Upcoming Seminars

Watch this space for more seminars in 2023

Past Seminars

The Arts L&T Seminar is a showcase of the innovative L&T practices and strategies being implemented across the Faculty. The L&T Seminar will focus on excellence in learning and teaching.

Hosted by the Arts Learning Design and Production (LD&P) team with Professor Albert Atkin and Dr Maryam Khalid.

Join colleagues for presentations on innovative L&T which fosters student engagement, diversifies assessment, improves student outcomes and ensures quality teaching.

Presenters

Presenter	Topic
Dr Richard Carter-White Macquarie School of Social Sciences	Scaffolding fieldwork in Geography and Planning The significance of fieldwork within geography and planning L&T is constantly evolving. In the FoA, field work is first introduced and implemented in GEOP1010 (the major introductory human geography unit). It is then then mapped out and refined across the Major/BPlan (particularly in 2000-level units). This presentation will discuss the significance of fieldwork for students, both as a process of data collection and engagement with real world challenges, but also as an experience of reflecting on the nature of geographical knowledge.
Dr Janet Dutton Macquarie School of Education	'Mantle of the Expert' Viva Voce Utilising the a ‘Mantle of the Expert’ (Heathcote & Bolton, 1994; Heathcote & Herbert, 1985) teaching system, this assessment as learning task positions 1st year Master of Teaching students in role as classroom teachers speaking to their Principal about a classroom management dilemma they have managed. The ‘Mantle of the Expert’ approach places the student at the centre of learning with the facilitator’s role being to create the conditions whereby a mantle of leadership, knowledge, competency and understanding grows around the student during the task (Aitken, 2014).
Dr Jasna Novak Milic Department of Media, Comms, Creative Arts, Language and Literature	Designing learning for stress-free hybrid-flexible course delivery In a post-pandemic era, the hybrid-flexible course design model (HyFlex), which implies flexible learner attendance along a spectrum from fully online through face-to-face on campus, is getting more attention, however many are doubting whether its essential blended-synchronous element can be done in a smooth way, to the satisfaction of both the lecturer and the students. With help of so called ‘double zooming’, interactive applications such as H5P and basic classroom and office technology available, blended-synchronous can achieve classroom-like interactions and high levels of student satisfaction.
Dr Alex Simpson Department of Security Studies and Criminology	Teaching Theory Through Film If theory is a system of ideas intended to account, explain and interpret a wider set of social phenomena or activities, then in criminology theory is crucial to shedding critical light on, and giving meaning to, the processes of crime, law and treatment (McLaughlin & Newburn, 2013). From explaining the over-incarceration of people of colour to analysing the inequalities of victimisation, theory is a way of enabling students understand and examine the repeated injustices surrounding victimisation, incarceration and offending. However, in the classroom, theory is often overly abstracted in both teaching and the literature, with students often struggling to apply theoretical contours to make sense of real-world scenarios. Furthermore, theory suffers from the problem that definitional solidity, especially in teaching, is the moment where the complexities and nuances of social experience become flattened and reduced to its summary classification (Ferrell, 2013). This session explores the possibility of film as a way of making theory ‘come alive’, enhancing the student experience and instilling a greater creativity that promotes heightened degrees of both application and synthesis. After all, both theory and film share the same premise – to make comprehensible the illegibility of social life.
Dr Madeline Taylor Macquarie Law School	Reconceptualising, demystifying, and engaging in Commercial Law: An ECR Perspective Commercial Law is oft perceived as a rigorous and highly challenging private law subject surveying several highly technical areas of legal practice. This presentation will examine the reconceptualisation of commercial law teaching through reform-orientated case-method learning to embrace and tackle ‘wicked problems’ in commercial law. It will also survey authentic assessment tasks and the journey of enhancing the learning and teaching environment to encourage students’ appreciation of Indigenous knowledge and enterprise while critiquing western modes of transacting.
Dr Alex Woods Department of History and Archaeology	Challenging Normative Archaeology & “unsilencing” Marginalised Narratives In session 1 2022, the curriculum of AHIS / AHIX 1250: Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Archaeology was revised to consider how the region’s archaeological past is valued, owned and contested by both academic and public communities. Drawing on humanistic, anthropological and scientific methods and theories, the course reveals the limitations and possibilities of archaeological knowledge production, engages with contemporary debates and diverse cultural perspectives to contextualise historical and archaeological knowledge, considers topics of social relevance today and addresses the importance of conducting responsible archaeology in the 21st century. The presentation outlines the application of anti-colonial and decolonial theory and pedagogy in AHIS / AHIX 1250 to explain the urgency of revising the introductory archaeology curriculum for promoting equity in the discipline and beyond.

Presenter

Topic

Dr Richard Carter-White Macquarie School of Social Sciences

Scaffolding fieldwork in Geography and Planning

The significance of fieldwork within geography and planning L&T is constantly evolving. In the FoA, field work is first introduced and implemented in GEOP1010 (the major introductory human geography unit). It is then then mapped out and refined across the Major/BPlan (particularly in 2000-level units). This presentation will discuss the significance of fieldwork for students, both as a process of data collection and engagement with real world challenges, but also as an experience of reflecting on the nature of geographical knowledge.

Dr Janet Dutton
Macquarie School of Education

'Mantle of the Expert' Viva Voce

Utilising the a ‘Mantle of the Expert’ (Heathcote & Bolton, 1994; Heathcote & Herbert, 1985) teaching system, this assessment as learning task positions 1st year Master of Teaching students in role as classroom teachers speaking to their Principal about a classroom management dilemma they have managed. The ‘Mantle of the Expert’ approach places the student at the centre of learning with the facilitator’s role being to create the conditions whereby a mantle of leadership, knowledge, competency and understanding grows around the student during the task (Aitken, 2014).

Dr Jasna Novak Milic
Department of Media, Comms, Creative Arts, Language and Literature

Designing learning for stress-free hybrid-flexible course delivery

In a post-pandemic era, the hybrid-flexible course design model (HyFlex), which implies flexible learner attendance along a spectrum from fully online through face-to-face on campus, is getting more attention, however many are doubting whether its essential blended-synchronous element can be done in a smooth way, to the satisfaction of both the lecturer and the students. With help of so called ‘double zooming’, interactive applications such as H5P and basic classroom and office technology available, blended-synchronous can achieve classroom-like interactions and high levels of student satisfaction.

Dr Alex Simpson
Department of Security Studies and Criminology

Teaching Theory Through Film

If theory is a system of ideas intended to account, explain and interpret a wider set of social phenomena or activities, then in criminology theory is crucial to shedding critical light on, and giving meaning to, the processes of crime, law and treatment (McLaughlin & Newburn, 2013). From explaining the over-incarceration of people of colour to analysing the inequalities of victimisation, theory is a way of enabling students understand and examine the repeated injustices surrounding victimisation, incarceration and offending. However, in the classroom, theory is often overly abstracted in both teaching and the literature, with students often struggling to apply theoretical contours to make sense of real-world scenarios. Furthermore, theory suffers from the problem that definitional solidity, especially in teaching, is the moment where the complexities and nuances of social experience become flattened and reduced to its summary classification (Ferrell, 2013).

This session explores the possibility of film as a way of making theory ‘come alive’, enhancing the student experience and instilling a greater creativity that promotes heightened degrees of both application and synthesis. After all, both theory and film share the same premise – to make comprehensible the illegibility of social life.

Dr Madeline Taylor
Macquarie Law School

Reconceptualising, demystifying, and engaging in Commercial Law: An ECR Perspective

Commercial Law is oft perceived as a rigorous and highly challenging private law subject surveying several highly technical areas of legal practice. This presentation will examine the reconceptualisation of commercial law teaching through reform-orientated case-method learning to embrace and tackle ‘wicked problems’ in commercial law. It will also survey authentic assessment tasks and the journey of enhancing the learning and teaching environment to encourage students’ appreciation of Indigenous knowledge and enterprise while critiquing western modes of transacting.

Dr Alex Woods
Department of History and Archaeology

Challenging Normative Archaeology & “unsilencing” Marginalised Narratives

In session 1 2022, the curriculum of AHIS / AHIX 1250: Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Archaeology was revised to consider how the region’s archaeological past is valued, owned and contested by both academic and public communities. Drawing on humanistic, anthropological and scientific methods and theories, the course reveals the limitations and possibilities of archaeological knowledge production, engages with contemporary debates and diverse cultural perspectives to contextualise historical and archaeological knowledge, considers topics of social relevance today and addresses the importance of conducting responsible archaeology in the 21st century.

The presentation outlines the application of anti-colonial and decolonial theory and pedagogy in AHIS / AHIX 1250 to explain the urgency of revising the introductory archaeology curriculum for promoting equity in the discipline and beyond.

L&T Seminars