Symbiotic or parasitic? Valuing our post-graduate students in the research environment

This blog  is written by Prof. Roberto Weinberg from the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University who, amongst other accomplishments, was recently awarded the Science Faculty Dean's Award for Post Graduate Supervision   Symbiosis. The relationship between research students and supervisors is based on symbiosis: a collaborative effort directed at research. Candidates learn to do science and their efforts are an essential ingredient of our research output. Research students are at the...

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Student use of mobile devices in science practicals: Perceptions, impediments and the future

Technological advancements are rapidly changing the way students use and interact with educational materials. Students now have access to a range of electronic devices that make learning more interactive, flexible and mobile. In the USA, a national study of student use of technology found that students are drawn to and recognise the benefits of technologies...

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Leadership can be taught in an undergraduate science course

Teaching Leadership In an increasingly complex, diverse and ambiguous world there is a growing need to develop effective leadership capacity in scientists. The scarcity of leadership development for scientists represents a substantive disadvantage for the discipline and its practitioners. It’s a necessity to develop leadership skills in concert...

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Raising the esteem of science-education research

I reflect endlessly on the current disparity between the esteem in which education and research are held in the university sector, about means to blur the teaching–research dualism, about the fruitful nexus between teaching and research, and about what each can learn from the other. Here I highlight one area in which science education researchers have something important to learn from their non-education science research colleagues.    While most successful non-education science researchers in Monash University’s Faculty of Science...

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Balancing teaching and research in the era of “ERA”

Rowan -  Coral Warr, recipient of the 2014 Dean's Excellence in Teaching Award for Excellence, writes an informative blog about juggling the demands of a teaching and research academic. Teaching and research staff come in many flavours, and have different balances between the two areas of academic activity. I genuinely love both teaching and...

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What Future for The Lecture?

Today I did something humbling. I logged into the Monash Uni online lecture recording system, and listened to myself giving a lecture. Urgh! Does my voice really sound like that? Hang on, I think what I just said there was not entirely accurate. I say “actually” a lot. Wow, Chris, that was a really, really bad joke. Strangely enough, many of the 200-odd...

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Student-led seminars: Rediscovering discovery

14.00 Having just kicked-off a new student-led seminar (SLS) program in the Bachelor of Science Advanced (Global Challenges), I thought I'd share my key discoveries thus far. Associate Professor Susanna Scarparo sums up the benefits of SLSs perfectly - these "...gave me a chance to stop talking at/to student and start working with...

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The IDEA Experiments

In 2012, three Schools in Science (Biology, Chemistry & Physics) embarked on an audacious project to reinvigorate their first year lab programs. We say audacious somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as the simple aim of this project was get first year science students to behave like real scientists in their undergraduate lab classes. Across the sciences,...

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