At the recent ACDS TL Conference, Les Kirkup from UTS gave a presentation on an OLT funded Seed project:’ Matching the background of demonstrators with those of their students: does it make a difference?’ Les and his co-workers at UTS and the University of Cape Town are exploring the experiences and perceptions of students and demonstrators in undergraduate science laboratories with a goal of developing improved strategies for recruiting, supporting and professionally developing demonstrators.
In his presentation Les suggested a possible new project for 2016 drawing on the work of the Seed project and other recent and concurrent OLT funded projects and fellowships, including Kelly Matthew’s 2015 OLT fellowship ‘Students as partners: reconceptualising the role of students in science degree programme curriculum development’. The 2016 project is provisionally entitled ‘Students as learners, leaders and architects: reconceptualising curriculum design, development and delivery of student-centred, laboratory-based, activities’ and you are invited to discuss it with Les. Background to the Seed project and preliminary findings can be found at http://www.unistars.org/papers/STARS2015/13F.pdf.