Avondale enhances learning opportunities by offering international study tour electives as credit towards students’ degree programs. Study tours are available in history, visual communication, music, business and biblical studies. Preparation includes lectures, discussions, research, tutorial presentations and a written assignment. A post-tour assignment brings together the insights acquired on the trip. Study tours enrich theoretical learning with first-hand experience, generate an enthusiasm for learning that has no equal in the classroom, and develop global perspectives of value in subsequent professional life.

Bible lands study tour

In July 2011 Dr Wayne French, Lake Macquarie campus chaplain with a keen interest in archaeology, led sixty-two students on a study tour of Bible lands: Egypt, the Sinai peninsula, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Greece and Italy. The tour gave special attention to sites associated with Israel’s exodus from Egypt, the footsteps of Christ in the gospels, Paul’s missionary journeys, and the seven churches of Revelation. Highlights included climbing Mount Sinai, a communion service at the garden tomb in Jerusalem, a baptism in the River Jordan, and scripture readings at key locations. The tour also included historic sites at Petra, Jerash (Jordan), Gallipoli and Pompeii. Students said the tour made the Bible live as they saw the places where the events occurred. It also gave many their first experience of cultures outside Australia.

History study tours

This year’s history tour studied aspects of French history associated with sites in the south of France and in and around Paris. The previous tour (2008) focused on the history of ancient Greece and Rome. The tours enhanced students’ skills of historical investigation as they analysed and interpreted the source materials available at the various sites and museums. Students experienced at first hand the geography, locations and cultures relevant to the history they had studied, gaining clearer understandings of the political, social and ethical issues facing people in history.

“Actually seeing the buildings, sites and ruins in person
. . . has made the people in history . . . more real to me,” one student wrote. Another said, “History has quite literally been brought to life. It has freshly re-dawned on me that the history I study was the reality of people, communities and humanity.”

Students commented that the experience of operating in alien cultures and language environments also enriched their personal and spiritual development.

“It was clear that on-site experiences made a massive difference to the students,” said Associate Professor Daniel Reynaud. “The level of visible connection to the past and the immediacy with which they connected was evident in levels of excitement and verbal feedback.”

Following the tour, Associate Professor Reynaud and Dr Maria Northcote delivered a refereed paper on the educational value of international history tours, which they presented at the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australia Conference, Griffith University, Queensland (2011).

Visual Arts/Visual Communication

The 2011 tour studied art and architecture in Chicago and New York, cities whose museums and galleries exhibit an astonishing wealth of art from ancient times to the present. Highlights in Chicago included the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Museum of Contemporary Art; and in New York the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. The 2009 Visual Arts tour went to Paris, Amsterdam and London.

Business

The 2011 business tour studied selected industries and corporations in Singapore, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy, Monaco, France, Switzerland and England. Locations included the Lego factory in Denmark; Airbus, Volkswagen and BMW in Germany; Swarovski Crystal in Austria; Nestlé-Calliers in France; and the London Stock Exchange in England. The tour supplemented the theoretical base of students’ studies with practical applications in “real world” situations. Students were able to observe best practice in a range of international businesses, improving their understanding of the internal workings of organisations and enhancing their awareness of the broader social, cultural and environmental factors that influence business processes.

Music

The 2010 music tour studied the music, composers and performers associated with Vienna, Salzburg, Venice, Paris and London. Highlights included concerts at tour locations.

Dr Maria Northcote

Lecturers are using online technologies to extend the reach of Avondale education and to supplement traditional methods of learning and teaching. Online courses are becoming more and more common for Avondale’s distance education students, while many other students study in a “blended” format in which on-campus activities are supplemented by online activities. A “blended” learning experience provides greater flexibility and choice for students, and prepares them for the future by guiding them in the use of learning and teaching technology.

Like many other educational institutions, Avondale uses the online learning system Moodle, developed in Australia. This system allows lecturers and students to meet online to access course material, learning activities and resources. Some activities are even conducted online, a feature especially popular with students who live a long way from our campuses.

Avondale lecturers are keen to continue the high quality teaching that already happens at the college, including the personal touch and pastoral care that characterise Avondale’s education culture. Avondale is now working hard to extend these experiences to the online context – to maintain the traditional strengths of Avondale’s teaching while equipping lecturers to teach in new and innovative ways.

In line with this strategy, four staff members – Dr Maria Northcote, Associate Professor Daniel Reynaud, Dr Peter Beamish and Tony Martin – conducted research in 2010 about online teaching at Avondale, in collaboration with Dr Kevin Gosselin of Texas Tech University, USA. The research aimed to find out the lecturers’ current skills and concerns about online teaching; and to use these findings to assist staff to become skilled in online teaching and to provide a positive experience for students using online technologies in their learning. Dr Gosselin allowed the Avondale researchers to use a questionnaire that he had developed in 2009. The questionnaire was given to staff in two Avondale faculties to survey their ideas, their confidence levels and their concerns about online teaching. Dr Gosselin also helped analyse the data from the questionnaire.

So far, the research has shown that although lecturers may be concerned about using some aspects of online teaching technologies, they already have many of the baseline skills required to teach online. They already know how to structure courses and create valid assessment tasks, and are confident about transferring courses to online environments. They expressed concerns about how to select the best technology for teaching, how to make time to learn new skills, and how to use technology in purposeful ways. These concerns about technology are now being addressed in staff development programs through a series of workshops providing support resources, teaching guidelines and examples of good practice.

The research was presented at the Third Biennial Threshold Concepts Symposium at the University of New South Wales, 2 July 2010, and at a staff colloquium at Avondale on 26 August 2010.