HERDSA Guides provide useful ideas and information on many aspects of teaching and learning. Written by experts in specific fields, they are short, inexpensive and easy to read. The HERDSA Guides Editor and Editorial Committee review proposals for HERDSA Guides and other occasional publications and supports and advises authors in the writing process. The Guidelines for Authors page provides information for authors of guides and other relevant information pertaining to the publication process. HERDSA seeks authors to propose new Guides to add to the series. If you are interested in writing a HERDSA Guide, please consult the Guidelines for Submitting a Proposal.
Current guides
A list of the most current HERDA guides for sale are provided below.
Designing and using e-assessments
Professor Geoffrey Crisp
This HERDSA Guide highlights some of the key issues surrounding the use of e-assessment and provides examples and practical advice on how teachers might engage students in more interactive online tasks. It presents a realistic view of what is now possible through the use of computers and the Internet in higher education assessment. It specifically discusses the important relationship between learning, teaching and assessment, and presents a number of frameworks for aligning e-learning activities and e-assessment tasks.
The Guide covers e-assessment possibilities ranging from simple computer marked multiple-choice questions, through to elaborate role-plays, interactive simulations and online scenarios. There is no suggestion in the Guide that e-assessment will replace all traditional assessment tasks; it highlights the necessity for teachers to be aware of the new opportunities for enhancing the quality of assessment tasks through the use of computers and the Internet. The Guide also emphasizes that if students are using the Internet or computers as part of the learning environment, they should also use these tools to complete their assessment tasks. Numerous examples of how teachers can prepare engaging questions that will test higher order capabilities in students are provided in the Guide.
Professor Geoff Crisp is the Director of the Centre for Learning and Professional Development and Director of Online Education at the University of Adelaide. He completed his PhD in chemistry at the Australian National University in 1981. Geoff has been actively involved in online learning and e-assessment as an academic and has continued that involvement in his current position. The winner of a number of teaching awards, Geoff received an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Associate Fellowship in 2006 and National Teaching Fellowship in 2009 both of which focused on e-assessment. He was elected President of HERDSA in 2009.
Academic Writing Retreats: A Facilitators Guide
Barbara Grant
Academic writing retreats are an increasingly popular mode of professional development. Such retreats have the virtue of providing collective opportunities for learning more about how to write productively, stylishly and with enjoyment. At the same time they provide protected time during which participants must actually engage in writing in a sustained way. This mix of activities has shown to be a successful way to reorient academics to their writing work. Academic Writing Retreats: A Facilitators Guide pulls together the ideas and practice developed by the author during her ten years experience of running academic writing retreats. The Guide is structured to take the reader through the process of facilitating a retreat from the planning to the follow-up stages. The reader will find many ready-to-use writing activities and group processes that offer a range of benefits to academic writers at every level.
The Research Matrix: An Approach to Supervision of Higher Degree Research
Robyn Smyth & T. W. Maxwell
This HERDSA Guide takes a new approach to higher degree research supervision by conceptualizing the research task via what we call the Research Matrix. The matrix links methodology, design and practical realities in one view using the research questions as the key ideas. It uses a two dimensional framework, like a spreadsheet. In the early stages the research questions (and sub questions) form the first column(s) and then design and methodological features are added as they develop. In the latter stages, its multi-dimensional nature helps to keep control of the project in terms of time and focus. The matrix allows flexibility but at the same time is designed to keep the project focused. Supervisors can use the matrix as an heuristic device and together with the student create the matrix as a growing document which charts progress and provides reference points for decision-making.
Conducting tutorials, 2nd edition (2009)
Jacqueline Lublin & Kathryn Sutherland
Conducting Tutorials addresses the common experiences of tutors and students in a variety of group learning situations. This second edition of HERDSAs best-selling guide has been redeveloped around the framework of the characteristics of scholarly work, identified by Charles Glassick and colleagues: Clear goals, Adequate Preparation, Appropriate Methods, Effective Presentation, Significant Results, and Reflective Critique. It offers research-informed perspectives and practical advice on, for example, how to approach the first tutorial or how to deal with silence, combined with discussion of the underlying attitudes and expectations of tutors and students which affect their behaviour in groups. The relationship between the way in which a tutorial is structured and the appropriate or inappropriate learning processes which are thereby encouraged is discussed, and possibilities and strategies are given.
Organising Academic Conferences
A. C. Lynn Zelmer
The key to successful conference organisation, with a minimum of stress is preplanning. This booklet has been written to assist in the task of organising a conference, whatever the size of the subject, beginning with committee responsibilities and covers aspects such as promotion, program planning, conference logistics, support services and budget.
Peer observation partnerships in higher education (2005)
Maureen Bell
Peer observation of teaching is a truly effective process for ongoing change and development in higher education teaching. This guide aims to support higher education teachers through a program of skills, knowledge and ideas development to meet their own developmental aims within their immediate teaching environment. The guide explains how peer observation partnerships work, explores theoretical frameworks and related concepts and provides a guide to the whole process of peer observation of teaching including observation techniques, post observation discussion, feedback and critical reflection.
Advising PhD Candidates
Peggy Nightingale
Traditional metaphors of master and apprentice include an unequal power relationship where the PhD candidate is supervised rather than advised. In this guide, the author suggests that PhD students are more like our colleagues. The guide has been written with the goal of encouraging those responsible for PhD candidates to consider carefully how to guide and advise people through their candidacy. This guide draws upon and acknowledges the very successful HERDSA Green Guide Supervising Postgraduates by Ingrid Moses. While this new guide focuses on the PhD candidate, it is also useful for supervisors of all post graduate students.
Up the publication road (3rd ed) (2006)
Royce Sadler
This third edition of this popular guide includes Publishing in scholarly journals: How the system works, and How to help the system work for aspiring authors. Other areas addressed in this guide include deciding on a suitable journal, copyright, refereeing procedures, preparing a manuscript, submitting a paper, proof-reading, and how to cope with rejections. (40 pages)
Managing student teams (2006)
Donella Caspersz, Judy Skene and Madeline Wu
Stemming from a research project surveying both staff and students on operational aspects of student teamwork, this guide discusses the challenges facing staff and students in using student teams, before describing strategies that can be used to manage these. The guide discusses the knowledge and skills required by students for managing a successful student team project, provides guidance on the sequence in which strategies may be used, and presents some over-arching principles and guidelines for staff and students in managing student team work. (57 pages)
Introducing students to the culture of enquiry in an Arts degree (2004)
Kate Chanock
This guide is for teachers of first-year subjects in university Arts Degrees. Many of these degrees are designed to introduce students to the idea that knowledge is constructed, and to induct them into the culture of academic enquiry, that is the purposes, methods and discourses that stem from this idea. However, students are not often aware of this induction and need their lecturers to make it more explicit. (63 pages)
Improving teaching and learning in laboratories (1998)
Elizabeth Hazel and Caroline Baillie
This guide is written for both experienced and inexperienced staff who are involved with laboratory classes for science or engineering subjects. The guide can be read in its entirety or specific sections can be reviewed to try to address specific issues. The authors articulate the goals and potential of laboratories and go on to explore issues in the design and teaching of laboratories, including controlled exercises, experimental investigations and projects, the assessment and evaluation of laboratory programs, detecting and discouraging fraudulent practices and introducing change in laboratory programs. (77 pages)
Reciprocal peer coaching: A strategy for training and development in professional disciplines
Richard K Ladyshewsky
This guide provides a clear introduction to reciprocal peer coaching and describes how it relates to other kinds of peer assisted learning. (34 pages)
Student centred teaching: The development and use of conceptual frameworks (1996)
Kym Fraser
The reader is introduced to the technique of concept mapping, a process for visually representing and interrelating the content of a subject in a conceptual framework. This framework can be used as the basis of subsequent decision making and teaching practice. The Guide compares concept maps, flow charts and mind maps, identifies specific steps to consider when constructing a concept map, suggests ways to teach students how to construct a map and lists numerous ways in which concept maps may be used in teaching. (56 pages)
Herdsa has archived some older guides which are still available for purchase. Archived guides can be ordered from the Archived Guides page.
