Students at Risk 6399 - Week 5

I have sent emails to all students at risk this week.  To the students who did not attend tutorials this week but have attended in other weeks, I sent:

Dear student

According to my records you did not attend your tutorial in Week 5. Tutorials are the most important component of the unit and it is essential that you make every effort to attend your tutorial every week if you hope to pass the unit.

If you have any questions about the material you missed, please come and see me during my consultation hours (on LearnOnline) or call to make an appointment.

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To the students who have not attended any tutorials this semester, I sent:

Dear student

According to my records you have not attended any tutorials this semester. If you do intend to continue with your studies in this unit then missing these tutorials has seriously damaged your chances of passing the unit. It is imperative that you make every effort to attend tutorials every week for the remainder of the semester if you hope to recover from your current position and have a chance of passing the unit.

If you do not intend to continue with your studies in this unit, I recommend that you withdraw from the unit as soon as possible to avoid a fail result on your academic transcript.

If you have any questions about any of the material you have missed, please see me during my consultation times (on LearnOnline) or call me to make an appointment.

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To the students who have missed this week's tutorial and have missed one other tutorial, I sent:



Dear student

According to my records you have not attended tutorials in 2 of the last 3 weeks. Missing these two tutorials seriously damages your chances of passing the unit. It is imperative that you make every effort to attend tutorials every week for the remainder of the semester if you hope to recover from your current position and have a chance of passing the unit. If you have any questions about any of the material you have missed, please see me during my consultation times (on LearnOnline) or call me to make an appointment.

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I have also sent emails to students who have performed poorly in the second online test:



Dear student

You did not achieve 70% of the second online test.  This means that your mark for this test is 0.

As it appears you are having difficulty with the unit, please come and see me during my consultation hours or call to make an appointment. At this appointment I can help you overcome your difficulties with the unit and we can develop a strategy for your studies for the remainder of the semester which will maximise your chances of passing the unit.

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Finally, I sent individual emails to the two students who did not attempt the second online test:

Dear xxxx

You have not attempted either online test in Contemporary Issues in Accounting 6399. This means that you cannot satisfy the conditions required to pass the unit unless you have a valid reason for not attempting the tests.

Please contact me as a matter of urgency.

Dear xxxx

You have not attempted the second online test in the unit. In order to pass the unit you must attempt 5 of the 6 online tests in the unit. If you do not attempt another of the tests you will fail the unit unless you have a valid reason for not attempting the test.

Flat Lecture - CCA

The CCA lecture in CIA PG last night was flat.  I need to rewrite this lecture from scratch to make it more engaging.  Some of the improvements needed include:

• Get rid of the calculation of the firm specific rate of inflation.  It does nothing for achieving the learning outcomes and just confuses student by adding unnecessary complexity
• Add some graphs to show the movement over the year of the monetary items.
• Get rid of the second year in the example
• Set up an exercise to be done in pairs to evaluate HC versus CCA measures of performance
• Add some pictures
• Explain depreciation and compare declining carrying amounts using NPV, FV, HCA straight line, HC reducting balance.  Use graphs.
  
• Demonstrate DCF based periodic income
• Talk about industrial disinvestment in Australia in the 70s - Barton's article - and the Button steel and car plans
  

Students at Risk - Late Submission of Assignment

I have sent the following email to all students who have not submitted Part 1 of the Group Assignment.

Dear student

You have not yet submitted Part 1 of the Group Assignment. This was due last Friday (14th August 2009). Submission of Part 1 of the Group Assignment is a compulsory component of the assessment for all students. Late submissions are accepted but they will have a late penalty imposed if there are not valid reasons for the late submission. You will fail the unit if you do not submit Part 1 of the Group Assignment – see Section 5c of the unit outline.

If there are any reasons for your failure to submit on time, please contact me as soon as possible.

The Six Secrets

Monica has sent me the six secrets.  They are:

• Love your employees - employees are part of the organisation, not a resource to be exploited.
  
• Connect peers with purpose - peer interaction and collaboration is vital - employees should form a community
  
• Capacity buidling prevails - build the change skills which are necessary to build improvement
  
• Learning is the work - learning is not something we do so we can do the work - learning is integrated with all work
  
• Transparency rules - deprivatise practice - do everything in a fishbowl
  
• Systems learn - develop many leaders and be open to new ideas
  

T&L Activities Friday 14th August

Today has been busy for teaching and learning activities. They have been:

• Breakfast with a leader - six secrets of change leadership: Felicia Zhang, Laurie Grealish, Monica Kennedy
• Finding the leader within - meeting 1
• TATAL - holistic learning: Amy Griffin

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Breakfast with a Leader

Despite the false advertising, this was a great session. It appears that only the intellect was to be fed - the body was starving at the end and was only appeased by a chocolate-chip muffin.

Laurie, Monica and the late Felicia discussed the six secrets which they had acquired at a recent conference (?). I carefully forgot to write down the secrets so they are still secret, nor did I record the reference. I will ask Monica later for the details. One of the major themes mentioned was the need for openness. Another was love your team (in an contextually appropriate manner). I really need to get the list of secrets - while the session made a strong impression on my, I cannot remember the details. Arrrrrrrrrrgh.

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Finding the Leader Within

This was the first meeting of the group. Most of this was a getting-to-know-you exercise which also explored our concepts of leadership. The concepts shared were similar and focussed on themes of motivation, support, respect and inspiration. The remainder of the session dealt with admin matters for next week's retreat - I must remember to fill in the travel forms and email Janet the information she needs. The program looks promising.

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TATAL

Amy lead TATAL today and she spoke about holistic learning. She gave three definitions:

• Teaching the whole person
• Systems-based teaching showing the interconnectedness of the parts
• Holistic learning style as opposed to sequential learning style (synonomous with global learning style)

She ran us through a Learning Style diagnostic (Felder and Soloman) with four dimensions:

• Active - Reflective
• Visual - Verbal
• Sensing - Intuitive
• Sequential - Global

I came out as stronly intuitive and global, moderately visual and weakly active.

I will use this instrument on my students later if I can make time in a lecture.

Students at Risk - Response to SMS

I sent 8 SMS messages to the students who had missed the first two tutorials and had not given me any reasons for their non-attendance.  I received 4 responses within 2 hours of sending the message.  I consider this to be an exceptionally high response rate for students that I had considered were disengaged totally.  I will continue to use SMS for this purpose and will recommend that other staff do the same.

The only downside of this approach was the tedium of sending 8 SMS from my personal phone at my personal cost.  I have called the ICT service desk to see if there is a method by which I can send bulk SMS messages to students simply using University resources - I am awaiting their reply.

Students at Risk - 6399 week 4

I have sent emails to all students who:

• Did not attend tutorials in week 4
• Did not attend tutorials in both weeks 3 and 4 but have advised me of their reasons for not attending
• Did not attend tutorials in both weeks 3 and 4 but have not contacted me

I have also sent SMS messages to the third group if their mobile number was on Callista.

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The emails to the first group were:

Dear student

According to my records you did not attend your tutorial in Week 4. Tutorials are the most important component of the unit and it is essential that you make every effort to attend your tutorial every week if you hope to pass the unit.

If you have any questions about the material you missed, please come and see me during my consultation hours (on LearnOnline) or call to make an appointment.

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The emails to the second group were:

Dear student

According to my records you have not attended tutorials in weeks 3 and 4. While you have informed me of your reasons for non-attendance, missing these two tutorials seriously damages your chances of passing the unit. It is imperative that you make every effort to attend tutorials every week for the remainder of the semester if you hope to recover from your current position and have a chance of passing the unit.

If you have any questions about any of the material you have missed, please see me during my consultation times (on LearnOnline) or call me to make an appointment.

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The emails to the third group were:

Dear student

According to my records you have not attended tutorials in weeks 3 and 4 and you have not contacted me to explain your absence. As I have stated on LearnOnline, you will be deleted from the tutorial in which you are enrolled unless you email me before 1700 on Friday 14^th August stating that you wish to remain in your tutorial. Remember to include in the subject line of your email the unit number (6399) and your student number.

If you do not intend to continue with your studies in this unit, I recommend that you withdraw prior to Census date which is Friday 14^th August 2009.

If you do intend to continue with your studies in this unit then missing these two tutorials has seriously damaged your chances of passing the unit. It is imperative that you make every effort to attend tutorials every week for the remainder of the semester if you hope to recover from your current position and have a chance of passing the unit.

If you have any questions about any of the material you have missed, please see me during my consultation times (on LearnOnline) or call me to make an appointment.

Ting Wang's Seminar

Ting's seminar was presented on Wednesday 5th August 2009 at 12.30pm in room 1C29 at the University of Canberra.

Some of the things Ting mentioned resonated with me.  The first of these was the need to teach the definition of critical thinking.  While Ting was making the point about her students, I think the issue is broader than that.  We use the term so frequently that we forget that this concept can be new to students and that we should define it.  The problem Ting pointed out is that without this guidance, students associate the term "critical" with negativity.  We need to get students to overcome this preconception so we need to demonstrate what we mean by critical thinking.  Ting gave a quote from Lipman (1995) as her definition.  I think this quote is a little narrow.  Maybe I have been too polluted by the post modernists but I think that emotive, dogmatic and analogous thinking also have a role.  However students have to be aware of the style of thinking they are applying, the strengths and weaknesses inherent in that type of thinking, and the appropriateness of that form of thinking to the context and environment.  I like to adapt de Bono's 6 thinking hats for this purpose.

Ting also discussed the types of silences: no idea; germinating; and conflict avoiding.  John Gilchrist added disengaged.  She discussed strategies for creating space for the germinating and conflict avoiding silences to become less silent.  I have not considered this issue before and it has given me an immediate tool to apply.

She also addressed how to draw-out the knowledge of students, particularly when there power differences in the classroom (Frances - in an aside - that this was a problem at ADFA when students were at different military ranks).

Ting also presented her photovoice assessment item.  I think this is wonderful but I do not know how to apply it in accounting yet.

Tutorial Engagement 6399 - Week 3

The first tutorials for the semester were held this week in Contemporary Issues in Accounting 6399. Tutorial attendance was very poor with only 65% of students attending.

I conducted a meet and greet session in all of the tutorials which seemed to work reasonably well. I then divided the class into small groups and assigned one question to each group. Each group was given a transparency and OHP pens (interestingly, most of the women chose a purple pen and the men chose red or blue) and about 15-25 minutes to prepare an answer then present it to the class. This worked fairly well in most tutorials. Some of the issues that did arise were:

• Some students were trying to find the "correct" answer in the textbook instead of discussing the issues.
• In T4 in particular, some of the more mature students (LV, SP, RL) dominated the discussion space and allowing the more reticent students to hide.
• Some students have appalling presentation skills.

I have told the students that the approach is not to find the answer in the textbook or the lecture notes and that they need to justify their conclusions with reasons. I will be giving more advice on presentation skills in tutorials as well. When I organise groups in future, I will try to arrange them to create a discussion space for the shyer students.

Students at Risk - 6399 week 3

I have sent emails to all students who:

• Did not attend tutorials in week 3
• Did not attempt the first online test
• Achieved less than 70% on the first online test

Advising them that they are at risk and recommending actions they should take.

Work Integrated Learning (WIL) in Accounting

The recent WIL week has had me thinking that the traditional internship or practicum unit model is not appropriate for accounting.  This model as it implemented in other disciplines is predicated on the assumption that the student does not already have relevant industry experience.  Frequently, this is not the case in accounting.  Many students are working full-time or part-time in the industry either through cadetships or by being recruited to entry-level positions during their studies.  It would give UC a distinctive feature if this work experience of students working in the industry could be developed into a unit which could count towards the students' degrees.

While I am considering this issue from an accounting perspective, its application is not restricted to that profession.  This model could be applied in any discipline which has sufficient students working in their industry and wishing to undertake this type of unit to make the unit viable.

The basic model I imagine for this unit would consist of:

• Students maintaining a reflective journal for the period of their study
• Students developing a professional and academic portfolio documenting their skills and accomplishments
• Students preparing a paper on the fit between their University studies and the skills they need currently and for their future career

The coursework for this unit would consist of some intensive sessions at the start on portfolios and journals and some sessions during their studies for students to discuss the fit between their studies and their current and future work.

If the University structure allows, there is no reason why this unit needs to be run over a single semester or even a single year.

There is also no reason why this unit needs to be restricted to the for-payment work environment.  Students undertaking sufficient industry based work on a voluntary basis could also participate in this or a similar unit.

I will discuss this proposal with some others around the discipline and the University to see if it has legs.

Lecture Attendance in 6399 - Weeks 1 and 2

The lecture attendance in 6399 so far this semester has been very poor.  It is not that they have become disenchanted by my lectures as they have not attended in the first place.  I have written to John White to ask if I can monitor who is downloading my lectures.  It should be possible as students have to login through OSIS to access the recordings.  I am going to start monitoring lecture attendance more closely.  It is not feasible to take attendance at lectures, nor am I using clickers which can be used as a sign-in.  To overcome this I am going to use my digital camera to photograph the lecture theatre.

This approach will, I hope, have two results.

1. I can determine who is coming to class and reconcile this with tutorial attendance and LOL access to assess non-engagement
2. I may get a Hawthorne-effect type result

I have also put a survey question on LOL asking who is using the recordings and how they are being used.

Tutorial Engagement in Week 2 - 6228

The first tutorial session for the semester was conducted last week. I divided the class into 5 groups - 4 containing 5 students and 1 containing 7 students. I assigned 4 questions to the 5 groups. The two groups who had the same question were asked opposite sides of the question. Some aspects of the process worked well, others poorly. The feature which worked best was the interaction within the groups. Most students seemed to be engaged in the group discussion.

The aspects which worked poorly were:

• When presenting, students talked to the screen instead of the audiences
• Students put far too much on their overheads
• Students seemed to think that their role was to find the correct answer in the textbook and then read it to the class
• If there was not an answer in the text, students did not know how to approach the question

The things I will do differently next time are:

• Get students to introduce themselves and their group members when they start to present
• Tell students about better presentation techniques
• Let the students know I want their opinions and the reasons for their opinions, not regurgitation of my and Deegan's opinions