Mechanics

The Mechanics (of teaching at Bond University) video includes the following five topic areas:

(1) Clear Assignments
(2) Availability
(3) Plagiarism
(4) Grading Schemes
(5) Feedback

Transcript

Clear Assignments

Student 1

"In one class for example it’s very hard for me to know what’s expected of me, what the assignment is about, and what format should it be handed in or, so I'm struggling with that maybe."

Student 2

"And also when we talk about the assignments, well I’m from overseas so English is my second language. I need more detailed explanation of my assignments, such as if there would be more explanations, or more examples, that would be better for me."

Student 3

"Well what I like as well is that we, the assignments they are close to the things that we would encounter in the real situation, like in real world situation, which trains us with more practical skills - that we would actually need."

Student 4

"It's definitely useful to have real projects. It’s a lot more time consuming but in the end I think you learn so much more because you know, you know, it’s put into context you know you have useful information, it's like, I’ve done it."

Baden U’Ren,
Senior Teaching Fellow, Faculty of Business

"Feedback from past classes from international students has stressed that the clarity with which the requirements for a piece of assessment and how that piece of assessment is going to be graded is sometimes a bit blurred for them, so now I try to make sure that with the pieces of assessment that I set, that it is very clear what the requirement of the piece of assessment is, and also that, the process that I will use to grade that piece of assessment."

Availability   

Student 5

"The teachers back home they don’t really allow much time for students, they give the lectures and that’s pretty much it, but here it’s like people, the teachers give their emails and stuff, even their home phone you know, and they give a lot time for the students, make sure that each and every one understands their lesson. If you miss out they actually give some time to teach you again. That’s the big difference."

Student 6

"They are very nice cause they um, they are available after class, yeah, it’s different from the China cause the teacher after finish the class the teachers gone away and gone to another university to earn the money. The teachers here are really nice and they have the regular consultation time for students and so you can go and talk with them not just for your study but also for your daily life."

Student 7

"Actually I have, I have two major essays coming up now so I’ll do my running to the door of my professor and he says “Yeah, yeah of course I have time for you”, like writing out sources, that I find has been really helpful."

Dr Liz Spencer,
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law

"One of the needs of foreign students that we need to address is their need to check in with us, to speak with us on a one-on-one basis so we need to make ourselves available."

Jane Murray,
Senior Teaching Fellow, Faculty of Business, Technology and Sustainable Development

"If I’m not there my email is answered within a 24 hour period and they get a response back. Some students don’t want to come up to you in class, they don’t want to talk to you in class about an issue they’re having, or they are too embarrassed to say “Hey I’m not really understanding what you are talking about here and I need some more information" and it’s something that you can easily do at Bond because your classes are so small and you know your students so well. They trust you and they feel like they can talk to you about these things."

Plagiarism

Student 8

"The difference about Bond is that plagiarism is a really big deal here, you have to hand in papers on Turnitin.com"

Student 9

"I think it’s a good thing, yes. I know It’s probably really weird for a student to say, but just so you know that no one can take the easily way out, you know level playing field for everyone."

Student 10

"And being in a group where plagiarism has occurred, going through the tribunal and everything that comes along with it is a lot more stressful than it is back at home."

Dr Ben Shaw,
Professor of Human Resource Management, Faculty of Business, Technology and Sustainable Development

"One of the things that international students sometimes have a problem with is the issue of plagiarism because it's defined very differently in different countries. One of the things that I do in my class because I use a lot of group projects is a process whereby students have to turn in their paper electronically to turnitin.com about a week before it’s actually due. What I do, is I allow them then to see their originality report, which is a thing that turnitin.com allows you to see, and it shows you what in your paper has been copied directly from other sources. The students get to look at that and they are then able to make sure they properly footnoted all of the material that has come directly from other sources. In some countries copying things from other material is not, nearly as severely viewed as it is here at Bond University. So the students can see this, as a group they can check their work, and then I have them sign a form that says “Look we’ve all looked at this, we agree that everything that has been copied directly has been footnoted and as a result I haven’t had any troubles with plagiarism in my group, my multicultural group since I implemented this process."

Grading Schemes

Student 11

"Well the grading system here was a shock to me. When I got my first exam back the average was probably a 60 and at home that’s a D and, well that equals our D, and here that’s actually not that bad and then I just heard someone actually say that 75 equals an A and all these things are coming as whenever the American students get these grades back where you see these low grades and we're like “Oh my gosh I need to start doing more work, what’s happening” and but in reality we were doing fine but nobody ever reassured us of that and so that was something very challenging for us."

Student 12

"In China probably the whole semester it depends on your final exam, your grade on that final exam, but over here you have different sections all through semester so you have some part percentage of this kind of assignment, and then attendance, and then final exam all mixed up together to become your final grade but over here I think it’s more fair to the student’s abilities."

Student 13

"A good grade at home is not the same here. A good grade at home could be a 80-90 which here is unheard of sometimes. That was one of the shocking things when I came here.

Dr Beata Webb,
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

For years and years my Asian students would come to me and they would say “Oh but I put so much work into it, I’ve worked so hard", so of course as a teacher you just want to say “Well wonderful, you’ve worked so hard, but what about the outcome?” and further on I realised and I read that in fact the eastern view of education views the effort as more important than the outcome, so that’s a very different concept for eastern and western view of education."

Dr Marian Williams,
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

"In Australia compared to some of the countries in North America and some of the Asian countries, the grading scheme is just different enough that it can cause lots of confusion, and for example I gave a student a distinction and on her paper I had marked D. Well, she’s from Canada and when she came to me she had a very concerned look on her face and she said “Oh my gosh what did I do wrong” and I said “Well no, a D is a very good grade”. Explaining that to her the first time made me realise that that is a huge point of misunderstanding amongst students who come here either for a semester or a full degree, when they first get here they don’t understand the grading scheme, so it’s really important that as faculty we make sure that the grading scheme is explained to the international students and that they understand it clearly."

Feedback

Student 14

"Yes they are giving a good feedback to me, very positive, and I think I can improve a lot from that."

Student 15

"Feedback, it’s good they give feedback, they give for the whole class, but in terms of personal feedback, you have to go to them trying to find out some information about what you did in the exams and everything and I think sometimes if they see on a paper about a student something that really has to be clarified, on the topic or something, that they should go to the student and ask them to come to their office, you know, like to be more pushy, you know, kind of so that would be better, because some students, you know, they’re like “Oh well I’ve done bad but I’ll  do better next time” and they don’t really understand what’s wrong or what they should change the next time, so yeah."

Student 16

"I got feedback and, I did it again and I improved it according to the feedback  and then it didn’t improve my grade or anything, so I still don’t know what I’m doing wrong."

Student 17

"Bond have like every semester at the end of semester have forms for our, for students to write down what they think of their teachers and so I think it’s great because in China we don’t have that kind of system for feedback "

Mike Grenby,
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

"And I do a little feedback sheet in the sixth week of the semester and say “Are we having fun yet?” and it gives me some feedback  from the students and if I get the feedback “Please speak more slowly” I know that perhaps I really need to concentrate on that a bit more. I had a French student, same thing, he came up to me at the end of the first class and he said “Do I have any chance of getting a good mark in this class because of my accent“ he said in a very heavy French accent and because of my culture because its very different from here in Australia”. I told him the same thing I said “Take pride in your culture and use that to your advantage because that’s what makes you interesting to us” and he also went away with a smile and when he did his presentation he capitalised on the fact that he was French, he ended up with a Distinction. Asian students in particular sometimes have a problem coming up and giving talks, they tend to be a bit shy, and in a case like that I invite them to come and meet with me so that we can talk one-on-one, come up with some suggestions, some ideas, on how they can become more effective and more confident speakers, and although not all the students take me up on the invitation and not all the students rise to the challenge, most of them do."