Carrick Senior Fellowship

Teaching, technology, and educational design:
the architecture of productive learning environments.

CoCo's Prof Peter Goodyear was awarded a prestigious Carrick Senior Fellowship, commencing 2008, for his research into how university teachers can design better learning activities.

Slowly but steadily, conceptions of successful higher education are shifting. The focus of attention is moving from what the teacher says to what students do – especially to how they work with new knowledge. The quality of students’ activity is key. The design of good learning tasks, and the design and management of supportive learning environments, are moving centre stage in higher education. The aim of this project is to help universities become better at design. It will work at three levels: providing resources to help teachers become more proficient at educational design; working with PVCs (Learning & Teaching) and other senior staff to identify strategies that will enable higher education institutions to become more design-savvy places; stimulating and contributing to public debate about the changing nature of teaching work in higher education, and especially about how such teaching can be done in a more principled, professional, enjoyable and effective way.

Excerpt from the UniNews article "Designs on better learning", 22 May 2007:

The one-year senior fellowships, worth $330,000, are awarded to outstanding scholars who are respected advocates for excellence in teaching and learning.

Professor of Education and co-director of the CoCo Research Centre at the University of Sydney since 2003, his research interests are all about how students learn. "The focus of attention is moving from what the teacher says to what students do," he says.

"People learn by doing, not just by being told things. So the design of good learning tasks, and the design and management of supportive learning environments, are moving centre stage in higher education.

"In universities, these learning activities now draw on a wider range of tools and resources than ever before: computer software, the Internet, books, papers, people, and so on.

"The richness and variety of these resources provides tremendous scope for good teaching, but it also presents a difficult design challenge for academic staff."

Professor Goodyear's work will help teachers design learning resources and activities by improving our knowledge about the "essence of good educational activities".

He is one of only two academics Australia-wide awarded a senior fellowship today.

For More information, see the original UniNews Article by Kath Kenny.

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