Academic Development Project Research Articles

DOCTORAL PROGRAM IN MEDICAL SCIENCES ASSOCIATED WITH A SPECIALTY. A HISTORY CLOSELY LINKED TO THE CHILEAN ACADEMY OF MEDICINE

The Doctoral Program in Medical Sciences (DPMC) associated with a specialty of the Faculty of Medicine of Universidad de Chile is an academic development project that aims to train specialists with a PhD degree, who are inserted in clinical centers and have the ability to respond questions of medical interest with a translational basis, putting the generation of knowledge at the service of patients. Universidad de Chile hopes that the graduates of this program will be the basis of the academic turnover of future generations. The DPMC was created in 2000, to date (2023), 85 students have entered, 46 have graduated, 8 have withdrawn and there are 31 current students. Sixty-five per cent of the graduates work as academics at the Faculty of Medicine of Universidad de Chile, with outstanding activity as specialists, teachers and researchers, incorporated into the different Advanced Clinical Research Centers (CICAs) that the faculty has created in different hospitals. Fifty-four per cent of them have been or are principal investigators of competitive projects: FONDECYT, FONDEF, FONIS, with one or more projects awarded, depending on the time since their degree, with an average of 55 publications/year for the defined group. After 23 years of uninterrupted operation, the DPMC is a consolidated, unique, accredited, successful program, financed by Universidad de Chile, sustainable, a pillar of the academic development of the Faculty of Medicine, which as it grows will allow the CICA network to be strengthened and will contribute to the creation of knowledge at the service of the patients and the country.

‘I’m not alone’: outcomes of a faculty-wide initiative for co-creating inclusive science curricula through student–staff partnership

ABSTRACT We explored the experiences of and outcomes for students and staff working in partnership on an academic development project aiming to enhance the inclusivity of science curricula across a faculty. Quantitative survey data revealed changes in student and staff perceptions, including increases in sense of belonging for both, perceptions of fairness in decision-making for students, and increased adoption of inclusive teaching practices for staff. Open responses articulated the benefits and challenges of the project. Implications of this research will be relevant to academic developers working in similar spaces, such as decolonising the curriculum or engaging students as partners in development work.

“Students CAN be the center of their own learning”: lessons learnt from a transnational collaborative academic development project

ABSTRACT This study attempts to explore changes in teaching conceptions after a transnational project to introduce new pedagogical methods in Indonesia. The project involved a consortium of European universities as mentors and Indonesian universities as mentees, piloting methods based on a student-centred learning approach. We analysed vignettes from the narratives written by project partners to explore the conceptual change after a significant length of development activities. Such change is influenced by sustaining, neutral, and hindering factors in learning outcome attainment, institutional support, and involvement of other stakeholders in the learning process. These findings may better support transnational collaborative academic development activities.

From contradictions to complementarities: a social realist analysis of the evolution of academic development within a department

Academic development is a recent project in the university, intended to enable the university to respond to the needs of a more diverse student body. In South Africa, such work arose during late apartheid, and has now moved to a more central institutional position advocating responsiveness in the light of the educational disparities that are the legacy of apartheid. The present study uses a social realist perspective to analyse the 25-year evolution of an academic development project within an engineering department at a South African university. The findings show that while academic development initially posed a contradictory logic to the department, the response was to reform the nature of this project into one that suited the other commitments of the department: a logic of complementarity. The department's relationships with industry were shown to have played a key role in fostering this form of change.

Deepening discipline: digital reflection and choreography

In this paper, we discuss findings from a recent academic development project in which we engaged with students in an exploration of how they think and what they think about in the process of creating solo-authored choreography. The project emerged from a revisiting of the reflective frameworks identified in the validation documents for a series of choreography modules, in order to explore how the incorporation of digital technologies might facilitate students in their choreographic practice. The discussion explores creative, critical reflection in and on action, and outlines what we mean by digital reflection (using digital technologies to enhance creative reflection). Finally, we evaluate perceived benefits and impact of digital reflection folded into choreographic practice, where enhanced personal awareness can help choreographers identify their deepening discipline as art makers.

16 SPERM DISTRIBUTION AFTER LAPAROSCOPIC INTRAUTERINE INSEMINATION OF FROZEN GOAT SEMEN

Generally, laparoscopic intrauterine insemination (LII) provides a higher success rate than that of cervical insemination in goat. However, the sperm distribution following LII in goat remains unknown, especially when frozen semen is used. This study aimed to evaluate the distribution of frozen-thawed goat sperm after LII. In experiment 1, the frozen-thawed sperm were stained with CellTrackerTM Green CMFDA (CT-Green) or CellTrackerTM Red CMPTX (CT-Red), and then evaluated in vitro for viability and motility at 0, 3, 6, and 9 h after staining. In experiment 2, the CT-Green and CT-Red labelled sperm (30 × 106 sperm in 0.125 mL in each side) were laparoscopicaly inseminated into the left and right uterine horns, respectively (n = 4). After ovariohysterectomy at 6 h post-insemination, the distributions of green and red coloured sperm were assessed by tissue section and sperm flushing. The comparison of semen parameters among groups (control, CT-Green, and CT-Red) were statistically analysed by a general linear model. The results revealed that the fluorochromes used in this study did not impair the sperm motility and viability (P > 0.05). The frozen-thawed goat sperm transuterine-migrated following LII, as both CT-Green (left insemination) and CT-Red labelled sperm (right insemination) were found in both sides of the reproductive tracts. This study concludes that LII in goat would be simpler and consume less time if the semen was unilaterally deposited. Supported by a grant from Chulalongkorn University Centenary Academic Development Project and RGJ-PhD-industrial link program, Thailand Research Fund (PHD/0156/2550).

Histories and institutional change: understanding academic development practices in the global ‘north’ and ‘south’

Academic development has played a significant role in creating university ‘learning and teaching’ as an object of policy scrutiny and intervention. While academic development is a new field, its practices have been productive of new learning and teaching regimes in both the global ‘north’ and ‘south’. This paper explores the emergence of academic development as a practice and the agentic understandings of its actors in creating the academic development project in the face of global unevenness. The paper offers a critical account of the emergence of academic development practice in both the global ‘north’, drawing on the intertwined histories of the UK and Australia, and in the global ‘south’, drawing on the example of South Africa. In looking at the ongoing debates about academic development the paper argues that in constituting teaching and learning as its object, other more radical, feminist and critical pedagogies, which are capable of dealing with the power and curricula, were marginalised.

Troubling our Desires for Research and Writing within the Academic Development Project

In this paper, I speculate on the work ‘usefulness’ does to regulate the research and writing of the scholarship of academic development project. My argument is not that academic developers ought to repudiate a fidelity to usefulness; rather, I want to expand our ideas for the possibilities of research and writing beyond purposes of institutional performativity that so often dominate the agenda. In essence, it is an argument for redeploying how we see usefulness. My search has led me to traditions of arts‐based inquiry. It is that form of inquiry that invites the academic development community to consider the narratives that constitute, organize, and render its scholarship meaningful. It is also that form of inquiry that supports academic developers’ inhabiting, perhaps even desiring, a creative space in which to examine and re‐imagine what can be legitimately written about the project of academic development. Dans cet article, je spécule sur comment la notion « d’utilité » régule la recherche et la rédaction relatives au projet de développement pédagogique érudit. Mon argument n’est pas que les conseillers pédagogiques doivent renoncer à être fidèles à cette notion d’utilité ; plutôt, je désire élargir nos idées de façon à rendre possible la recherche et la rédaction au‐delà des buts reliés à la performativité institutionnelle qui dominent si souvent l’agenda. Essentiellement, il s’agit là d’un argument en faveur du redéploiement de notre façon d’envisager l’utilité. Mes recherches m’ont menée vers les traditions artistiques d’investigation. Cette forme d’investigation invite la communauté du développement pédagogique à considérer les récits qui constituent, organisent et rendent significatifs son érudition. C’est aussi cette forme d’investigation qui amène les conseillers pédagogiques à habiter, voire même désirer, un espace créatif à l’intérieur duquel ils peuvent examiner ou ré‐imaginer ce qui peut légitimement être écrit au sujet du projet de développement pédagogique.

Working and Worrying Partnership: A Case Study of a Long-Term Academic Development Project in China

ABSTRACT This paper consists of a case study of a long-term academic development project in China. The background and framework of the project as a whole are first described, and then the particular context and goals of work in three focus area.—gender studies, moral education, and minority and bilingual education—are elaborated in more detail. Some of the more notable results and their impact are identified for each focus. Attention is then given to an evaluative account of special challenges faced, how they were approached, and worries about structural obstacles to truly collaborative parmering.

Discipline‐based academic development through a tripartite partnership

This paper describes a discipline‐based academic development project based upon a tripartite relationship between departmental staff, work‐based practitioners and the central academic development unit which took place over one academic year within the Department of Physiotherapy, Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh. The purpose of the project was to discuss and debate the concept of the ‘reflective practitioner’, to develop strategies for enabling undergraduate students to be reflective, and to devise a framework for assessment of reflective practice in clinical work‐based learning. The outcomes of the project, most important of which was a change in the learning experience for students, demonstrate that academic development can be valuable and productive when undertaken as a partnership and placed in a disciplinary context. The authors identify key elements important to the success of the academic development process which should be applicable in similar situations and which could serve as guidelines for the planning and delivery of staff development through similar kinds of partnerships.