I.D.E.A.S.

Masterclasses

Hear from internal and external experts in SoTL approaches and methodologies, innovative teaching, and authentic industry practice.

Community of Practice

Network with new, emerging, and experienced scholars of teaching and learning, and share knowledge and best practices.

Project Support

Develop SoTL projects with TLL support and guidance. Present findings and develop publications targeting SoTL venues.

Recognition

Present your practice and innovation successes, and celebrate them with the Faculty and wider engineering and computing education audiences.

IDEAS is a Faculty of Engineering and IT (FEIT) Teaching and Learning Laboratory (TLL) initiative bringing together academics with teaching responsibilities in the Faculty, to promote SoTL.

IDEAS meets face to face every 3 weeks, has asynchronous activities between the live sessions, and provides project collaboration and support in addition to these whole-group activities.

The Teaching and Learning Laboratory supports teaching evaluation research through the IDEAS group using a broad-scoped ethics protocol. See this page for information on the protocol and to submit a project (available to Faculty of Engineering and IT staff only).

To join IDEAS, or for more information, reach out to josh.burridge@unimelb.edu.au

  • The Faculty of Engineering and IT at UniMelb has a fantastic depth of teaching innovation and excellence. IDEAS promotes the publication of these skills and designs so that the local knowledge held within the Faculty can have increased impact into other contexts, and to highlight the impact being made by skilled educators in the Faculty.

  • Most engineering and computing education practitioners come from an engineering  or computing background rather than an education background - IDEAS provides development in educational practice through collaboration between new and experienced educators, as well as masterclasses from experts on specific engineering and computing education approaches and techniques.

  • Academics have an expectation to evaluate their teaching, and improve their practice as a result of these evaluations. IDEAS positions those evaluations in a SoTL context, supporting a more rigorous evaluative approach with a broad audience for the learnings identified.

  • A defining characteristic of SoTL is its contextual nature - SoTL is conducted on real teaching and learning conducted in practice, and involves active investigation and development of real classes. IDEAS supports the direct and meaningful application of SoTL techniques and projects into classes across FEIT.

  • Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has many complementary and competing definitions; the definition used for IDEAS is:

    • Scholarship of Teaching & Learning is active scholarly practice applied to specific teaching and learning contexts.
    • Scholarly practice involves drawing on existing knowledge to design and evaluate current and future practice, and contributing back to that knowledge.
    • The key differentiator between SoTL and Education Research is SoTL is inherently specific and contextual.