Education

I lead the delivery and design of units for students in IT, engineering, computing and architecture, consulting with other academics and managing casual teaching staff. 

I have obtained prizes and competitive conference funding within Swinburne, and am sought after by sessional tutors to work for due to my focus on their professional development.

Industry-linked units

I was assigned to design and deliver the first industry-linked unit for BICT students in 2022, as part of what was called a "spine". Unlike many other spine units, this unit was created from scratch; it was not an existing project unit or an existing unit adapted to include an industry project. As an additional challenge, I had not worked with BICT students before.

The industry involvement was altered slightly to use a software product provided by industry with a project designed by teaching staff, instead of having a client provide a problem and us needing to determine the software to use. This meant students were able to interact with an IT industry professional and gain advice on a career in IT.

In line with the Agile principles associated with the chosen platform, feedback was sought from students regarding assessment and rubrics (as a form of student co-design), teams participated in stand ups each week in classes, and retrospectives were undertaken with the entire cohort.

"Considering it is a new unit, I think you have done an exceptional job and I have thoroughly enjoyed every session throughout the semester. I have gained a lot for my future employment from learning this unit." Student feedback via email

I liaised with Employability to integrate their Professional Purpose training into the unit, which was an expectation of spine units. The ICT unit had 71% of students complete the required modules, compared to 34% for the Engineering spine unit and 5% for the Computer Science spine unit in the same semester (S1 2022). Unfortunately poor engagement in the subsequent unit meant that completion of the next set of modules was 24% for both BICT and BEng students (compared to 3% for BCS students), so the strong start did not continue. Looking across years at students who submitted a portfolio for ICT Inquiry Project, 75% of students completed the required modules in 2022, with a small increase to 79% in 2023.

At the end of 2022, I presented a poster at Swinburne's Work Integrated Learning community event on incorporating employability skills into the curriculum.

Mobile development

I have taught both iOS and Android on and off since 2016. This requires not just knowledge of foundational concepts (and keeping up to date with both frameworks) but also awareness of how best to present topics and common issues faced. 

A review of the iOS unit in 2018 revealed a number of issues with task structure and the appropriateness of materials for the student cohort, leading to low engagement and student satisfaction. By moving to a self-directed learning approach, the proportion of satisfied students (rating 7+/10) increased from 33% to 61% (2019). The implemented changes led to a Faculty Teaching Excellence Award in 2020.

Changes to the Android unit led to increased engagement with the self-selected optional make-your-own-app project from 17% to 23% of students in 2018. In 2020, the remote learning version of the unit changed over to Kotlin which was well-received, alongside a flexible self-learning structure consisting of written and video instruction ahead of time, weekly video updates, a live Q&A session each week and solutions videos at the end of each week. Extremely high satisfaction (9 or above out of 10) with the unit increased from 32% in 2018 to 40% in 2020, remaining at 39% in 2021.

Both units use GitHub Classroom for managing code submissions.

A number of students have progressed from both mobile units into internships, work placements, or graduate roles as mobile developers.

Predict project: mobile app for tracking progress using gamification

For the course Predict: Current and Future Trends in eLearning (UTS Online, November 2024), I pitched the MobDevSwin app described on my Software page as an example of student engagement and motivation. The app allows students to measure progress in a unit in a way that suits them (e.g., using a progress bar, viewing how many other students have completed tasks), obtain notifications of tasks, and email staff with questions. The idea is not to distract students, but gently nudge them towards their goals for the unit, as well as show students a custom mobile app in action, and demonstrate a tool aimed at students with high levels of technical literacy.

Project team peer assessment

As part of the new industry-aligned units at Swinburne, students are required to work in teams and then provide a review of each team member using a set rubric. 

In 2022 I took on processing peer review data and calculating scores for all 730 students/140 teams in COS10025 Technology in an Indigenous Context Project using Forms, Excel, Python and pandoc, saving several hours if the task was delegated to 10 separate tutors. The output included the self and peer score for each student along with peer comments, organised by team for easy reading. 

The process is being further developed in 2023 as more units roll out. In S1 2023 it was used for 210 students/60 teams in ICT10022 incorporating pandas into the pipeline for matching of teams. Unfortunately incorrectly-entered student IDs for teammates still need to be cleaned manually. The introduction to Forms of being able to edit responses will assist with cleaning in future semesters.

Transport engineering

I contributed to significantly increased student satisfaction for Transport Systems at the University of Melbourne (2013): between 65-85% agree/strongly agree for all Student Experience Survey responses (compared to 21-55% the previous year).