across a Computing and Engineering faculty that allowed promoting technologically and user-driven innovation strategies. Design/methodology/approach: A renewed culture and environment for industrial design (ID) students emphasised seeking functionality and fidelity, user and society value over beauty and form factors alone. The pedagogical approach sought to determine the new industrial products reality with an increasing contribution by design thinking, and its associated methodologies that are currently advancing typical ID. Findings: In conclusion, the authors propose a number of reflections as recommendations, which may be useful for educational institutions contemplating similar curriculum makeovers to their design degrees. Originality/value: Our research provides valuable lessons to other design courses that wish to invigorate their curriculum with technical and design thinking-based advances.

Computer science, like technology in general, is seen as a masculine field and the under-representation of women an intransigent problem. In this paper, we argue that the cultural belief in Australia that computer science is a domain for men results in many girls and women being chased away from that field as part of a border protection campaign by some males--secondary school teachers, boys and men playing games online and young men on campus at university. We draw on American feminist philosopher, Iris Marion Young's analysis of the "five faces" of oppression to suggest strategies whereby Australian universities could support women in computer science and educate men about respectful behaviour and gender equity.

This paper is based on a study into the social and ethical implications of computer education in secondary schools in Queensland (Australia). The relationship between computer technology and philosophy is discussed; three curriculum orientations are described--(1) vocational, (2) liberal, and (3) socially critical; and a socially critical orientation for computer education is advocated. (20 references) (LRW)

There is a need for outreach programs to attract a diverse range of students to the computing discipline. The lack of qualified computing graduates to fill the growing number of computing vacancies is of concern to government and industry and there are few female students entering the computing pipeline at high school level. This paper presents three outreach programs that have the underlying assumption that students need to be reminded about the creativity and potential of computing so that it remains on the radar of their future career options. Each program instigated social and cultural change through a paradigm shift where girls moved from being ICT consumers to ICT creators. By exposing students to a wide variety of ICT activities and careers during secondary schooling, they were more likely to consider studying information systems, computer science or any other computing course at the university level. Results are presented showing student attitudinal changes as well as observed increases in enrolments at secondary school and university courses.

This paper describes the design of teaching and learning activities (TLAs) in an entrepreneurship subject offered to Information Technology (IT) students. We describe the challenges that we have encountered. Within one teaching semester, the students are expected to achieve a high level of applied knowledge in an area where they have little theoretical knowledge. We introduce TLAs that are not common in an IT curriculum. These TLAs use experience as the basis of knowledge, collaboration as the focus of learning and a reflective approach to structuring knowledge. We identify our rationale for using these new TLAs to achieve the intended learning outcomes for the subject based on the existing literature. To evaluate the effectiveness of our design, we conducted an annual survey. The results of the survey support our design. Student feedback surveys and end of course assessment results indicate that the new TLAs have enhanced the students' learning.

Graduate employability has become an issue since there are broad mismatches between the acquired graduate skills from university and the required skills by employers. While previous researches have outlined the salient skills that need to be embedded in graduate education, to date no studies have attempted to methodically identify and synthesize the literature on graduate attributes. In this paper a total of 39 relevant studies on graduate skills and attributes in the subject areas of business and management, accounting, and computer science were extracted from Scopus® (database). This revealed a total of 53 graduate attributes, with some being highly used, such as communication, teamwork, problem solving, technological skills, creativity, interpersonal skills, leadership skills, self-management and flexibility/adaptability. The majority of studies used a quantitative survey method to collect and rank graduate attributes, and Australia emerged as the most active country in researching the domain.

Programming is a subject that many beginning students find difficult. The PHP Intelligent Tutoring System (PHP ITS) has been designed with the aim of making it easier for novices to learn the PHP language in order to develop dynamic web pages. Programming requires practice. This makes it necessary to include practical exercises in any ITS that supports students learning to program. The PHP ITS works by providing exercises for students to solve and then providing feedback based on their solutions. The major challenge here is to be able to identify many semantically equivalent solutions to a single exercise. The PHP ITS achieves this by using theories of Artificial Intelligence (AI) including first-order predicate logic and classical and hierarchical planning to model the subject matter taught by the system. This paper highlights the approach taken by the PHP ITS to analyse students' programs that include a number of program constructs that are used by beginners of web development. The PHP ITS was built using this model and evaluated in a unit at the Queensland University of Technology. The results showed that it was capable of correctly analysing over 96% of the solutions to exercises supplied by students.

England and Australia have introduced new learning areas, teaching computer science to children from the first year of school. This is a significant milestone that also raises a number of big challenges: the preparation of teachers and the development of resources" at a national scale." Curriculum change is not easy for teachers, in any context, and to ensure teachers are supported, scaled solutions are required. One educational approach that has gained traction for delivering content to large-scale audiences are massively open online courses (MOOCs); however, little is known about what constitutes effective MOOC design, particularly within professional development contexts. To prepare teachers in Australia, we decided to ride the wave of MOOCs, developing a MOOC to deliver free computing content and pedagogy to teachers with the integration of social media to support knowledge exchange and resource building. The MOOC was designed to meet teacher needs, allowing for flexibility, ad-hoc interactions, support and the open sharing of resources. In this paper, we describe the process of developing our initiative, participant engagement and experiences, so that others encountering similar changes and reforms may learn from our experience.

This paper reports on a series of introductory programming workshops, initially targeting female high school students, which utilised Lego Mindstorms robots. Cognitive load theory (CLT) was applied to the instructional design of the workshops, and a controlled experiment was also conducted investigating aspects of the interface. Results indicated that a truncated interface led to better learning by novice programmers as measured by test performance by participants, as well as enhanced shifts in self-efficacy and lowered perception of difficulty. There was also a transfer effect to another programming environment (Alice). It is argued that the results indicate that for novice programmers, the mere presence on-screen of additional (redundant) entities acts as a form of tacit distraction, thus impeding learning. The utility of CLT to analyse, design and deliver aspects of computer programming environments and instructional materials is discussed.

This paper describes a course in programmable logic design and computer architecture as it is taught at the University of Newcastle, Australia. The course is designed around a major design project and has two supplemental assessment tasks that are also described. The context of the Computer Engineering degree program within which the course is taught is presented, and some student outcomes are discussed. (Contains 2 tables, 4 figures and 1 footnote.)

While the ready-made Lego[TM] Robotics kits are popular in schools and are used by students at both primary and secondary year levels, using the Picaxe microcontroller (chip) to create simple electronic devices, including robotic devices is less popular. The latter imposes an additional challenge as a result of the need to construct the universal board with the chip in it--a challenge embraced in the cross-disciplinary mechatronics program in this study. This paper reports on how teachers from five Australian secondary schools put into practice technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) developed from expert-led workshops and explores factors (intrinsic and extrinsic) that influenced the implementation. The results show that different strategies were adopted by the schools in implementing the programs. While teacher attitude played an important role in influencing the program's success, being able to identify where the program sits within the curriculum and planning around timetable and facility constraints were also important factors to consider. The research indicated that teachers' TPCK was most challenged in non-obvious areas such as diagnosing where faulty soldering joints were.

Contributing student pedagogy (CSP) builds upon social constructivist and community-based learning principles to create engaging and productive learning experiences. What makes CSP different from other, related, learning approaches is that it involves students both learning from and also explicitly valuing the contributions of other students. The creation of such a learning community builds upon established educational psychology that encourages deep learning, reflection and engagement. Our school has recently completed a review and update of its curriculum, incorporating student content-creation and collaboration into the design of key courses across the curriculum. Our experiences, based on several years of experimentation and development, support CSP-based curriculum design to reinforce the value of the student perspective, the clear description of their own transformative pathway to knowledge and the importance of establishing student-to-student networks in which students are active and willing participants. In this paper, we discuss the tools and approaches that we have employed to guide, support and structure student collaboration across a range of courses and year levels. By providing an account of our intentions, our approaches and tools, we hope to provide useful and transferrable knowledge that can be readily used by other academics who are considering this approach. (Contains 6 tables and 5 figures.)

An important aspect of education is to promote higher-order thinking skills to learners. However, in the lecture environment, learners are passively engaged and it is unlikely for higher-order thinking to occur. Although interventions such as "clickers" can be used to increase engagement in lectures, this does not necessarily promote higher-order thinking. Approaches such as collaborative learning are better suited for this but there is little room to use such methods in the short time frame of a lecture. With recent advances in the capabilities of smart mobile devices and their growing penetration rate among the student cohort, it is possible to take advantage of these devices to design a system to promote higher-order thinking skills in the lecture environment. We present the design of a mobile-app-based collaborative learning system named "myVote" and a process for its usage. Our aim is to present a theoretical paper that discusses the relevant learning theories used in designing the system as well as describe a process to use the system to achieve collaborative learning at varying levels of thinking. We demonstrate the usefulness and flexibility of the system through three scenarios involving different levels of thinking, ranging from lower- to higher-order. Although the scenarios are in the context of IT education, the system is versatile enough to be adapted for education in general and also non-educational settings, such as business-like environments. Our contribution is a framework for using mobile apps and collaborative learning theories within a lecture environment to encourage higher-order thinking in learners. Although a potential limitation of the system is that it may not be appropriate for teaching more technical IT materials, such as programming and SQL code snippets, the problem can be recasted in a different format such as pseudocode in order to facilitate teaching in these areas. (Contains 4 figures and 1 table.)

Recent surveys of information technology management professionals show that understanding business domains in terms of business productivity and cost reduction potential, knowledge of different vertical industry segments and their information requirements, understanding of business processes and client-facing skills are more critical for Information Systems personnel than ever before. In an attempt to restructure the information systems curriculum accordingly, our view is that information systems students need to develop an appreciation for organizational work systems in order to understand the operation and significance of information systems within such work systems. Work systems are systems in which human participants and/or machines perform work to produce products and/or services for internal or external customers. This view stresses that systems in organizations involve more than an IT system (such as a data warehouse or an accounting application). The work system method has been designed to assist in developing an understanding of work systems in organizations. The method describes an adaptable set of steps that an analyst can use to identify a work system, clarify problems, issues, and opportunities related to that work system, identify possible directions for change, and produce and justify a recommendation. To date, the use of the work system method in information systems curricula has demonstrated that postgraduate students can benefit from this approach when examining a business situation involving an information system. To contrast the experiences of post-graduate students with work experiences, in this paper we report on use of a simplified version of the Work System Method in a freshman Information Systems course and study how students without work or technical knowledge performed when analyzing IT-reliant work systems in business settings. We reflect on an introductory information systems course that included a work system analysis assignment, and we examine the reports produced by students as well as the learning outcomes and challenges. Our analysis reveals that undergraduates can benefit from analyzing IT-reliant work systems through the work system method. Their analyses tend to reflect their lack of business background, but doing these analyses can help as a first step toward appreciating the business situations in which information systems are used. We present a series of implications for improving the class experience related to teaching work system ideas and including IT-reliant work systems as an essential part of an introductory information systems course. These implications relate to clarifying the scope of a work system analysis, providing examples of successful as well as unsuccessful analyses for guidance, providing relevant analysis templates, succinctly defining terminology and assisting in emphasizing the differences between technologies, work systems, and organizations. Perusing these recommendations, our work demonstrates how information systems students can start developing a holistic understanding of information technology in use in corporate organizations at a very early stage of their learning process. (Contains 1 figure and 7 tables.)

Based on a three-semester design research study, this paper argues the need to redesign online learning environments to better support the representation and sharing of factual, procedural, and conceptual knowledge in order for students to develop their design capabilities. A web-conferencing environment is redesigned so that the modalities facilitate more socio-constructivist pedagogies whereby students co-construct knowledge and share their design thinking. The design-based research methodology explicates how redesign not only allowed more effective student representation and sharing of the different levels of knowledge required for abstraction to occur, but also enabled better teacher assessment and, hence, remediation. On the basis of the emerging findings of the study a set of principles for designing web-conferencing (or other online) environments to support creative design learning is proposed. (Contains 3 figures.)

This study reports the findings of an investigation of the factors influencing the use and usefulness of wikis in an introductory, undergraduate information systems course. Informed by the media choice, technology acceptance model from information systems research, and group collaborative learning research from the education literature, a survey instrument was developed and administered across the entire course. The study found that wiki use was influenced by the student's prior expertise with wikis, with their perceived usefulness of wikis being strongly influenced by their teachers' attitudes towards the technology, and the ease of access to the wikis. The students' overall attitude towards wikis was largely influenced by the extent to which they saw wikis as helping with their assignment work, and their intention to use wikis in the future was driven by their perception of wiki's usefulness. The paper concludes with an outline of the lessons learned from the study and recommendations for instructors who are thinking of using wikis in their teaching. (Contains 5 tables.)

This paper reports on one part of the first year of a three-year study into the feasibility of using digital technologies to represent the output from practical assessment tasks in senior secondary courses. The aim was to improve the alignment of assessment with pedagogy and curriculum. Students in seven classes studying the "Applied Information Technology" (AIT) course in Western Australia completed a digital portfolio and a computer-based exam for assessment. All student work was placed into an online repository to be accessed by external markers through a standard web browser. These were marked using a traditional analytical method and a paired comparisons method. Generally the portfolio was implemented without technical difficulty and for the exam only sound recording provided some difficulty. Both methods of marking provided reliable scores with the paired comparisons method being the more reliable. Students and teachers indicated a preference for assessment at a computer whether to create a portfolio or complete an exam. (Contains 3 tables and 3 figures.)

Lack of accessibility in the design of e-learning courses continues to hinder students with vision impairment. E-learning materials are predominantly vision-centric, incorporating images, animation, and interactive media, and as a result students with acute vision impairment do not have equal opportunity to gain tertiary qualifications or skills relevant to the marketplace and their disability. Due to its logical, rather than physical, nature IT help desk and network administration roles are ideal for people who are blind. This paper describes the development of a fully accessible e-learning environment to deliver advanced IT network curriculum to adults with acute vision disabilities. The components include a virtual classroom, accessible learning materials, a remote computer laboratory, and delivery of the learning materials by vision impaired instructors. Industry standard courses in advanced IT were redeveloped, and the accessible on-line learning environment was developed to deliver the courses. Vision impaired students who excelled in the pilot project were trained as instructors, gaining industry-standard instructor certifications. These instructors were used to assist with the design of accessible methods and delivered the materials to the vision impaired students. The project has been operational for four years with a pilot project being conducted over a two year period, followed by the delivery of the courses both local and remote vision impaired students across the globe using this accessible e-learning environment for the past two years. Evaluation results indicate that vision impaired students situated both locally and remotely gained equivalent grades to their sighted counterparts given additional time to comprehend and experiment via the virtual classroom and remote computer laboratory. In addition, the use of vision impaired instructors has resulted in more innovative approaches to accessible teaching methods and delivery of the curriculum. (Contains 4 tables.)

This paper reports on the findings from a quantitative research study into the use of a software tool that was built to support a part-complete solution method (PCSM) for the learning of computer programming. The use of part-complete solutions to programming problems is one of the methods that can be used to reduce the cognitive load that students experience during their learning. The tool that was built is a code restructuring tool known as CORT. It permits the display of a part-complete solution to a programming task together with a set of possible lines of code that can be used to "fill-in" the solution. Students can then easily manipulate the programming lines within CORT and then test their solutions within a traditional development environment such as Microsoft's Visual Studio. An inquiry into CORT's effect on student learning outcomes took place over a period of 14 weeks at an Australian university. Two student groups participated in an introductory programming unit, one of which utilized the CORT system whilst the other acted as a control group. Data were collected on student background, time taken to complete programming tasks, the amount of help that students required, and student learning outcomes. The data were analysed using a statistical package, and it was found that there was no significant difference in the relative levels of achievement between students in the two groups. However the results did indicate that students in the CORT group spent significantly less time and required significantly less help than the students in the control group. This suggests that if the CORT students had spent extra time on further programming tasks such that their overall time had been equal to that of the non-CORT students, then they may have achieved higher learning outcomes. Also the fact that the CORT students required less help than the control group suggests that the use of CORT might be beneficial to students studying programming in external mode where access to tutor help is more problematic. The data were also analysed to determine if there were any differences with respect to student achievement between the sub-groups of: previous achievement level; age; computer literacy level; previous programming experience; and gender. The analysis revealed that the CORT students who were either younger, only moderately computer literate, or without any previous programming experience, performed at a lower level than their non-CORT counterparts in reading and comprehending computer programs. This might be because these sub-groups have ill-developed mental models of program execution and therefore have greater difficulty comprehending code. It suggests that such students completed their programs relatively quickly with CORT, with less experimentation, and that this hindered their mental model development. (Contains 25 tables and 6 figures.)

This paper presents findings from the SiMERR National Survey concerning the need priorities of secondary ICT teachers for professional development, resources and student learning experiences. The findings--drawn from a survey of 237 secondary ICT teachers across Australia--provide an opportunity to compare the needs of teachers working in metropolitan, provincial and remote schools. The study found that vacant ICT positions are difficult to fill and that the novel and dynamic nature of ICT requires teachers to have more extensive opportunities for on-the-job training, collegial collaboration and mentoring than is the case for teachers of more traditional subjects like science and mathematics. The study also found that ICT teachers are commonly required to manage and maintain ICT resources and to assist other staff to use ICT resources, while being allocated insufficient time in which to do these additional activities. The implications of these and other findings are discussed along with recommendations to help address the needs of ICT teachers in different parts of Australia. (Contains 7 tables, 7 figures, and 3 footnotes.)

Considering the increasing importance of enterprise systems in business, and their pedagogical value in demonstrating business process orientation and concepts of integration, several universities have incorporated popular enterprise system (ES) software products such as SAP R/3 into their business school curricula. This paper describes an attempt at that integration and reports on the evaluation of the curriculum design and instructional strategies employed and the perceived knowledge gain. Based on the self-assessment of students' knowledge and students' perception of various aspects of the curriculum design and delivery, the effectiveness of the course was analysed. Analysis revealed that the students had perceived a significantly higher level of knowledge gain during the course on the knowledge domains such as implementation of enterprise systems and SAP software skills than on others such as interface knowledge and management knowledge. Expansion of the curriculum to enhance the depth of the SAP skills, more guest lectures to bring real-world experiences into the class room, integrated project that requires application of conceptual as well as technical (software) skills of students, more case studies that deal with post-implementation issues, better alignment of this course curriculum with other pre-requisite courses, and improvement in the knowledge of academic staff and their access to students are some of the potential improvements emerging from this study. The study also noted significant differences between Commerce and Information Technology (IT) students with IT students more satisfied with the course than the Commerce students. (Contains 7 tables.)

Year-long team projects with external clients provide a well recognized opportunity for students to gain industry experience, whilst being supported and guided by staff to minimize risks. Each group should be supervised to ensure that they have enough direction and confidence to approach a new problem of significant size, without being daunted. A structure is needed that is flexible and adaptable to suit various institutional cultures but, at the same time, provides the safety net to ensure that success is likely. This paper presents a reflective analysis of teaching at three different institutions and presents the resulting distilled wisdom of experience that has produced a structured framework for capstone project units. The proposed structure is scalable to any class size and portable across institutions and potentially across technical disciplines. The structure leads to team student projects that are successfully engaging and provide excellent experience toward producing work-ready graduates. The structure is flexible in design so that the teaching workload does not increase too much as class sizes increase, but students are still well supported with appropriate scaffolding and mentoring. We detail the key factors in our framework: careful project selection, appropriate sign posts, and helpful guides that together improve upon overall project success. We argue that students need appropriate projects, "good" clients, and a well formed team. The sign posts support students through the "uncharted waters" of ill-defined problem-based learning. Sign posts include: deliverables, deadlines, team notebook, progress reports, and accountable time-tracking. Helpful guides spread the teaching workload broadly: relying on cultural expectations, technology, team supervisor, feedback, and clear marking guidelines. This structure has been successfully implemented in at least three different universities in Australia and several remote partner teaching sites in different countries over many years. We have provided case study examples of implementations in three different Australian Universities: a large urban university (The University of Melbourne), a small urban university (Victoria University) and a regional university (The University of Ballarat). Students benefit from such an experience in their final stages of an undergraduate computing degree. The scaffolding and support provided by the structure enables students to improve their skills in technical development, communication, team work, project management and client negotiation. The project unit provides opportunities for independent self directed learning and realistic experiences in an environment that allows for experiential learning. Students are engaged when working with real problems for real industry clients. Our student feedback supports our view that students' confidence in their ability to manage a project is enhanced through their project experience. Based on our own observations and anecdotal feedback, we believe that our students benefit and are helped to become "industry ready" graduates through the learning experienced in the capstone project course. This same structure could be used successfully in similar programs. We would encourage others to consider adapting this framework to their institutional context, as we have collectively found it a positive model to help us manage the considerable workload in offering successful year long undergraduate software projects with clients. (Contains 2 tables.)

This paper reports preliminary work in an ARC Linkage Project involving collaboration among James Cook University, Education Queensland, and Technology One (a Queensland based company). The project aims to identify and interpret factors associated with low female participation rates in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) professional level occupations and education pathways. Data is being collected using qualitative and quantitative methods. A survey is being administered to over 6,000 year 11 and 12 female high school students in Queensland to provide a comprehensive database that will be augmented with individual and focus group interviews. An online survey will be administered to women working in ICT industries. Reference groups representing EQ and ICT industries have been established to provide consultative advice and feedback throughout the project, and to function as working groups during the data analysis and interpretation phases. Project results will inform the development of strategic response options for education systems and ICT industries and suggest further research and industry-based initiatives designed to enhance female participation rates. (Contains 2 endnotes.)