AUGEN NEWS - December 2021
From the President
Our last AUGEN NEWS for 2021!
We’ve had a great year as a TEAM.
AUGEN has been formalised, with a committee, and has found an administrative home within the Australian Geoscience Council
We have a sparkly webpage, a regular newsletter, and some great new initiatives including the AUGEN Conversations series and the Geoscience Education Research Discussion group.
We have had new members join from Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and New Zealand as well as a wide range of Universities, organisations and schools within Australia. Remember that we also welcome teachers at primary and secondary school so please encourage educators you know at all levels to join!
We hope you can join us for our annual Virtual Meeting - Friday 4 February, 2022. Please consider submitting a presentation or suggesting a discussion topic.
Thanks for joining and engaging with us this year. On behalf of the AUGEN committee, we send our best wishes for a relaxing end-of-year break and a safe and prosperous 2022.
Best, Sandra
A/Prof Sandra McLaren
School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
University of Melbourne
** 2022 AUGEN TEAM annual meeting **
Join us for our annual meeting!
** Friday 4 February 2022 **
Presentations on teaching and learning in geoscience are welcome, but only an informal abstract paragraph will be required. Did you approach an aspect of your teaching differently in 2021? Did you have some successes you would like to share? Did you have some failures you’d like to share? Do you have some questions to put to the team? We want you!
The meeting will be around 3 hours (with a break or two) depending on the number of presentations
1 pm NSW, Vic, Tas, ACT
12:30 pm SA
12 noon Qld
11:30 am NT
10 AM WA
Format - short talks (10-15 minutes) on teaching innovations, disasters, and successes as well as School/Department updates or Geoscience Education Research results, proposals or discussions all welcome. Only short (e.g., two paragraph) abstracts are necessary. We will also have time for discussion on topical general issues such as the future of geoscience education in the current higher education climate. If you wish to propose/lead a topic for discussion please email sandra.mclaren@unimelb.edu.au
Registration is completely free and is now available on the AUGEN TEAM website:
Geoscience Education Research Working Groups
Our first Geoscience Education Research Discussion was held in November and the team had a great brainstorming session thinking about projects that they would like to lead or be involved with. We are currently in the process of collating those ideas and forming working groups focused on particular topics - we hope to circulate the list in late January.
At the AUGEN TEAM annual meeting, online in February 2022, we will have some breakout rooms to discuss how to proceed with these different projects. Express your interest in joining to Sandra or Jackie, or register for the meeting and join on the day! You are more than welcome to join more than one working group going forward
AUGEN Conversations
Given many members were on well-deserved leave, we decided to hold over the scheduled December AUGEN Conversation until March 2022. The date has been updated on the Conversations page of our website, where you can also check out previous sessions.
For further queries, or to suggest a topic for Conversation, contact Dom
Meet the Team
Bonnie Teece
UNSW, Sydney
b.teece@unsw.edu.au
My current teaching role
I teach 2nd and 3rd year Science Communication and 2nd and 3rd year Astrobiology. I am also the Deputy Director and Co-Founder of Praxical, where we build curriculum-aligned data driven workshops with practical approaches
Areas of special interest/expertise
Geochemistry, Palaeontology, Field work, Virtual field work, Assessment, Outreach (general public, primary and secondary schools), SoTL, Geoscience Education Research, Astrobiology
Feel free to get in touch if you have questions on these topics!
What’s the best teaching advice anyone has ever given you?
That you can't always measure a student's interest and engagement by their body language and participation in the classroom. Students express themselves in a lot of different ways
What do you enjoy most about your teaching role?
I enjoy working with students to help them develop life-long learning skills and have critical thinking skills in a world where there is an increasing amount of information, but not all of it is reliable
What advice would you give someone starting out in geoscience teaching?
Build a supportive network and write reflexively about your teaching practices, knowing why you are doing things and how effective they are is essential
What is the greatest challenge to increasing the reach of geoscience education?
Accessibility is a big problem. There are a lot of people who still believe that the only way to be a good geoscientist is to have extensive field experience, but there are a lot of people interested in geoscience who aren't interested/able to have field experience. I think we need to explore ways of creating equitable field knowledge
Which wins for you? Rock, mineral, fossil, structure?
Fossil!
See all the AUGEN TEAM profiles online
https://www.augenteam.net/contact
WE NEED YOU! Complete the form at https://forms.gle/kPk5YQwFDXh4S8vD8 to be profiled on our website and in an upcoming newsletter!
Links, reading and resources
Some recommended reading and online resources from the AUGEN TEAM:
The National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education has launched a new resource with resources, news and events related to regional tertiary education: https://www.ncsehe.edu.au/regional-university-centres-network-launches-new-website/
Something that would surprise none of our wonderful AUGEN TEAM members … but approaching teaching with kindness has positive effects on learning and the learning environment with benefits for students and educators! Check out the recent paper on the kindness pedagogy here: Journal of Advances in Education Research, Vol. 6, No. 2, May 2021 https://dx.doi.org/10.22606/jaer.2021.62002
Teacher gender bias? Check out the discussion in this recent Conversation article by Rigissa Megalokonomou of the University of Queensland: https://theconversation.com/teacher-gender-bias-is-real-and-has-lasting-effects-on-students-marks-and-study-choices-171827
A thought provoking session organised by Auscope at the recent AEGS2021 explored how the Australian geoscience community can be more inclusive of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in geoscientific programs. Read about the session across on the Auscope blog
The recent special issue of the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology on Emerging technologies in education for innovative pedagogies and competency development includes a paper on gamification in teaching and learning potentially of interest to AUGEN TEAM members
Through the lens
A selection of field photos from Nathan Daczko, Macquarie University, of field teaching in the Weekeroo area of South Australia.
WE NEED YOU! Do you have a great geoscience photo to share? Email it to sandra.mclaren@unimelb.edu.au to be featured on our website and in an upcoming newsletter!
Contributions to AUGEN News are welcome! Please send your updates, commentaries, book or journal article reviews, photos and ideas through to the team - sandra.mclaren@unimelb.edu.au