RMITUniversity © 2002

RESEARCH AND GRADUATE STUDIES COMMITTEE

REPORT ON ATN ONLINE STUDY MODULES FOR RESEARCH STUDENTS

ATN LEAP (Learning Employment Aptitudes Program)

For details of this program go to:

The ATN LEAP program has been operating since 2002[1]. It consists of a suite of 6 modules:

  • Project Management
  • Leadership & Communication
  • Research Commercialisation
  • Global Sustainability[2]
  • Public Policy[3]
  • Entrepreneurship

Modules are free of charge to all research students in the ATN group. They are offered on a rotating basis during the course of an academic year. To date there have been 22 offerings. Table 1 shows the extent of participation since the program has been available on line —a total of 1121 students.

TABLE 1

Module / Project
Management / Leadership
& Communication / Research
Commercialisation / Global
Sustainability / Public
Policy / Entrepreneur
ship
University / TOTAL / % of
total
RMIT / 92 / 57 / 60 / 30 / 35 / 54 / 328 / 29.25
QUT / 70 / 45 / 24 / 25 / 13 / 25 / 202 / 18
CURTIN / 37 / 34 / 22 / 10 / 24 / 26 / 153 / 13.6
UTS / 51 / 42 / 23 / 21 / 24 / 34 / 195 / 17.4
UNISA / 7 / 51 / 41 / 16 / 24 / 31 / 170 / 15
TOTAL / 320 / 229 / 170 / 102 / 120 / 170 / 1121

Table 1 also shows that the:

  • module with highest number of participants is Project Management with a total participation of 320.
  • University with highest overall number of participants is RMIT with a total participation of 328 (29.25% of total participation).

As the number of times a module has been offered is not the same across the modules, a useful measure of participation is the mean number of participants per module. Project Management has the highest mean with 64 participants, followed by Leadership & Communication (57) and Global Sustainability (51). The mean of overall participation is 51.

TABLE 2

MODULE / Project
Management / Leadership
& Communication / Research
Commercialisation / Global
Sustainability / Public
Policy / Entrepreneur
ship / TOTAL
TOTAL PARTICIPATION/ MODULE / 320 / 229 / 170 / 102 / 120 / 170 / 1121
NO. OF OFFERINGS / 5 / 4 / 4 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 22
MEAN NO. OF PARTICIPANTS/ MODULE / 64 / 57 / 42.5 / 51 / 40 / 42.5
OVERALL MEAN NO. OF PARTICIPANTS / 51

Table 3 shows the mean number of participants per participating university in relation to the total number of offerings. RMIT with 15 has the highest mean number of participants per offering.

TABLE 3

UNIVERSITY / RMIT / QUT / CURTIN / UTS / UNISA / TOTAL
TOTAL NO. OF PARTICIPANTS ALL MODULES / 328 / 202 / 153 / 195 / 170 / 1121
NO. OF OFFERINGS / 22 / 22 / 22 / 22 / 22 / 22
MEAN NO. OF PARTICIPANTS / UNIVERSITY / 15 / 9 / 7 / 9 / 8 / 51

Future developments – ATN MORE (Modules for Online Research Education)

For further details go to: h - https:/(see/olt.qut.edu.au/udf/atnresearch/ -

The ATN universities are now developing online research skills modules for their research students using the collaborative model established in LEAP. MORE will form an additional component to online resources for research students.

Each university in the group is developing one module to be located on a parallel website to that on which LEAP is located. MORE will use the existing infrastructure already operative in the support of LEAP.

MORE will:

  • Increase ATN research students’ access to resources that will develop and enhance their research skills
  • Encourage increased collegiality between research students across the ATN group

Modules being developed:

  • Ethics in Research
  • Practice based Research in Arts, Media & Design
  • Critical & Creative Thinking[4]
  • Critical Writing
  • Risk Assessment & Management

MORE is projected to go live in April this year.

Document: Normal.dot/RSISave Date: 28-02-2005 Page: 1/4

[1] Research students in the ATN group can enrol for a LEAP module in moderated mode or they can take it in independent study. The data in this report refer only to the former.

[2] Module developed at RMIT

[3] Also developed at RMIT

[4] This module is being developed at RMIT by Dr. Robyn Barnacle