Programme Contents

Developing research and inquiry though undergraduate education

There is widespread advocacy for ‘research-led learning’ in Australia at present – especially amongst research intensive universities where it has proved to be an especially seductive idea. However, beneath the apparently shared vocabulary of the rhetoric, there is considerable variability in what students, teachers and university policy makers understand ‘research-led learning’ to be. For some it is about research led teaching - finding links between the research and teaching activities of staff, for some it is about promoting active student learning or a related idea of student engagement, and for others it is about the nature and quality of the learning outcomes – amongst many interpretations. Behind these variations in what the call to ‘research led learning’ is understood to mean, there is often some ambiguity as to the sorts of benefits that are assumed to flow from research led learning or teaching - and whom is expected to benefit. This seminar will consider these issues from the perspective of current research in the area of generic graduate attributes. It will explore how the need to foster certain sorts of student learning outcomes provides a pedagogically relevant rational for introducing research led learning with all undergraduates. There will be opportunities for participants to explore the implications this raises for introducing different sorts of ‘research-led learning’ in undergraduate curricula with diverse student cohorts.