We, Paul Whitelaw (School of Hospitality, Tourism and Marketing, FoBL) and Fiona Henderson (Language and Learning, VU College) were awarded $80k from the Australian Teaching and Learning Council (ALTC) to conduct research into the use of multimedia resources and technologies to help Chinese students better understand the principles and issues of academic literacy and plagiarism.
This is an extension of work undertaken as a pilot project in 2006. The review and evaluation of the pilot project was exceptionally positive and has resulted in academics from Australia and overseas seeking to acquire a copy of the resources for their students. However, despite the overall positive response, several areas for improvement have been identified. In particular, the culturally specific examples were not well understood by the international students, especially the Chinese students. Whilst these students valued the efforts exerted in developing the resources and recognised that academic honesty is vitally important, they still did not, as a group, understand the concepts as well as hoped.
» read about the Project Team
» visit the Pilot Project website
Focus Groups
We began preliminary investigations and research in June in the form of focus group meetings with students and staff at our project partner institution, Chinese University of Finance and Economics (CUFE). These focus groups were replicated with Chinese international students at Victoria University in September.
» view the outcomes of focus groups
Workshops
We hosted a mini-conference/workshop on Friday 29 August 2008 at our City Flinders campus. The purpose of this workshop was to gain insight into issues surrounding academic literacy and teaching Chinese students from a 'reference group' of academics who have experience in these issues. We invited all past and present Carrick recipients who had focussed on Chinese students and/or plagiarism, teaching and learning experts as potential guests.
The workshop was a great success, with informative presentations and stimulating dialogue. We hope this is the start of an ongoing communication and the first of many forums between those who were involved.
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