Exploring Ideas for Innovations in the Educational Technology at a Regional Campus in Western Australia

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Recent budget allocations to tertiary education sector are challenging many universities, especially small regional campuses, to explore the use of innovative ways for delivering more cost efficient teaching services, and providing their students with improved teaching/learning environment. This paper describes continuous efforts in teaching, research and training diverse groups of science students at a regional campus in Western Australia. One efficient way to reduce financial expenses associated with practical experimental work and laboratory activities was to develop and use proprietary softwares for teaching technology related subjects. This allowed involving the students in real life like prototyping activities, through modelling and simulations, resulting later in production of the real products that suited to their interest. Results showed that the effectiveness was in development of flexible teaching delivery, sustainable cost efficient learning environment and improvements in the following measures: unit organisation, learning scope, evaluation of learning resources and context and overall satisfaction. The overall students’ satisfaction (OS) increased and standard deviations (SD) decreased in the following order: conventional face to face teaching approach in 2004 resulted in OS=47% and SD=9.46%; introduction of product prototyping through calculations in 2006 resulted in OS=54.4% and SD=4.39%, and computer simulations coupled with product prototyping in 2007/08 resulted in OS=98.6% and SD=3.13%. This type of teaching approach and real life like product outcomes attracted an interest of local industrial renowned companies and resulted in development of successful grants which involve both the ECU-SW lecturer and his students. This confirms strong potentials in enhancing teaching practices with computer assisted predictions. We found that proprietary software can easily be modified to different teaching and learning scenarios in order to serve and suit a larger group of diverse students, and like to share the findings with other academics through conference forum(s).

Stream: Technology in Learning; Maths, Science and Technology Learning

Paper: Exploring Ideas for Innovations in the Educational Technology at a Regional Campus in Western Australia

Dr Jaromir AUDY is a Senior Lecturer in Science and Coordinator of Diploma in Science Course at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. Over the past 20 years he has taught at the tertiary level and has studied and worked at six universities in Europe and Australia. He is an active member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Manufacturing, MMScience Journal, Journal of Materials Engineering, Journal of Engineering, as well as a reviewer for Elsevier. He regularly publishes in worldwide peer-reviewed journals. He travels extensively and has presented his research findings at numerous international conferences across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. His current research interests include technology and science education associated with computer-assisted modelling and simulations in optimisations of industry-based products’ design, materials, service life, and performance. He teaches in the Surf Science program at ECU’s South West Campus. The program is one of only two of its kind in the world; and Dr Audy’s research and teaching has been focused on innovating ways to use materials engineering theory in developing equipment for marine sports.