We launched Futures in February, when we published one of our most-read posts for the whole year, Georgina Barratt-See’s tips for how to solve the wicked problem of ‘My Students Don’t Talk!‘.
In March, we said hola to Jeffrey Browitt, who showed us how his students co-create course content for his subject Contemporary Latin(o) Americas. CIC’s Simon Knight gave us some handy tools for data management in teaching, Adrian Norman told us who to blame for the rise of the MOOC, and Jane Hunter shared some innovations from the world of teacher education.
In April, learning got more fashion conscious with Melissa Edwards and Mark Liu on transdisciplinary learning with BCII students, and more delicious with Annette Dowd’s 4 ingredient recipe for successful learning.
In May we were tickled pink to have a contribution from VC Professor Attila Brungs, celebrating the winners of the Learning and Teaching Awards. We were equally proud to be first to publish the story about the Auslan research of UTS student Emily Quinn Smyth (and her lecturer Andy Leigh) – and so excited about the places Emily’s story has gone since.
In June, Jason Benedek from DAB got us up to speed with Virtual Reality & 3D. We had posts from our buddies in postgraduate.futures – Carmen Vallis on improvements in student engagement, and our mates in UTS Library giving us the lowdown on Open Educational Resources.
We made everyone feel just a little better about themselves in July when we helped break the story about Nick Hopwood’s wall of rejection. Meanwhile Equity & Diversity’s Sarah Houbolt got the Simulation Blues.
In August, Elizabeth Humphrys and Keith Heggart from the School of Communication explored radical economic pedagogy and experiential learning, while we got all maritime with Law of the Sea expert David Leary. Over in Science, Elaine Huber interviewed Sheila Donnelly from the School of Life Sciences about the teaching-research sweet spot. And Natalie Krikova’s lucky students experienced authentic learning through industry excursions.
In September, Chris Riedy showed us there are no shortcuts to learning how to do transdisciplinary research. Lan Snell from UTS Business School and lately postgraduate.futures shared her ‘soft skills’ videos, while Jackie Jones told us how she made a video to take the fear out of client interviewing for her law students. And Susan Page from CAIK explained why all UTS students need the Indigenous Graduate Attribute.
In October Jurgen Schulte’s post on creating an authentic learning experiences was a hit. Over in Engineering and IT, our story about Zee Opperman’s use of escape rooms with her students really captured our imaginations.
In November, Venetia Vecellio, our accessible.futures intern, gave us plenty of food for thought around not making assumptions about access requirements. (Actually, our content on accessibility topics has been some of the most popular with readers this year!).
This month, Amanda Lizier brought us a better way to do student presentations without boring powerpoint. And if you haven’t yet read our most recent post – by Annmaree Watharow on her PhD journey and disability in the university – you should.
To ALL our contributors – that’s many more people than we’re able to mention here – we are so grateful you chose to share something on Futures this year. In the VC’s words, “So many of the things that we are trying [at UTS] are new, and it’s important to our success that we share our learnings and understand what works and equally what does not.” That’s what Futures is all about. We’re looking forward to helping the UTS learning and teaching community share more stories of successes, tribulations and innovations in 2018.
To all our readers, we wish you a restful / fabulously exciting festive season (choose all that apply). See you in the future!
Feature image CC BY 2.0 by Miguel Vaca