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This paper presents an evaluation of the inverted pendulum experiment in control engineering from a statistical and pedagogical point of view. Student usage statistics and success rates were collected over a period of three years at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. The results in the paper show that an online experiment can both increase student satisfaction and success rate while decreasing the costs to the university associated with a traditional laboratory setup. In particular, the number of laboratory benches has been reduced from seven to one. At the same time the number of laboratory contact hours for the course administrator was more than halved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities now have a lot to say about tertiary teaching. University policy, teaching units, and promotion criteria have a very specific understanding of good teaching within the academy. This case study of Queensland University of Technology (QUT) found that good teaching has two central features: it is necessarily student centred, and it is `innovative', a characteristic that, at QUT at least, is increasingly equated with the use of technology. This paper – based upon interviews with twenty-four QUT academics across three faculties (Education, Science, and Law), an analysis of QUT's teaching and learning policies, and some additional historical research – will suggest four things. First, that the concept of student centred learning, based on ideals of progressive education, is neither an historical inevitability nor theoretically unproblematic. Second, that irrespective of discipline, all lecturers espouse an underpinning `progressive' teaching philosophy, even though, in practice, teaching style appears to be determined primarily by subject-matter. Third, given that, in practice, the progressive model seems to suit some faculties and subject areas better than others (i.e. Education, as opposed to Science and Law) this has significant professional implications for the lecturers concerned. Finally, that rather than promoting a `progressive' pedagogy, the use of technology in teaching actually appears to reinforce traditional teaching techniques. Consequently, it is suggested that monolithic understandings of good teaching, when applied across the academy irrespective of context, are often inappropriate, ineffective and inequitous, and that universities need to think through their teaching policies and programmes more thoroughly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the methods and findings of the Student Focus Project, a sixmonth study of student perceptions of service at a large university in Brisbane, Australia. The study paneled 24 focus groups of undergraduate students to assess their beliefs about a pretested set of questions concerning positive and negative aspects of university life, successes and frustrations with university service, attempts to overcome the obstacles of university life, and what students expect from their relationship to the university. Of the themes identified in the Student Focus study, it was found that “malignant bureaucracy” and the “balkanization of Information” are systemic factors that negatively influence student perceptions of the quality of university service. It was also found that student strategies for service recovery can contribute to the overall confusion and poor performance of university services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]