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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.

Assessment of student learning is a crucial part of quality work—integrated learning (WIL), yet presents some significant challenges for WIL practitioners. Assessment of WIL differs to assessment in classroom based courses because of the complexities of assessing the more holistic nature of learning in WIL, as well as (in many cases) managing the involvement of an external partner in the assessment process. This paper investigates academic workload implications of WIL assessment for staff at an Australian university. Over two years 34 WIL courses were surveyed, with 30 staff interviewed over a wider three—year period. Analysis of survey data reveals assessment of student learning is the largest single contributor to academic workload in WIL courses, with qualitative data providing some insight into the reasons for this. This paper reports findings from the study, noting implications and recommendations for practice, policy and future research.

"We have too many first-year statistics students but too few who choose to major in statistics" is a common complaint among academics in the discipline of statistics, and our department is no exception. Many non-statistics academics appreciate the value of statistics to their discipline and include at least one statistics unit in their required units. However, students in such units often do not see the use of statistics within their discipline or the importance of learning statistics or quantitative skills in general, despite the current shortage of statisticians and deluge of data to be analysed. Our student numbers decline sharply by years of study, from first to second and from second to third. A handful of students who decide to major in statistics or decision science find themselves in high demand. In early 2016, just before the first semester started, we ran an event for the previous year's successful first-year statistics students to encourage more students to choose statistics or decision science as a second major in addition to their existing majors. We worked with our alumni so that the second-year students heard talks mainly by people like them instead of like us -- their lecturers. We called this event 'Statistics: Your Ticket to Anywhere'. In this paper, we describe how we structured the event, its outcomes for the department, and how it helped us to "unveil the curtain" and to show the value of statistics to the students in their chosen fields of study.

Objective: As a strategy for the identification and treatment of individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN), we sought to reduce stigmatising attitudes concerning AN among members of their potential social network. Design: Three forms of stigma were focused upon: traditional, positive volitional and negative volitional. Stigmatising attitudes were captured at baseline, and after the first and second interventions. Setting: Male and female undergraduates at a university in Australia. Method: In all, 122 undergraduate students were randomly allocated into two groups where via videos one group received information about AN from a medical professional (education) followed by a person who has recovered from AN presenting her experiences (contact). The second group received a contact then education intervention. Results: Repeated measures ANOVA showed that participants' volitional stigma was lesser than at baseline following the presentation of the first intervention for both education and contact. However, levels of traditional stigma did not significantly differ. Contact was more effective in reducing positive volitional stigma than education for men, but both were equally effective for women. Conclusion: Study findings provides support for the value of using video-based interventions to change attitudes to stigmatised conditions and demonstrated that education and contact intervention strategies were effective in reducing stigmatising attitudes towards AN in university students.

Opening Real Science (ORS) is a three-year government initiative developed as part of the Mathematics and Science Teachers program. It is a collaboration across universities involving teacher educators, scientists, mathematicians, statisticians and educational designers aimed at improving primary and secondary pre-service teachers' competence and confidence in mathematics and science. The ORS project has developed 25 online learning modules for pre-service teacher programs. Statistical literacy is prioritised. The Statistical Literacy Module for Primary Teachers (SL-P) adopts an inquiry-based approach and uses resources and contexts relevant to their practice. This paper documents the development and evaluation process of SL-P from its conception to implementation, and reviews the initial trials.

This discussion will summarize the two papers presented (Stern et al 2012; Baglin et al 2012) in 2012 IASE Roundtable Conference – “Technology in Statistics Education: Virtualities and Realities” – in Cebu, Philippines and the following discussions that took place after the presentations. In the last section a list of recommendations on learning and teaching and research will be provided.

The aim of the current study was to provide evidence that an abbreviated version of the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) was invariant across different languages and educational contexts in measuring university students' learning approaches to statistics. Data were collected on samples of university students attending undergraduate introductory statistics courses in five countries (Argentina, Italy, Australia, Turkey, and Vietnam). Using factor analysis, we confirmed the three-factor (Deep, Surface, and Strategic approach) model holds across the five samples, and we provided evidence of configural and measurement invariance. The current version of the ASSIST for statistics learners is a suitable scale for researchers and teachers working in the field of statistics education and represents promising tool for multinational studies on approaches to learning statistics.

Work-integrated learning (WIL) courses can be more time consuming and resource intensive to design, teach, administer and support than classroom-based courses, as they generally require different curricula and pedagogical approaches as well as additional administrative and pastoral responsibilities. Workload and resourcing issues are reported as key challenges to the implementation of WIL, but most of the evidence to date is anecdotal. Accurately quantifying workload associated with WIL is difficult, because teaching and administrative roles can be so interconnected. To address this gap in the literature and inform institutional practice, a study was initiated at an Australian university to collect empirical data on the type and amount of work involved in delivering WIL courses. This paper describes the process of survey development, including literature review, extensive consultation phase and pilot study, all of which had to take account of the inherent power dynamics, politics and sensitivities around measuring staff workload.

Higher education institutions typically express the quality of their degree programs by describing the qualities, skills, and understanding their students possess upon graduation. One promising instructional design approach to facilitate institutions' efforts to deliver graduates with the appropriate knowledge and competencies is curriculum mapping. To support the complex activity of curriculum mapping and to address existing problems associated with current practices around unit guides, that many Australian higher education institutions are developing unit guide information systems (UGISs). This study examines factors influencing the acceptance and use of UGIS by unit conveners and academics. This study proposed a model for the acceptance of UGIS, which integrated key constructs from the technology acceptance model (TAM), social cognitive theory and model of PC utilization including seven main factors: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude towards using the UGIS, intention to use the UGIS, social influence, unit guide specific self-efficacy, and unit guide specific anxiety. The model was tested on a sample of 134 unit guide users from 39 Australian universities and analyzed using structural equation modeling and partial least squares methods. Analysis showed that attitude, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use from the basic TAM model contributed significantly to explain the intention of academics and unit conveners to use UGIS. In addition, the integration of self-efficacy, anxiety and social influence as constructs were found to improve the fit of the model. Implications of the results are discussed within the context of unit guides and curriculum mapping.

Interventions to improve health and well-being abound. Whether they are designed for prevention, maintenance or improvement, a key challenge is the motivation of the user to change their current behaviours, such as persisting or taking new actions. To encourage someone to change their behaviour requires persuading them to change their goals and/or their beliefs about the behaviour or their ability to perform it. Our embodied conversational agent (ECA) uses explanations based on the goals and beliefs of the user to promote a sense of personalisation and engagement with the treatment plan which could form a bond as the dyad develop shared goals and tasks together. To keep our message minimal and understand whether belief-based or goal-based explanations are more efficacious in changing behaviour intention, we collected data in the context of a scenario where the ECA seeks to change four behaviours recommended to help students manage their study stress. Our findings suggest that when the behaviour requires a change in desire, we need goal-based explanation, when adoption of the behaviour requires addressing a barrier we need belief-based explanation and warrant future investigation. Further, the stratified analysis suggested that more tailoring to the student's context could provide more motivation to change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe a project involving information and communication technology (ICT) students in Australia and Singapore, working together as a virtual global team. The authors investigated the question: Can differences be found in the behaviours and attitudes of our two cohorts to working in teams? This would allow the authors to better manage the project and reflect on its success/failure. Design/methodology/approach: The authors ran a one semester cross-cultural software development project. An anonymous online survey measured three temporal dimensions commonly used in time-at-work studies and seven cultural dimensions. The results are discussed in the context of cohort behaviours, project outcomes/outputs and related literature. Findings: Differences were found along the temporal dimensions of punctuality, time boundaries and awareness of time use. While conformance with national cultural stereotypes was evident, only selected statements in the cultural dimensions showed significant differences. Some gender differences were also identified. Research limitations/implications: Generalizability beyond the domain of ICT students would need further investigation. Though larger numbers would strengthen the paper's claims, some statistically significant results show differences between Australian and Singaporean cohorts requiring further investigation. Practical implications: Education providers should carefully design, implement and monitor cross-cultural learning opportunities to prepare graduates to work in global teams. Originality/value: The project provided rare cross-cultural and virtual team experience and revealed that providing this experience is likely to be effort intensive for all parties, involve higher project and people risks but potentially deliver greater (life-long) learning gains. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

Game technology has been widely used for educational applications, however, despite the common use of background music in games, its effect on learning has been largely unexplored. This paper discusses how music played in the background of a computer-animated history lesson affected participants' memory for facts. A virtual history lesson was presented to participants with different background stimuli (music or no-music) to test the effect of music on memory. To test the role of immersion on memory and its possible relationship to the music, two different display systems (3-monitor display system or immersive Reality Center) were used in the study. Overall, participants remembered a significantly higher number of facts using the 3-monitor display system, particularly if no background music was played in the second half of the history lesson. Conversely, for participants using the Reality Center, significantly higher recall of facts was found when participants listened to music in the second half of the history lesson. Cognitive load/overload and (un-)familiarity with the technology are offered as explanations. (Contains 2 tables and 4 figures.)

Purpose: While the natural expectation is that students seek greater depth of learning as they develop intellectually during their studies, some research calls this into question and even suggests that student learning can become shallower from year to year. The present study aims to investigate the relative depth of students' learning at different stages of their undergraduate studies by comparing second-year with third-year students in two statistics units. Design/methodology/approach: A survey was conducted using Biggs's Study Process Questionnaire. The survey results were used to compare second- and third-year groups, as well as to investigate other variables by comparing the performances of: international and domestic students, male and female students, students who worked and those who did not work, and students who intended to register for a higher degree and those who did not. Findings: Significant differences in approaches were found between male and female students; and between students who intended to enrol in a higher degree and those who did not. Research limitations/implications: Characteristics of the learning and teaching environment, including quality of teaching, were not investigated in this study. These and the possibility of students' mixed approaches to learning depending on the unit of study might have significant impact on the results. Additionally, this study is specific to one Sydney university; therefore the results might not be generalisable. Originality/value: The findings from this study provide evidence that there is no significant difference between second and third year; or in international and local students' approaches to learning in statistics. (Contains 2 figures.)