Are more students cheating on assessment tasks in higher education? Despite ongoing media speculation concerning increased "copying and pasting" and ghostwritten assignments produced by "paper mills", few studies have charted historical trends in rates and types of plagiarism. Additionally, there has been little comment from…

Students' use of test information to prepare for a test in a controlled or supervised test environment has been examined in studies outside Australia. This paper reports the findings of the use of test information and its value, in terms of an improvement/decline in marks, in an actual test of an undergraduate subject taught at an Australian…

Australian higher education institutions have struggled to develop clear strategies for developing and assessing graduate attributes within their specific disciplinary contexts. Using the example of the graduate attribute of social responsibility, this paper explores the outcomes of using assessment tasks to raise the awareness of development of…

This study investigated 438 Year 10 students (15 and 16 years old) from Western Australian schools, on their understanding of the greenhouse effect and climate change, and the sources of their information. Results showed that most students have an understanding of how the greenhouse effect works, however, many students merge the processes of the…

In two decades, Australian university students have accumulated over $25 billion in debt, a figure that is expected to increase dramatically over the next few years. The literature has rarely considered students' attitudes about ancillary services and amenities, despite their importance to the character of university life and substantial…

There has been increasing interest in an evidence-based approach to education in Australia, but relatively little research has provided relevant data on knowledge of the evidence base for instructional practices among teachers preparing to enter the profession. Final year teacher education students (N = 290) in 15 Australian tertiary institutions…

This study investigated whether a number of cultural orientation, sociodemographic, academic achievement, and personal/personal experience variables predict attitudes toward the provision of special programs/provisions for gifted students. Surveys completed by 241 Australian preservice teachers were analyzed using confirmatory factor analyses and…

There is a paucity of research in Australia on the nature of young people's attitudes, knowledge and actions. This paper reports on the findings from one such study of Australian high school students. The research was based on a survey of 5,688 students form Melbourne and Brisbane. These young people identified protection of the environment as the…

This article presents an analysis of rich data, gathered from interviews with 46 candidates and 38 supervisors from three Australian universities, about experiences of doctoral supervision in cross-cultural situations. Our analysis shows that many of the issues reported by international candidates are the same as those encountered by domestic…

Upon beginning postgraduate research at the Faculty of Built Environment at UNSW, the authors were surprised to find themselves working in a library-like environment, where a culture of silence prevailed. Assuming initially that this was just how postgraduate research was, they soon learned that the building also housed a second postgraduate lab…

It has often been suggested that actual or anticipated final grades may influence the ratings given by students in student experience surveys but few studies have been able to test this using actual grades. A study was carried out involving six courses over all four year levels of an undergraduate engineering programme, where students were asked…