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TESOL and Applied Linguistics

Postgraduate Study in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at UTS.

Join Dr Keiko Yasukawa to find out more about our renowned postgraduate TESOL and Applied Linguistics courses.

Using contemporary models of language, learning and teaching, we aim to meet the needs of people both with and without teaching degrees. The program provides an initial teaching qualification for career changers wanting to teach English to adults, and a specialist qualification in TESOL for those who already hold a teaching qualification.

TESOL and Applied Linguistics courses

All right. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the TESOL and Applied Linguistic Postgraduate showcase. I’m Lucas from the domestic recruitment team at UTS.

So, yeah, before we start the session, I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation upon whose

ancestral lands our city campus now stands. I also would like to pay respect to the elders both past and present

acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge of this land. So we’ll allow more time for the attendees to join us online.

I'm just going to run through a couple of tips for you to enhance your experience for this webinar.

So participants, cameras and microphones have been muted to mix must keep up in that experience and please assess any questions

throughout the session via the Q&A function at the bottom of your toolbar.

We have also dedicated some time for our Q&A session at the end for this webinar.

So please note we also have started recording for this webinar for educational purposes.

Thank you.

Okay. So welcome to those who have just joined us

for the TESOL and Applied Linguistic Postgrad Showcase. My name is Lucas from the domestic recruitment team at UTS.

So in this session you will explore various careers options and stay updated on industry insights.

You'll also learn about the UK's program in style and applied Linguistics.

Whether you are new to teaching English as a second language or advancing your teaching career,

you will also have a chance to ask questions to other speakers as well. So feel free to put down any questions for Cathy.

Question and answer function at the bottom of the toolbar.

So to kick us off for the session, I'm pleased to introduce to you to Dr.

Keiko Yasukawa. Keiko is our program coordinator for TESOL and Applied Linguistics program.

She focuses on adults, education, literacy and numeracy. She has held leadership positions

in the news of US Adult Literacy and Numeracy Council since 2009 and is a member of the Australian Council

of Teens Vocational Education Group, where she works on vets policy and teaching quality.

Thank you very much for joining us tonight. Dr. Keiko. Hello, welcome.

So yeah, can you let us know about what Applied linguistics is and

and who this program is for? Okay, Thanks Lucas, and good evening, everyone.

Well, what is applied linguistics and to so applied linguistics is a very broad field.

It is an applied study of languages

and it can cover many different areas of how the study of

and knowledge of languages can be applied. But in our program, Applied Linguistics

focuses on the teaching of languages and how it works.

So the program is mainly targeting people who want to teach language, English,

and also literacy, the use of language in different contexts.

So it is really focussed on teaching of language and literacy and numeracy, I might add.

Yeah, thank you very much. So in a rapidly changing world, what skills and compared to see, do you think are the most important

for future language and literacy educators to cultivate in their students?

Yeah, so. Well, the world has always been changing and I'm sure it will continue to change.

And that means people and culture will continue to change.

And so what we need in teachers of languages and literacy

and numeracy are teachers who are curious,

who are open to learning and

really important that they are curious and open to learn about their learners

and what they bring to their learners, to their learning. Because as teachers, you know, we know a lot,

but we can't be effective teachers if we assume that we know everything

and our job is just about passing on what we know to our learners. Learners also bring a lot of knowledge and experience,

a lot of knowledge and experience that we as teachers don't have. So teaching is a relational practice.

It's about developing relationships with our learners, learning from each other, sharing knowledge with each other.

And I think in our UTSA program, that's the kind of

mindset that we want our teachers to have

Perfect. Thank you very much. And so in this ever evolving field of thought and

applied linguistics, what recent trends do you believe are having the most significant impact on teaching in language and literature

and literacy, support and development? So the field is constantly evolving.

The theoretical explanations that we had, you know,

even two decades ago about how people learn, how people learn language, how people develop literacy.

Those theories have not completely been thrown out. But because

research others in the field keep asking questions. These theories keep evolving.

And I guess there's two developments that I might want to share with you that's influencing the way we think

about languages and language learners and language learning, literacy, learning.

One is this approach called asset based pedagogy or asset based

teaching, and that is giving recognition

to what the learners bring to the teaching and learning context.

So when we're talking about teaching languages or teaching English,

we are talking about multilingual learners. They may be learning English,

but they already have knowledge and use of at least one

language, their so-called mother tongue. And we need to see their mother tongue and any other language

they know as assets and resources that they bring to learning

rather than focusing on what they don't know about English.

So that's a very simplistic, perhaps explanation of what we mean

by asset based pedagogy, focusing and building on what the learners bring.

And another development in not so much in the field but in society in the world as a whole is

the multi-modal ways in which we communicate with each other at the moment.

You know, we're communicating on Zoom

online video technology, which didn't exist

30 years ago, but that's sort of part and parcel of our everyday life now.

Certainly, you know, in the affluent countries of the world, you know,

we say, oh, oh, we can't meet face to face because of that. Oh, we'll meet by Zoom or we'll meet on two teams.

So the modes of communication have,

you know, expanded in recent years. So we communicate certainly still

by the traditional print based mode, reading and writing, you know, traditional printed text.

But increasingly, you know, that printed or the text

is combined with images, sometimes videos sometimes sound.

So, you know, our communication has become much more multimodal.

And so when we're teaching languages and literacy, see,

we need to be teaching what we call multi literacies, multimodal literacies.

And that makes both the teaching and learning of language and literacy much more

much richer and much more interesting. Amazing. Thank you very much.

So why did job opportunities and career pathways for applied Linguistics and Teasel graduates?

Okay, so the graduates from our program and I'll speak to this again

when we look at the slide presentations, but

they work in broadly

three different sector. So certainly there are graduates working in the school system,

the K-12 school system, teaching children

for whom English is an additional language or dialect.

So there's the primary or secondary teaching of English as an additional language.

But there are also graduates who are working with adult learners

in Australia. So they might be teaching English to adult migrants or teaching

English language and literacy and numeracy to job seekers. People who, for whatever reason

couldn't finish their schooling or had a bad experience of schooling.

And so as adults they may be speakers of English as a first language,

but they need to improve their literacy and perhaps numeracy in order

to get employment or in order to become basically more independent in their life.

The third area is what we call teaching English for academic purposes.

So in Australia they might be teaching international students who want to

develop or improve their English in order to

get accepted into an English speaking well university

or vet course, or they might be teaching English for academic purposes overseas,

where English is a foreign language. So the three sectors schools,

adult education and tertiary pre, academic, English teaching,

they're the three broad sectors that our graduates work in.

Yeah, thank you. So once the like subjects will decide on like the figures on what they want to teach on,

is there any other qualifications that graduate of the ETS. So in the planning quizzing program need before they come

and do the teaching in the field? Okay. That's a quite a complex question, Lucas.

For those who want to teach English to speakers of additional languages in Australian schools,

primary or secondary, they need to already

have a school teaching qualification either

to be qualified as a primary school teacher or a secondary school teacher. They might be qualified as a secondary English teacher

or secondary history teacher, but they need to already have a school

teaching qualification that's recognised by the school system.

The adult education sector is a different system altogether and

some providers may require something called the certificate

for in training and education. The CERT for TAFE.

The adult education sector is not regulated in the same way as the school sector,

so there's a little bit of variability.

The tape currently in New South Wales will accept ah, graduate diploma qualification

as satisfying the Certificate four requirement that I just mentioned.

But not all adult education providers will recognise that.

So that's something that you have to keep in mind for working in the academic English context.

Usually teachers will have our qualification at the masters level

and typically they don't ask for any other qualified patients.

Hey, thank you very much for all the insights and all the details. So now that we have or they explored some of the Teasel

and applied linguistics segments will now move on to a much broader landscape.

And I also would like to ask her to share how courses at UTS align with the evolving trends

and meeting the needs of aspirating language educators.

Okay. Thank you, Lucas. So I'm hopefully sharing my slides.

Can you see my. Yes, so much helpful. So I hope to this is my presentation.

Okay. So broadly, why study t social and applied linguistics?

Well, at UTSA, the program is structured so that you can tailor

the course that you're studying to meet your specific interest

and needs for that teaching context. So some of you may be interested in working overseas,

while others may be more interested in working locally in Australia.

You might be interested in working at the Adult Migrant Education program

or in the Second Chance Adult Education Program in Australia or you might want to work in the school sector,

or you might want to teach English for academic purposes. In tertiary institutions,

we record nice that the field of English language teaching, literacy and numeracy

teaching are very broad and so we cater for all of these different interests

and we bring our collective experience and

expertise in all of these different sectors. So you might want to

do these courses because you want to make a career change into English language teaching

or literacy teaching, or you may already be working in the field in some capacity,

but you want to update your knowledge or upgrade your qualification. Maybe that's going to help you get promoted.

So we have both what we call pre-service teachers and in-service teachers.

We cater for both and we have a set of nested courses.

So we have the Master of Applied Linguistics, a test full and Applied Linguistics, which is one and a half years

full time or both, depending on how slowly you want to take it. If you want to study part time, it might take between 2 to 5 years

and it consists of 12 subjects in total, made up of 12 made up of six.

Compile three subjects, and then you choose a string, a specialist string.

You might want to teach adults in adult education colleges

in Australia to teach adult migrants or second chance learners. So then you might choose the adult literacy and numeracy stream,

or you are a primary or secondary trained teacher and you want to continue working in the school sector.

But having the specialist qualifications to work with

learners for whom English is an additional language, then you would teach the ESL of D

and literacy in schools stream, or you might want to teach English for academic purposes,

in which case you choose that stream and upon completion

you'll be able to pursue careers in these different specialist streams

so we don't have a one size fits all kind of program. We recognise that you want specialist knowledge

in order to move into the specialist areas that you are interested in.

We have the graduate diploma which is nested within that whole sequence.

The graduate diploma is one year full time or if you study part time, obviously it will take longer.

It consists of eight subjects, five of which are core or compulsory,

and then you choose one of the three specialist strings that I've already spoken about, and you can choose one elective.

And what's unique about the UTS program, that UTS graduate diploma

is that you have two periods of supervised teaching practicum.

Many courses only have one, but you have two opportunities to undertake

a teaching practicum in an authentic teaching context

and for the graduate diploma and for the graduate diploma only,

there is a limited number of what we call Commonwealth supported places.

So it means that your fees are subsidised by the Government.

So it brings the cost down. So that's a plus for choosing the graduate diploma.

For somebody who wants just a taste or an entry

into the field, you can choose a graduate certificate and this only takes half a year

to complete full time or obviously longer. If you study part time

and you do a total of four subjects, they're all compulsory subject

and it qualifies you to teach English as an additional language.

And there is a supervised practicum embedded in the graduate certificate.

So you get experience in an authentic

teaching context in a classroom. And this practicum is both in the graduate certificate

and the graduate diploma are really important because this is the way you get your foot in the door.

And many of our graduates get employed in the college

or the centre where they undertake their practicum. So, you know, you get your foot in the door,

you get known by teachers and if you perform well in the practicum,

then, you know, often you'll be offered employment. So that's a really important feature of our program.

So career paths, people who've graduated from the adult literacy and numeracy strand,

they're teaching in adult English as a second language program.

ESL programs in institutions like Taif or in private providers like Navitas,

or they might be teaching in second chance adult education programs, adult literacy and numeracy

programs, again in Taif Navitas community colleges empty, saying

they might be conducting workplace English language literacy and numeracy programs.

So often workplaces will,

you know, seek English language literacy and numeracy professional to come and deliver

training programs for their employees because they might have employees

who need to develop their communication skills and they'll contact a provider like a tape and say, Hey,

have you got a teacher who can work with us to help our employees?

And we have a number of graduates working with local councils as well as in private enterprises.

You might be if you're working in do what's called learner support work,

and this is working side by side with vocational teachers.

You might be working in a commercial cookery course with a pastry teacher or in a plumbing course

or in a hairdressing course where there may be students

who need assistance with their literacy

or numeracy or English language spoken skills. And so you're working with the vocational teacher

and this is a really interesting area of work where there's a high demand for teachers.

You might also be working in a government agency like the Reading writing hotline.

This is a national referral system for adult literacy learners, adults who want to improve their literacy

but who don't know where to get help from. They ring up the reading and writing hotline, and the hotline

refers them to a suitable program, and the current manager

of the reading and writing hotline is one of our graduates.

If you want to work in schools, there are teachers working as English as an additional language

or a dialect teacher in New South Wales primary and secondary schools, as well as in private and Catholic schools.

Or you might work in an intensive English centre. So throughout Sydney there are these ICES

intensive English centres or recently arrived

migrant or international students who need to develop their English

before they can join the mainstream classes, or they might be, you know, working

as English language teachers overseas where English is a foreign language.

We've got a graduate who's coordinating the refugee support programs in New South Wales schools.

So again, even within the school sector, there may be different opportunities for students to graduate.

With the reality and literacy strain,

those who graduate with the academic English dream, they might be teaching academic English to international students,

preparing for tertiary study in Australia. So you may be familiar with a number of

private colleges or colleges attached to university City. At UTS, we have the UTS College, where

international students who don't quite meet the English language prerequisites to enter into the university will do six months or 12 months

of intensive English language study so that they can be accepted into the university programs or vet programs.

We also have graduates who are teaching academic English overseas and universities,

and we also have graduates who are working in the universities, providing academic language and literacy

support to the university students. So I hope you can see that our course

can lead to quite a variety of career paths.

So hopefully something that is related to your interests as well.

So why you? Yes, well, you know, we offer the qualification

for you to start a new teaching career or to upgrade update your teaching qualification

in teaching English language and or literacy and numeracy.

And the people who will be working with you have a wide range of experiences.

We might not have experience across all of the different sectors

where English language and literacy are taught, but each of us has

extensive experience and contacts, involvement,

engagement in the field. Some of us have taught overseas, some of us have taught

academic English at UTS and other institutions. Some of us have worked with literacy

and numeracy teachers in the adult education sector. Some of us have been involved in foreign aid work.

So, you know, we have a nice

set of repertoires, if you like, collectively that we think

will enrich your learning experience in our program. We know that students are busy people with multiple commitments,

so our delivery mode is designed to try to suit your needs and

most of our classes are held in the late afternoon and early evenings.

So people, for example, who are teaching in schools can join our classes after they finish teaching.

If any of you live outside of Sydney, in regional New South Wales or Interstate,

you are able to study in hybrid mode. So you might be zooming into

on campus tutorials. We do like to work with our learners

face to face as far as possible, but of course we welcome students from interstate and regional New South Wales

because you would bring other knowledge and experience that's going to enrich all of our learning.

So don't be hesitant if you don't live in Sydney and can't attend classes on a weekly basis.

And as I've already mentioned, the professional practice component of our graduate certificate and graduate diploma are really important because

they give you a foot in the door in the sector and can lead to employment in the sector

and the other thing I should mention, which may not have been clear to you, I mentioned about the nested courses.

So the graduate certificate consists of four subjects if you can articulate into the graduate diploma.

So the graduate diploma is the graduate certificate plus form of subjects.

And if you want to go further into the Masters, it's four more subjects on top of the graduate diploma.

So once you've got the graduate diploma, you don't have to do 12 new subjects in order to get the masters.

The eight subjects you've done for the grad dip will count towards your masters.

Okay, what else can I say? Our program has

recognition as a quality provider by nil.

Yes, this is the National Quality Assurance Organisation

for the English language teaching sector and they have come and audited our program

and have decided that we have a quality program.

They specifically noted the sense of community within the teaching and academic management staff.

So we all work together to create an excellent teaching experience for you.

We have a positive environment that enables us

to gain a really good understand funding of each of our students

and to be able to provide the individual individualised support that our learners need.

And we have a very rigorous and systematic approach to ensuring that students get feedback from us

and that we get feedback from you to continue to improve our program.

So we have the needs endorsement now. And

how do you get into the course? Well, it is a postgraduate program,

so we want our applicants to have a bachelor's degree.

And if you have a bachelors degree in what we call a late

discipline and cognate discipline, interpreted quite broadly so in the fields of education, management

and commerce, society and culture or creative arts, that qualifies as satisfying the bachelor's degree requirement.

But we also welcome students who finish their bachelors degree in other fields.

I mean, my bachelors degree was in mathematics, not in teaching or language study, and here I am.

So we are open to very

diverse backgrounds of students. All you need to do is to provide a personal statement

and a CV that you know, says something about why you want to make a career change

into teaching English language and or literacy.

If you already have a masters degree, that masters degree can be in any field whatsoever.

It just demonstrates to us that you can study at the Masters level.

For international students, there is an English proficiency requirement

which is shown on the slide. I won't read about.

So we are taking applications for the teaching sessions starting in autumn next year.

The classes begin on the 19th of February and for domestic students, applications

will close on the 28th of January and for international students

the deadline is a bit earlier, but apply early.

It helps our planning, but it means that we can get in touch with you.

And if you have questions, for example, about recognition, subprime learning,

we can start addressing those questions early rather than waiting

until the 18th of February and saying, Oh, do I get RPO? Yes, you get RPO.

So you don't have do this subject and then you have to re arrange your whole program

because the subject you thought you had to do, you don't have to do anymore. So apply early.

And you know, it means that we can notify

your acceptance into the course early as well. There are financial support options at UTS.

As I've already said, Commonwealth supported places. There's a limited available for the graduate diploma

in Tesla and Applied Linguistics. There's what's called postgraduate FEE-HELP,

which works a little bit like Hicks, But for the postgraduate students, UTS

alumni will get a 10% discount out on non Commonwealth supported places

for the fees and scholarships to sell for a scholarship for both domestic

and international students to assist with educational expenses.

Also, what I can mention is that for those of you who are already qualified as schoolteachers,

if you are qualified as schoolteachers but don't already have

a t sole or eald teaching qualification. The New South Wales Department of Education and Training

offers scholarships, so you might want to look into that because that's obviously going to reduce the cost of studying

and we do provide recognition for prior learning.

So you might want to inquire about that. That will reduce the duration of your course you're studying

and also the cost of your study. Okay.

What else can I tell you? I think it's now time for questions and answers.

Thank you. Thank you very much, kiko, for all the amazing information as well.

So we will now open the session for audience for question and answer for those in the audience.

Please feel free to keep sending through the a box at the bottom of the table.

So I guess that starts off with the question and answer echo.

What sets the Teasel and apply linguistic program at UTS apart from audits?

And how do you ensure that students receive a well-rounded education in this field?

Okay, so, you know, I can't speak for all of the Teasel programs in Australia,

but I do know from what past students have told me, who've obviously,

you know, shopped around to see which courses of the most, sort them at the best.

And many of them have said that they were attracted by

the opportunity to undertake two sets of teaching practicum aims at the Graduate Diploma or Master's level,

because many programs either have no teaching practicum or only one.

And the other thing that is a plus

for the students, or so they tell me, is that we because we're very engaged in the industry,

we have contacts in industry and we support students in

identifying a suitable placement. We don't just say, okay, go and find a placement.

You know, how would you know where to look if you're making a career change? So I think the two practicum aims

is a positive feature. Another feature that some students have pointed out is

we have both local students and international students.

I know that in some so courses, all of the students are international and they're all from the same country.

So if you're not from that country, you feel really out of place. And in the UTS course, we have quite a mix,

a mix of international students as well as local students. So it makes the I guess the

learning environment very multicultural and multilingual, which, you know, is

is quite appropriate for what we're studying here.

Yeah, Thank you. I think on to that. So for international students or for those who have like English

as a secondary language, what advice can you offer for those? Continue to want to pursue teaching in English

for second graduate for secondary language. Right. If if they if if they are speakers

of English as an additional language, it means they have, you know,

additional languages as as resources. So that's perfect.

You know, we one you will have experienced

learning English as an additional language, so you will have greater empathy with the students you're teaching,

but also, you know, you have an appreciation

of how language works in a way that

perhaps different to the understanding that

somebody who may only have, you know, English in their language repertoire

so, you know, don't feel that you're less qualified to teach English

because you've learned English as a second or third or fourth or fifth language.

It's it's an asset, not a problem.

Yeah, sounds good. Thank you. So what advice would you give to someone looking to specialise

in the field of his OR and applied linguistic and would it be better to focus on obtaining

a graduate certificate first unlike or should be just

procedurally to a graduate diploma? And yeah, so how can be collected term

and which option is more suitable for fall for us? Okay. Well if I were a local student,

I'd go for a graduate diploma for two reasons. One, there are, even though

there are limited numbers, there are some Commonwealth supported, so that means a significant reduction in cost.

But secondly, and perhaps more importantly

from a professional perspective, the graduate diploma level has been

for a long time kind of the, you know,

expected accepted level of qualification in Australian educational institutions.

That's not to say that you won't get employment if you only have the graduate certificate, but obviously you'll be a lot more competitive

if you have a graduate diploma rather than a graduate certificate. But there's no imperative for you to,

you know, do the graduate diploma

all at once. You might, you know, do the graduate certificate,

look for work, get a taste of what the field is like, and you might, you know, realise yourself that, oh,

yeah, I really want to learn a bit more about this. I'll go back and do the graduate diploma and a lot of people do that.

They do the graduate certificate, go out and work and then come back, do the graduate diploma,

go out again, come back and do the Masters so you can do it any way you like,

depending on, you know, what suits your particular

goal and circumstances. Yeah. Thank you.

So we've got another question. So does the graduate certificates qualified you to teach professionally

if you don't already have any teaching qualification in the past.

It will not qualify you to teach in New South Wales schools primary or secondary

if you don't have a teaching qualification, but you don't need a school teaching qualification in order to teach in

the adult education sector or in the university or

private English language centres. They don't require a school teaching qualification.

Yeah, thank you. And would you mind also expanding on like some actual subjects that you will be teaching?

Is there like a specific focus on teaching or like it's just more deep dive into English

in terms of grammar or pronunciation stuff?

Okay, well, all of those things we need to teach, but if I can start with the

the first four core subjects to give you a flavour, there is a subject called Introducing Knowledge about language.

So this is a subject that gives you the knowledge

about how language and in particular how the English language works.

So it is about grammar and about, you know, discourse.

You know, how we use language, how we make meaning from the way

the particular language your teaching is is structured. So this is developing your knowledge about how English language works.

So one of the things you'll be learning is how the English grammar system works.

And of course that's important when you're teaching English. Another subject that you will study is called Test.

So methodology. It's, you know, the methodology, it's how you teach

English language. There's a subject called, the multilingual learner,

and this is a subject about, you know, the learners

that we're going to be working with and the different context

of multilingual learners learning English or any other language.

So it is about learning about how we think about multilingualism

and so multilingual learners learn language, learn and develop language.

And we have the subject called test or Practicum. So that's the first practicum subject

where you learn how to, you know, specific

teaching strategies and you spend 18 hours in an authentic

English language teaching classroom being guided by an experienced teacher. So

that, I hope, gives you some flavour of the graduate certificate.

And then as you go on to the graduate diploma and masters, you learn more specialist knowledge

specialist knowledge about how you teach adults English language literacy and numeracy, for example, to work in the migrant

English program or the adult literacy programs or the specialist

teaching approaches and curriculum that you work with when you're teaching English language

learners in primary or secondary schools or, you know, the methodology, the curriculum that you work

with when you're teaching academic English. There are there's a subject about teaching pronunciation.

There's a subject teaching multi literacies. And so they're more specialised subject.

As you progressed into the graduate diploma and the Master's.

Hey, thank you very much. We also have a question from the audience about how many hours a week

are there for classes scheduled for, as you mentioned, that like lessons usually are scheduled in the late afternoon or early evening?

Okay. Good question. So In all of our subjects, we

have a lecture and a tutorial

and all of the lectures are

delivered asynchronously. So they are

recorded videos that are uploaded onto the learning management system.

So each week the lecture will upload a pre-recorded lecture and you would access that during the week.

And you know, we don't know if you're listening to the lecture at

midnight or, you know, 11:00 in the morning. You access these lectures when it suits you.

But the tutorials are interactive, real time tutorials and they're held on campus.

So the lectures are one hour equivalent. The tutorials are generally one and a half hours long,

so we would have tutorials. Let's say from 330 to 5 and

another tutorial 530 to 7. So yeah, the

tutorials are generally an hour and a half long. And so in addition to,

you know, doing the lectures, participating in the tutorials, you would be doing independent study,

you know, reading articles and textbook chapters, working on assignments and so forth.

Yeah, thank you very much. So we also have a question. So which subjects do you believe have the most significant impact

on teaching careers and how that have like a good learning outcomes benefits to students?

All of them. All of them. Yeah. I really can't pick one.

We we take a very holistic view in our program.

So it's not just a random selection

of subject topics that are, you know, interesting to individual lectures.

And then we cobble together a program. We have designed the program collectively as a teaching team

to really thinking about what kind of English language

and literacy teachers we want graduating from the course, and then, you know,

making sure that the program as a whole is coherent. So I think it would be

kind of meaningless to pick out one subject and say this is the most important or impactful subject,

but enough. Thank you. So would you mind also describing on any exciting research projects

or like classroom initiative that you are currently promoting as part of the program curriculum?

Well, one of the things that is really important to us in the to the program

is to, as I've already said, to treat multilingualism

as an asset and multilingual ism also includes

Aboriginal languages, Indigenous languages and also

Aboriginal English's. And, you know, we we don't think of multilingualism

or languages as you know, something

that comes from overseas or just English. There are there's a very rich language heritage in,

you know, Australian First Nations communities and we really want all of our students

to learn about and develop an appreciation

of Indigenous languages and

yeah, and what it means to teach standard Australian English

to speakers of Aboriginal English is for example.

So that's not that, that, you know, we have subjects on that in isolation

and everything else, but it is something that we really want our graduates to have a strong appreciation for.

But I might, you know, say that graduates from our program,

many of them have gone on to do doctoral studies. And so, you know, we've got one

graduate who's doing research on the experiences of people with Down syndrome

in further education. We've got

a graduate of our program who has recently completed a Ph.D.

writing a history of a bilingual Aboriginal school in Central Australia.

We've had a recent graduate who completed a Ph.D. in

looking at the experiences of overseas trained teachers

trying to find employment in the Australian school system. So you can see that they do a masters

in T Sol in applied linguistics, but their research takes them to

quite diverse areas. So pursuing a research degree is another,

I guess, career path that some of our graduates have taken. Perfect.

Thank you very much. And with that last question, we conclude our session. We extend our gratitude to Dr. K.A.

Cole, the program director of Teasel and Applied Linguistics at UTS,

for sharing her insights into the latest trends in the Australian education industry.

And she also provided valuable information about the opportunities offered by these programs at UTS

and the exciting futures that awaits our graduates. So for our audience over here,

our team is also available on the QR code

coded QR code. Dr. K.A. Would you mind going to this? You

see with this QR code, we can also book a one on one consultation with our team,

or you can also feel free to contact us via the fast doc marketing at UTS, dot AEW, and then you will be able

to reach out for more support and answer your question directly. For those interested in applying.

Application are now open for the February 19th intake.

You can also submit your application via the ETF Student portal and then of course, please let we check on the deadline

for domestic international students as well and you will be able to come and join us at UTS very, very soon.

We appreciate your participation and we hope to welcome you to UK soon and the next session would be the master

of Media Practice Industry showcase. It would be at tomorrow at 6 p.m..

In the case of any of you would like to register and intend, we also look forward to seeing you again

very soon and have a lovely evening and thank you very much for joining us today. And just before we finish,

I just put my email in the chat. So if anyone thinks of a question

after we finish, feel free to contact me directly.

Or if you felt that your question wasn't answered this evening, don't hesitate to contact me directly.

I'm very happy to answer your questions and if I can't answer it, I'll refer you

to somebody who can. So thanks everyone, and thanks very much, Lucas.

Have a nice evening, everyone. Okay, good. Thank you.

Learning Design and Microcredentials

Postgraduate Study in Learning Design and microcredentials at UTS.

Join UTS Lecturer Dr Keith Heggart and UTS FASS Director of Postgraduate Coursework and Short Forms of Learning, Sita Chopra to find out how you can develop your skills and knowledge in the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design. The course design and content is tailored to the needs of those who work in the broad fields of education (at any level) and training, those seeking employment in these areas, as well as those desiring to develop their digital learning skills to leverage new technologies to address changing educational needs.

Courses

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design Showcase. I'm Maddie McWilliam from the domestic recruitment team.

Before we start this session tonight, I would like to acknowledge the First Nations peoples of Australia, including elders,

both past and present as well as emerging. I extend this respect to the traditional custodians

of the land from which we are hosting this event today. The Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.

I would like to acknowledge their enduring connection to this land which has always been and always will be Aboriginal land.

As we allow for a bit more time for some of our attendees to join online, I'd just like to run through a couple of tips so you can have the best experience tonight.

We've decided to mute our videos and audio of the attendees to maximize the webinar experience.

But please do ask your questions. We have a Q&A function down the down below your screen, and we will endeavor

to answer these questions at the end of this session.

Okay. Well, I think we should get into it. Welcome to those who are just joining us. We are here tonight for the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design Showcase.

Again, I'm Matt McWilliam from the domestic recruitment team. So tonight's session, we're going to have a great time.

We're going to be looking into insights into some of your career options and developments through discussion with current teaching

academics and industry experts within the learning design industry. I hope that you're going to be inspired by the personal experience

from these industry experts and current students. You're going to discover how industry connections and how you test

pilots are program to meet industry needs, and you're going to learn about program structure, study options, including delivery modes.

So to kick off our session tonight, I would love to introduce our guests on the panel.

Tonight, we are joined by Dr. Keith Higgins. He is an Apple distinguished educator and a Google certified innovator.

He's currently the academic lead for the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design at UTS.

Keith has established a long career as a high school educator, work in school leadership in government

and non-government schools across the UK and Australia. We're also joined tonight by Caesar Chopra,

who is the director of Short Forms of Learning and Post-Graduate Coursework in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UTS.

C To have over 15 years of experience in senior project management, governance and administration roles within the tertiary education sector.

We also have Claire Seldon with us tonight. She works as a learning designer within the New South Wales Department

of Education and as a lecturer in learning design at the University of Technology, Sydney and the University of New England.

We're also joined by Franco Conti, a current student of the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design, and he is also

the director of Library Services at Deakin University Library. He manages a group of STEM and fast scholarly services

librarians, and he's working with lighting designers to make sure that services and resources are included and utilized in cross course curricula.

Well, with that, I think let's hand it over to the panel now. I would love to hear from each of you if you maybe want to tell us a bit

more about yourself and a bit more about your experience in learning design.

Keith, How about we kick it off with you? Thanks for getting on, Keith. You can tell I work at UTS.

I'm suitably branded for this evening's presentation on the class co-ordinator, which means I had the pleasure of of doing something that I love,

which is designing a whole course about learning design and how we we can make learning experiences better for people.

And then I'll get to teacher. So yeah, I designed all eight subjects and along with my team, some of whom are here with me tonight,

we teach the Mocaa credentials and the graduate Learning Design.

Excellent. Fantastic. Claire, how about you?

So I guess I am. I'm actually a high school teacher. That's what I started out as science high school,

and I fell into learning design by accident, not even knowing what it was

because I didn't want to work in the classroom anymore. And then I ended up making really cool stuff

for people all the way from four and five year olds up to 99.

So it's really exciting to be here. And my areas of expertise and real passion is gamification and virtual reality.

And so I occasionally teach with Case or just add that current industry

person view to some of the other subjects.

Such an interesting space to be working in art. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your experience.

Thanks, Maddy. So I was one of the people involved in the initial accreditation of the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design,

and I also work with teaching, talking to different areas in the industry

because we've had quite a number of organizations being interested in upskilling their staff

by undertaking the micro credentials. So we've had great interactions with areas

such as the Health, Education and Training organization. Also the Australian Army.

Yeah, I mean one of the things that just really resonated with me, they said, and what we looked at

when we're designing the courses around how a number of people kind of have fallen into learning design or come at it from other careers.

So I think one of the positive aspects around these courses that we've noted

is that a lot of people who may have been in the field for many years, I've really enjoyed coming back and getting that credential

and seeing how theory really relates to practice.

Lastly, Frank, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your experience? Sure.

So I've been in academic libraries for most of my working career, really, and so I started off shelving books, but sort of worked my way up into in the

in the library and and many institutions in Victoria. I've worked at maybe four institutions here in Victoria.

And I've just noticed over the course of the last five years, I think the

the blending of the, the learning design as with with, with what the library does in optimizing all of those library digital resources

that we have access to and optimizing them through the curriculum. And as we become more digital, I see that connection sort of developing even more.

And so I lead a team of librarians who who do a lot of that work and also have some learning designers in my team as well.

So my interest comes from many different areas. But clearly there's there's

a way that we can actually blend the two, the two areas.

It's great to have you all here tonight and such a varied and a wealth of knowledge about learning design.

Keith I'm wondering, can you let us know what learning design program is and who it's for?

Yeah, the easiest answer to that question is who isn't it for? But I'll be a little more precise, something that we've noticed across

all kinds of industries, and I'm talking in the corporate sector, the not for profit sector, the higher education sector, The school sector.

Yeah, pretty much everywhere. Is this growing interest in more effective learning and development opportunities for employees.

And they need people who can actually design those kinds of learning experiences.

Hence you need learning designers. And just in the last five or ten years in Australia,

there's been this real explosion of interest and employment calls

for people who are called learning designers or instructional designers or learning experience designers.

But ultimately they are people who work primarily with multimedia technologies

or online technologies and things like learning management systems to create learning experiences

that are both effective and efficient. And and, you know,

if you've ever had an interest in that kind of thing and you've wanted to upskill in your ability

to perhaps deliver courses online or to design courses online, to train or to facilitate or to assess or to evaluate,

then this is the course for you, regardless of your educational background, whether you're a teacher, perhaps, or you're not.

We have lots and lots of opportunities and we'll teach you everything you need to know to go from knowing nothing about learning design

to walking into your first learning design job. And it's an ever evolving field in learning design.

What recent trends do you believe are having the most significant impact on professionals who are following this career

path? So if you'd asked me the

beginning of the year, I would not have said I am, I am. I am now going to say I, but not potentially for the reason

that you might think as somebody who's just recently made some professional learning,

trying to teach people how to use AI safely and well,

one of the things you need to be able to do as a professional learning designer is tell people who want learning

and don't know anything about it that their idea is no good

and in order to do that, one of the things I love about this course, and I would say if you wanted to change careers

into learning design course, which is myself and most of my team,

the people that I work with, I lead a small team. They're all learning designers and none of them started

as a learning designer. I'm not sure many people do. In fact, I think we come to it through all sorts of ways.

Why don't we now look for the graduate certificate preferentially?

And part of the reason is because you get a really broad understanding of all the different things that failing that are important

to the industry and learning design, including things like

when something is overhyped, when something isn't good, to have that knowledge of

being able to analyze, evaluate, design, something based on her, your learners, and what you want them to learn rather than what is the newest, shiniest thing

which is currently I, but ironically was once VR and gamification, and they were both overhyped

and oversold and under-delivered and are now useful tools within a learning design tool kit.

So the other thing I guess I would say, and I know I've talked you long, is that the what the answer to that question will change.

And so as a good learning designer, even if you're already in the industry doing some micro credentials to keep your knowledge

relevant and current case and I've been teaching predict the course about that includes

AI for three or four years now case something like that while and we have to keep rewriting sections of it because it changes

because the pedagogy changes, because understanding of things change. So regardless of whether you've never done any learning design

or you're already working in the industry, being able to engage with

that cutting edge stuff in latest research is part of what you need to do as a functional learning designer is

keep your eye on that. Very interesting set up to give us a little bit of detail about some of this feedback

that students or alumni have given with their experience doing this course.

Yeah, look, I was really happy to research into this question as well because we've had such a great lot of feedback coming from people

that are in the course, but also those that have graduated. I've just pulled out example from somebody who completed the course

last December and they mean to us in March basically saying that they were really happy that the course was

well designed, fantastic teaching and industry excludes us. We have people for us

and also just acknowledging that of course, about learning design. Thankfully, the learning design that was put into it was really exemplary.

But the bit that we always like to see is around the career success of a graduate.

So this alumni actually said, I also wanted to let you know that I'm just about to start a full time job with Angie as a learning experience designer.

It was an intense interview process, but thanks to the portfolio I put together throughout the headset, I was able to provide

lots of examples of my knowledge and skills in learning design. So thank you for developing your course.

So adequately Equip students to work in the field upon course completion. And I know that Keith will talk a little bit more around the work subjects

involved in the graduate certificate and the portfolio, but we definitely have been getting really good feedback from graduates around

how useful that portfolio is to you in the interview process

and frankly, your current student. So maybe you could give us a bit of your story

and your experience and what you've learned from the program. What are you finding most useful in your current role?

Yeah, so I just want to echo both Claire and Slater around the fact that it's very industry focused and it has so much currency,

you know, with with lots of discussions around things that are happening in the industry now around generative

AI and having those philosophical discussions and introducing those challenges to the students so that you can actually think about it

in ways to potentially resolve those issues or even just have a discussion in relation to those things.

So the learning content, the assessments, the conversations are all related to the work environment and the broader industry that you'll be stepping into.

So I think that aspect of the course has been really enlightening for me.

The the courses is of course delivered with a real pragmatic approach to learning design.

There are lots of activities to to allow you to sort of test out all those new tools,

which I think are fantastic because you would not normally get the opportunity to do that sort of thing.

And it doesn't shy away from those complex issues and problems that the industry does face. So you get a real opportunity to have a discussion with your instructor,

with other students and really delve into those current issues, I suppose.

I mean, that's a perfect segue way for my next question. Franco So thank you.

And so in this rapidly changing world and there are these challenges in the industry, what skills and competencies

do you all think almost important for future learning designers to gain?

I'd love to hear from each of you if you have something to say, maybe later. Would you like to weigh in? Yeah.

I mean, I think the ability to actually question and iterate

and so being able to discuss with your client or review your working leads around the rationale

for why you've designed something the way you have and really having that confidence to be able to explain it to them.

I think that's really critical

piece. Maybe you have something to add as well. Yeah, absolutely. I want to say that

something that people often assume about learning design is that they spend all their time in a box in the dark hacking away at a computer,

and that couldn't be further from the truth. When you look at the skills that employers want amongst learning designers, of course they want a deep knowledge and a deep

understanding of learning and how to design for learning. But the other thing the employers really look for

a good high level communication skills because often as a learning designer, you kind of become a de facto project manager.

And that's one of the the kind of career pathways of learning designers is into project management because you already do so much of it.

But as a de facto as a learning designer, you are constantly explaining

why you've made specific design decisions about learning experiences to people. And to do that you need to be able to communicate.

So high level communication skills are so essential and we we focus on developing those through the assessment tasks as well.

Where do you have something to add? Yeah, so I was thinking about that. So we, we do have

we definitely do have that, that focus on, on the high level communication skills in the assessment tasks.

And it's interesting because Case and I have discussed this before, one of the assessment tasks actually asks learners to pitch their in

in a five minute video and it's people don't like that. I don't like being on video.

I don't like the sound of my own voice. Do I have to do this? Yes, But so

I have one of my team three applying for her job and I was on the panel

and she is doing the grade two at the moment and she, as part of her

New South Wales government recruitment process, needed to talk through

a piece of work that she had done and explain the pedagogy, the design decisions, whatever.

This is a job interview to retain a position. And she meant she kind of

she could talk about every aspect of the design. And I think

what I'm trying to say is, yes, those communication skills, yes, all the stuff

that Setor and Franco were talking about with that, the broader picture of stuff.

But ultimately, really, really what you want to be is a lifelong learner, because if you do not currently have communication skills, that's fine.

But I as going to hire someone, always want to pick that person

who's still learning, who wants to learn who, who knows where.

They're not necessarily the project management skills maybe aren't so great that I'm terrible at video and image editing.

It is not my skill and forte, but I'm trying. I'm doing some short courses in those kinds of things.

So I think being able to self evaluate where my where the holes

in my expertise in my tool kit and how can I improve that. Definitely be a big skill for me I'd be looking for.

And to those attending tonight who feel passionate about learning design,

but maybe aren't sure about where it could take them. Could you all weigh in on what job opportunities and career pathways?

They're also learning design graduates. Yeah, this is something that I'm

really interested in because I like to keep a track on, on where all our graduates end up and you know what they're doing.

And I think the first thing is it's a growing field, you know, and it's growing not just in Australia but internationally.

I think they were talking about 15% growth over the next couple of years, which is which is brilliant.

It means there's lots of opportunities and lots of opportunities for promotion. So we we find that

some of our graduates end up working in higher education institutions and in professional or in academic roles.

We also find some of our graduates go on and work in the corporate sector.

So the example that CEDA gave, we seem to get a lot who end up in the finance sector, and I think that's because the finance sector

is really getting ahead in the way that they're looking to become those learning organizations.

So they're employing a lot of learning and learning experience designers, and then we get a lot of people who end up working for not for profit

and kind of community education groups, you know, to give you a breadth of that. We've had people working for the the Tenancy

Rights Union, we've had people working for the Australian Association of Mathematics Educators.

We've got people who are currently working for the Australian Institute of Sport

as learning designers, as sport and learning design is a huge thing, which is fascinating I think. Yeah, and so on. So

the you know what most of our graduates do, they go in as, as graduate or beginner learning designers.

But what we found is that very quickly, because of the training and the experience that they've already got, they end up in quite senior roles.

So in some of the big learning design companies, companies like CURIO or OAS,

we've got people who only graduated couple of years ago and they're already team leaders or senior learning designers.

So it's pretty exciting stuff. Yeah, it's a very exciting field.

Thank you all for sharing your insights there. Now that we've looked at the broader landscape of learning design trends, Dr.

Keith Piggott and Cedar Chai Para, could you but share some specific highlights or features of the online

courses that align with these industry developments?

Yeah, I'm for sure. So what we've we've noticed is that

in the past, you know, as I was saying, there's all this call for learning designers, but increasingly there weren't enough learning designers to fill this role.

And we wanted to make sure that there was a credential out there that people could undertake. And then at the end of it, I could feel confident

saying that, yes, I've got the skills to be a learning designer. And so often we get people who are doing

who are currently working as designers who come and do this qualification because they want that that recognition that they're now a learning designer.

Although we get lots of people who are new to the field as well. I think a couple of the things that are really worth

mentioning in terms of the courses that it is, as everyone else has said, it's industry focused, but it's really, really practical.

I'll get really frustrated when people suggest that,

you know, learning design is an old field or it's a backwards looking field or, you know, the thing that we should be doing in this

course is writing essays about how people learn or anything like that. What we want to do is help people to take the tools that are available

today, things like learning analytics, things like interactive multimedia,

things like VR and gamification, and then help them to turn those into

learning experiences that will actually improve the outcomes regardless of whether that's in a corporate setting, a higher education

setting in a primary school setting or wherever, you know, and we get to dive into some of the most exciting

parts of society in education and technology that are out there today. You know, so in predict one of the subjects

that I'll talk about in a moment, we've got a whole unit about artificial intelligence and machine learning.

In fact, you can go and create your own chat bot if you want. And we've actually had people who've created a chat bot

and showed it to their boss at work at a university and their boss has said that's really good, we need to install it in the library because it works so well.

But I think the part that I'm most pleased with out of the whole course

is the final subject, which is we don't offer it as a marker credential. It's only for people who complete the whole graduate certificate and it's

called Work Learning Design Project, and it's an internship like experience. So that means that we will and I'm in the process of doing this right now.

So I sent an email to Franko just a couple of days ago to start this process

where I've I've asked all of the students enrolled and work what kind of internship like experience would you look for?

What are you most interested in that will help you meet the goals that you want to achieve?

You know, do you want an internship at a learning design company? Do you want an internship at a university to go into higher education?

Do you want an internship in a different setting in a social business or a or a corporate setting?

Or do you want to work on something currently within your own workplace that might be related to your

current work or efforts to get promoted? And then over the next six weeks, we spend time, you know, act as a kind of

supervisor and mentor, and they undertake an internship like experience. And at the end of it, as well as all the other assessment

tasks that contribute to their portfolio, they've got a complete learning design object that they can point to and say,

This is what I've done and it's such an asset. When they go to that first interview

or they go for a promotion in their current role and people say, Can you tell us about a project that you've been involved in, which seems to be a question in every interview

I've ever been in, and they can say yes, if I can. Let me tell you about work, my learning design project,

and it's such a fantastic opportunity. Yeah, so, so that's that's one of the things that I'm

I'm really proud of it. I should mention that the Univ, The Graduate, is structured really differently to

the the traditional university subject. Okay. So one of the things we know is that learning designers

need to be really proactive. They need to be across a range of different areas.

And so what we did is we, your normal grad said, is only four subjects, but what we did is we decided we cut them all in half.

So there are now eight subjects and that allowed us to cover the breadth of all the different kinds of things that are learning design and needs to know.

They only go for six weeks each and you do them in series. So subject one

and subject to then subject three, then subject for all the way to subject. And that means you can do it even if you're doing it part time

in about eight weeks, not eight weeks, eight months, maybe not eight weeks.

If you're doing it full time, it's even quicker. You do two subjects at a time and it's finished in form.

Let me tell you just a little bit about the subjects to give you a flavor of all the kinds of things that we're covering.

Okay, So in Think we do everything about learning theories, I call this subject

everything from behaviorism to collectivism and everything in between. Okay, So we talk about constructivism and we talk about collectivism

and behaviorism and cognitive ism and learning science and all of those kinds of important things.

But we talk about them in the context of learning design. So it's not your psychology of education course.

This is What do these theories of learning tell us about how we design learning experiences?

So again, it's really hands on and practical in design Designing for learning, which is a marker of potential.

Our most popular marker credential. What we do in that subject is we introduce students to instructional theories.

So we touch on the classics, you know, the principles of instruction. You know, we talk about Addie and all of those kinds of things,

but we also explore things like learner experience, design, user interface and user experience, design, design,

thinking, all of those modern ideas around how we design. And again, it's really practical, you know, So during this subject, you,

you design scenarios, you build learner profiles, you construct a high level learning design

strategies for a brace that you've designed yourself in critique.

We look at all those tricky ethical issues related to learning design. So things like privacy, copyright,

the law and learning design, which is a really interesting space. And we also look at,

you know, inclusion and accessibility. There's nothing worse than spending a whole lot of time developing an interactive multimedia

learning object only for it to file the web content access guidelines. And you have to go straight back to the start again.

It's just ridiculous. Okay, So it's important that learning design is not about that. Analyze is all about evaluation and assessment.

Okay? Assessment. We talk about the things that you might expect now, but also some really interesting stuff

like stealth assessment or assessment through learning analytics. We talk about,

you know, the changing face of assessment, how to design a good rubric, all that kind of stuff. But evaluation is where that subject really shines

because that's something that's so often overlooked. You know, I call it how do we get past the smiley sheet, You know,

at the end of a course there's always a shape and you indicate how happy you were with each kind of thing. And everyone always talks about the food.

That's an evaluation, but it's not a good evaluation. This course will teach you how to do a good evaluation.

Crunch is one of my favorites. We dive into learning analytics, we start talking about descriptive,

and we end up talking about predictive and prescriptive analytics.

And we use a tool called Tableau to help us create create visualizations for actionable insights based on

real world data. Yeah, so that's a lot of fun That one predict is clay is subject.

She talks a lot about gamification, artificial intelligence, machine learning.

We also look at Excel, extended reality, including virtual reality, augmented reality.

We play around with lots of the tools involved. There is Minecraft involved in that on I'm front end.

But but yeah, we take a very critical view about educational technology.

So it's not just about the shiny object syndrome, it's about whether there's actual value in that for learning design create,

we actually dive into a range of different tools, authoring tools. You've probably heard them called about how we might actually go

about designing these kind of objects in ways that will be suitable, accessible, effective and efficient, you know?

So how do you layout text on an online site? How do you embed interactive objects and make sure that students use them?

How do you how do you develop a good discussion board in an online course, for example, and not one that everyone just ignores?

All of these kinds of things are covered in create and then work. The final subject, which I spoke about is our big internship like project.

Yeah, we offer five of these as micro credentials. Yeah. And I think I'm just going to talk about the micro credentials.

Things Key Yes. So again, I guess of course it's about learning design.

We wanted to try something new. So micro credentials are basically UTS is newest form of learning,

as some of you may have heard around the National Micro Credential framework that was approved last year by the Australian Government.

We've been offering micro credentials if you use before that, but that framework basically gave a universal definition

of what a micro credential is. So according to the government and my great credentials is certification

of assess learning or competency with the minimum volume of learning of an hour and less than an actual formal qualification.

So in our case was then the graduate certificate and its ultimate complementary component part of an IQ.

If word qualification. So when this definition came out, we were really happy that what we had been

doing aligned with it. So just looking at how we'd been defining micro-credit angels as it sits up there on the screen,

it's basically a homely assist piece of learning. So basically it's a stand alone component

and it's something that you can study outside of the award course. Importantly, after you've undertaken a micro credential and pass

the assessment, we're able to issue you with a certificate of attainment and that verifies the study you've undertaken and it reflects

the various skills and knowledge in that particular micro credential.

I think, as Kate said, when we were designing this course, we wanted to make sure that there were different entry pathways into it.

So different people, regardless of their backgrounds and educational experience, could access the learning.

So if you decide and we've had a few of these people that want to start with the graduate certificate,

you can enroll in a micro credential. It basically gives you the option of dipping your toe in the water to see

what the course is like. Alternatively, we've had other people who have only wished

to upskill in one of the areas that our micro credentials are in.

Again, you know, that's perfectly fine. We'd love to see you with my micro credentials and you still be

able to get credit recognition for completion of the micro credential. If you do decide that you'd like to be applying for the graduate

certificate later on. There are a number of other benefits

that the micro credentials provide to our learners. When we were designing this course, I never quite spoke to a lot of different

industry organizations, including the education sector. I think there were interviews with h.R.

Different, so on and so forth. A lot of that work that was done is now incorporated into the subjects and the micro credentials.

And i'm not sure if we mentioned this, but there would be in conversation sessions and the expression sessions

that are also part of the degree and if you're doing the migrate credentials you'd also be able to access those.

So should I mention what an expression. Session is, please jump in. Because if the name is a bit misleading, I just.

Love the name. On it. And so the final week of every

every subject or moniker credential is light on content, but the focus is on what happens during the live session, the workshop,

and they take place in the evening on a Wednesday or Thursday, and the final week is the expression session.

And that's where we invite an industry expert, usually somebody who's a learning designer or someone in a learning design adjacent role.

So they might be a learning analyst, for example, and we get them to explain and to run a workshop

showing how everything that the students have been learning, for example, they might have been learning about creating interactive multimedia objects,

how that relates to what they're doing in their job at that time. And we've had some fantastic

people come in and run wonderful workshops on things like accessibility or virtual reality or, you know, what they do as learning designers.

And what we're trying to do there is make it very clear if you haven't worked it out already,

that there are close connections between what you're learning

and what you're going to be doing as a learning designer in the future. Thanks. Inkscape.

As I mentioned to very differently, make sure that you've got some recognition for completion of the micro credential so you get a certificate of attainment,

which we've had a number of people share on social media. We're also looking at badging at the moment, so

there'll be news around that coming soon. And as Keith mentioned, it's these particular five subjects

that we're also offering as micro credentials at the moment.

We originally only had four, but then we undertook some work with the New South Wales Health and Training Institute

and they really wanted to do the online spon as a micro credential. So we've opened that up to everybody as well

and each of these markers just like the subject. So we have a combination of self study and online learning

and the optional weekly online sessions. And just if you do want. To.

Consider a micro credential or just drop some information into the chat we've got, it's so American.

I'm sorry, but a Black Friday Cyber Monday sale coming up soon, so I'll just put details of that into the chat.

Thank you. Great. Thank you. Well, that brings us to our question and answer section of the evening.

Thank you, Keith and Safer and all our guest speakers tonight for your insight so far.

So we're now opening up the session for Q&A for those in the audience, please do keep sending through your questions

to the Q&A box and I will ask them directly to our speakers tonight.

But just to kick it off, Keith and Cesar, tell me, what do you think sets our learning design program

at UTS apart from others, and how do you ensure that our students get the education and experience that they need to meet industry demand?

There are so many things that I'd like to answer in relation to that question, but I'll try to keep it brief.

The learning design course and the micro credentials has it's an award winning course and it's won awards from learning

design organizations, international learning design organizations. And the reason it won those awards is because it's designed

and taught by people who are learning designers. We're academics as well.

But but I was a learning designer for five years before I became an academic, and I still do learning design work.

John Woollett, who is one of our other colleagues, he teaches some of the other subjects.

He was a senior learning designer and team leader at UTS before he became part of the team.

You know, Claire, as you've already heard, is a senior learning designer. So the the strongest thing,

the thing that is most distinctive about it is that it is so close to the field, regardless of where that field

is, whether it's corporate, higher education or whatever. We've got people who do all of those kinds of things and have done all of those things and continue to do all of those things

and the other thing is there are lots of other universities who've kind of jumped on the bandwagon of offering headset learning design.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And I was talking to one of the professors from that

unit, from one of the universities, and he said, you know, we really liked your structure and some of the ideas for your course.

So we borrowed that another. Oh, okay. But what we do, what we do differently is

we prioritize the student experience. We deliberately keep the class sizes small.

You know, you're never going to be in a class with 100 people. Your your teachers, me and the rest of the team

will know your names and we will respond to you really quickly. The the number one thing that we know about learning experience

is that the the learner experience begins right now.

You know, and it is so important that you have a good learning experience. And I think I think we do that far better than any other university athlete

and tastic. Claire, I know you've touched on this a bit in the session already, but what advice do you have for those tonight who are still considering

pursuing learning design programs? Well, all right.

Look, I'd like to add a little bit to what Keith was saying about picking utes in particular. Yes.

Chase was first I mean, when he was first coming up with this idea and talk, I was one of the people that he talked to.

And at that time there wasn't really anything like a lot of people learning design had fallen into it one way or the other.

We had some kind of background or four or something.

But one of the things I really love about Utes in general

as an institution is there's a focus on mastery education.

And what I mean by that is that the the rubric for the assessment tasks is there,

but there is no limit or bell curve marking or anything like that.

So our goal as educators in this course is to help every learner get the most they can out of the course.

And if that means that you want to give me drafts, you want feedback, you need help brainstorming.

My job is not to be a black box or a dispenser of knowledge.

In theory, my job as an educator is to be by your side as you work through the theory, as you apply it

to your current job, your current space, something real, and help you get the absolute best, most out of the course.

Not to guess what you need to do to get a mark. And obviously that's not the case for all other universities,

but it certainly compared to my university experience or even the postgrad experience of some of my colleagues, what they

what we really focus on utes like case studies at student experience where your

I mean, it sounds kind of corny, but it's like your individual success in developing yourself as a learning designer.

Actually matters to me. I want you to master the content to the level or extent that you can.

Somebody asked a question before about, you know, I'm I'm working full time. Can I do this course? Yes, you can.

You 100% can and you can do this course without ever coming to a live session

if you can't make them because you have children who need to eat, for example.

But you can reach out and speak to the lecturers, to the,

to academics and talk to people to get help.

And we like it's a small group, we're a small community. Like K said, we want you to have success.

And I really find that different about you. It's

fantastic. Franko Did you have something to add to that point? I really do. I just want to just reiterate and echo both Claire and Kate

as a student of the course, that intention or construction that Kate has talked about is really obvious through the design of the course.

And, you know, this summit, the clarity is is really there and it's obvious.

And the scaffolded nature of how the course builds from, you know, you start off with think around the the learning theories

right through to your project I think is really obvious in the course. So your assessment is made clear from the beginning, from the outset.

The rubric helps you have guidance throughout there, examples of best practice that you can discuss with your instructor,

the conversations and the one on ones with with your instructor as well really helps clarify things and you're left in no doubt how to achieve success.

So I think from a students perspective, it's fantastic.

Thank you for that. Franca. I've got a question for all of you here. And again,

we have touched a little bit on this, but I would love to hear your perspective. Looking ahead, what emerging

trends or challenges do you foresee in learning design? We've talked a little bit about AI staying adaptable well.

How can students coming to UTS to begin this course

prepare themselves to thrive in that evolving landscape? Maybe see, how do you want to kick us off with that one?

Thanks, Nettie. Sorry, I was just replying to one of the questions.

Look, I think as we've mentioned, the great thing about this course is the fact that we've got academics and industry involved.

So any of those emerging trends are likely to be addressed in the in conversation session.

The expressions, sessions, conversations like these. There's also the Australian Association of Learning Designers,

which Keith has created. So even if you're a student or you've graduated from the course or you're just involved in learning designs

and want to be part of that, then there's a community of people out there that you can be talking to and I think that's also another thing that's quite unique about our degree

that maybe Frank would would you like to weigh in on this one as well?

Yeah, I would agree with that. With Satya around that, those expression sessions that you get a real flavor

of what's happening in the industry when you when you get have a presentation from somebody who's working

those philosophical discussions around generative and other things that are sort of emerging in this space is always present

and Kate is always with his finger on the pulse case. I'm throwing you in it as well as the other instructors

to everybody really gives you the opportunity to discuss those issues and think about how you would actually approach them

in in a learning design role.

Well, maybe just to finish here tonight, I'd to each of you have maybe one tip

that you could give our audience who are considering joining the program. Maybe. Claire, would you like to start us off on this one?

What's a tip you could give our Future program attendees? Oh, I'm

be brave. Be bold when I say, Would you like

a free license to learn how to use VR software? Say yes. Yes, I would.

Claire, That sounds cool. One of the coolest things that happened to me

relatively recently, I was talking to an ex student. I get I get emails from students

asking questions and looking for career advice sometimes. Very recently,

an ex student contacted me via the department because she just got a job in a completely unrelated area of the department and was like,

I need to know something and I realize you work here. Can you tell me X? Which was awesome.

But she what she said to me is because she had already been learning designing for a while and she was an ex teacher.

And she said to me, Claire, I don't know if you taught me anything. I didn't know. But what you did do constantly and with love is

push me out of my comfort zone and ask me to try something different. And it made me a better learning designer.

And so what I guess I would say to you as a student coming into this course, be bold, be brave,

push your boundaries, try something new because you'll get so much out of it.

Great advice, Kate, What would your tip be? A storm on? Yeah.

Ask inside, people. Take the plunge. You know, you'll meet some people, you'll learn some things.

And who knows? You might get a new career out of it, right? It's going to be awesome. It always is. You know, it's such a pleasure to work with people in this course.

And Franco, do you have any advice or tips, seeing as you are current? Student? Yeah, I think I guess from being bold and being brave,

you can throw yourself into this course and make a network with so many people.

You can meet a lot of great learning designers who are already working in the industry, but also a lot of the students

that are also working in different areas as well, where you can make lots and lots of connections before you even start your journey in learning design.

So I would encourage everybody to put an application in and go for it.

And Patrick and see Lucky last. What would your your tip or advice be?

I mean, I've undertaken postgraduate study. I remember thinking, how am I going to fit in with work?

Is this really something that's going to help me in my career? I think if any of you were still a little bit unsure, just reach out to us.

Like we're really happy to talk to you and seeing you through the questions that you might have again, if you're not sure if you want to

do the whole degree to start with, consider those career credentials. But again, we're just really happy to talk to you

about the course and try to help you with any of those questions that you may have. And I think one of the things,

if it hasn't come across from what we've been saying is that this is really a supportive group of people that work on this course.

So we all really want to see people do well. And, you know, with in the same kind of vein.

And we'll talk to you around any of those questions because here it is a commitment to do postgraduate study.

And we will recognize that. Thank you to. And on that note, we're going to bring our session to a close tonight.

I would like to extend my gratitude to our guest speakers for their insights into the latest trends in Australian learning design industry,

as well as the opportunities offered by the Graduate Certificate program at UTS and exciting future that awaits our graduates and prospective students.

And for our audience, just like CEDA was touching on that, our team is available to answer your postgraduate study

inquiries and can schedule a one on one consultation with you. So please feel free to contact us at SAS dot Marketing at UTS.

Edu agu that's a double s dot marketing at eats dot edu dot AEW

and we look forward to supporting your learning journey at UTS. For those interested in applying, applications are now

open for the February 19, 2024 intake. You can submit your application via the UTS Student Portal

and just a reminder that the micro credentials for 2024 will be on sale on the 24th of November for Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale.

So it's going to take 20% off the price and that's about it for us.

We appreciate your participation and we hope to welcome you at UTS soon. The next session will be for the Master of Tesla

and Applied Linguistics Showcase tomorrow night at 6 p.m.. In case any of you are interested and would like to attend,

we look forward to meeting you again and have a great evening. Thank you. Thanks everyone.

Thanks everyone. See you next year. Right.

Primary and Secondary Education

Explore postgraduate study options in Primary and Secondary Education at UTS.

Passionate about a career in education? Join Dr. Don Carter and Dr Keith Heggart to discover our practice-oriented Master of Teaching in Primary Education and Master of Teaching in Secondary Education. Hear inspiring stories from experts, alumni, and current students, and participate in engaging discussions exploring career pathways, industry trends, and opportunities in teaching.

With these qualifications, you can embark on a rewarding journey as a primary or secondary school teachers in NSW. Start shaping young minds today with UTS!

Passionate About a Career in Education? video transcript

Okay if you can all just sit up straight please. I've just got to see if I've still got it and the answer is probably not. Welcome everyone, how you all doing and welcome to everyone online as well.

I'm really excited to say to see so many of you and to welcome you to our postgraduate showcase about becoming a teacher either in primary or secondary education. My name's Keith and I'm going to be your MC for the evening and I'll introduce myself in just a little bit and I'm the course coordinator for the Master of Teaching in Secondary Education but if you're interested in primary we're going to talk about that as well. One of the reasons that I became an academic was because I didn't have to wear a suit and tie to work every day and my colleagues have kind of outdressed me so please yeah overlook that.

Before we start what I'd like to do is acknowledge the First Nations peoples of Australia including elders both past, present as well as emerging leaders and I'd extend that respect to the traditional custodians of the land from which we're hosting this event today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I've come this morning from the Darug lands on the banks of the Derebin River. We acknowledge the enduring connection to this land which has always been and always will be Aboriginal land.

So why are you here? Why teaching? Well hopefully over the next little bit we're going to answer some of those questions and to do that you're going to hear from industry experts who are going to share their insights into careers and opportunities that only come from teaching. I think you're going to be inspired by alumni success stories, you're going to discover exciting project opportunities with experts and you're going to learn about our flexible program options and ultimately you'll get answers to the questions that you want to ask all of which will make this package a compelling reason to study education at UTS. So let me introduce you to some of our guests.

So the first person I'd like to introduce you to is Denise Lofts. Denise is a highly respected leader in education with a remarkable career as a visual and creative arts teacher and a school principal. She currently serves as the president of the New South Wales Secondary Principal Council and as the principal of Ulladulla High School, it's a tough life I tell you, where she has a profound influence on the New South Wales public education system.

Denise's work focuses on enhancing the quality and reputation of public education both nationally and internationally. She's known for a dedicated and compassionate style of leadership and is committed to supporting and inspiring school principals. When Denise gets up and shares her insights with you, she's going to talk about her approach to nurturing the next generation of educators, highlighting the crucial role of their well-being and professional development and achieving success in schools.

Please put your hands together to welcome Denise and I'll invite her up to the lectern in just a moment. My next colleague is Dr Don Carter. Don is an associate professor in the School of International Studies and Education here at UTS.

He has extensive experience as an English teacher, a department head, an ESL consultant in southwestern Sydney. He's also served as an English inspector at the New South Wales Educational Standards Authority. His leadership has influenced the English curriculum in New South Wales schools including the development of the current English K-10 syllabus and the creation of the HSE English Studies course for years 11 and 12 students.

I think I've actually taught that course. You might also know Don as one of the co-hosts of the Talking Teachers podcast which is available on all good platforms. Please put your hands together to welcome Don.

Our final colleague is John Bartlett. John Bartlett brings over 20 years of experience in energy and sustainability procurement, consulting, trading and market analysis. After pursuing a career change he became an alumnus of our program and recently has been working as a secondary teacher of business studies and HSE at Morris Catholic College North Shore.

Just a few short months ago I was teaching John in his final subjects and now he's out there as a fully-fledged teacher telling me all kinds of stories about what he's getting up to. John's going to share his unique insights on the student experience and offer guidance to current and future students on their career paths and I think if you want to find out what the program here at UTS is really like, John's the person to talk to. And for me, well I'm the acting director for the Centre for Research on Education in the Digital Society, I'm an Apple Distinguished Educator, I'm a Google Certified Innovator, I'm a Tableau Ambassador, basically if there's a badge out there I've gone and got it.

But I used to be a high school teacher. I taught history, I taught English and I taught whatever else they asked me to teach. I've held leadership positions in government and non-government schools in England and in Australia and currently as I said before I'm the coordinator for the Master of Teaching in Secondary Education at UTS.

So with our introductions complete I am now going to pass the floor over to Denise and we look forward to hearing her overview of the teaching profession in the current landscape, including the required skills to become a teacher in New South Wales. Okay, can you hear me okay? I'm not quite. I too would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people.

60,000 years, this is, was and will always be a First Nations land. I come to you, I live on Murramurrung land of the Yuin Nation on the south coast of a place called Ulladulla. I'm currently the substantive principal of Ulladulla but currently I'm taking on a role as the president of the New South Wales Secondary Principals Council with membership, that's all the public school secondary principals that I look after and make sure that they're getting on with their job.

So I'd like to clarify that I haven't actually, I might have said that I was Dr Denise Loft so I'm actually not. I'm actually hoping to submit my thesis this time next year and I'm actually researching philanthropy and what it should do to improve equity in rural schools. So I've interviewed a whole lot of philanthropists and I've interviewed school leaders so I look forward to finishing that just to say.

So I'm just a learner and that's what every person who works in schools, we're just learners and I just want to kind of bring you into that realm. So I've built my school around the philosophy if you don't feed the teachers they eat the students. So the most important people in my school are my teachers and you know I will talk about also the fact that principal work and how we tell the story and how we lead.

We're the biggest group of secondary principals in the southern hemisphere that are collectively and we do tell our story about the complexity of our work and that's something that you know I will kind of talk to more and it's our stories that we tell. We want young people to be able to read and not because it improves our PISA results but the research tells us then when young people read it builds their empathy and when they read they show a greater sense of understanding other people and as you know you know it seems to be that there is a divisive element out in our you know social media but if you read stories about people then you start to show empathy and I'm kind of getting this going to move toward we want young people so that they have a voice, they can tell stories, they can advocate for a better life. They're the most valuable resource we have.

That's the fiscal answer to where we're up to. We've in secondary schools we've banned mobile phones because we want to influence a generation. So this is where the future of where you as teachers come into the story.

As it's graduation time if you would have might not have noticed and it was quite strange this afternoon as I wandered through the buildings of UTS. Literally one building connects to each other and there's this feeling in the air that graduation's on. With a university as large as this it's quite inspiring.

I was not I didn't know who's graduating but the feeling is the same the camera crews they're lined up there's the photography booths, the graduation merchandise, the briefings, the overhead big screens beaming in the keynote speakers, the deans, the professors and of course the graduating class. The opportunity to graduate what a great thing that is. This is probably only probably one of two or three ceremonies that have happened today.

It's a big deal. Education is a big deal in general. I remember clearly my undergraduate graduation at Newcastle University.

My post-grad was here. I did my master's here at UTS and only quite recently I remember giving the occasional speech to a graduating group of communication and education students. It was in that preparation for that speech that I read back over when I was preparing for today and I led with the heading teachers and school leaders indeed shape the future the hearts and minds of our tomorrow.

So I began to reflect on the incredible educational thinkers such as you know Sir Ken Robinson who challenged us to think differently about education. Professor Yong Zhao who encapsulates the entrepreneurial spirit. Parsi Solberg who would you know who you know who talks about equity and that resonates with me and and to many incredible colleagues and progressive universities like UTS that shape tomorrow.

I told I told the story of one of my students and I'll tell the story says hi miss thank you so much for your support. Jade, Lachlan and I really appreciate it. This is on an email.

This was the end of an email chain from my school captain at the time an incredible young aboriginal woman telling me that I could listen to her speech online given to council about the rescission motion for climate change. Letters to be sent from the council to Parliament House Canberra and how she was representing the youth of the Shoal Haven along with two other students from Ulladulla High School. She said oh do you mind if I wear my school uniform? I said knock yourself out that's great.

The speech was on the back of a change the conversation on climate change at UHS that we'd had just before during a lunch time when student other students were missing school our students clearly articulated their stand not by missing school rather to ensure the focus was clearly on the issues not on the point of missing school. This clear succinct mindful deliberate protest by the students could not be ignored. This type of agency is mirrored across many young people in our schools.

Student agency I believe will continue to be a big influence in the way we do business at school. So we never stop learning and that's you know you join the profession. Classrooms are places where you have the opportunity to not only provide for students to find themselves but it is a place where where teachers actually find themselves as well.

In 1988 that was my first year of teaching. If you wanted a teaching position pretty much pretty much what you had to say times have changed. I had to say I'll go anywhere in the state if you wanted a teaching job with the New South Wales Department of Education who I've served now for 38 years and it makes me sound old but then I really wanted to go rural.

I thought oh you know I was born at Bathurst I'd love to go to the country. So instead I wasn't placed in the country I was placed at Cambridge Park High School. At the time was the biggest school in Western Sydney, a diverse community and off I went with loads of enthusiasm.

I was visual arts was my background. However I knew that it wasn't always about visual arts it was about building the hearts and minds of young people and connecting with them. I've been a teacher, I've been a head teacher, a deputy principal and a principal and now the president of the Secondary Principals Council.

I had no idea that this is where I would end up and the profession has given me such a great career and now I advocate for my colleagues and their students in their schools. Yesterday I'm not sure whether you read the news this is all interesting news for people who want to become teachers. So the Teachers Federation New South Wales signed a three-year agreement with the New South Wales Department of Education which is a history making on the back of the history making deal last year.

Particularly to graduates is it makes us the best paid in Australia and we're aligning with other professionals. However what was really significant about yesterday, so it marked a culture shift towards teaching. So you know you might have people out there telling you don't become a teacher, what are you thinking? We are a gendered profession but yesterday marked the recognition of that and the focus was on flexibility, it was on the idea of part-time, it was about encouraging older teachers to stay around to help the next generation of teachers and I was pretty excited by this.

I was excited that our profession was getting kind of the backing that we need to serve our young people and public education is my at my at the heart. It's a huge system which serves 2,200 diverse schools who educate the bulk of students in New South Wales. We're a vibrant inclusive system and remembering that teaching is about building people that you can take and once you know how to once you become a teacher you take it across the globe.

Many of my teachers have taught in all different places around the world. So I guess what I'm going to finish off with and I could talk underwater basically, principals can but you're you know if you see this as your future you're joining the future teachers club. It's what you know what it means to be a teacher and become a teacher and you know it I can answer any of your questions but it shows that you believe in young people and you believe in the future you know you and you're not really chasing the big money but you're you're really going to live a life of purpose and for me after 38 years in public education every time I walk back into the school after being at principal meetings because previously I was the deputy president and I would be at a meeting but I would still be the principal and I would walk back into the school and I was very much energised by by my students you know they are the future and you know they are hopeful they have dreams and they have so much potential and and and all the teachers in the system believe in their future as well so and it's kind of the purpose of what I do and what I get up and and you know like I said you know we don't we don't make a million dollars but we certainly do make a difference and the work that we do really does matter um so I hope that I welcome you into the future the the the future teachers club all right thank you very much.

Thanks very much Denise I really like the line as a teacher you live a life of purpose that's excellent and it's true and I guess you're here now because you want to get some more insights into the teaching profession and hopefully come to UTS. I want to talk to you about the primary degree this is a brand new degree and we are very excited about it we have a great reputation in teacher education at UTS particularly in the primary sphere and we believe that this degree will strengthen our reputation and we actually have a double vertical stack degree starting next year that's for people who are going to start off as undergraduates but tonight it's about postgrads. Can I ask how many of you are thinking of becoming a primary school teacher? One two three great there could be more you're just a bit shy of putting your hand up all right I'm happy to take questions um over a water or two at the end but let me tell you a bit about the um the degree.

First of all there are some commonwealth supported places available now that is where the government chips in some money plus you chip in some money for your degree information and specific information is on the UTS website it's competitive you have to show that you're interested you have to apply you have to include a personal statement and there are deadlines and I think the first deadline for autumn next year is the 24th of November so please look on the UTS website. So I want to talk now about the degree itself so you do a degree in primary education that qualifies you to teach kindergarten to year six here in New South Wales across Australia and internationally you can teach in government schools or in private schools it's the full qualification the content is largely governed by the New South Wales Education Standards Authority NESA for short and you have to do subjects in what's called the KLAs the key learning areas and you'll see them up on the slide English, Maths, Creative Arts, Human Society and its Environment, Science and Technology and PD Health PE that's mandatory and our subjects are based around those KLAs it also our subjects also include inclusive education, digital learning, working with and for Indigenous Australians and that's part of why we think our course is distinctive those particular subjects but one of the good things about the degree is that you do 60 days professional experience that means a school placement we find a school for you and you go do three 20-day blocks across that school and maybe another one and that's where you get that hands-on experience that's where you get to implement the things that you've been learning in your coursework. The good thing about the way we organise it is that we get our students out in the schools early on in the degree and this allows you to say to yourself is this for me is teaching for me and it has been the case in the past that we've had students who've dropped out they've said no after my prac I realised teaching isn't for me I'm not going to do an education degree.

Some courses it's only in the last year or right towards the end where you go out on a school placement we get you in the schools early so this course is ideal for graduating students career changes people who are looking for something different so you'll see in this slide there's the primary education core there's a subject called digital supported learning resetting the future Indigenous Australian education inclusive education I've mentioned maths teaching EALD and literacy in primary schools professional experience the teacher performance assessment that's at the end of the course professional experience the primary school child and then classroom management. Obviously classroom management is a very important subject and we certainly emphasise that along with the other subjects. One thing that I will mention is that across Australia it's a requirement that every teacher education student has to undertake what's called LANTITE literacy and numeracy test initial teacher education and you have to pass the literacy test and you have to pass the numeracy test so that's integrated into your course it's not run by us it's run federally by the Australian Council of Education Research.

You also do the key learning areas as I mentioned and you'll see there the names of subjects in maths English science and tech creative arts PD health PE and HSIE. It's a mandatory requirement that you have to do more English and maths subjects than some of the other key learning areas so what this does is it gives you the content knowledge of the curriculum but also we teach you how to teach that content it's not like we say okay you're going to go teach you know cloud formations to year six we will show you how to do that different pedagogical models. So I will mention also that this degree is currently with Nessa going through the accreditation process we've been working with Nessa closely they've been giving us input along the way and we're confident that there'll be a favourable decision by the end of the year.

So admission requirements into the degree because it's postgraduate you need a recognised bachelor's degree or an equivalent qualification also you need to in your undergraduate degree have subjects that align with the key learning areas or across a number of key learning areas. You also need to do a personal statement and this is for all universities. You need to and it's on the UTS website there's four questions about what makes you want to become a teacher, your motivations, some examples you can give about how you've managed deadlines, organisational work and so on.

So that is for all of teacher education students around Australia. Okay so I'm really hoping that this has whetted your appetite and the three people who's indicated they want to become primary teachers has now doubled or tripled. All right thanks very much over to you Keith.

Do you know how you tell the difference between a primary school teacher and a secondary school teacher? So when you talk to a secondary school teacher and say oh you know what do you teach? I'll say I teach business studies or I teach mathematics. Talk to a primary school teacher they say I teach children. I'll let you work out which one you think is the best answer for that one.

All right I get to talk to you about the Master of Teaching Secondary which is the course that I'm in charge of and and if you haven't already worked out I'm pretty excited about it because I think it's a fantastic course and I think it offers things that some other courses that are competitors might not. So let's have a look at how it's all structured and of course being a teacher I'm desperate to get out from behind the lectern and walk around the room but then I'll lose the microphone so I won't do that. But this is how it's structured and let me just go through some of this because some of it has got some language that is a little bit complicated and I just want to make sure you all understand what you're possibly signing up for here.

The first thing is that there are seven core subjects. These are the things that teachers across all the KLAs need to know and what I like about this course is that there is no filler okay. It is all stuff that you're going to be putting into practice in your very first day in the classroom.

So we teach you about using digital technologies because that's a central part to being a teacher regardless of what subject you're going to teach you need to know how to use it. We teach you literacy and numeracy because whatever else we all are just like Denise said we are all teachers of reading and writing and also numeracy. What else do we teach you? There's a subject called professional learning that's where you start to understand how schools operate and start working with teachers and things like that.

You'll go out and you'll visit some schools at that point. We've got a subject on inclusive education which is about meeting the needs of students with special needs or additional needs which is a really important subject and of course there's a subject on Indigenous education which is central to the Australian curriculum and the New South Wales version of the Australian curriculum as well. Then we have two options.

So when you come and you study the Masters of Teaching Secondary Education here at UTS you get to choose whether you're going to pursue one core subject or two core subjects or two specialisations. So for example you might be an English teacher and that's it or you might be an English and an EALD teacher or you might be an English and a society and culture teacher or you might be a business studies and an economics teacher. So whether you have one specialist area or two specialist areas means that your subject choices change a little bit.

Ultimately what it means if you do two subject specialist areas you have slightly fewer electives because you need to do some of the other subjects. So let me explain what I mean by that. You'll see that if you're doing a single teaching area you have to do three teaching methods.

So these will be named after your subject teaching area. So if you're going to become a business studies teacher you will do HSE, human society and environments teaching methods one, business studies teaching methods two and business studies teaching methods three. That does not teach you about how to run a business.

We assume that. That's why you've got an undergraduate degree but it does teach you how to teach those subjects. It familiarizes yourselves with the content that's in the New South Wales curriculum or the New South Wales syllabus.

Now this is really really important. When I get on to the next slide you'll see the kinds of subjects and specializations we offer. You won't see ancient history up there or modern history and people always say oh Keith does that mean that I can't come to UTS and not be a history teacher? No.

It means that we don't offer specializations in ancient history and modern history and geography but you can still train and in fact we do train you to be a HSE teacher for stages four and five. So when John gets up in a moment he's going to explain that he's currently teaching stage four history and geography because of how we trained him here okay. But he won't teach those in stage six.

In stage six he'll teach business studies because that's what we train him to do yeah. If you do two subject specializations, so let's say you're going to be a maths and a physics teacher, you need to do the first as your major. So you'll do mathematics teaching methods one two and three and then you'll do physics teaching methods one and two okay.

So you've got to do a few extra methods. Again we're not going to teach you the maths content. We're not going to teach you the physics content.

That's assumed in your undergraduate degree. We're going to teach you how to teach those things the pedagogy of the the idea. And then there is a whole range of electives and we're fortunate to have some really interesting electives.

My current favourite at the moment is called Crunch just because I like the name. It's all about learning analytics for performance improvement. In case you don't know understanding data and making good use of data in schools is becoming increasingly important.

So that's a very popular course at the moment. All right this is what it kind of looks like for a full-time student spread over two years. You can see that there's four subjects in each semester and it's a good mix of when you do your electives and when you spread out.

The important things to keep an eye out there are the subjects called professional experience teaching placements PTP1 and PTP2 because those are when you go out into your schools. You will do 60 days of placements over the course of the two years and that's when you do them. So we throw you into the schools adequately supported and ready for it but we get you into the schools as soon as possible.

And one of the great things that we've discovered and I think this is testament to our course is that our students are ready to teach when they are doing their professional experience teaching placement too. So often they are very much in demand from that point on being asked to come back for casual teaching or being asked to actually you know teach full-time which shows how ready they are. Something else that's worth noting people often say when can I actually start working as a teacher and I think that's important to say because you can actually become what's called provisionally accredited at the start of the second year which means you can start working as a casual teacher and in fact we encourage you to do it as long as it doesn't interfere with your classes because it's a great opportunity to get out there and see what schools are like.

Yeah okay so that's that. This is for somebody with two areas of specialisation you'll see that there's a few less electives available and there's more teaching method subjects but the core subjects remain the same so it's pretty similar. So this would be for example someone doing maths and physics or business and economics or maths and chemistry we've got a whole range of different options.

Let me show you those different options. So we've got English, maths, we've got all the different kinds of sciences up there and we've got lots of different HSEE subjects as well. Just a reminder that you qualify to teach stage four and five HSEE which includes history and geography and commerce as well as society and culture and business studies and economics.

Oh and legal studies. How could I miss legal studies? Okay so this is a really important point and this is something that we are more than willing to help you with but it's often something that's best done on a individual basis. So you might be thinking how do I know if I've got the requisite subject content knowledge to become for example a mathematics teacher? Perhaps you've got a degree in science you know an undergraduate degree in science.

Does that have enough maths to to allow you to become a maths teacher? The best thing we can do is actually sit down with you and look at your transcript and count up the requisite subjects because what NESA does, the New South Wales Educational Standards Authority, they say that you basically need at least six subjects of a certain level and not all of them can be first year and not all of them can be later years and if you've got six subjects that counts as a major and if you've got a major you can teach that subject. So if you your degree has those six subjects that you need then we will be able to offer you a place where we can train you to be in this example a mathematics teacher or a business studies teacher. It gets a little more complicated than that and this is why we we suggest that it's done on a one-to-one basis and we look at your transcript for you and give you that kind of advice because for example in business studies you have to cover certain areas you have to have a management subject you have to have a HR subject in mathematics you have to have at least one statistics subject and so even if you've got a degree in business studies but you don't have what NESA needs you're not actually qualified to become a business studies teacher.

The good news is if there is one or two subjects that you're missing for whatever reason for example you don't have that management subject you can slot them in as your electives and we can offer that so you can still qualify to become a business studies teacher with the requisite subject content knowledge. Remember I said you can do two specialisations well for the first specialisation you need six subjects equivalent to six subjects or a major and for the minor if you were to do a minor the second subject you would only need the equivalent of four subjects and again just to make it complicated NESA says not every subject can be a minor okay so so again that's a good chance for us to have a discussion about what's how it all fits and not every subject can be a major okay so for example if you're going to become a English as an additional language teacher that's always got to be a minor and so normally people become English and then English as additional language teachers. Like I said we are happy to have the conversation and look at your transcript for you.

Okay yeah that's pretty much exactly what I just said. These are the English language and admission requirements you will note that you as as Don said for the Master of Teaching Primary there is a requirement to pass what's called the land type test during your testing this is something that everybody enrolled in initial teacher education program has to complete before they can go out on placement and it's just a literacy and numeracy test. Basically I always call it year nine level all right you're not going to be doing calculus and differential equations but there will be some addition subtraction and that kind of stuff there and don't forget the personal statement like Don said four questions take it seriously.

I read every single one that comes into the Master of Teaching Secondary just because I find it fascinating to see where everyone's coming from and why they want to be teachers and I do reject some of them not all not not a huge amount but if they're not taken seriously I do reject them. All right and there you go so you can see those are the kind of questions that they might ask you what inspired you to become a teacher lots of people talking about their families their grandmothers it's nice to read it really is and then how you've shown a bit of leadership how you manage your time and how you use your problem solving skills nothing there about content knowledge more about the kind of soft skills I don't like that term human centered skills that teachers need to know. All right so why I mean it's a fantastic program but now I really want to give you some some of the hard core statistics about why it's so important to study education at UTS because I think there are some really fantastic statistics to show and this is I'm not going to read everything off something that you learn really quickly as a teacher is if you you put up slides and then you just read off them people quickly zone out so I will not do that but what I do want to share with you are just some of the highlights about teaching at UTS and why I think it's so successful.

All right so and then I'm going to hand over to John who's going to talk about his student experience but one of the things that I think is really important is that our programs allow you to tailor your your approach to what you're interested in you saw the range of different specializations that are available there plus there's the range of electives too. Our program is incredibly inclusive we want people from diverse backgrounds that makes the teaching profession stronger so you know when you are sitting there you will be working with people who are doing their undergraduate degree at the same time as you're doing your postgraduate degree and you're all learning together. Our biggest success and it's the highlight of the course every time we talk to students are our professional experience teaching placements this is your chance to get out there early and see what teaching is like and of course you might be thinking all right it's a long time ago Keith but I can still remember what school was like it's different when you're on the other side of the staff room door and and it's better okay and I enjoyed school as a student but it's much much better as a teacher I think and and we find those placements for you we work with you to make sure that it's a good placement it fits well with you we often have students who say just like Denise was saying I want to go rural we do our best to meet those needs and it's great when we send students out to Cobar or Dubbo or Wee War is another place that we send people to which is great and and to give you an idea of how strong those placements are we have more than 200 formal partnership agreements with schools.

Our teaching programs are informed by the best educational research Don and I and all the other lecturers in the program are practicing a lot of us were teachers but we're also researchers we are deeply involved and committed to the profession and to improving the profession and improving the status of the profession we're ranked within the top 100 universities worldwide in the field of education that's not in Australia that's worldwide we're in the top 100 according to the Times Higher Education Ranking and you know because let's be honest money counts we offer Commonwealth supported places which can significantly reduce the cost of doing an education degree here at UTS. All right so um oh yeah we talked about that I went off track it's a career hazard um all right so I think this is a really important slide because it showcases the starting salaries one of the great things about teaching is that when you graduate you actually earn more than banking graduates you earn more than engineering graduates now it doesn't stay that way I'll be honest with you okay but certainly at the start of your career you earn well and if you move into leadership positions you can you can earn a significant amount of money like Denise said we're not here to be millionaires but you know not it helps to be able to pay your rent. Introduce you John how are you ah there we are okay so what I'd like to do now and it's probably the part you've all been waiting for um I'd like to introduce you to John Bartlett who's one of our alumni uh he'll share his experiences pursuing education as part of his career change his journey into us in our secondary education program and his insights as a secondary teacher at Marist Catholic College.

Please welcome John. Good evening and thank you for having me this evening um as Keith said uh it was my very last subject when I finished the course um was one of Keith's lessons for uh teaching across the curriculum and my very first class two years prior was also one of Keith's class it's the only time we had an 8 a.m uh class in the two years it was the earliest session of all of them but in looking back to that sort of first class now I tried to think about how confident I was going into this career into this career change and just reflecting on the process of applying and stuff I'd actually forgotten about that but when I I can't remember what my confidence was like in how it was going to go but all I can remember is that I was actually quite excited I immediately found every lesson engaging and um embarrassingly I now realized that I was one of these over enthusiastic mature age students that I used to find annoying when I was in my 20s doing my undergrad but nevertheless the study in particular and in particularly assessment tasks were really rewarding during my study there was a real sense of achievement I felt again in meeting deadlines and awaiting for grades to come through and that was really motivating over the two years of the course in my first semester I had a tutor who I found was an extremely hard marker and it wasn't Keith I have tried to hit Keith up for some marks and um he I'll talk to him about that later no just joking um but it wasn't Keith but I had him in the first semester I thought he's such a hard marker and then I had him again in the second semester um and then again in the third semester by the time I got to the third semester however I'd actually built a respect for this person's marking I actually was embracing the challenge and looking forward to the challenge of his marking he held us to a very high standard and I think to want his students to be excellent teachers says something about the degree that you're working towards you want to still try and be the best in your profession and to challenge yourself at that at all times and in saying that I welcome the challenge and when I did complete my degree my master's the sense of reward and achievement felt that much more because it was challenging and um the other thing that I that came with the challenges throughout that I picked up when I did my placements at the schools and when I eventually started teaching the challenges whether you realize it or not can create a confidence in you that you can meet these obstacles you don't know it at the time but the challenges do make you more confident when you do go into the classroom and I'll come back to that shortly I don't want to put anybody off with what I'm about to say teaching can be like getting teenagers to eat vegetables you might have five or six different classes with 20 plus students each of them liking different vegetables or wanting them cooked differently or put on a plate for them differently and you need to be able to find a way to be able to get these children to eat their vegetables they know it's good for them you know it's good and their parents know it's good for them it's the same with the knowledge you need to be able to make it appealing for them but you do have many many different appetites and many fussy eaters in every class so where am I going with this a good teaching degree at the minimum will have you going into a classroom with a recipe book a number of good recipes but a great teaching degree that challenges you will give you the confidence to then start experimenting with that and making these recipes your own and that's one of the key things the first time you step into a classroom on your own is you want to feel confident and that's where you need to challenge yourself when you go when you're working towards a master's to push yourself to achieve a high standard and then just as you feel rewarded with the degree at the end of it you can also make your career as a teacher rewarding by challenging yourself in the classroom when children challenge you how do you manage that and those challenges much like the reward you feel with the degree make your job rewarding at the end of the day you look back and you reflect on the lesson how did I go today did I do a good job what could I have done better and one thing I noticed with a number of the assessment pieces certainly in my last assessment piece in Keith's class is we wrote across a number of subjects we wrote quite a few reflective essays throughout the course and I thought oh this just must be some new trend reflective essay sounds very soft but I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say I reflect on my school day every day I reflect on my lessons whether it be briefly or in more depth every single day so I look at these reflective essays as being part of a education degree and it actually is quite fitting you do need to be able to self-reflect you do need to be able to see what you can change see how you can challenge yourself and I think that that's when you're choosing a degree and a career that you look at a challenge as being something good because the reward that comes from meeting those challenges is is actually quite satisfying on a day-to-day basis when you take your first step into that classroom for the first time yes you want to have some good recipes and you want to feel confident you need a supportive teaching staff around you to help you build your confidence teach you the skills and in doing so when you first step foot into that classroom you feel prepared to be able to teach and then make that classroom your own and build on your career as a teacher in your new profession and obviously give so much to so many students whether they know whether they like the subject or not or whether they know that you actually do care about their learning you're not going to get a pat on the back from every child at the end of every lesson it's not about that but you know that what you're doing is important and on any given day you might reach a different student but you just keep trying and you never give up and you continue challenging yourself to improve over and over again and with that you'll get the satisfaction from the job and from the degree itself thank you all righty now we hand it over to you it's your chance to ask our panel any kinds of questions that you might like so there's people online who might be putting in questions and they'll feel them through to me but if you've got some questions as well now something that I know as a teacher you've got to give people a little bit of thinking time to work through what kind of questions they might ask so I'll give a starter question and then we'll go to the audience and see how we go so I'm going to throw this over to anybody who wants to answer it why teach why on earth did you decide to enter this profession yeah okay that's actually I was almost going to put that in my speech when I first arrived 1988 rocked in visual arts faculty there were six teachers six women and one of them sidled up to me probably a couple of days after I actually when I arrived at the substitute teacher said here's the keys it's all yours you know and I thought right okay and this other teacher sidled up to me and she said why have you come into teaching what what were you thinking you know what were you thinking and it actually got me thinking I thought oh far out have I made the wrong decision so I went and enrolled in a Bachelor of Legal Studies and I did one semester and as I'm struggling to do that I was still teaching and after after I actually finished that one semester and then I thought to myself actually teaching is my thing I love being with people and I loved being with the students and and just because that was her opinion about her you know what what she was experiencing I actually really loved being around young people and I you know they're not they're not great and I love the vegetable thing like seriously they're not always going to eat their vegetables but but you know really they are tomorrow and I I felt that um once you connect with them you know and I thought that the people the students I loved working with the other teachers we had a lot of fun um and we really did you know it is a fun place to be you know and you actually get to hang out with young people um with all due respects when I'm over here at UTS I'm hanging out with lots of older people except for the students but it's really interesting it's a young people you know you walk in and they are young people and you know if you've worked in an office environment and there's been lots of adults they're pretty hard to work with as well so just comparing fantastic all right um I want to I want to hear from the audience is that all right if we go to the audience so please raise your hand and we've got somebody with a mic who'll come around and uh just just wait for the mic oh thank you so much for presentation it's very informative um I'm currently pursuing my PhD degree in languages and cultures but I'm thinking to um make a transition in my career development because I always have passion in education and teaching but not to college students but to primary or secondary school students so could you please share with me some unexpected moments or some setbacks or challenges that I might face in the future when I'm in the career and also I have a second question that is um like if I if I get a degree here in UTS can I also use this degree in other states in Australia and also I'm not very familiar with being a teacher in a primary or secondary school so could you please visualize what a teacher is in the school like um not just teaching right but like what is the daily routine of being a teacher yeah thank you so much so so just for first question is about setbacks and challenges and second is like um this this degree whether it is uh it is applicable in other states and the sec the third question is about the daily routine thank you I'll I'll do the first or the second question about whether it's applicable in other states um yes is the short answer uh due to mutual recognition which is something that has only come in recently if you become a accredited teacher you'll be able to teach in other states as well yeah and New Zealand I think there you go um who wants to to do the question um setbacks yeah you you'll experience a few as a teacher but you always dust yourself off and get up and get on with it because you have to in order to survive setbacks can come in many shapes or forms usually in the form of classroom management until you assert yourself in the classroom with your classes you will find it difficult because kids are kids they'll test you and um it takes a while but that's why we have you know subjects about classroom management we teach you how to do it and then you go into the classroom other setbacks could be dealing with parents you know parents are very keen for their kids to do well other setbacks could relate to um your lesson planning getting your lessons right getting your units of work right and that takes time and you tailor them not only according to the syllabus and curriculum requirements but to the kids who are sitting in your classroom and every class you go to is different John do you want to do the question about what you do on an average day as a teacher yes so what what is an average day there's nothing average about it the same content the same lesson for two years seven classes presented back to back could be completely different the behavior or the interest or the response in giving a lesson at nine o'clock in the morning versus two o'clock in the afternoon can be completely different so you're oh okay they're the only the only thing that's um consistent is probably the inconsistency itself is that it does change and that you need to adapt i was um very fortunate uh when i did my prac placement and my supervising teacher said oh look don't be hard on yourself if the lesson doesn't go to plan the most experienced teachers have bad lessons and it's true they do and i was talking to one um who's been at the school a very long time and she will say oh i just had a terrible class it just went it went you know terribly um so well i'm not saying that they all go terribly but things don't go to plan is what i'm trying to get across and you need to understand that that they are children and um what you're saying to 20-25 children in the room one day what you're saying might be really interesting to them the next day they might be distracted by their excitement of going to the football the next day or they've had a disagreement with their friends or there's something else going on in their lives you need to understand that just because you're at the front of the room and talking to them what you're saying at that point in time might not be the most important thing to them on that day but of course it's important that you're trying to help them learn it and you adapt around that and you try different skills different recipes as i said to see if you can get them to absorb the information so every day is every day is different which which is good which is good yeah i was just gonna say i love being in the staff room in the morning so basically they come in your backpack on and and what they'll often do is they do huddle around i've got this idea have you tried this here's my kahoot do you want to use that kahoot do you oh this is my you know there is that collaboration and often i find and maybe i've created that environment where where teachers are very collaborative so you know in other words we talk about what's going to happen in the lesson and it's really about i love what don said about what we do is we organize kids around learning so you enter a classroom it's the good teacher line up so my good science teacher who is 70 they all line up and they all line up and walk in and it's a public school comprehensive and they understand that you know rules are set your classroom becomes your learning environment so you know some of our classrooms that look beautiful you know they're well decorated you know because it's you know posters and all of those sorts of things so that's part of the teaching thing you know there is so many aspects that you create the learning around and when you say what do you do that's what you do you prepare the lesson you actually then you work out well what kids have i got in this class you know and you you understand the learning needs of each of those those young people and we have lots of data and i like the data thing you know you know this person hasn't turned up for three days oh i need to ask the question about that what's going on for them and their families and and so that's the people side but there's the kind of the there's the content but the content is quite exciting the way that you can bring it to young people and you know with with the technology which i appreciated as well so you know it's a very collaborative profession you don't get to eat lunch much i've got to say because there's no sitting around you know there are a couple but really often lunch times are oh i need to talk to these kids about their assignment or i want to you know someone's got to stay back because they were talking when i was talking and you know because i went through my whole career with missing lunch pretty much most days so if you're a person who loves their lunch maybe not but you know that's and but that's kind of what you do and you get to the end of the day and that's how it is yeah and you could be on staff duty at lunch that's another thing too but the the people side of it is something i didn't mention and that's a very very important part of the learning experience it goes hand in hand with the content and to how receptive the students are simple things like learning their names and building that relationship with them learning their names starting to show an interest in them individually makes the teaching easier for you as well and i noticed that my first few weeks i was doing substitute teaching before i was given my own classes and i didn't have access to the learning profiles of some of the students so while i pulled up some kids for behavior or i was perhaps teaching a certain way when i was then went full-time and had my own classes i looked at those same students learning profiles and i found out so much more about their backgrounds their learning needs and that changed i would have completely acted differently or taught differently to those students had i known that in the beginning so you learn so much amount so much about the individual students and you care to the point that you want to tailor your lessons to make it more accessible to each of them so the relationship side is very important yeah thanks john um i'm just conscious of time and and we've just run over a little bit but i just want to say i promise no one will leave here with a question unanswered and for the people online i will follow up any unanswered questions that are there as well so i know a few people had their hands up i will come and speak to you i promise um but what i'd like to do is just wrap up with a few quick announcement please put your hands together to thank our guests and our they're very generous coming and sharing um their insights and their expertise i'd like to thank you all online and for those who came to campus for joining us applications are now open for the february 17th intake so when you've made the decision that you're ready to be part of the future teachers club please log on to the uts student portal remember commonwealth student supported places are available

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