Learning Lunchbox

The Educator Lunchbox is a series of 1-hour interactive events which showcase strategies for engaging students in the physical and virtual classroom.

Upcoming sessions will be listed here as scheduled.  If you wish to present at a future session, please email ten@newcastle.edu.au.  Recordings from our previous events are available below.

Feedback

If you have attended an Educator (Learning) Lunchbox, please take a couple of minutes to provide feedback.  The feedback provided is used to assist with planning future events.

Past Lunchbox Events

Monday 29th September 2025 - Online Student Engagement

Online Student Engagement: Strategies that worked
As more courses move to a blended and online delivery mode the question of how to engage online students starts to be asked. Join this session as educators, learning designers and teaching staff come together to share their experiences of what worked and how it was approached. T
here will be presentations from the below followed by time for discussion:

• Dr Ash McIntyre
  School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences
• Dr Warren Reilly
  School of Engineering
• Paul Sijpkes
  Learning Design and Teaching Innovation

View session recording

Monday 21st October 2024 - Oral Assessments

With the rise of GenAI, ensuring assessment security has become more crucial than ever. Oral assessments are emerging as a powerful tool to address this challenge, offering numerous benefits such as authenticity, stronger relationships with students, and enhanced feedback uptake. We are thrilled to invite you to watch a special Educator Lunchbox with three of our colleagues who will share their experiences with oral assessments:

• Rachel Birch
  School of Education
• Andrew Kepert and Natalie Thamwattana
  School of Information and Physical Sciences (Mathematics)
• Nicholas Foulcher
  School of Architecture and Build Environment

View Session Recording

24th September 2024 - Improving clinical education through research

This session will be presented by the School of Health Sciences and held via Zoom.

Presentations include:

• Physiotherapy clinical education in Australia: Educator profile, support needs, and innovation in professional development
  - Dr Clint Newstead, Health Sciences
• Embedding simulation-based learning into professional placements: lessons learnt and practical considerations
  - Ms Kelly Squires, Health Sciences
• Use of tele supervision when supervising students undertaking professional placements: speech language pathologists experiences
  - Joanne Walters, Health Sciences

View Session Recording

19 June 2024

This Educator Lunchbox, facilitated by Professor Steven Warburton,  focused on three speakers from the University of New England speaking about UNE’s journey to improve student retention and engagement by helping academics with proactive outreach to at-risk students, from Pilot to Platform. This session was delivered via zoom.

View Session Recording

University of New England Presenters:

• Dr Martin Schmude
• Ben Davies
• Harrison Munday

16 August 2023 - Ourimbah

This Educator Lunchbox, facilitated by Dr Andrew Kepert,  focused on three speakers from our Ourimbah campus discussing their unique approaches to teaching practice.  This session was delivered simultaneously, both face to face and via zoom.

View Session Recording

Presenters:

• Margaret Platell:  Marine Science - an online course with over 500 students
• Quan Vuong:  Food Science and Human Nutrition - Industry partners supporting an authentic student experience.
• Denise Higgins:  Education Simulation - Health Therapy and Podiatry.

24 May 2023

This session brought together a number of speakers to talk about eReserves, Open Education Resources, Audio and Video Feedback and  outlined information about WIL modules.

View Session Recording

Presenters:

• Kylie Clarkson - Course Readings for Student Engagement
• Ruth Camerson - Open Education Resources
• Jeremy Rennex - Audio and Video Feedback
• Renee Smith & Monique Kassi - Understanding WIL Modules

Session Recordings will be made available shortly.

7th September 2022  - Reinvigorating Student Engagement in face-to-face Teaching

This panel discussion session, hosted by the College of Engineering, Science and Environment was held on 7th September 2022.  The session was facilitated by Professor Helen Giggins, School of Architecture and Built Environment.

View Session Recording

Panelists included:

• A/Prof. Karen Blackmore - School of Information and Physical Sciences
• Dr Liam Phelan - School of Environmental and Life Sciences
• Dr Igor Chaves and Prof Mark Masia - School of Engineering
• A/Prof. Sam Spurr – School of Architecture and Built Environment
• Dr Stuart Marlin - School of Psychological Sciences

27 April 2022  - Simultaneous Teaching

This session looked at simultaneous teaching, also known as hybrid or concurrent teaching, involving teaching a face-to-face and online cohort at the same time.   The session included three presentations followed by a panel discussion around what works, what doesn’t and suggested tips for educators preparing to teaching in this mode.

Presenters and Panelists:

• Dr Geoff De Luliis, Environmental and Life Sciences
• Mr Thomas Johnson, Architecture and Built Environment
• Dr Marcus Rodrigs, Newcastle Business School

View session recording.

12 August 2021 - "Maslow before Bloom" - Wellbeing and connection in online teaching and learning

View session recording

• Facilitated by Associate Professor Rachel Buchannan.  An open sharing session that examined the challenges and success of looking after students' wellbeing in the synchronous online learning environment.

10th November 2020 - "Student Retention and Success"

Viiew session recording

• Andrew Kepert:  “Strategies for Student Retention for large courses"
• Ruth Pring and Natalie Downing:  “Student Success Partner Program”
• Joel McGregor:  “University Preparation Program (UPP)”

29th September 2020 - "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Research"

This Pecha Kucha style Learning Lunchbox event was hosted by The Faculty of Health and Medicine, Professor Erica James.

* PechaKucha is a storytelling format where a presenter shows 20 slides for 20 seconds of commentary each. The slides move automatically as the presenter is speaking. This format ensures that the speaker is concise, keeps the presentation moving, and gets through all of their content. Slide text is kept to a minimum to encourage the speaker to tell the story with images and to enhance audience engagement.

• Associate Professor Therése Kairuz: “Growing as we Grow”: lecture capture from contributors in different time zones and countries
• Dr Anne Croker:  ‘In-sight-in-mind’ and ‘present-with-presence’: A deliberate approach to video-conferenced learning and support for learning
• Miriam Grotowski: How do curriculum designers consider medical student wellbeing when constructing a new curriculum?  A qualitative exploration
• Dr Karen Mate:  Skills Recognition and Development in Biomedical Science Students
• Dr Melissa Robinson-Reilly: Introduction of Telehealth into the Master of Nurse Practitioner program

3rd September 2020 - Teaching First Years

Presentations and discussion reflecting challenges, how we support our students and effective pedagogies.

• Jodie Davis: "The First Year Experience - building student engagement and belonging"
• Dr Erin McCarthy: "Supporting the Transition to First Year"
• Dr Effie Karageorgos "Teaching First Years through a Pandemic
• Associate Professor Sara Motta - "Equity Pedagogies in the Teaching of First Year Economics and Politics"

View Recording

27th May 2020 - Moving Courses Online

This session looked at experiences in relation to the BA Online

View Recording |  Presentation Slides
Retention Guides (F2F, FL, Online)

28 May 2019

• Dr Mitch Smith - Environmental and Life Sciences
  Lessons from a novice blender: This presentation will cover a number of key points that I have learnt while blending a course for the first time. What has/hasn’t worked from both my perspective, and that of the students
• Dr Emma Beckett - Environmental and Life Sciences
  Finding my feet as a teaching academic – sharing lessons learned from reinventing courses
• Dr Rachael Newell - Nursing and Midwifery
  Developing and Implementing an Online Medical Charting Application:  Rachael worked with staff from the BOLD team to develop an online tool for students that replicates the use of medical charts in their professional practice.

10 April 2019

• Dr James Bennett / Dr Kate Ariotti - Humanities and Social Science
  Cohort-driven change: Redesigning a 1000 level History course for non-History majors
  As referred to in the presentation, you can access the video The Hallowmen here.
• Dr Benjamin Matthews - Creative Industries
  Workflow, Engagement and Ethics: Online docs as a Collaborative Environment
• Dr Helen Giggins, Architecture and Built Environment
  Creating resources to improve a sense of belonging for online students
  As referred to in the presentation, you can access the flexible working options video here.

26 September 2018

• Associate Professor Jed Duff (Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Health and Medicine)
  Adapting online courses for student needs – changes to online postgraduate courses to make them more student-centred
• Catherine Burgess (Education, Pathways and Academic Learning Support Centre)
  Equity, opportunity and scientific curiosity – improving science outcomes through innovative and targeted pedagogical strategies designed to rebuild students’ scientific curiosity and understanding
• Michael Cvetanovski (Physics, Faculty of Science)
  Remote physics labs – an example of how students can learn practical skills online via the use of robotics and mechatronics

29 August 2018

• Dr Andrew Kepert (Mathematics, Faculty of Science)
  Addressing a learning outcome through student discussion of their own work, which is then integrated into lectures
• Dr John Furst (Physics, Faculty of Science)
  How engineering physics went from traditional to blended and responsibility for learning was placed firmly with the students
• Dr Graham Lucas (Management, Faculty of Business and Law)
  Management in in a nutshell – an engaging combination of old and new teaching methods via the BOLD lab

18 July 2018

• Professor Darrell Evans, DVC(A)
  Demonstration of an effective student engagement activity available in all teaching situations.
• Denise Higgins, Oral Health  
  Implementing instructional videos to benefit students.
• Dr Warren Reilly, Senior Practitioner Fellow, School of Architecture and Built Environment
  'New' ways in Work Integrated Learning.