Tuesday, July 07, 2009

herdsa2009 - day 2 - concurrent sessions 2

My presentation was after lunch in between a session by Alexis Esporto from Swinburne University & Nick Zepke & Linda Leach from MasseyUniversity.

Alexis has been working on forecasting future skills needs. He detailed how the Monash forecast survey tool in association with the American Occupational Info. Network (O*Net), to provide for forecast of skills needs for occupational areas. The O*Net provides a comprehensive skill lists which can be used for comparisons between occupations.

Linda & Nick presented a subset of their work on student motivation and engagement in learning. In this presentation, the focus was on what engaged students in learning. Deci & Ryan's (2000) self determination theory was used to underpin the research. Three facets of SDT were student autonomy, relatedness to others and feelings of competency & success. The study showed there was little commonality between various institutions but that feelings of competency & success were important intrinsic motivators for students. Recommendations therefore are to find out what motivates your students in your context, develop student belief in their own competence, focus strongly on student sucess and recognise agengy & relatedness as motivators.

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