Meeting Notes 05-11 (May 10, 2011)

The meeting participants were Cathy Greenfield, Adrian Dyer, Yoko Akama, Jeremy Parker, Rachel Wilson, Russell Kerr, and Adrian Miles. Apologies received from Karen Trist and Francesca Rendle-Short.

Cathy tabled the rubric that she developed for the Media and Communication Futures subject (draft available as a pdf). This was not discussed, but will be used as a template for all other courses as we move into curriculum development. [It was not discussed because the working group has been working piecemeal and the schedule got a bit sidetracked, so we will keep this to one side to be used when we are specifically dealing with curriculum.]

Adrian M. reported on recent meeting with Dean and a variety of other staff. The Dean has expressed belief that there should be one program director for honours (inspite of their being two programs), that there be a small program team of three to five, and that the PD position should rotate every two years.

The meeting then worked on completing an informal Gantt Chart of tasks that need to be completed for the program to commence successfully in 2012. We listed all tasks we could think of, and then where possible indicated when they had to happen by. This is to give us a more specific roadmap than we’ve had for a while and to stop meetings chasing tails. We know have deadlines, and in some cases preliminary actions. The roadmap is currently pinned up on the wall in 9.2.5.

Adrian Miles is chasing up what role the working group has, if any, in proposing a method for finding teaching staff and a Program Director for the program.

Meeting Notes 04-11 (April 13, 2011)

Present: Russell Kerr, Jeremy Parker, Adrian Dyer, Adrian Miles, Cathy Greenfield, Karen Trist, Adrian Miles
Apologies: Yoko Akama, Phred Peterson

Have received word from Fiona Peterson that the academic ‘package’ has successfully passed through the next step of the approval process, and so I take from this that we can be confident that the program will be allowed to begin in 2012.

We then discussed some concerns around the research methods/strategies subject offered, and identified that where there is a specific need for a very specific and detailed method, that an alternative methods subject could be undertaken. However, it was also agreed that in general students should be using methods and practices that they are familiar with from their undergraduate study and that honours is not where you begin a new method, from the beginning as it were. To be blunt, honours is not there to address or correct things that may be missing from the undergraduate curriculum.

At the last meeting we had been working on the Media Futures subject. It was agreed that a general statement about the aims of the subject would be prepared, and that this would not outline specific approaches or theories, but provide a framework to let individual teaching staff frame a curriculum.

ACTION: Cathy agreed to write this for tabling at the next meeting.

We then had a long, broad, general, and wandering discussion about the the labs. It was agreed that agreeing upon a method or protocol for how lab themes were to be defined was the key next step. (And then we could actually theme them.) In addition input from Linda Daley (HDR) and Jo Tacchi (Research) would be sought.

ACTION: Adrian Miles to contact Jo and Linda for informal input. Responses to be tabled at the next meeting.
ACTION: all to consider possible scenarios or ways that labs can be defined (what methods or protocols we could have that are clear, understandable, transparent, for how a lab theme is decided upon). These to be discussed at the next meeting.

In addition there are questions around staffing, selection, promotion and marketing, and resourcing that need to be addressed.

ACTION: Adrian Miles to meet with relevant staff to discuss, this to be tabled at first available meeting.

Overall governance of the program also needs to be considered, and defined.

ACTION: Adrian Miles to discuss this with Fiona Peterson, outcomes to be tabled at first available meeting.

Meeting Notes 03-11 (March 16, 2011)

Present: Cathy Greenfield, Jeremy Parker, Rachel Wilson, Yoko Akama, Adrian Dyer, Karen Trist, Adrian Miles.
Apologies: Russell Kerr, Jeremy Yuille.

Discussed and outlined the Bachelor of Design honours that is being proposed and its relation to the Media and Comm Honours program. In essence the two cohorts will be together except for Media and Communication Futures.

Revisited the Research Strategies course that has been developed so far. Variety of things raised and discussed, generally further contextualising the subject and its role.

Discussed Media and Communication Futures – what should it do, what should students learn. This conversation needs to continue at the next meeting. This documented via the photos below:

Meeting Notes 02-11 (March 1 2011)

Here: Adrian Miles, Cathy Greenfield, Yoko Akama
Apologies: Karen Trist, Karli Lukas

Update: revised academic package has been returned to College, so we are waiting for what’s next. Arranging a meeting to get a bit more information about the Comm Des honours proposal, partly for clarification and partly to get a better sense of what the imagined relation to the M.Comm honours is.

Today: last session we built a map of the outcomes for the research strategies subject. We now want to:

1. define assessment outcomes
2. develop an assessment matrix
3. define assessment timelines
4. develop and describe a learning roadmap for the subject

Excellent discussion about the strategies subject. It will begin from a constellation of questions:

• what is your discipline?
• what counts as a proposition in your discipline?
• what is a discipline?
• what counts as (professional) knowledge in your field?
• what is knowledge?
• what is the difference between information, data, knowledge?

Around or arising from this are a cluster of related questions and problems. We discussed the ‘roadmap’ of the subject as like a guide, where there are, say, three key things to be seen, but how you get to them will vary, but you really need to see these three things. So, the assessment is a way to focus this stroll so that students are to make a response to:

• what questions matter?
• how do you do research?
• what do you do as a researcher?
• how is it done?
• how is it presented?
• what methods are used?
• why does this matter?

A version of this of around 2000 words will be assessed half way through semester. Critiqued/assessed and then further developed and submitted at the end where it will be between 4 and 5000 words. These are the only assessment tasks, they are iterative, and a mix of formative and summative. It is also to build the ‘bedrock’ for their second semester research task.

A research proposition, which is also an outcome of this, will be assessed by the honours committee, but will be ‘attached’ to the research subject as a hurdle assessment, come satisfactory progress requirement.

In addition we talked about ways (and the value of) an ongoing mapping come visualisation task in the workshop that maps the different discsiplines/fields/methods being used, where you place yourself, as a way of making visible respective research specificities and differences. This would be a key outcome of the strategies workshop, not assessed, but useful in showing what has been done, where we’ve been, and will inform their responding to the main assessment task. The aim is to start broad, and spend the semester focussing ti down.

Meeting Notes, 01 -11 (February 14 2011)

Present: Yoko Akama, Cathy Greenfield, Jeremy Parker, Karen Trist.

Update: Part As and program guides approved subject to some amendments, which Adrian is doing.
Communication Design has been tasked with developing an individual honours program, discussion about this and relation to Media and Communication honours is ongoing.

Old stuff: Have confirmed that the Part Bs of the course guides (where you pretty much specifically indicate what is being done in the subject) do not have a formal approval process. Have not been given any information about how the process of staffing and teaching the program will proceed.

We talked about developing and designing the entire curriculum, on a subject by subject basis. The first one we started with was the strategies come methods subject. We sent the day doing the first step, which was to make a list of the things we could think of that students might want or need to learn doing the subject. Each thing was stuck on to a chart, where I later moved the items into thematic/cognate groups.

Reading vertically, from left to right, headings are mine:

technical
does it need to cover how to write?
what ‘technical writing’ stuff is needed?
styleguide?
presmises of academic writing
library session

stuff
what stuff will you be working with? How?
where is this stuff?
what do you need to know to do this?

epistemologies of research
what is knowledge?
what is your discipline?
what counts as a proposition in your discipline?
what is a discipline?
what counts as professional knowledge in your field?
what is the difference between knowledge, information, data?

tacit knowing and research
what constitutes/counts as research?
what is a research question/problem?
what form does evidence take in your discipline?
what does a research answer look like?
what is an argument?

ethics
what are the ethics of research?
ethics – an ethical reflection of you to your research, your research persona as ethics, things you should do, not just things not to do

currently miscellaneous
how does this relate to the labs?
systems of reason
hierachies of knowledge
qualitative versus quantitative
specific methods or practice modules (interviewing, surveys), in lectures, workshops?

Next: from this map move to how students might learn these things, activities, methods, models. And then what learning outcomes these are, and what assessment artefacts are relevant and useful.

Meeting Notes, December 8

Apologies: Karen Trist, Jeremy Yuille.
There: Cathy Greenfield, Yoko Akama, Jeremy Parker, Adrian Miles.

Reported on where the formal documentation is up to. Finalising the final, last, hopefully for now, changes to the Program Guide, and the Part A course guides. These are then being submitted to the College for consideration, and hopefully then to Building One. The program guide outlines program capabilities and which subjects/courses link to and teach which of the capabilities.

Will keep regular updates out to the School via the School newsletter. If we get through the next approval round then will also see if we can present a brief outline of honours to the next whole school meeting.

Key Tasks for 2011

1. draft vision dash mission statement for honours
2. develop a bibliography/collection of key resources to inform our thinking about honours
3. detailed planning, structuring and scaffolding of the entire curriculum for delivery in 2012

To be confirmed:

1. Do Part B course guides need to go through an approval process?
2. At what point in 2011 do issues around staffing (who is going to teach these things) need to begin? Finished?
3. What governance structure needs to emerge from the working group?

We will begin again in February, fortnightly hourly meetings with the main task to develop specific curricula for each subject.

Meeting Notes, November 8

Adrian Miles, Jeremy Yuille, Rachel Wilson, Karen Trist and John Power (for Jeremy Parker)

There were apologies from Yoko Akama, Francesca Rendle-Short, Cathy Greenfield.

Another one of our engaged, broad, intense, productive and constructive roundtables. All fired from talking about what the program capabilities should be. This generated a large cloud of things, which Jeremy Y. and Adrian M. will analyse and synthesise.

Meeting Notes October 20

Present: Rachel Wilson, Adrian Miles, Jeremy Parker, Cathy Greenfield, Karen Trist.

Presented the program proposal as it has gone to college and Building One. The major differences to what has been discussed and modelled to date:

1. will share research methods with existing subjects, but we have enough students to run our own tutorial cohort, so 2 hour workshop, not 3
2. labs must have 15 students
3. scaled down numbers for beginning, so 30 COG and 5 ION places
4. individual supervision for semester two only

If the program grows, then a final total enrolment of 45 has received support from within the School, which would also mean three labs. In terms of delivery cost, the program is predicted to lose the School around $140,000 per year. (Back of spreadsheet calculations with the financial analyst indicated B.Comm honours and Creative Media honours lose a combined $650,000 a year at the moment.)

Discussion then turned to the labs and the implications of only having two. In a nuthsell we recognised that:

• with only two labs having research themes seems problematic, as it is one thing to have four overall themes that reflect the school’s research agenda, but only two means it can’t reflect that
• the labs could still have a theme but these could more easily change from year to year
• first semester labs could be about the theme, about that topic domain and learning about it (as you need this to be able to frame a viable research proposition around it)
• while second semester labs could be reconsidered in terms of practice – how and what students are making, where there might be one lab dedicated to the sorts of research practices that revolve around writing, or theses, and a second one dedicated to project and exegesis work
• this reflects the 24 credit point that is now allocated to labs in semester 2 (done to enable a part time enrolment structure)

Problems arise though if enrolments increase and we have three labs, but of course the simple dichotomy between two types of labs might change with more students as well. This requires a lot of discussion and thinking about, as it does need to be nailed down shortly.

Presentation to 2010 B.Comm Honours

The Honours Studio

In the last class for the current Bachelor of Communication (Honours) students this year I made a presentation about the new honours proposal. They had a lot of good feedback and ideas, most of which I’ll document separately once I go through the notes they made for me.

Second presentation about the new honours (pdf)

Meeting Notes, October 5

The things we need to briefly discuss:

• meeting Thursday with financial analyst to work through a variety of scenarios for costing the honours program
• next steps for the LTIF proposal
• Expression of Interest has been endorsed, we are now official
• next best steps for this working group in relation to making honours a success?
• seminar come symposium come discussion on October 22nd with Cameron Tonkinwise and Anne Burdick – what, why, how?

Francesca, Jeremy P, Jeremy Y, Yoko, Karli, and Adrian attended. Long discussion about implications of various funding scenarios and any further scenarios that could be costed. These have been added to the relevant post.

We discussed the RMIT Learning and Teaching Investment Fund application and given the complete application is required to be submitted by October 17 agreed that we did not have time to do this, and that we would continue with it with the view for making it a part of the 2012 honours delivery.

We agreed to continue with developing and writing out the learning and teaching and research vision for the honours program, and that this also be provided to Cameron and Anne so that they could a) help us write these statements and b) critique the laboratory model we have developed and c) develop and contribute to a laboratory scenario for us.

Next meeting, Wed October 20, 1pm.