Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemVision and reality: what are the experiences and perceptions of overseas students enrolled in a year 13 Foundation Studies course in business offered in a city university?( 2001)Internationalization has become one of the 'buzzwords' in Australian education. For most Australian educational institutions, internationalization meant an unprecedented influx of overseas students enrolling in their courses. This thesis will consider the mismatch of expectations between students from the Asia-Pacific region in a tertiary education institution in Australia. What is the mismatch of expectations? What is its extent? How does it come to exist? How does it manifest itself? These questions have been explored in focus group discussions with students from the Asia-Pacific region currently attending a Year 13 Foundation Studies course in a city university. The research found a mismatch between student and staff expectations due to miscommunication and cultural values.
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ItemNetworked learning/learning networks: a case study of constructivist pedagogies in an online post-graduate higher education setting( 2004)The study investigates teaching and learning practices in an online postgraduate higher education setting. It is concerned with how networked teaching and learning practices are organised in space and time. The first part of the study sets the scene and explores the diverse � literatures of online education, which include functionalist, socially critical and post modern accounts. The ontological variety of these accounts is discussed with the writer concluding that actor-network theory has something to contribute to understanding the complexity of socio-technical practices. This section closes with consideration of the methodological approach and ethical concerns of the study. The second part of the study is concerned with discussion of the data stories. These stories tell tales of the shaping and reshaping of learning technologies. They talk of teachers and programmers as network builders, seeking to attract, recruit, enrol and mobilise entities. The stories relate some of the compromises made when the network shudders with dissent or the unexpected and the patchwork done to hold the network together. This section also speaks of networked spaces as uncertain, intersected spaces. It closes with a discussion of how ICTs un/settle learning networks and of the ways in which entities manage their multiple memberships through numerous renegotiations. The third and final section concludes the study. It analyses the data stories and finds that actor-networks are porous and vulnerable. Suggesting that when entities maintain membership in multiple networks identities are constantly contested and redrawn. In lifting contested practices up to view, the study proposes that dis/order might be a positive feature of learning in networked environments. This final section includes some discussion of the implications for the University. And, most importantly perhaps, it makes a call for a new vocabulary, a new way to describe the flows of net(work).