Case 3: Multi-university and multi-campus teaching: The European Union
Dr Stefan Auer and Dr Phillip Bull, History & Politics.
Stefan Auer interviews His Excellency Bruno Julian, EU Ambassador to Australia and New Zealand, as part of the lecture programme in The European Union unit.
The unit The European Union is delivered from La Trobe University to Griffith, Newcastle, Macquarie, Flinders and Murdoch Universities, as well as to La Trobe's own regional campuses at Bendigo, Albury-Wodonga and Mildura. This multi-campus and multi-university reach in teaching and learning was an outcome of a successful submission to the European Commission in which the Innovative Universities European Union Centre (The IUEU Centre) was set up, based on a consortium of six universities, with La Trobe and Macquarie as the two principal nodes.
The Challenge: To teach one unit concurrently to six universities, and maintain personal face-to-face contact in tutorials, and accommodating within the lecture programme non-academic experts from outside the Faculty.
The approach: Development of The European Union involved video recording of two lectures each week: one as a conventional lecture, the other a guest lecture in a recording studio. These recordings were turned into DVDs and streamed through Lectopia to WebCT. There were about three hundred students taking the unit in the first year (2007), with a similar, or higher enrolment expected in 2008.
Each participating university provided a local tutor who arranged viewing of lectures delivered from La Trobe University, and the local tutor took tutorials and assessment. Alternate lectures were recorded in a studio with a small student audience, so that most students would view that lecture in the same way that participating students from other universities did. The studio recording enhanced the quality of the recording to a standard comparable to broadcast television, and student questioning of guest lecturers was an added dimension. Stefan developed a presentation style for studio recordings in which he conducted interviews with guest lecturers. The lectures are delivered by DVD sent by courier to each university, as well as through Lectopia. Both of these methods are now accepted as valuable to the success of the project.
Reports from students and tutors in this pioneering teaching approach are that the unit is working well, and that the type of engagement and stimulus associated with physical presence in teaching and learning has been maintained in the flexible modes of delivery.