The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand

This collaborative, sector-wide project with the aim of developing a professional capabilities framework to clarify the capabilities of newly qualified social workers (NQSWs) and social workers at experienced and advanced levels of practice.

Using interactions between participants in the teaching and learning process, this project seeks to understand the reality of field-based early childhood education.

This project explores issues of equity of access associated with distance delivery of a New Zealand Diploma in Business. In particular, it explores the social justice issues which may arise from the use of enhanced e-learning technologies in education.

The Real-Time Assessment Project ran as a pilot in 2008. It intended to develop and implement online assessment for five courses which form part of the New Zealand Diploma in Business, as a means of responding to increased enrolments in the course due to a changed economic environment.

This project examines the role of e-learning technologies in potentially eroding the traditional role of distance in distance education. It explains why caution should be exercised in permitting this takeover.

This project examined ways in which tertiary organisations can harness the affordances of technological processes to use them to the best advantage for teaching and learning. It identified how such technologies could overcome traditional barriers of distance and cost, making best use of internet-based technologies.

This research examines strategies for the engagement of first-year distance students at a distance learning organisation. It examined a number of aspects of student engagement in such a setting, including transactions within the institutional setting, teachers’ work and institutional culture; student motivation, influences external to the institution, and demographics.

This research explores the notion of mentoring in tertiary education. It examines different models of mentoring, and explores its application to postgraduate supervision. It also examines the sociocultural dimensions of mentoring.

This research explores the espousal of sustainable education models in the context of business education. In particular, it makes a case for the teaching of the fullest possible range of different conceptions of sustainability, as a means by which business education might work towards environmental imperatives.

This project will examine bicultural competence in early childhood education. It will examine the value of cultural competence paradigms and models in supporting teaching and learning pedagogies, and examine how Māori pedagogies are valued in the provision of early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand. This project seeks to support both Māori and non-Māori early childhood education student teachers in applying te reo Māori me ona tikanga in their practices.