Two academics from The University of Queensland have been awarded fellowships to help improve university education for maths and science students.
Dr Michael Bulmer, from the School of Physical Sciences, and Dr Roger Moni, from the School of Biomedical Sciences, have both recently been awarded fellowships to the prestigious Carrick Institute for Teaching and Learning for Higher Education.
Dr Bulmer’s project will focus on helping discover students’ attitudes towards learning maths in large classes, while Dr Moni will aim to improve the writing skills of science students.
Dr Bulmer said the fellowship would allow him to work for three months full-time on the project, which he said was “a rare opportunity for an academic”.
Likewise, Dr Moni looked forward to being able to meet with international scholars through his project, because his research will have global significance.
Dr Moni said his research would take a year to complete, starting in 2008. It will assess how writing is currently taught in UQ’s Bachelor of Science program and how science students can be taught to improve their writing skills.
He said the project was inspired by feedback from future employers that science students were not good written communicators and this posed problems for them when they entered the workforce.
“Writing is… clearly central to thinking and communication,” Dr Moni said.
“How science students learn to write goes well beyond just mechanically reproducing text types.”
He said the findings of the project could ultimately be applied in science classrooms in universities around the world.
Dr Bulmer said his project would also have a broad application in other universities. His topic, “Technology for Nurture in Large Classes”, will investigate how students feel about learning in large classes and how teachers can respond to students’ feelings.
His project will also involve establishing a one-day national forum on “Nurturing in Higher Education”, which he hopes will become an annual event in Australia.
Media: Dr Michael Bulmer (07 3365 7905), Dr Roger Moni (07 3346 9865) or Tegan Taylor at UQ Communications (07 3365 2339)
