Purpose: The aim of this research note is to introduce a new appraisal form, the Classroom Communication and Collaboration (C3) Appraisal, designed to evaluate communication and collaboration within classroom settings. Method: A comprehensive synthesis of the key skills from a broad range of publications on successful communication and…

New assessment types that include multimodal and digital elements are increasingly being used to assess university students' 'soft skills' such as communication, as well as their science content knowledge. However, very little is known about how or how well such products assess communicative elements, particularly when these elements are so…

In recent decades, with the rapid economic development of China, there has been a large influx of Chinese students into Western countries to pursue their studies. Empirical research reveal that some students encounter linguistic and academic challenges, and find it difficult to adapt to the Western learning environment. Adopting a qualitative…

Communication skills are one of five nationally recognised learning outcomes for an Australian Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree. Previous evidence indicates that communication skills taught in Australian undergraduate science degrees are not developed sufficiently to meet the requirements of the modern-day workplace--a problem faced in the UK and…

There has been a major shift in educational learning goals--as seen most recently by Goal 4.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals--focused on global citizenship education and education for sustainable development. The shift concerns recognition of the need for education systems to equip learners with competencies such as problem solving,…

Industry placements are popular means to provide students with an opportunity to apply their skills, knowledge and experience in a "real world" setting. Within this context, supervisor feedback allows educators to measure students' performance beyond academic objectives, by benchmarking it against industry expectations. However, industry…

How to compute and report subscores for a test that was originally designed for reporting scores on a unidimensional scale has been a topic of interest in recent years. In the research reported here, we describe an application of multidimensional item response theory to identify a subscore structure in a test designed for reporting results using a…

In this paper, we discuss ongoing challenges in defining and assessing generic competencies in Australian universities. The paper begins with a discussion of factors that led to, and later fuelled, the focus on generic competencies in Australian higher education. Broad constructs that have underpinned research and practice in the field are then…

There is an increasing support from international organizations and the research community for stepping beyond infant or child mortality as the most common child level social indicator and progressing towards an international measure of child development. The Early Development Instrument (EDI) is a teacher-completed measure of children's…

The plentiful and steadily increasing literature on teaching and learning in higher education has produced a number of helpful frameworks and guidelines that can be applied to the development and communication of assessment practice. The continued prevalence of much imprecise, unclear and otherwise confusing terminology around the discussion of…

This paper describes a student-focused activity that promotes effective learning in analytical chemistry. Providing an environment where students were responsible for their own learning allowed them to participate at all levels from designing the problem to be addressed, planning the laboratory work to support their learning, to providing evidence…

The document presents findings and discussion from a 1981 Australian workshop on language curriculum development for hearing impaired students. The first 11 papers, unattributed, address the following issues regarding development of a language curriculum: content, principles, levels of language, techniques and materials, features of conversational…

Over the last 15 years, surveys in a range of English-speaking countries, from North America and the United Kingdom, to New Zealand and Australia, have consistently shown that employers rank oral and written communication skills as highly as or more highly than any technical or quantitative skills. However, in New Zealand there has been very…

An innovative instructional program designed to improve children's skills in referential communication, especially in communicating descriptions and instructions, is evaluated. Insights gained into classroom organization and the teacher's level of adoption of the innovation are discussed. (MSE)

Examines the descriptive and analytical work of students and teachers through classroom talk and interaction, using information from audiotaped classroom activities to identify classroom members' work. The article discusses the organization of classroom knowledge, relationships, and order, noting relationships between descriptive and analytic work…