Teaching resources
On this page you will find pedagogical overviews, tips and resources to support your teaching practice
Academic integrity
Academic integrity is breached by students if they behave dishonestly when completing assessment tasks. Deakin upholds academic integrity by teaching students about their responsibilities, designing strong assessment tasks, detecting breaches, and imposing penalties for dishonest conduct.
Top tips
- Ask students to perform realistic assessment tasks that require applied knowledge and Skills.
- Show students the difference between plagiarism and effective paraphrasing.
Further resources
Active learning
How do students learn in your seminars? One way to reflect on this is to think about what students are doing in your learning activities. An active learning approach to teaching immerses students in their own learning. In effect, students can’t be passive participants because of the design of your activities.
Top tips
- Think about what introductory activity will ‘hook’ your students into your seminar.
- Consider, what challenge or problem do students need to solve together in your seminar?
Academic literacies toolkit resource
The Language and Learning team have developed ‘Teaching Academic Literacies: A Transition Toolkit’, to help teaching staff to reflect on ways of embedding academic literacies within curricula. This bank of customisable resources and activities is particularly valuable in the lead up to early written assessments.
Access the resource in CloudDeakin
- Log into CloudDeakin.
- Click the ‘Self Registration’ link on the right of the screen.
- Under the heading, Site offering, click on ‘Teaching Academic Literacies: A Transition Toolkit‘.
- On the next screen you will have an option to register – click register.
- In your course dashboard at the top of CloudDeakin you can now enter the Teaching Academic Literacies toolkit modules.
Authentic assessment
Great assessment tasks are authentic and realistic. They tend to be motivating as students can identify the relevance of the knowledge and skills required for successful completion. Many authentic assessments are simulations of real-world scenarios.
Top tips
- Ask, how does your assessment task link to a professional practice?
- Consider which graduate learning outcome is embedded in your assessment task?
Further resources
- WIL at Deakin explores how assessment can be linked to authentic learning opportunities.
Digital teaching and learning
Online learning at Deakin is delivered by a number of technologies in the CloudDeakin ecosystem. Learning online at Deakin emphasises the power of social learning as well as self-regulated learning and there a number of resources to help you design and facilitate your teaching.
Top tips
- When facilitating an online class, keep the ‘story’ of your lesson in mind.
- Zoom has replaced Bb Collaborate as Deakin’s preferred platform for online teaching – get to know its features for more effective class delivery.
Faculty Learning Innovation teams
- Arts Ed artsed-digital-learning@deakin.edu.au
- Bus Law dlf-li-bl@deakin.edu.au
- Health hedu@deakin.edu.au
- SEBE dlf-li-sebe@deakin.edu.au
eVALUate survey
The eVALUate survey gives students an opportunity to reflect and report on their learning experience in most units at Deakin University. It’s also a key component of the unit and course review process.
Top tips
- Learn how Deakin uses surveys including eVALUate to improve courses, units and student outcomes.
- Understand how to use eVALUate data to improve unit quality and provide the best student learning experience.
Further resources
Feedback for learning
It’s important to keep in mind that great assessment involves formative feedback. This can be led by the teacher but carried out by students as part of a learning activity prior to an assessment deadline. Teachers can also use a number of methods to give constructive feedback to students after an assessment has been marked.
Top tips
- Do your learning activities prepare students explicitly for the task?
- Consider audio or video feedback sometimes.
Further resources
Inclusive teaching and learning
As educators, we anticipate learner diversity attributable to a range of factors including language, culture, gender, sexuality, religion and socio-economic status. Diverse student backgrounds are a strength in courses and units as they offer first-hand experiences and perspectives of the authentically diverse world in which we work and live.
Top tips
- Always use inclusive language
- Facilitate student group work that is inclusive
- Consider Indigenous Knowledges, perspectives and pedagogies
Further resources
Located teaching and learning
Whether teaching a large class or a seminar, there are many strategies for engaging your students with your learning goals for the session. If you are teaching in a team, there are great benefits from designing the teaching collaboratively.
Top tips
- Consider a teaching plan.
- Think about how you ask students to know your key concept for the session.
Register for training in CloudDeakin
- Log into CloudDeakin.
- Click the ‘Self Registration’ link on the right of the screen.
- Under the Site offering heading click on ‘Curriculum Development for Unit Chairs‘.
- On the next screen you will have an option to register – click register.
- In your course dashboard at the top of CloudDeakin you can now access the learning modules.
Rubrics
Your assessment rubrics make explicit the criteria against which students’ work will be assessed, and describe the expected performance at each grade level. This is critical especially if more than one person is responsible for marking students’ work. It is important that the assessment rubrics directly reflect the learning outcomes developed in your unit.
Top tips
- Consider, does your assessment rubric support students to complete the task?
- Share your draft rubrics with a teaching colleague for feedback.
Register for training in CloudDeakin
- Log into CloudDeakin
- Click the ‘Self Registration’ link on the right of the screen
- Under the Site offering heading click on ‘Curriculum Development for Unit Chairs‘
- On the next screen you will have an option to register – click register
- In your course dashboard at the top of CloudDeakin you can now access the learning modules
Sessional staff learning modules
The ‘Sessional Staff Professional Learning Modules’ resource is designed to support sessional staff at Deakin. Find out about academic integrity, working with groups, your first class and giving great feedback.
Access the resource in CloudDeakin
- Log into CloudDeakin
- Click the ‘Self Registration’ link on the right of the screen
- Under the Site offering heading click on ‘Sessional Staff Professional Learning Modules‘
- On the next screen you will have an option to register – click register
- In your course dashboard at the top of CloudDeakin you can now enter the Sessional Staff Professional Learning Modules
Training resources SharePoint
The training resources site is designed to support teaching teams to incorporate new software into teaching and learning practice. It features bite-sized chunks of content supported by case studies and multimedia resources that explore a range of software that can be adopted in teaching and learning.
Further resources