Preface

The 11th Annual Teaching and Learning Forum for Western Australian Universities was held on the Mount Lawley Campus of ECU (Edith Cowan University) on the 5th and 6th of February 2002. The theme, "Focusing on the Student", was chosen to highlight students’ central position in quality learning and teaching outcomes. Participants were invited to present their ideas as roundtables, dilemmas in teaching and learning, posters or demonstrations of teaching. Conference abstracts can be viewed on-line at http://cea.curtin.edu.au/tlf/tlf2002/contents.html.

This is the third year in which a reviewed publication has been produced and we have followed a similar process to that in previous years. Participants were invited to submit their papers for peer review after the forum to allow authors to re-work their papers in the light of discussions at the forum. Full papers were then submitted to a double blind peer-reviewing process where the papers were assessed according to a number of criteria including relevance to conference theme, importance, applicability, innovation, and breadth of perspective. The standard was very high: of the 49 papers submitted for consideration, 24 were recommended for publication in this book. We are very grateful to the reviewers for their constructive feedback and we trust that the authors of these papers also appreciated the feedback provided. The reviewers are listed at the end of this preface.

Given the conference theme, we have chosen to begin this publication with papers that include a strong and direct student voice. These papers tend to be case studies where the authors reflect on what students have to say in a specific learning context. This publication ends with several papers that are more overarching in their scope in that they consider more theoretical and/or institutional perspectives on students’ learning. Not all the papers report on research; some papers are included because they provide useful literature reviews.

We would like to thank, on behalf of all conference participants, the numerous people behind the scenes who gave their time and expertise in the various stages of planning and hosting this conference. As editors, we are particularly grateful for the financial and administrative support from Learning and Development Services @ ECU that has made this publication possible.

Alison Bunker and Geoff Swan
Edith Cowan University