Assuring Quality in the Casualisation of Teaching, Learning and Assessment: Towards Best Practice for the First Year Experience.

Author: Sally Kift

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Teaching and Learning, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology.

Keywords: teaching and learning, assessment, quality assurance, first year experience, casualisation.

Article style and source: Peer reviewed, paper first presented at the 6th Pacific Rim First Year in Higher Education Conference 2002: Changing Agendas - Te Ao Hurihuri, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, 8th to 10th of July, 2002.

Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Definitional matters - who are they and what are they called
• The First Year Dimension
• Casualisation: Conceptualising the issues.
• The Issues - Good Practice Strategies
• The Issue of Quality
• "Standard" support and "new agenda" teaching and learning imperatives.
• A teaching and learning training sub-set: assessment issues.
• A teaching and learning support sub-set: Resources support.
• Paradigm shift towards institutional assimilation and a sense of belonging.
• Conclusion
• References

Abstract

Increasingly, the task of mediating the complexity and diversity of the first year experience has fallen to casual or sessional academic staff who are, themselves, often embarking on their own first year experience (of teaching) or, at best, in the early stages of their own transition to the new role of tertiary educator. As the rate of casualisation in the tertiary sector grows exponentially in response to the endemic diminution in public funding, the imperative of assuring the quality of the casual teaching and learning environment has become critical. The response has been to resource management initiatives and teaching strategies that focus on innovative and effective ways to train, support and nurture this integral staff cohort in recognition of the pivotal role they play in delivering increasingly complex and resource intensive programs. This paper will examine some of the issues that have arisen and identify some models of good practice that have been developed in a law faculty case study.

Introduction

Tertiary education is one of the most casualised sectors in Australia. The recent and significant expansion in casual staff numbers is reflective of the trends noted in many American and United Kingdom universities in the last decade (Lueddeke, 1997). In Australia, casual employment in the sector has risen from 10.8% of equivalent full time staff in 1993 to 15.4% in 2000 and in fact rose by 18.2% between 1998-2000 (DETYA, 2001).

Enthusiastic and talented people are often said to be at the heart of a successful university. In this era of intense competition, ever-increasing tasks and reduced funding, where the student demographic is increasingly diverse and complex, it is to "enthusiastic and talented" casual academics that faculties now routinely turn to ensure the delivery of their resource intensive programs. It is triter still to say that, almost without exception, it is the greater mass of first year students who will be taught by casual academics in their small group classes. The teaching and learning experience of our students in their first year is a crucial one that can have lasting positive (or negative) effects, depending on the skill with which it is handled. For many first year students, their earliest human interaction at university will be with their tutor. It is more likely than not that this first point of personal contact will be a casual academic. That we should be able to assure the quality of this experience for both parties - teacher and student alike - has become a prominent management issue for the sector in recent times.

While the professional development of casual staff has received serious consideration in the United States in particular and, more recently, in the United Kingdom (Barrington, 1999), the issue is still a relatively new one in the Australian context. How does the sector recruit, support and assure the quality of performance of casual staff in both their and our students' first year teaching and learning experience? How is their transition to more expert teacher facilitated by staff development and enhancement opportunities? What are the processes and management strategies for training and supporting this casual workforce on which such heavy reliance is now placed to deliver increasingly complex programs to an ever-larger number of students?

Of particular interest is how we address the issue of acculturating casual staff to the new student-focussed learning agendas with which even quite fresh graduates-turned-academics will not be familiar. For instance, there has been recent dynamic change in the way in which courses have been restructured and their learning objectives re-defined to meet changing student and employer demands. Universities have come to recognise "that there is a need to ensure that graduates have the generic skills desired by employers such as analysis, communication, team-work and leadership skills" (Nelson, 2002, para [38]). The implications of generic capability development for casual staff are enormous. What training are they given to take on the new imperatives of balancing content acquisition (the know what) with skills attainment (the know how to do)? How do they engage with the dimensions of experiential learning and the scaffolding, modelling and feedback requirements that underpin the delivery and assessment of these new course objectives? Moreover, the "development in online education [has required] universities to re-evaluate the pedagogies of the campus learning environment" (Nelson, 2002, para [55]). In short, the new higher education context needs to be made as explicit to casual teachers as it does to the students with whom they will be engaging.

The necessity to promote a dialogue between university management, fulltime staff, students and casual academics that embraces a shared vision of program delivery has become pressing. It is a matter to which our faculty and the university as a whole have now directed attention and resources, as have other institutions. The President of the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association (AHEIA), Professor Di Yerbury, Macquarie University's Vice-Chancellor, recently acknowledged in The Australian's Higher Education Supplement (17 April, 2002, p. 35) the centrality of casual work, while Queensland University of Technology's Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Peter Coaldrake (1999, p. 4), has said:

Part-time and adjunct academics form another group of university staff frequently overlooked in discussion of policy and institutional strategy. Potentially, the use of such staff can add enormous practical value to university teaching, bringing in people who are practicing professionals to add an additional dimension to the learning experience of students. Yet in practice, many casual and part-time staff complain of being isolated from the university, being unable to participate in decision making, having no access to support facilities or development opportunities and being subject to arbitrary fluctuations in employment, Despite the HECE decision of the Industrial Relations Commission regulating the use of contract employment, part-time, casual and limited-term staff will continue to play an important role in higher education. This role...cannot be overlooked or isolated if universities are to make best use of the skills of the people who collectively are working to advance the institution.

Underpinning such statements is undoubtedly tacit acknowledgment of growing concern over the professional and economic status of the casual cohort. At the forefront of union claims are issues of undervaluing casual staff and the potential for their exploitation. At a different level, some very real concerns exist in relation to the gendered nature of the issue: in many disciplines it is women who account for a disproportionate number of casual teachers (Barrington, 1999; Berns, 2001).

Whilst the significant industrial issues surrounding the growth in casual employment are recognised and in no way sought to be diminished, those matters are beyond the scope of this paper, which is concerned primarily with the teaching and learning implications of casualisation. However, on one particular issue both industrial and pedagogical concerns converge: casuals are, almost routinely, excluded from training and staff development opportunities (McAlpine, 2002). This lack of access to professional development has been identified as a major issue for casuals in a survey conducted by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) in 2001 (NTEU, 2001). It is a crucial matter that goes to the heart of the contemporary teaching and learning environment casuals are now expected to negotiate.

At a national level, two further indicators of the changing agenda are also evident. First, the Australian Universities Teaching Committee (AUTC) has recently funded a 2002 project for the "Training, Support and Management of Sessional Teaching Staff" (AUTC Project, 2002). The AUTC Project aims to promote the development of policies and support mechanisms for sessional teachers within Australian Universities. Secondly, the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) this year begins a five-yearly cycle of institutional quality assurance audits addressing processes for teaching, learning, research and administration/management.

The quality of teaching is not a new concern, however, the issue of quality in the context of managing a growing casual teaching workforce, particularly in the first year context, raises an entirely different set of issues. back

Definitional matters - who are they and what are they called.

Just as the modern first year student cohort is replete with diversity, so too the tertiary casual teacher pool has no definitive taxonomy: casual staff fall into many different categories. There is an equally assorted array of reasons as to why casuals might be employed as the circumstances and aspirations that might drive them to seek employment (McAlpine, 2002). The AUTC Project 2002 has defined sessional teachers as

...lecturers, tutors, demonstrators or lab assistants who are employed on as casual or sessional basis (ie do not have tenure). They may include:

• Postgraduate students
• Research fellows/associates
• External people from industry or professions
• Part-time tutors and clinical tutors
• People who are regularly employed on a course-by-course basis (often over a number of years) [i]

In terms of nomenclature, unfortunately for sessional staff, the Enterprising Bargaining Agreement names staff who are not on-going as "casual", a label that has become an issue in itself: it is irksome to many valued sessionals who say they are not in the least casual - they are, actually, "quite professional"! As was said recently (McAlpine, 2002, p. 5):

...very little casual work has anything casual (meaning ad hoc or short -term) about it. back

The First Year Dimension

In research conducted at the University of Auckland, Barrington (1999) found that casual academics (there university tutors) keenly participated in programs that provided them with opportunities to improve their teaching skills. Of particular relevance is the finding that the need for tutor training was greatest in the first year, where students are relatively vulnerable and where, it might be added, many first time tutors cut their teeth as casual teachers. As so often occurs in the first year experience, there is another mismatch of expectations and abilities, in this instance in the misalignment of at-risk first year student with inexperienced casual academic.

McInnis, James and McNaught (1995, p. 57) in a survey of Australian first year undergraduates found that there was a significant criticism by students of small group teaching in the first year: less than half of all first year students thought their tutors were "good at explaining things" and only 53% thought academic staff were enthusiastic about what they were teaching.

Tutorials and practical classes in first year subjects are frequently staffed by inexperienced part-time teachers with little preparation for their role - often working within a structure of minimal support. Students expressed concern with the variation in the quality and attitudes of their tutors. Some were very happy with their tutors and believed their tutorials to be useful, others were less happy, having a sense of injustice about the "lottery" of tutor quality.

These concerns have been recently echoed in the context of a 2001 QUT Student Focus Group Report on "Student Perspectives on Learning for Generic Capabilities" (Hart et al, 2001). The issues raised in that Report reinforce the absolute imperative for teacher training in the new tertiary paradigm that embraces the value of graduate capability development. Hart et al (2001, p. 7) also noted that students want more interaction in tutorials, in preference to the perceived passive learning that occurs in lectures.

They argue that tutors, who rather than lecturers have the most contact with students, should be well qualified and exhibit excellent teaching skills. Tutorials are described as a "waste of time" if there is no interaction and/or the tutor is not confident about the content.

Casualisation: Conceptualising the issues.

The issues that tertiary casualisaton throws up in the teaching and learning context are convoluted and not easily distilled. How does the academic sector take on the training and support of such a diverse casual workforce, with all of its varying motivations and legitimate expectations, against the management reality of casualisation's use as a cheaper alternative for program delivery in a climate of reduced funding, larger student numbers and increasing complexity?

A first pass at conceptualising some of the issues and tensions into groupings, dimensions of which will inevitability overlap however, reads as follows: [ii]

An issue of quality. This is an overarching aspect and encompasses principled appointment processes, agreement regarding a set of mutual expectations and obligations as between institution and casual employee, and the issue of on-going quality assurance processes including encouraging casual staff to evaluate, reflect upon and aspire to improve their teaching.

"Standard" teaching and learning support - the bare minimum training that casuals should expect and to which existing programs direct attention (Sheard & Hagan, 1999; Davis, 1996). Issues here include -

• Adequate support in terms of resources, especially in large classes, with tutoring answer guides, study guides, copies of set reading materials, provision of prescribed texts, marking guides, etc.
• Team teaching strategies and communication mechanisms in units with large student numbers and a correspondingly large number of casual tutors.
• The mismatch between complex first year teaching and inexperienced casual tutors who have not been trained in the teaching strategies needed to facilitate small group teaching and learning in all of its diversity and complexity.
• Addressing the difference between undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. [iii]
• Being clear about expectations: "students continue to complain that staff are not sufficiently available for consultation"; and "student bodies have claimed that the increased number of causal and part-time staff, a prevalent means of achieving efficiencies, has significantly reduced the ability of students to access academic staff outside of lectures and tutorials."
  

"New agenda" teaching and learning imperatives. This head recognises that changed external drivers (Coaldrake, 1999; Nunan et al, 2000) in higher education have seen dynamic shifts in teaching approaches and curricula formulation. These new imperatives of course delivery need to be made explicit to casual staff who are expected to implement them.

• On-going staff development and mentoring support for casuals, particularly as tertiary educators become more knowledgeable about the nature of student learning and as good practice models shift to position around that learning.
• Providing induction by way of overviewing these modern drivers for change and acknowledging the contemporary context of Australian higher education: for example, the massification of Australian higher education at one level; developments in technological change and the increasing focus on learning outcomes in the form of graduate capabilities at a different level.
• Addressing issues created for casual staff by the increasing use of information technology in teaching: casuals need support and training in the use of this new repertoire of teaching tools. In our Faculty, on-line delivery serves a variety of purposes, amongst which is the IT literacy training of our students. It follows that casual staff need equal access to training in these IT skills.
• An entire set of issues created by the increasing focus on learning outcomes in the form of graduate capabilities, particularly regarding the need to improve the quality of assessment and feedback in this context, but also in terms of casuals' access to staff development opportunities for skills training.

Paradigm shift towards institutional assimilation and a sense of belonging. This is the issue of creating an environment that nurtures, values and includes casual staff; a institutional approach that does not leave them feeling as isolated as the first year students many of them teach. Issues here include -

• How to manage expectations and motivations, for example, in relation to aspirations towards full time academic careers.
• Provision of networking opportunities for and amongst casual staff
  
• Retention of valued and valuable casual staff for the longer term despite high turnover rates and their feelings of insecurity of tenure.
  
• Mechanisms (such as surveys or regular meetings) for addressing casuals' concerns and to facilitate reflection on their own teaching practices and on their students' learning.
  
• o Coaldrake (1999, p. 6) has called for staff management systems that recognise and co-ordinate the contribution to university objectives by groups other than full-time academics: "thus part-timers and general staff need to be involved in strategic developments and supported by the university." back

The Issues - Good Practice Strategies

Having distilled some of the issues, the balance of this paper will identify some good practice strategies that seek to address them. The exemplars referred to are primarily initiatives that have been developed and trialed in my own institution, QUT, and in my own school and faculty, the School of Law, Faculty of Law, QUT. back

The Issue of Quality

The significant increase in the use of casual employment has required Universities to develop policy initiatives to deal with casualisation, at the very least in relation to administrative or procedural management, but more recently, in a more substantive sense to regulate a move away from ad-hocory towards a more principled appointment and training regime (cf McAlpine, 2002).

The QUT Law Faculty, in recognition of the "important role [casual staff play] in the delivery of its undergraduate and postgraduate programs", has now adopted a "Policy on Casual Academic Staff", the purpose of which is recorded as being "to state the Faculty's position in relation to the recruitment, support and development of its casual academic staff."

The recruitment process is a critical mechanism for ensuring that quality casual staff are employed. The Faculty Policy now requires that all casual academics go through an appointment or nomination process into a pool of "approved candidates", prior to their appointment to specific teaching duties by unit co-ordinators seeking to fill a tutoring vacancy. Three possibilities for appointment to the pool are envisaged under the Policy:

• Existing casual staff may be nominated by their unit-coordinators into the pool on the basis of their "ability to provide quality teaching";
• The Faculty would advertise for appropriately qualified persons and new candidates could be appointed into the pool following an interview and selection process;
• A Head of School (HOS) may nominate straight into the pool on the basis of a curriculum vitae and other necessary evidence of the ability to provide quality teaching.

Though time consuming, this process worked quite well and has been an important first step in regularising what has otherwise been an ad-hoc set of casual appointments. The goodwill of valued existing casuals was kept by nominating them straight into the pool. Allowing HOSs also to nominate straight into the pool deals with last minute vacancies that can arise despite best planning efforts. But the great bulk of casual staff had their applications (on a provided pro forma) assessed and were all interviewed briefly. [iv] Out of the application and interview process, the selection panel was able to indicate to Faculty staff who was available in what units, at what preferred times of the day and week and with what expertise. In some instances, the panel suggested that certain personalties might not be suited to the first year experience. It was also possible to identify some quite expert specialists, a couple of whom were called upon when one staff member fell sick and when another was seconded to other duties.

In a very practical way, the Policy, a copy of which is provided to all casual staff and made available on the staff intranet (under "Teaching and Learning"), has satisfied the need to monitor the quality of casual teaching staff at the threshold level. With only minor adjustments regarding the nomination process, it applies also to casuals employed to teach into the Faculty's postgraduate programs.

However, recruitment is but the first step and the Policy's other great advantage is that it also makes clear the mutual obligations that exist as between casual staff and the Faculty; relevantly here, to provide the casual pool with training and staff development, communication and mentoring, and resources and support (all discussed in more detail below). Quality Assurance processes are also specifically addressed in the Policy in the following terms:

The Head of School, in conjunction with unit co-ordinators, will review the pool of approved candidates each year.
Casual academic staff will be appointed for six months at a time and advised that one of the factors that may be taken into consideration in the reappointment process is evidence of their level of performance, for example as evidenced by student feedback (including [utilisation of QUT's formal teaching evaluation tool]) or peer review. If no evidence is provided, a casual academic staff member may be encouraged by the relevant Head of School to undertake [a formal teaching evaluation] or to participate in some form of peer review in future, to assist him or her in evaluating his or her own performance as part of their staff development.

Many of the expectations the Faculty has of casuals and the reciprocal obligations back to the Faculty are further reinforced in the Casual Academic Staff Guide - Administrative Procedure (the "Administrative Guide"), prepared by the Law School's Administration Officer (Academic Programs) who is also a designated contact for casual staff. [v] This booklet is provided to all casual staff on appointment and deals with a range of administrative and other issues in a most pragmatic and targeted manner. The Administrative Guide details the relevant procedures and policies and serves to clarify otherwise potentially fraught issues regarding expectations at an early stage (eg, what to do if sick for tutorial and who to contact; Faculty expectations regarding availability to students; clarification of what marking is included in the hourly original and repeat rate; what expectations exist regarding answer guides to tutorial exercises; the general approach to teaching materials; etc). The Guide also includes helpful hints and tips on academic administrative practice (eg how to download a class list with student photos), while completed pro formas are provided for general assistance (eg, how to fill in a pay claim timesheet). Casual academics can suffer from information overload at the start of the semester (just like students), so it is appropriate that these issues be canvassed in booklet form for easy later reference. back

"Standard" support and "new agenda" teaching and learning imperatives.

In absolute terms, the most pressing issue for quality assurance of the casual teaching and learning environment is the training and staff development made available to casual staff, both at the induction stage and on an on-going basis. Given the complexity of current interwoven course initiatives, it is not possible to divorce the "standard" requirements for this training from the "new agenda" imperatives for staff development (as they have been described above). Casual tutors are frontline course providers in every respect, and in terms particularly of the first year experience, the impact they have on students and on students' perceptions of whole course objectives can be "make or break" from very early on.

There is an urgent and immediate need to assist casual staff in their transition to the role of tertiary teacher. With all of the demands made on casual staff in terms of on-line delivery, capabilities' development, increased assessment and feedback responsibilities (especially tutorial participation assessment which starts from day one), casual staff need to hit the ground running and feel confident of their ability as teachers in teaching and learning environments which many find much changed from their own student experience. In this respect, the extreme diversity of the student body and the pressure that responsibility for student assessment places on casuals present particular and quite early challenges.

Highlighting the entry level concerns that casuals' experience, were the responses of a group of first time tutors in the Faculty of Law who were asked, at the commencement of their Faulty training, to express their "Three main concerns" as casual tutors. [vi] The responses throw up a range of issues, which have been loosely grouped as follows:

• Facilitation issues:
  • "Keeping students focused - and attaching appropriate weight to the issues"
  • "Maintain interest and involvement in the subject"
  • "Engaging students to discuss"
  • "How to handle the students in their diverse backgrounds and career aims." "Dealing with special needs students."
    
• Content issues such as:
  • "Adding value to the subject - giving more than the answer".
  • "Being able to answer all questions...particularly those out of left field"; "Being right - knowing the answers";
  • How to provide "a balanced perspective on issues"; how to deal with "changes in terminology and context"
  • Achieving the right balance right between relevance, knowledge for the "examination and practical experience"; between "theory v practical".
    
• Assessment issues:
  • "How to be fair and equitable in assessing the students...especially tutorial participation";
  • "Assessment and allocation of marks and consistency across tutorials".
    
• Role as tutor issues:
  • "Effectively balancing tutoring responsibilities with other responsibilities";
  • Coordinating our other work with the tutoring schedules, preparation and consultation"; "Balancing time/time management, prepare yet work and other commitments"
  • "Students access to us - how to manage appropriately"

Targeted casual teacher training programs can address these various concerns and a selection of these programs is now discussed.

University Program: At a University level, the office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor and the University's Teaching and Learning Support Services (TALSS) jointly present two annual professional development workshops (one in each semester, usually mid-semester) for casual academics as part of a QUT Casual Academic Staff Professional Development program. These workshops, titled the "Casual Academic Staff Teaching and Learning Development Program" are conducted on a range of issues such as PowerPoint, communication, working with international students in the classroom, developing a teaching portfolio, introduction to the On-Line Teaching (OLT) system and classroom management. All of the (approximately) 1900 QUT casual staff are invited to attend and receive payment of $110 when they attend their first workshop for the year.

At the most recent program held on 20 April 2002, the range of sessions available for participants tends to suggest that there is little (if any) distinction to be made between the teaching skills required of on-going staff and those required of casual academics. The workshops offered (each attended by 30-40 participants) would all take pride of place in any university's standard staff development program for its full-time staff. The list provides an insight into the training demands of casual academics and their perception of the expectations students have of them regarding the extensiveness and skills base of their teaching repertoire:

• Teaching through interaction - Communicating
• The challenges of teaching diverse student groups - a panel discussion
• Professional and personal development - developing a teaching portfolio
• Connecting students and resources for effective information literacy
• Embedding and assessing generic capabilities
• Introduction to QUT Virtual and e-mail
• Developing learning materials using Microsoft Office
• Introduction to PowerPoint
• Effective presentation skills
• Supporting learning in small group tutorials
• Working with international students in the classroom
• Developing and evaluating your teaching
• Integrating learning and study skills into your curriculum
• Work integrated learning
• Tips for using the media equipped lecture theatres and audio visuals
• Both introduction and advanced sessions on using the On-line teaching (OLT) system (both sessions run twice)

Law Faculty program: : While the University program offers a selection of more advanced training for the casual staff member, at a Faculty level, the office of the Assistant Dean, Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Law has developed a specific training program for the induction of new casual staff. Attendance at the Faculty ENTER program is now a condition of casual appointment and the Schools also pay staff to attend the half-day workshop that is run in the first week of the new semester in which they are appointed. The program is open to casuals who teach in both the undergraduate and postgraduate programs of the Faculty. As a package pair, the two programs (university and faculty) are quite comprehensive - one more introductory and the other more specialist - and together they should suit the training needs of most casuals. Casual staff are also encouraged to attend the university's suite of on-going staff development seminars on topics of specific interest (such as utilising the on-line teaching resources). We find, however, that often these seminars are not necessarily offered at convenient times for the Faculty's busy casuals, many of who are practicing professionals in full time employment.

The Faculty program attempts to address the range of issues - both standard and new agenda - identified earlier including:

• the contemporary legal and justice education environment;
• the teaching and learning philosophy of the Faculty;
• assessment and feedback expectations of tutors (with examples of good practice feedback provided);
• introduction to the use of formal teaching evaluation tools;
• how to facilitate an effective tutorial; and
• a workshop simulation of tutorial best practice and strategies.

Participants are provided with copies of the PowerPoint presentations from the sessions together with a resource booklet that includes references to books (such as P Ramsden (1992), Bertola & Murphy (1994), Habeshaw et al (1984), Biggs (1999), D Boud (1988), Gibbs (1992), Nightingale et al (1996)), websites (such as QUT FIT website; James & Baldwin, 1997) and a collection of useful readings to support and assist them in their development as university educators. The materials provided become a useful resource for casual staff after the training program and address such topics as:

• other students' and tutors' reflections on best practice (QUT FIT website);
• questioning techniques and getting to know students' names (QUT FIT website);
• common problems and possible solutions (Bertola & Murphy, 1994);
• how to inspire independent learning (Baume & Baume, 1997);
• teaching international students (Biggs, 1999, Chapter 7);
• how to assess learning with assessment and feedback samples (Nightingale et al, 1996);
• how to request an evaluation of teaching using the existing University processes.

The Faculty program has been very well received. At the conclusion of the most recent five hours of interactive sessions and training, participants' comments included that:

• "[I] left with a feeling of confidence and motivation"; "gave comfort/alleviated concerns"
• "It answered the many, many questions I had about tutoring law at QUT"; "[the] interactive, informal 'advice" giving session - the practical pointers were great"
• "it was practical and [allowed] participation"; "excellent"; "open [and] flexible"; "tutorial strategies [what I liked most]"
• "Overview session [what I liked most]"
• "Variance in presentation styles [what I liked most]"
• "Contact with other tutors. Workshop very good"; "Opportunities to ask questions and meet other staff"
• "Detailed information and handouts."

Other programs: Another example of a rigorous and systematic tutor training program is that described by Barrington (1999). At the University of Auckland, the Centre for Professional Development runs a "Tutor Training Certificate (TTC)" under which casual staff are required to complete 15 hours of training and have a formal assessment done of their teaching. The certificate consists of nine hours of basic training in the nature of three three-hour workshops that focus on generic small group teaching skills. Additional to this generic training, tutors are also required to choose two further three-hour modules that they can complete at any time in their employment period. The third requirement for the Certificate is that the tutor must carry out a Formative Feedback Process with their students.

When he evaluated the efficacy of this program, Barrington found that tutors were keen and enthusiastic to access opportunities to enhance their teaching skills. He also noted that the "tangible recognition" of the award of the certificate "appears to act as a focus and a stimulation to complete all parts of the training" (Barrington, 1999, p. 8). Another significant contribution this worthy program makes is that it "catches" the beginning academic at a stage where they more prepared to commit to teacher training (Barrington, 1999, p. 10). The hope is that this enthusiasm may help shift university culture towards one that places a higher value on teacher training, while it also augurs well for a climate of ongoing professional development in the next generation of academics.

There have been other descriptions of alternative tutor training methods (Sheard and Hagan, 1999; Davis, 1996). Another recent example is that implemented in relation to a first year psychology course at the University of Queensland where the first year tutorial program is utilised as a "tutor training program", an approach similar to the "teaching community approach" described by Sheard and Hagan (1999, pp. 3-4) for introductory computer programming tutors at Monash University. The Queensland University approach (McLean, 2001, p. 2) is that all new tutors must teach in the first year program before moving into later year teaching roles:

Much of the training takes place during weekly meetings with experienced "lead" tutors, the Course administrator (who was a tutor for a number of years himself) as well as the course co-ordinator. At these meetings, the group discusses assessment requirements and standards, common mistakes made by students and content issues as well as giving and receiving feedback. New tutors are paid to attend all lectures. back

A teaching and learning training sub-set: assessment issues.

The last decade has witnessed a dramatic change in the intent and methods of university assessment. The response to calls for a broad-based education that focuses as much on the "how to do" as the "what they know" has seen the traditional assessment methods, with which casual academics would be most familiar, superseded. As universities are now teaching to a much broader range of student capabilities and to the acquisition of generic and discipline specific skills, so it is that current assessment practice seeks to develop more authentic assessment tasks that test for a mastery of content and skilled behaviour, directly linked to reformulated learning outcomes. To enhance acquisition of this new learning, attention is also focussed on improving the quality of formative and summative feedback students routinely receive. Tertiary teachers have finally come to appreciate that it is desirable to "harness the full power of assessment and feedback in support of learning" (Nightingale et al, 1996, p.6).

The changing nature of higher education teaching, learning and assessment has been challenging enough for full time staff who have been participating in, or at least privy to, institutional engagement with a broader range of learning objectives. It must, however, be almost incomprehensible to casual academics who are now expected to teach to and assess for the attainment a range of content, skills and dispositions outside anything they themselves may have experienced in their undergraduate education. The context of and imperatives for such a shift in assessment philosophy are rarely made clear, though the increased expectations on academics are onerous. The casual teaching pool needs to be acquainted with the new discourse of student engagement - issues of integrated and authentic assessment; graduate capability development; the embedding of desirable attitudinal outcomes (such as demonstrating ethical behaviour) and the necessity to adopt teaching methods that will assist students to attain the knowledge, skills and attitudes identified as learning outcomes in the unit of study. Without this understanding of student-centeredness and the broader goals of current university practice, there is the potential for the casual staff member unwittingly to undermine teaching and learning objectives and send mixed (at best) or conflicting (at worst) messages about the identified aims and expected outcomes of students' study. That these mixed messages might come in the first year of student experience of course content could prove fatal to the achievement of ultimate course objectives. To this end it is also important that assessment strategies and their correlative expectations are made explicit to casual academics at any early point in time. It should also be made clear that, in this context, supervision of their work is an expected and understood part of their employment (and not something unexpected).

In the QUT Law Faculty, with the assistance of two University Teaching and Learning Development Large Grants and other funded initiatives, we have developed resources to assist all staff - on-going and casual alike - to deliver and assess capability development. These resources include video resources (streamed on-line); clear teaching guides and answer guides; explicit sets of assessment criteria and related feedback sheets for assessment tasks together with detailed marking (including feedback) instructions, and like matters. We seek to constantly review and monitor these resources, evaluating how they are used and how useful they are found to be by both staff and students. back

A teaching and learning support sub-set: Resources support.

The provision of hard resources to casual staff is principally an aspect of teaching and learning support but also raises issues of management and policy that can either facilitate an inclusive culture for casuals and work as an indicator for them of how valued their contribution is, or militate against these things absolutely. These are relatively simple matters which, if not attended to efficiently and with minimum fuss, will spoil most other good practice adopted. Casual tutors come to us with an appreciable amount of goodwill that is not worth dissipating on such banal issues - they must be provided with the tools they need to get on with the job and should not have to waste their valuable time getting resources together.

In our Faculty, resource support is done at both a School level and on an individual unit basis, the latter as one of the routine responsibilities of unit co-ordinators (ie, those academic staff members in charge of running units). The university undertakes to provide all casual staff with staff cards and computer access; the School will seek to ensure that obtaining these necessary tools of trade is an unproblematic exercise. One of the appendices to the Administrative Guide (referred to above) is a hard copy of the "Read Me First!" document that deals with obtaining access to information services at QUT, while at the Faculty ENTER program, casuals are provided with a simple sheet that sets out how to obtain an ID Card and how to access their QUT username and password.

At the more generic level of resource provision, the School ensures that casual staff, who are, in the main, practising professionals from the city, have their own room in the School equipped with computers and phones. Here they can access on-line unit materials (such as lecture PowerPoints and student notices) and print off resources from the on-line database of course materials. Relevantly, the Faculty Policy guarantees that casual staff will be provided with certain infrastructure support by way of pigeon holes for hard copy communication, e-mail accounts, access to staff photocopiers, common rooms and staff libraries. Specifically, an e-mail list is set up for the casual tutor pool which is used for a variety of purposes -such as to remind of early pay cut-off dates; to advertise further employment opportunities; to encourage use of formal teaching evaluations, etc. All casual staff are also requested to subscribe to their unit e-mail lists so that they are kept informed of notices sent to students via the on-line teaching sites. Casuals may upload notices to their own tutorial groups if they wish to do so (for example, regarding make-up tutorials following public holidays) or may request unit co-ordinators to do this for them.

What these matters seek to illustrate is that, in the technology driven environment that higher education has become, it is critical for casual staff to be guided and supported in their use of and reliance on all aspects of university IT systems and services. To use my institution as an example, though the issues are common, it is critical for all casual staff to have almost immediate email access (for the purposes of unit and course email lists at least) and for them to become quickly familiar with the tools they need to access via QUT Virtual (the vehicle for secure access to QUT information and services, eg to print class lists). Casuals now also need be able to access and to have some fundamental familiarity with the on-line teaching (OLT) technology via which active on-line unit sites contain important unit and course information and current notices. At a most basic level, the casual teacher needs to have access to the same materials as the students they teach and to be able to share with their students the language of that access.

At a micro unit level, unit co-ordinators arrange for their tutors to be provided with copies of texts, study guides, answer guides (the latter to promote uniformity of approach to material to reduce the "lottery" aspect of tutorials of which students are so fearful (McInnis et al, 1995, p. 57)), course materials and the like, prior to the start of the semester. Assessment guides and feedback tools referred to above are usually provided throughout the course of the semester.

These last are fairly standard matters for casual management. As the AUTC Project (2001) on Teaching Large Classes found in 2001 when it conducted a survey of large class teaching around Australia:

In terms of supporting tutors and students in large class contexts, 41 of the 64 respondents provided tutoring guidelines, handbooks or set materials to assist tutors with their teaching. This proportion increased in the largest category (1000+), where 5 of the 6 provided tutorial guides to help inform and manage large teams of tutors. back

Paradigm shift towards institutional assimilation and a sense of belonging.

Casual staff should be made to feel part of the program into which they teach in both a philosophical and academic sense discussed above, but also in an institutional sense. Many aspects of the casual environment that have been already mentioned go to the ultimate objective of instilling a sense of belonging in casual staff that is demonstrative of the value which they add and the contribution they make to course delivery. An ethos of inclusivity is one that comes from management down and, for casuals, will echo in measurable indicators such as commitment to resource provision, facilitation of networking and staff development opportunities, the naming of these teachers and their inclusion in strategic school/faculty/university developments.

At a different level of engagement, the parallels of the casual teaching experience to the first year student experience are worth noting: many casuals report feeling isolated, peripheral and unsupported (Coaldrake, 1999; Sheard and Hagan, 1999). Often faculty expectations are not made clear and many casuals who start with high hopes and enormous goodwill end up feeling quickly overwhelmed. Given the centrality of the casual teacher to program delivery, the engendering of an inclusive environment that attributes value to their contribution is critical to the overall efficacy of curriculum delivery.

Properly developed, an inclusive culture that embraces and values the casual teacher will work to the Faculty's advantage in many tangible ways. It is trite to say that it is important to keep good people (basic management philosophy). But it is more than this. A number of our casual tutors, including those from the practicing profession, go on to apply for (permanent) academic positions in the Faculty, and the anecdotal evidence is that this is what drives a number of them to take up casual positions in the first instance. [vii] Such expectations should be both managed and harnessed: staff development is again an issue here; while casuals, like full time staff, should always be encouraged to undertake formal and informal evaluations of their teaching with a view to reflection on their teaching practices in a continuous cycle of improvement. A mentoring role should also be possible as between casuals and "their" unit co-ordinators, both generally as regards achieving unit objectives and particularly in terms of assessment duties. As regards the latter, supervision of the marking undertaken by casual staff is an accepted quality assurance role within the duties of unit co-ordinators. Unit co-ordinators should both moderate the results received from both casual and on-going staff and should also be satisfied that (particularly newly appointed) casual staff have marked appropriately to the task's criteria, in accordance with marking guidelines and that they have provided an appropriate level of both formative and summative feedback to students.

But wider possibilities for including and involving committed casual staff also exist. In the Law School, unit co-ordinators are encouraged to share with their teaching team members (both full time and casual) the results of SEUs (formal Student Evaluations of Units) with a view to seeking advice on improvements. The casual academic's voice from the teaching coalface is an important one in terms of this aspect of strategic course development and the quality assurance cycle of improvement.

The casual staff member who wishes to pursue other aspects of academic work should also be supported and encouraged: for example, it should be possible to provide incentives to casual staff to present papers at conferences (in terms of making funding or research assistance available to them on a similar basis as for full time staff). This has already occurred in my Faculty. I have also found that the Faculty's two Teaching and Learning Development Large Grants [viii] have attracted significant interest from casual staff (which is not that surprising really, given that casuals are intimately involved in delivering new teaching innovations). It has therefore become Faculty practice to keep casual staff informed of progress under teaching and learning initiatives and to seek their views on these matters also (by way of administered questionnaires and invitations to participate in focus groups). Indeed, following a call for expressions of interest for persons to act as project administrators under the most recent grant, two casual staff members have been appointed on a job-share basis in this role, a most gratifying outcome and a big advance for inclusivity.

From the perspective of legal education, it is particularly noteworthy that the discipline does not have access to large numbers of postgraduate students to take on the casual teaching role (though we do have some postgraduate students and they do take up positions with us). Mostly, our casual pool is drawn from the practicing profession, importantly supplemented by a number of women practitioners who have primary childcare responsibilities. The professional make-up of our casual pool is another important ingredient in the mix that motivates the desire to ensure that the experience of casual staff is a quality one: ultimately, it is these people who speak back to the profession about the worth of our programs, who will be employing our students and who, if we treat them right, will act as our ambassadors in the professional marketplace.

The provision of networking opportunities for and amongst casual staff as a mechanism for addressing their concerns and to facilitate reflection on their teaching practices and on their students' learning is another aspect of engendering a sense of institutional belonging. At the University level, the Professional Association of Part Time Academics (PAPTA) is an association for all part-time academic staff at QUT including tutors, demonstrators, clinical facilitators, practicum supervisors and lecturers (including both casual and contract appointments). PAPTA operates very well to support an inclusive culture as a board-based organisation. Its objectives should also be supported by some locally-based, faculty initiatives. To this end, an important part of the Faculty run ENTER program is the networking opportunity there presented: participants are provided with a list of casual staff, their e-mail contact details and information about the unit(s) in which they will be teaching. The casual e-mail list referred to earlier is a flow-on from this and a valuable networking device, as is the casual tutor room made available for staff to come and go from in the School. The goal here is to develop a tangible sense of community among this cohort, as a group in the first instance - somewhat akin to the study groups we encourage our students to form.

As a more concrete initiative, the Faculty has also instituted teaching recognition awards for this category of staff, an initiative that has run for a number of years now. It is a good start, and welcomed by some, but is not the compete answer - I know for a fact that some of our most valued and long-term tutors object to the notion of awards, and even if nominated will not proceed with the nomination (the whole University culture here of "filling in the detail of your own nomination" also detracts considerably from the value of these awards from an outsider's perspective). An end of year function to thank all casuals for their contribution is probably just as well received, while another (complementary) form of recognition might be a letter from the Dean each year thanking each individual casual for his/her efforts and encouraging feedback on their experience from their unique stakeholder perspective. Postgraduate teachers might also be invited to join a particular research group in their area of specific interest or be invited to consider collaborative research projects. back

Conclusion

There are many correlations between the experience of the casual academic staff member and that of the first year student for whom they often take initial teaching and learning responsibility. With targeted initiatives both parties may be assisted to fulfil their potential. The issues of quality assurance, teaching and learning training and support, and a shift to a culture of institutional assimilation and inclusivity, are priorities for the pedagogical and administrative management of this valued pool of teachers. The sector has dealt with the phenomenon of casualisation poorly; we are only just moving away from a model of casual employment that sees staff

...selected on the minimum qualifications of availability and past experience; [where] they are given guidance in only administrative matters, but not pedagogy and are seen as a form of cost-saving, semi-skilled labour (Barrington, 1999, at 7).

For the sake of our students and to assure the quality of our institutions' teaching and learning practices, casualisation as a fact of the new tertiary agenda should be embraced and nurtured, rather than marginalised as a teaching backwater and lamented as an economic rationalisation. The distinction between on-going and casual academics is becoming increasingly irrelevant in real terms. We need to put commitment, effort and resources into training, supporting and integrating this teaching cohort into the institutional mainstream. back

Notes

[i] E-mail from Rachel Hannam, TEDI, University of Queensland and AUTC Project Co-ordinator Training, Support and Management of Sessional Teaching Staff, to Sally Kift, Law Faculty, QUT of 20 March 2002.
[ii] Reiterating that industrial issues in relation to achieving holistic economic and professional justice for casual staff are not the focus of this paper.
[iii] Regarding the latter, it is more likely that these teachers have responsibility for the conduct of an entire unit/subject. This is a significant undertaking and a valuable addition to any faculty's teaching profile, given that, at this level, these teachers are usually expert practitioners in the particular field. The management and pedagogical issues here are of a different quality.
[iv] Approximately 50 applicants applied for the pool, of whom about 10% were not appointed.
[v] The initiative of the Law School's Administration Officer (Academic Programs), Ms Cherie Gonchee, in putting together this valuable resource is acknowledged.
Ibid at [55].
[vi]Law Faculty program session facilitated by a member of the University's Teaching and Learning Support Services (TALSS), Karen Whelan, in relation to the "Three main concerns" of casual tutors.
[vii] Anecdotal evidence gathered in the interview process for appointing new casuals into the "pool" of approved candidates under the Law Faculty Policy and supported by the type of candidates who applied most recently to fill advertised vacancies in the Law School.
[viii] On embedding graduate capabilities and skills in core undergraduate curriculum and on establishing a framework for assuring the quality of the assessment of social, relational and cultural graduate capabilities.

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About the authors

Sally Kift,
Assistant Dean
Teaching and Learning
Faculty of Law
Queensland University of Technology
email: s.kift@qut.edu.au