Citation: Dr Robyn Horner. For sustained and influential promotion of high standards in the design and delivery of theological education
Summary
My work has contributed to the enhancement of the student experience through the development of staff and resources, particularly through attention to the quality of course, unit and assessment design and delivery. I have also contributed to clarification of the scope and status of theological education in the academy. Mine is a contribution that is frequently invisible to students, but which affects them in vital ways, such as whether or not they have been assessed in a manner that is fair and equitable, or how their engagement in theology is to be framed if they approach it from outside a Christian tradition. In terms of recognition, the invitations I receive to serve on committees and be involved in professional development, both internal and external to my home institution, suggest that others recognise my capacity to make a strong contribution to the development and implementation of educational policy and resources. This argument is underscored by the positions of teaching, learning and administrative leadership that I have held and the preparedness of others more senior to me to trust my judgment and ability.
Criteria and evidence
I shall address the criteria ‘approaches to the support of learning and teaching that influence, motivate and inspire students to learn’ (1); and ‘scholarly activities and service innovations that have influenced and enhanced learning and teaching’ (5).Iprovide evidence in support of the two criteria together because they are inextricably linked in my work. Some preamble is required to set the scene.
Context
Much of my thinking─ both as a researcher and as someone who has been involved in education at primary, secondary and tertiary levels for over 20 years — is motivated by the need to return periodically to first principles, and to proceed in a sequential, systematic, structured way. This has been the basis of my ongoing investigations of the ways in which students learn, and my contribution to the structuring of courses and units to foster more effective teaching, and learning that is sustained by appropriate frameworks for understanding. While a significant part of my career has been spent in teaching, I have been inevitably drawn into administrative activities because it has seemed vitally important to attend to structures and processes. Of course, education is about far more than structures and processes, because it is always about people and relationships, but if excellence is to be achieved, it is essential to think through first principles, about what is to be achieved and what resources need to be in place to promote particular outcomes.These principles and processes are essential as the means to structure the relationships between academics and students in order to promote deep learning.
My work at Australian Catholic University (ACU) has focused on professional development of teaching staff; development of online teaching and learning; leadership and coordination; and contributions to the advancement of the University’s teaching and learning through research, as well as my own teaching. My achievements in wider spheres have benefited ACU in particular and the higher education sector more broadly.
I mention also my previous work in two other institutions, not only as instances of my contribution to higher education but also because it has largely shaped the direction of my work at ACU.
When I commenced work as a theologian (at Monash University) in 1999, theological education in Australia was in a state of change. For many years, theology as such had been taught only in theological colleges, in a fairly focused suite of degrees. Through the 1990s universities had been exploring ways in which to offer theology to their students. By the time I was appointed to the Melbourne College of Divinity (MCD) in 2001, theological colleges were expanding their operations to include new qualifications and seeking to participate as Commonwealth-funded players in the unified national system of higher education. Online learning was becoming a popular option in tertiary education. These changes raised a number of issues for theological education. For me, two questions became dominant: how to ensure quality in theological education, and how to ensure its authentic place in the academy. These questions have preoccupied me over the last ten or so years, and have prompted me to act in varying capacities to address them. This forms the basis of my contribution to teaching and learning — which has affected students largely indirectly, but in very important ways. In what follows, I propose to give a number of examples of that contribution and at the same time to provide evidence of its impact.
Unit outlines
In moving to the MCD as Associate Dean, I became directly responsible for the administration of graduate qualifications. These had been newly multiplied. Of serious concern to me, however, was that in the rush towards offering them, a number of fundamental issues had not been addressed, particularly concerning the alignment of courses and units with the AQF. The Dean describes my response:
With the introduction of new coursework graduate degrees from 1999 (GradDip and MA), clarification of the distinctive learning outcomes of each award became a pressing need. Dr Horner addressed this need by presenting a paper [on postgraduate degrees] in May 2001. This paper resulted in the immediate establishment of a Graduate Studies Committee of the Board of Postgraduate Studies of which Dr Horner was a key member. This Committee undertook not only a review of the abovementioned awards, but of all Postgraduate Coursework awards, aligning them with Australian Qualification Framework Standards….
While students may not have been aware of the significance of this contribution, it had an important and lasting impact on the quality of their study and the credibility of the institution. My work contributed to the recognition of the MCD’s value as an educational institution and of MCD graduates as employees of choice.
I made a number of contributions to the professional development of staff at the MCD. For example, I developed a resource on the preparation of unit outlines, emphasising the writing of appropriate learning outcomes and the alignment of these with equally appropriate assessment tasks. A former colleague comments:
Dr Horner wrote several internal MCD papers which have guided the further development of postgraduate education at the MCD, including the adoption of a consistent pattern for unit descriptions in all MCD courses. This work was of particular use in preparing the MCD Performance Portfolio for the 2005 audit by [AUQA].
A focus on professional development in writing unit outlines has also been a feature of my contribution since coming to ACU. In 2007 I was invited to chair the School of Theology’s Assessment Review Committee, and at the request of my Head of School, I reviewed all unit outlines in the School in the second semester of that year. Having fed back to staff individually my specific suggestions about improving unit outlines, I tabulated the assessment information to include it on an Assessment Review Committee website that I then developed for the School. A colleague responded on the discussion board:
I have found this table really helpful in looking at the range of tasks that we use and the varying ideas about the word limits/weighting of particular tasks....
What struck me, however, was the vast range of expectations that lecturers across five campuses had for units that were ostensibly the same (that is, having the same unit code and title). As a committee, we had determined to trial selected units nationally for moderation and benchmarking. But what we found was that staff members were surprisingly cautious about working together in this way. It was the substance of this experience that I presented to Heads of School late in 2007 at a University Cross-campus Moderation of Assessment workshop. With the subsequent introduction of formal University policies on teaching across campuses and moderation, I have since initiated further professional development in the School to prepare staff for the reality of having to share the development of unit outlines, including the assessment tasks. Now that the Schools of Theology and Philosophy form a single Faculty, this influence extends to the new Faculty as a whole, through my participation in the Faculty Teaching and Learning Committee. To this point we have reached consensus on a phased introduction, the development of a bank of criteria sheets for consideration by different discipline areas, and the establishment of national networks of staff teaching the same units. We have a long way to go, but the significance of this work for the improvement of the student experience is clear: until we can agree on such issues as the purpose of a unit, the workload that undertaking it involves, and the ways in which student learning might most validly and reliably be assessed to ensure parity of standards, students are not completing degrees of any equivalent value, and they are not being treated fairly. Confidence of this kind is essential not only for students but also in order that employers can be sure that graduates are appropriately skilled. The Dean of Arts and Sciences comments:
Dr Horner has … led and mentored her colleagues to more critical approaches to assessment design and practice as an integral part of student learning and has fostered communication and established new procedures to achieve shared practice for staff located across five campuses.
Online learning and teaching
A further contribution I have made is to the development of fully online units in theology. While working at Monash University I had completed a project for the award of a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education on the use of online units in my discipline, and completed initial training in web-enhancement. At ACU in 2007 I was asked by the Dean to be responsible for the School of Theology in the development of third-party enhanced, fully online units (the “Fraynework” project). This project involved taking materials developed in Word by specialists in various theological content areas, and having them transformed into fully-online units of exceptional quality, using sophisticated colour palettes, images, and multimedia items. I worked closely with the technical coordinator of the project from ACU (Alison Blair) as well as with Fraynework; my tasks included editing all the units prior to submission for enhancement, translating the specialised content of the units for Fraynework so that appropriate enhancement could take place; evaluating the enhancements with Fraynework, especially the use of images; and being involved in quality control prior to release. As part of this process, and in partnership with Alison, I developed resources for staff to improve the whole process of preparing a unit for online delivery. This work was submitted to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Teaching and Learning Committee. The Associate Dean (Learning and Teaching) remarks:
Robyn Horner … played a major role in ensuring quality practices in the development of online units within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She co-developed a starter kit for Heads of Schools and developers of online units. This starter kit includes a wide variety of items, from making a decision as to whether a unit should be moved online through to checklists for peer review of units. These kits are now being used throughout the University.
My experience in online teaching also led to a request from my Head of School to review all fully online units offered in the School of Theology. He recalls:
When I was Head of the national School of Theology (2006-2007), there was an exponential increase in our online offerings as a result of the development of new postgraduate degrees. I asked Dr Robyn Horner to investigate the standard of our offerings to ensure their compatibility with University policy, in terms of best practice. Dr Horner submitted a lengthy and detailed report with recommendations and an action plan. [Her] recommendations enabled the School to plan a systematic revision of the units to improve their quality for students. The School introduced suitable practical changes such as the requirements of using a new unit outline template, and linking learning outcomes with assessment tasks which ensured the School’s online offerings are best practice within the University and internationally.
Together with Alison Blair, I completed initial research with students enrolled in these units, which indicated strong links between the appropriateness of images and the successful communication of content. In response to this research, we developed a grant application for the establishment of an ACU image database designed to increase students’ experience of images adding relevance and meaning to text in an online environment, particularly in units in religious education and theology, which require highly specialised images. While that application was unsuccessful, it in turn prompted the formation of a University working party to ensure that such a database would be funded, and this came to fruition in 2008. The Dean notes:
Dr Horner has demonstrated outstanding leadership to achieve significant change and innovations in the learning and teaching of theology. In particular, she has instigated new approaches to teaching online that have greatly enhanced student learning outcomes. Her initiatives have assisted academic staff to recognise that, compared to traditional pedagogies for teaching theology, online teaching demands new knowledge and skills for the development, design and delivery of effective online teaching. In addition Dr Horner has implemented new student-centred approaches to visual identity and imaging and important improvements in quality assurance policy and practice to enhance online learning in theology.
Leadership and coordination
Amongst the leadership roles I currently hold within the School of Theology are Assistant Head of School, and Course Coordinator of the Graduate Certificate in Arts and Master of Arts (Theology); it is the latter which has the most visible impact upon learning and teaching. In the role of course coordinator, one is often called upon to be the primary interface between the student and the institution, to advocate for the needs of the individual but also to protect the standards and protocols of the University. My focus as coordinator over the last twelve months has been on the development of a systematic approach to the offering of units, with an emphasis on providing creative alternatives to promote more opportunities for students. This includes, for example, determining a core of online units to be offered annually, offering more units intensively in school holidays that are nationally aligned, utilising the expertise and talents of staff across the five campuses of the national School to provide intensives in other than their home states, and so on. Another focus has been simply on increasing the level of interaction with students who, by and large, complete many of the administrative tasks to do with their enrolment online. This includes checking for enrolment irregularities and helping students to find the best solutions for these, and contacting students more regularly. One student responds in an email:
Hi Robyn, Thanks for the letter about re-enrolment. Can I again express my gratitude for the changes in administrative arrangements at ACU this year? It's great to feel connected, even if it's just through a simple form-letter!
Another writes:
Thank you so much for your professional assistance over the past year. It has been a delight to work with you.
Contributions to teaching and learning through research
My research concerns the intersections of poststructuralism, phenomenology, and fundamental theology; in fine, I consider the ways in which contemporary philosophy affects the conditions of possibility for doing theology. I am one of the leading scholars on the work of Jean-Luc Marion, which is acknowledged in the review of a book in which I have a chapter:
[Horner’s] knowledge of Marion’s work is indisputable as her two volumes on him have established her as a principal scholar in this field.[1]
Much of the material in this area is extremely difficult to read. However, reviewers of my second monograph note my capacity to make this material accessible, and in particular, accessible to students:
Horner has the invaluable capacity to cut through the intricacies of a difficult matter and expose the joints of its structure.[2]
We can be grateful to Robyn Horner for providing a clear introduction to Marion as a theologian that explains his philosophical underpinnings and reveals the theological significance of his thought.[3]
Horner … has here provided what was sorely needed: an erudite introduction to the key themes in Marion’s work, presented in a form accessible to advanced undergraduates, without sacrificing complexity. … Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through faculty/researchers.[4]
I have been approached by a number of doctoral candidates, nationally and internationally, including students I have supervised, who have expressed their thanks for the ways in which my books have helped them to understand the thought of Marion. This is borne out by the adoption of my texts as reading in different courses at various times, for example, at Syracuse University and Harvard Divinity School.
Wider contributions
It is important to note that many of the contributions I have made to learning and teaching have been made possible or enhanced largely because of my active membership ofa number of teaching, research, course review, and curriculum development committees, including committees external to my home institution. Through this activity I have gained a wider experience of the sector, and thus have been able to contribute a breadth and depth of knowledge both of the discipline and of policies and processes required for excellent teaching and learning. Experiences such as becoming a member of the new ACU Faculty of Theology and Philosophy Board; being invited to be on the Doctoral Development Committee and the Academic Board of Harvest Bible College; reviewing the Bachelor of Arts (Social Sciences) for ACU in 2002-03 and the Bachelor of Theology in 2008; being a member of an AUQA panel for ACU on course design and review; and completing consultancy work with the Victorian Registration & Qualifications Authority, have assisted in my better articulation of various quality assurance processes needing to be in place for the benefit of students. They have also provided me with opportunities to reflect on the role of theology in the academy, and to argue for the place of theology in the intellectual tradition, while promoting a strong commitment to intellectual freedom. Being involved in ongoing conversations about the identity and mission of this institution, and also in discussions both internally and with employers to do with the theological education requirements of the teachers ACU trains for service in Catholic schools, have forced me to attend to difficult questions raised in the teaching and learning of theology in a public context. Some of these issues were addressed in my presentation at the ACU Forum on Values Education in 2003, subsequently published in the Australian E-Journal of Theology in 2004 as “Values-Based Professional Education: Issues for Teaching and Learning Theology in a Publicly Funded, Catholic University.” They were also addressed through my participation in the ALTC-funded Uncovering Theology Project research day in 2008. But perhaps more pertinently, they are regularly addressed in classes I teach, for it seems to me to be crucial that students appreciate that their engagement with theology at university is about an intellectual opening, and not in any sense about indoctrination. In sum, my contribution to learning and teaching is characterised by a commitment to clarity — clarity of purpose, expectations, processes, communication, and content — and in this commitment, aiming to achieve the highest possible quality, and the best outcomes for students and my discipline.