BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
A holistic, student-centred learning experience
At the beginning of 2021, the University of Newcastle embarked on a cultural shift in how we use course and teacher evaluations to drive excellence and measure impact. By increasing the reliance on the student voice, the university has created a successful performance development process that encourages, nurtures and rewards individuals for their impact on their students and the wider community. Teaching was previously viewed as something separate and largely unmeasurable. Simplistic feedback scales left academics feeling judged by a blunt measure and largely unreliable model of success. Many viewed course and teacher evaluations as potentially career limiting, which stifled engagement with feedback processes, as well as innovation and creativity in the teaching space. Even after implementing a blended-learning model of teaching across all courses in Newcastle Business School, the impact of this innovative teaching style was rarely featured in the regular performance evaluation processes; and best practices remained siloed rather than proliferating across disciplines. In response, we developed the Foundations for Inspiring People framework that looks to capture quantitative and qualitative indicators of our impact across the three domains of academic work: research, teaching and engagement. The framework was an exercise to reorient our ‘performance review’ culture from a ‘one size fits all’ measurement and evaluation framework to a personalised development model that aligns academic achievements against institutional priorities and values. The Foundations framework offers a structure for reflection and identifies avenues for development. In the teaching domain, the redevelopment of our performance culture works hand in hand with our realignment of feedback culture, and student voice has been reframed from a ‘consumer satisfaction’ model to a participatory model of teaching quality improvement. A key challenge we have encountered is managing bias in feedback. In the past, we have taken a rather costly, yet effective, approach of trying to mitigate this issue by reading every student comment and removing destructive or offensive phrases. We look now to a powerful machine learning tool to help us immediately categorise unstructured data and detect deviations from trends in feedback requiring further investigation. This will allow us to provide balanced, normalised scores with a reduced negative influence of bias related to gender, LGBTIQ identification, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status and ethnicity. Ultimately, all this enables us to support our teachers better, to identify more accurately our outstanding teachers, and to track themes in student voice. We look forward to creating an environment where our academic staff are more independently engaged in the feedback process, see the impact they have on their students, and are supported to achieve the University of Newcastle’s vision for the future. FEEDBACK MATTERS: NEWCASTLE BUSINESS SCHOOL CASE STUDY Jennifer Milam looks at how the University of Newcastle, Australia – home to Newcastle Business School – derives, analyses and responds to student feedback, and considers its impact on teaching and learning
The transformation in learning model will not happen by investing only in digital platforms. It will materialise by developing a holistic, student-centred learning experience on campus and online. This learning experience should form part of an ecosystem that includes a changing role of faculty members becoming mentors; classrooms transforming into roundtable discussions; more campus-wide interdisciplinary curricular activities; and off- campus projects that advance societal impact and support community development. At the School of Business of The American University in Cairo – a School that in 2022 celebrates 75 years in the higher education space in Egypt and the Middle East North Africa region – one of the primary learning goals for students is career readiness. Since 2019, the School has been working with one of its long-standing strategic partners, PwC, to ensure that students’ skills, capacities and knowledge are relevant to today’s changing global marketplace. Last year, we also introduced an experiential learning co-op programme. This elective, three-credit course offers undergraduate students the opportunity to get that all-important hands-on experience with an organisation before graduation – whether from the private sector, government, or civil society – over the course of six months, on a full-time basis. For our School, rigorous assessment has always been an essential pillar through a well- established and integrated culture of continuous improvement among faculty, staff and students. In this new programme, students are evaluated on the basis of learning objectives that are pre- identified by a faculty member and an executive from the host organisation. The programme seeks to provide a personalised experience for each student, depending on their field of study, with the aim of developing challenging opportunities for students to fully immerse themselves and fulfil the learning objectives. It is a win-win proposition for both sides. On the one hand, the programme provides an excellent opportunity for employers to identify potential talent, manage short-term hiring needs and enhance their on-campus brand. On the other hand, the process of matching each student with a host organisation related to their field of study ensures a value-added and student-centred learning experience. Accordingly, Business Schools should continue to transform themselves as vibrant
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Jennifer Milam is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic Excellence) at the University of Newcastle, Australia
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