Projects

Over the years the ACDS has funded a number projects. These projects aim to support the community of Australian science educators with development of resources, research of particular issues or building leadership capacity.

Current projects include:

Reconceptualising the BSc

A series of workshops including teams of academics, industry partners, educational designers and students that aim to provide an experience of collaborative curriculum design. The workshops are lead by a team from The University of Newcastle and implement a process they have developed to redesign their Bachelor of Science and which has enabled them to take an expertise and evidence-based approach to curriculum design.

If you are interested in participating in these workshops contact acdsteachinglearning@gmail.com.

Repository of online resources for science and mathematics teaching and assessment

A new ACDS project aims to create a repository of curated remote teaching and assessment resources developed across Faculties of Science.

Find out more

Recently completed projects include:

Indigenous science resources

A website with resources that gives tertiary science educators a starting point in their quest to incorporate Indigenous knowledges, pedagogies, and perspectives in their teaching. At the moment this website is a collection of a wide range of resources found publicly. It is expected that with time users of the website will enrich it with contributing their own resources as they are developed. This project aims to facilitate the sharing of good practice across Australian universities aimed at increasing participation and success of Indigenous students in science courses as well as engaging all science  students in Indigenous knowledges. It builds on the findings of the exploratory survey supported by the ACDS.

See the website

Work integrated learning (WIL)

The Centre has been focusing on the employability of science graduates for several years, to provide tools and resources for faculties of science to develop work integrated learning opportunities for their students. To this end, the ACDS has delivered on projects funded by the Office of the Chief Scientist and the OLT. Regional WIL networks were established and four national forums were run to facilitate discussion of challenges and solutions on this topic. Work continues on this front, now with a focus on working in collaboration with the Australian Collaborative Education Network (ACEN).

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New study on the impact of Year 12 mathematics on university first year science performance

This ACDS study explores the performance of first year science and mathematics students in Australian universities and how it relates to their senior secondary mathematics background.

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Role of education focused academics

Education-focused academics can foster teaching and learning change and improvement in faculties of science. These roles have been developed in a number of Australian universities but their work is not well-described. This project will use tools developed in the US to explore the role of education-focused academics and related teaching-intensive roles in science and mathematics.

Find out more