The project aims to develop and pilot ASSH302 as a state-of-the art WiL program that will:

1. Provide a new and innovative WiL opportunity for all BSS and BPH students in their third year of study – meeting a critical shortage of WIL and placement opportunities within the social sciences;
2. Provide a final-year curriculum that exposes students to contemporary and real-world social policy issues in the Illawarra and Shoalhaven region;
3. Produce work-ready graduates for the social, human and public health service sectors;
4. Generate evaluation evidence of the ICJDN pedagogical framework and disseminate the findings in general higher-education and discipline-specific education literature;
5. Enhance UOWs standing and profile as a regional partner and leader in social policy research;
6. Position UOW as a national leader in the delivery of a state-of-the-art undergraduate internship training program; and
7. Provide ICJDN partners (local government councils and community organisations) with an evidence-base to promote State-level funding for social and human services sector initiatives.

The project aims to empower health students with the confidence to listen and engage with Community local to UOW and to carry this knowledge and skill forward in their future work as a health professional. UOW non-Indigenous staff will engage with Indigenous research assistants to share knowledges and further to engage with local Indigenous Community. The health of Indigenous Australians has typically been presented using a deficit discourse, yet the key dietary concerns relate to colonisation and introduction of refined foods away from traditional and sustainable dietary practices. This project aims to highlight the central role of food in Indigenous culture and to better understand the impact of dietary practices on overall health and wellbeing in Indigenous communities on the south coast of NSW. Learnings will be particularly relevant to equip graduates with skills required for transforming the current industrial food system to be more aligned with planetary health in terms of improved sustainability, equity, and access.

Every student in EIS, many students in SMAH and some students in BAL formally study mathematics and/or statistics at some stage in their course. We will develop high-quality videos and learning modules related to six first year mathematics subjects. These will become part of a comprehensive Digital Maths Revision Repository in the form of high-quality videos for students to use for revision of foundational mathematics and statistics. The repository will be made available to all students across EIS, SMAH and BAL, indeed the University, to support life-long learning. We will also embed these same high-quality videos into learning modules to provide the basis of a blended delivery model for six mathematics subjects taught to non-mathematics students.

Collaborative practice strengthens health systems and improves health outcomes. This occurs when health professionals, from varied disciplines, work with other professionals within and across disciplines, external to their profession, and with patients, families, and communities to deliver the highest quality care. To ensure collaborative practice is embedded in healthcare delivery, interprofessional education (IPE) needs to be part of health education programs. That is, graduates who learn together, work better together. This project will map UOW health discipline curricula to the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice, and investigate barriers and enablers to implementing IPE. Using this knowledge we will develop a framework of principles, teaching and learning strategy, and assessment to ensure IPE is embedded in curricula for UOW health professions.

The project aims to develop an innovative Working Integrated Learning Hub for UOW Engineering Students (The WIL eHub) to facilitate and support their WIL opportunities and experiences with key industry stakeholders. The WIL eHub  will serve as the focal point for an engagement network of UOW staff members, students and industry partners on innovation, with a range of WIL resources, including up to date industry project topics, WIL showcases, mentorships, scholarships, vocational programs and regular events, to promote exchange of learning experience and knowledge-sharing. The hub will provide a one-stop shop that effectively supports WIL and teaching excellence at UOW, particularly for engineering students, for whom WIL is the capstone for their graduation and early career development. It will have the following mandate:

• Promote the effective implementation of WIL and practices in cooperation and constructive engagement with staff members, students and true partnerships with industry stakeholders;
• Provide up to date information on WIL opportunities including industry placement, scholarships, mentorships, vocational programs and industry based/supported projects, workshops and guest speaker presentations/lectures;
• Showcase WIL Case Studies by UOW staff members (and students) demonstrating their successful approach to WIL and teaching practices;
• Serve as the focal point for a network of UOW staff members, students and industry stakeholders, with regular events/forums to promote exchange of views and knowledge-sharing related to WIL.

This L&T Innovation grant is Informed by a 2020 research project about early childhood sector leadership during the COVID-19 Pandemic (Neilsen-Hewett, Lindsay, Warren, Tonge & Cronin, 2021, accepted for publication) and responds to an ongoing Early Childhood workforce recruitment and retention crisis (Education Ministers Meeting, 2021). In partnership with Early Childhood situational leaders and the UoW L&T team, this project will partner with final year B.Ed-The Early Years students in the research and development of professional video resources about quality early childhood leadership and advocacy. These research informed resources, featuring Early Childhood leadership and advocacy exemplars, will be utilised in blended subject content to increase sector readiness and employability for both on-campus and flexible/online student cohorts and will be embedded within the design and development of a future micro-credential advocacy and leadership course to benefit the education sector and address workforce issues in the Early Childhood Education sector.

This project aims to develop a purpose-built online version of English for Tertiary Studies, designed to achieve the same learning outcomes and high standards of the onshore course. The course offering will be at a more competitive price point for students and provide a flexible and time-effective quality-assured course offering, that will allow for students to undertake their English studies in their home country. This project also ensures that UOW College / UOW remains a market leader in its Direct Entry delivery options for international students.

Academic misconduct continues to be an issue of concern in education, however, proactive measures designed to engage students as partners in their own learning journey can bring about systematic change to build a culture of integrity. Spanning across UOW Australia, Malaysia and Dubai, this project aims to create a game-based system (GBS) to educate students on academic integrity values. This educational GBS will not only be engaging and student-centred, but will also ensure that learning objectives on the importance of integrity are met. The project partners with European Network for Academic Integrity (ENAI)’s Gamification of Academic Integrity Working Group, which is led by a UOWD faculty and is supported by a multidisciplinary team of investigators who are working together to uphold the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education) through digital innovation towards a sustainable future of inclusive and equitable quality education for all.

Digital technology and online education have brought a transformative revolution in teaching and learning and the opportunities for us to achieve UN's Sustainable Development Goal 4 and the University's 2020-2025 strategic plan to enable lifelong learning. This project aims to innovate micro-credentials for Mandarin and Italian studies to meet students’ imminent learning and employment needs with the micro-learning mode, which facilitates effective use of learners’ fragmented time. Each micro-credential will have the following features: flexibility, engagement, connectedness, certification, and the support of lifelong learning. Connectedness is the key innovation of this project. We will integrate synchronous chat forums into the online courses enabling students to interact with teaching staff and practise the target languages with native speakers and peers. The project targets a wide range of student communities, including current and prospective UOW students, mature professionals and school-aged learners. Micro-learning for language studies has the potential to raise accessibility of learning, boost enrolments in language studies and enhance UOW's stellar reputation and impact in technology-enhanced learning.

Data science and machine learning represent an overlap of statistics, computer science and domain expertise and are increasingly becoming integral in research applications based on health and social data. The combination of statistics and computer science, allows machine learning methodology to take advantage of the strengths of both areas yielding methods that have some advantages over statistical analysis and computational algorithms on their own. This unique entry level short course is specifically designed for health professionals and will be taught in an approachable and intuitive way. The course will cover the most in demand data science and machine learning methods for both supervised (regression, classification and regression trees, neural nets and support vector machines) and unsupervised (clustering) learning. Participants will learn how to choose the appropriate method, and how to analyse and interpret the results using a free interface to the popular data science and statistical package R.

To implement a new authentic non-exam based assessment module in a final year Pharmacology subject being a scenario-based group video presentation set in a (virtual) hospital pharmacy and peer-assessed, individual podcast on selected pharmacological agent and reflective ePortfolio as an authentic, professionally focused assessment to replace the final exam. All assessments will be aligned with the program and mapped to learning outcomes. We will provide scaffolding and support for the students to develop the requisite IT, media and communication skills for the activities and ensure equitable access for all students. The goal is to improve student engagement, increase job-readiness and communication skills, with an added benefit of addressing academic integrity issues around non-invigilated online exams.

The first video series is aimed at academics, guiding the set-up in Moodle including using the workshop tool for peer-assessing. The second video series scaffolds the process of creating multimedia pieces for the students, providing skills around successful teamwork, building a portfolio, effective peer/self-assessment and the importance of reflection for learning. This resource pack is aimed at lowering the activation barrier for others to take-up these newer assessment styles, can be readily shared across subjects and will be hosted on the L&T Hub to widen its access and impact.

The overarching aim is to develop a modern, online learning platform for the new subject SCII211 “Natural Hazards” that will launch in Autumn session of 2022 and actively engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate various disasters. The key output will be the development of a fully functional online, Moodle site containing interactive content that will form the basis for interactive tutorials that will engage students in the science and management of Natural Hazards. Field components are the most difficult aspect to bring to an online class but modern video equipment including drone technology enables us to survey potential natural hazard sites more easily and capture high-resolution data for use in online classes.

This project is significant as Universities are crucial advocates for sustainable development education; “The introduction of the SDGs aids the development of students’ global competence and ability to collaborate and lead across national boundaries” (SDG Knowledge Hub 2020). The SDGengage module will provide equitable and inclusive access for all, developing awareness of sustainable development enabling students to further enhance this knowledge and practical skills in future subjects as part of their UOW learning journey. SDGengage will leverage the content and activities of the current iA SDG module, reusing components and repurposing through a student-centered active learning pedagogy. This project aims to develop an understanding of sustainable development and the SDGs, their significance and background; critically analyse SDG targets and indicators applied under the 17 SDGs; develop an awareness of how to access current industry reports and examples to understand SDG impact; and reflect progress toward measuring personal impact against SDGs.