Sentry, April 2021

SENTRY The future of e-learning

Jab or no jab?

Vaccine acceptance during COVID-19 On the treadmill of precarious labour What if they built it and nobody came?

The fallout from the international student boom Published by National Tertiary Education Union

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CONTENTS

Jab or no jab?

The future of e-learning

What is the level of vaccine acceptance in 2021, and how can it be improved?

Dale Pobega shares his experience of teaching during COVID in Adult & Community Education.

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Cover: Man receiving a vaccination (mkitina4/123rf)

Sentry is a free online news magazine for NTEU members and Australian higher education staff.

Sentry is published on the third Friday of each month in between publication of the Union's main member magazine, Advocate.

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Precarious labour treadmill

The fallout from the boom

Bill Skinner is an anthropologist and early career researcher at the University of Adelaide.

What if they built it and no one came? Alex Millmow on the pause in international education.

In 2021 Sentry will be published in February, April, May, June, August, September, October and December. Advocate will be published in March, July, November.

SENTRY ISSN 2652-5992 Published by National Tertiary Education Union PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 Australia ABN 38 579 396 344

In case you missed it... 01 Recent publications 14

All text & images ©NTEU 2021 unless stated Publisher

Matthew McGowan

Editor

Alison Barnes

Production Manager

Paul Clifton

Editorial Assistance

Helena Spyrou

Sentry is available online free as a PDF and e-book at www.nteu.org.au/sentry

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CATCH UP

NEWS & CAMPAIGNS

In case you missed it....

Where's the vaccine for insecure work?

In the lead-up to finalising the Union’s submission to the Senate Inquiry into Insecure Work, over 170 NTEU members and supporters attended our online seminar entitled ‘Where’s the Vaccine For Insecure Work?’ on 19 March.

The seminar was an opportunity to hear from Labor Senator Tony Sheldon, Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Job Security, and Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt, the Greens’ Workplace Relations spokesperson, about the pressing issues around insecure work and how to confront them. They joined NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes.

Read the report a

Stopping outsourcing at UQ's ICTE

Senate Inquiry into Insecure Work

In April, NTEU members and supporters from the University of Queensland's Institute of Continuing & TESOL Education (ICTE) gathered to protest the current proposal to outsource their work, placing at risk their jobs, wages and conditions.

They presented a petition (containing more than 1,116 signatures of support!) to UQ Vice-Chancellor Deborah Terry who met the members and said 'We will listen.'

Well done to these brave ICTE NTEU members! But the fight is still on to protect their jobs, wages, conditions, and the quality of Continuing and TESOL education at UQ.

At hearings for the Senate Select Committee on Job Security on 13 April, the NTEU submitted that twothirds of university employees do not have continuing employment.

The Union stated that it wants universities to report the number of people they employ and give casuals continuing jobs.

NTEU members Dr Liz Adamczyk and Paul Morris gave compelling evidence to the select committee on the hardships faced by university-employed casuals, with particular focus on their situation as a couple where both are precariously employed.

Read more online E

Read our Submission a

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VACCINATION

MEMBER EXPERT

Jab or no jab?

Vaccine acceptance during COVID-19

Image: Anna Shvets/Pexels

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Dr Katie Attwell UWA

VACCINATION

MEMBER EXPERT

With all eyes on Australia’s COVID-19 vaccination program, the field of vaccination social science offers insights from many years of interdisciplinary analysis. Consumer attitudes towards vaccines are important to the success of all vaccination programs, but they are not the only factor that matters.

For example, governments need to assure the supply and availability of appropriate vaccines. This is no mean feat when both the virus and vaccines are new, and circumstances continue to evolve through new strains and pharmacovigilance.

Reaching the population through effective vaccination services is yet another challenge. And health and medical providers need appropriate training and support in how to deliver the vaccines and record their administration.

But at all levels – from governments to providers and everyone in between – effective communications about the benefits and minor risks of vaccines are essential to public acceptance.

The COVID-19 pandemic experience has exacerbated global divides, not just between the economically privileged and those who live in poverty, but also between those countries that pursued local suppression of the virus and those which prioritised keeping businesses and borders open, often with a great cost in human lives. Australia’s successful employment of the first strategy, particularly through State-based pol-

icies, has made us one of the safest countries in the world.

However, the lack of COVID-19 locally makes vaccine acceptance more challenging. Our relative safety within State bubbles may make us feel less motivated to vaccinate, particularly for people who are not involved in work that depends directly on travel in or out of the country. Compare this to Europe, where hard lockdowns still apply and outbreaks continue, and the personal protection that vaccines offer is more tangible.

It’s exciting to do this research because there are real gaps in what the quantitative studies of the last year can tell us, particularly regarding why people feel a certain way.

That said, survey data from the last year tells us that many countries face a broadly similar spread of attitudes, although there is local variation.

Across the globe, majorities of at least two-thirds indicate that they will accept the vaccine. Generally small minorities indicate that they will likely not. The remaining hesitant cohort are often concerned about the relative newness of the vaccines.

It is important not to consider this hesitant group resistant to vaccines in general. With very high rates of childhood vaccination globally, vaccination remains the social norm. continued overpage...

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VACCINATION

MEMBER EXPERT Supporting those who are on the fence about COVID-19 vaccination requires empathy and leadership, rather than polarising discourse.

A small minority of Australians contribute to anti-vaccination messaging, spreading disinformation and connecting to broader conspiracies through groups such as QAnon.

The information hygiene efforts of major social media companies have had some success in removing these messages from mainstream platforms, reducing their impact on other audiences. However, such efforts remain incomplete.

For researchers, studying vaccination attitudes during COVID-19 mirrors many of the challenges of rolling out the vaccines themselves. Everything has a much longer lead time than the public would imagine. Australian human ethics reviews for social research are highly bureaucratic and time consuming, especially for research using state health department facilities.

Researchers in Europe do not face similar requirements; nor do the market research companies that governments often engage instead of utilising university scholars’ expertise.

Once researchers are out in the field, a constantly shifting information environment and program ecosystem

make it challenging to gather data and interpret findings. For scholars of social media, the platforms’ disinformation restrictions generate complexities in finding and studying the spread of that disinformation.

When it comes to publications, peer review processes means they are often out of date by the time scholars can discuss them.

In the midst of all this, vaccination social scientists are frequently asked by the media to comment upon emerging events and crises. We face pressures to draw upon or report data, support the integrity of the vaccination system, bolster public trust, and communicate transparently and ethically.

This goes very much further than the role of 'just' being a researcher, which is a huge task in and of itself!

Fortunately, we have years of experience to draw upon in studying vaccine attitudes and experiences in other populations and for other vaccines. And despite these challenges, it is an exhilarating time to be a researcher in this field.

My 'Coronavax' team, based across the University of Western Australia and Telethon Kids Institute, conducts qualitative research into the West Australian population’s attitudes towards coronavirus vaccination.

Image: mkitina4/123rf

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It’s exciting to do this research because there are real gaps in what the quantitative studies of the last year can tell us, particularly regarding why people feel a certain way.

As a specialist on mandatory vaccination, I’m very interested in what the public think about government or business requirements to vaccinate, and what people think about collective requirements for coverage in order to open our borders.

I’m generally interested in what motivates people in my state to vaccinate given that we have been almost unscathed by COVID-19. I’m also eager to learn what people think about eventually giving COVID-19 vaccines to their children.

Our study segments different age and population groups, so we will be able to compare young and older people, for example. And we can make the best of sudden policy changes, like the recent pivot away from Astra-Zeneca vaccination for under 50s by adjusting our methodologies. We have early data already, but in keeping with the considerations described above, I won’t offer spoilers!

VACCINATION

MEMBER EXPERT

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Dr Katie Attwell is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia NTEU members in Western Australia who would like to participate in the Coronavax study or share it amongst their family and friends can click here.

It’s exciting to do this research because there are real gaps in what the quantitative studies of the last year can tell us, particularly regarding why people feel a certain way.

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ADULT COMMUNITY ED

MEMBER EXPERT

The future of e-learning The experience of teaching in 2020 in the Adult & Community Education sector I don't know if it comes as a surprise to most fellow union members, but Adult Community Education (ACE) workers also form a part of the NTEU – though you may not hear much about us or our particular issues. It's a sector made up of community centres and neighbourhood houses that rightfully prides itself on catering to the needs of adult learners who are unlikely, in the first instance, to pass through the doors of a TAFE, college or private provider.

...online and blended delivery will be the order of the day, but you do wonder whether that will be a plus or a minus for most teachers.

Community based providers deliver both accredited and non-accredited courses. In the English language, literacy, numeracy and digital skills space, teachers have identical qualifications to those working in TAFE – but typically work for half the pay and like our colleagues in the tertiary sector, have problems securing permanency.

So, there are several issues to do with casualisation, workload and remuneration that remain sticking points for many.

Dale Pobega, Wyndham Community and Education Centre

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Pandemic pivot When COVID-19 hit and teachers were suddenly asked to do that much more – often with very little or no training in e-learning – I think these issues became quite pronounced.

As we go forward there is a reasonable belief that things can never be the same again and that online and blended delivery will be the order of the day, but you do wonder whether that will be a plus or a minus for most teachers.

MEMBER EXPERT

What also comes to mind is how do we provide training to those who are new to e-learning?

My life in ACE I teach English as an Additional Language (EAL) at Wyndham Community Education Centre in Melbourne's west for part of the week and do e-learning consultancy, teacher mentoring and project work in the area of Adult English Language, Literacy, Numeracy and Digital Skills (ALLND) the rest of the time.

I've worked for the last 30 years in ALLND with stints in editing and publishing for organisations such as the Victorian Adult Literacy and Basic Education Council (VALBEC).

From the late 90s to mid-2000s I managed a couple of Online Learning Networks and conducted teacher training in e-learning through the old TAFE Virtual Campus.

The work I do nowadays continues to straddle language teaching, mentoring and developing effective online and blended approaches appropriate for adult learners.

Headway/Unsplash

People sometimes ask what motivates me and why I stay in Adult Community Education. The answer is most definitely my adult students.

I lived overseas for most of the 1980s, so I have direct experience of what it is like to be a foreigner struggling with a new language and culture. My parents, too, had very few opportunities to learn due to the dislocating factors associated with war, poverty, migration and disability.

People sometimes ask what motivates me and why I stay in Adult Community Education. The answer is most definitely my adult students.

So, I often see reflections of them in my own students. That inspires me to stay where I am needed most and to do the best I possibly can as a teacher. continued overpage...

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ADULT COMMUNITY ED

MEMBER EXPERT

New ways of learning I think the experience of learning online in the last year or so has been at the forefront of everyone's minds.

We are now wondering what lies ahead: what needs to be kept and valued in our traditional teaching approach and what needs to change?

...what needs to be kept and valued in our traditional teaching approach and what needs to change?

The health emergency has had a hugely dislocating effect, particularly for many adult students with very low English language and literacy skills. As you would appreciate, many of these learners require face-to-face attention as their tech skills are also generally low and they have neither the resources nor support at home to cope well on their own.

I do think, however, COVID-19 opened up opportunities for adult learners studying at middle Foundational levels. These students, whose skills are slightly higher or mixed, have been able to actually enhance the way they study. They have worked more closely with me individually because we were all freed up from the strictures of the timetable.

Last year was a relief in the sense that I did not have to always manage the whole class at the same time and in the same place from one week to the next. I discovered several new ways to engage with students and get them engaging with one another.

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For example, my students have recently been forming ‘learning circles’ in which they can work effectively together in smaller groups and in their own chosen time on language-based projects.

That’s not to say there is no explicit teaching, meeting as a whole class or individual work they do with me, but there is now a broader range of working arrangements around content that they move between quite comfortably.

Most of the students I have been teaching online for more than a year now like the greater level of flexibility, the time savings, and the way the learning is differently organised than is usually the case in face to face classrooms.

Benefits of e-learning My students tell me they have more time to prepare and look for employment as part of their mutual obligations, to better attend to the needs of their families – to have what we all crave: a better study/work/life balance. I found that students at this foundation level embraced online learning enthusiastically and are mostly keen to continue with it.

Their attendance is better and so too their assessment results. The positive student feedback over almost a year and half I have received convinces me that is very much the case.

MEMBER EXPERT This coming term we will study one day in the classroom and two days online. I must say, I'm very lucky to work for a progressive organisation like Wyndham CEC which recognises the value of a mixed approach.

I think that the encouragement of blended learning is also a very wise strategy and form of insurance for the future as any temporary worsening of the health emergency means that students are capable of immediately moving back into total online learning mode.

Provided there is a reliable electronic channel for communication, a strategy for timely distribution and return of materials, good use of online synchronous conferencing for the group – and lots of fun – a great deal can be achieved online.

Overcoming the hurdles Working online does not have to be isolating or involve sacrificing the social contact students crave to be with one another and their teacher.

For instance, my own students have recently been setting up their own 'learning circles', using ZOOM to work together, practice drills, and meet online for a social chat.

I never thought that possible of students with tech skills that were initially very basic. I think it's a sign of just how far they have come in the space of a year. They are now working in a peer-oriented way that you would expect of typically younger,

much more tech savvy students in the tertiary sector.

Online learning may not be perfect, but the important realisation I had was that neither is the traditional face to face classroom. The one-tomany teaching approach, poor use of time and limiting resources precludes many other possibilities and configurations for learning.

It makes me wonder whether the COVID-19 experience of 2020 has given some impetus to the vision of two of Australia's most eminent educationalists, Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. For them the future of education holds the possibility of ‘no pedagogical differences [existing] between learning in person and learning online’.

It's a controversial idea and one I am not entirely sure will be realised but, like it or not, we are definitely being pushed towards a blended form of delivery – or one in which we will need to move deftly between actual and virtual classrooms as circumstances allow or dictate. It will be interesting to see how this new way of delivering education evolves.

Online learning may not be perfect, but the important realisation I had was that neither is the traditional face to face classroom.

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Dale Pobega is an EAL Teacher at Wyndham Community and Education Centre, Victoria Dale’s ESL and reflective blogs can be found at: dalepobega.blogspot.com dalepobegateaching.blogspot.com

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CASUAL RESEARCHER

MEMBER STORY

On the treadmill of precarious labour I’m an anthropologist and early career researcher at the University of Adelaide. I’ve just begun work on a three year, half-time research contract, on an ARC-funded project studying social and cultural aspects of water management and water risks in South Australian agriculture.

The focus is on near-urban farming regions including McLaren Vale just south of Adelaide, and Langhorne Creek, which sits on a floodplain near Lake Alexandrina right at the very end of the Murray-Darling system.

The project is led by colleagues in Anthropology and Geography, and we’re looking at relationships between practice, policy, local cultures and histories of water management.

I find the ways practice is informed by social and cultural factors fascinating (and timely, when it comes to water and environmental matters), and I’m lucky to be working with great people on this project. It’s been a lot of fun getting back into fieldwork, which I haven’t done much of since finishing my PhD five years ago.

Most of my time since PhD completion, however, has been spent on the treadmill of precarious casual labour which would be very familiar to a lot of NTEU members – semester-long tutoring and lecturing contracts, picking up bits and pieces of research work here and there. I love teaching, and have had the opportunity to deliver courses in really interesting areas and with some engaged and enthusiastic students: anthropologies of eating, drinking, and consumption. But all the while, I’ve been watching opportunities for more permanent work dry up.

Bill Skinner, University of Adelaide

There are now only about half the number of academic staff in my department than there were when I began my PhD a decade ago. As staff leave, they are simply not being replaced. I can see the weight that this is placing on overworked faculty members: teaching and

To tell your story to the NTEU member community, please contact Helena Spyrou

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MEMBER STORY admin loads are going up, and they are struggling to maintain teaching and research quality (or just to keep their heads above water!).

ping contracts (who can therefore rarely demonstrate ongoing employment), transition to more permanent work is very difficult.

Tied to this has been the place of casual work. Universities around Australia have increasingly used casual labour to plug the gaps created by downsizing the salaried workforce. A casualised workforce is a ‘flexible’ one. Of course, this means that whenever savings need to be made, it’s casuals who bear much of the brunt. In the past year underpayment of casual workers – wage theft – has been a widely-publicised problem across Australian universities, and one that the NTEU has fought against.

While permanent university staff are, understandably, worried about their own working conditions in the face of the pay cuts, enforced leave, and promotion freezes introduced in response to COVID, their concerns are very different to those of casuals.

The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought great changes across the tertiary education sector. We’ve seen massive disruption to international students’ ability to study in Australia, and moves toward online modes of learning and teaching. Universities have used the pandemic as justification for further cost-cutting – in particular, slashing casual teaching contracts.

While messages from management stress that staff are ‘all in it together’, emphasising minimal disruption to permanent employees, casuals have been left out of this equation. Disposability is built into our working conditions. This is the case among casually-engaged workers everywhere, but for educators working on semester-by-semester, non-overlap-

We have a large proportion of university workers without any job security, and without a clear pathway for achieving transition to more stable forms of employment.

Higher education was locked out of the Federal Government’s JobKeeper scheme. All of this has been to say that a union is only as strong as its members. A strong NTEU is one with high levels of representation from all parts of the industry, including (especially!) its most precarious workers.

I’m now in the happy position of having secure research employment. Though I will augment it with other teaching work, it is a big step up in terms of job security from a casual-only arrangement. A sector built on precarious workers that can be cut loose on a whim is not a pleasant place for anyone. We can only achieve a more equitable university system by fighting together for it.

Viktor Hanacek/Picjumbo

Universities have used the pandemic as justification for further cost-cutting – in particular, slashing casual teaching contracts.

Field work in SA (image supplied by author)

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Bill Skinner is an anthropologist and early career researcher at the University of Adelaide

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ECONOMICS

MEMBER EXPERT

The fallout from the boom in

international education

The poor state of our relations with China means that the numbers that do come from there will not be as great as they once were.

What if they built it and no one came? That thought must be running through the minds of some university vicechancellors and real estate developers about sinking resources and fortunes into building swanky student housing near the campus.

Just about every Australian tertiary provider had a presence in the Melbourne CBD, either in the form of a shopfront or an actual campus.

Little wonder Victorian car licence plates proclaim it ‘The Education State’. The city precincts used to be crawling with students, especially near the university city campuses.

Not now.

Some struggling universities have already offloaded city properties that were meant for teaching or accommodating their students. So far there is no sign of international students coming back until 2022. That too is looking conditional upon how the vaccine roll-out proceeds.

Yet there is still a wave of construction activity erecting more purpose-built student housing premised on the fact that the boom in international education will return. The same could be said of Australia’s other capital cities. Some of the latest accommodation being erected boasts hotel style catering to rather well-off students.

The poor state of our relations with China means that the numbers that do come from there will not be as great as they once were. It seems there will be plenty of empty student accommodation when things get back to normal.

Alex Millmow Federation University Australia

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No Australian city is more geared to the international students than Melbourne. Up until 2020, Melbourne was the ‘Boston of the Yarra’ which is how former Prime Minister Julia Gillard imagined us a few years ago.

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Universities were pointedly excluded from the Federal Government’s JobKeeper program on the premise that they lined their pockets from the boom in international education.

Even the new Education Minister, Alan Tudge did not credit reports that the sector had already shed nearly 20,000 jobs. Yet the closing of the Australian border has left all Australian universities under some financial stress.

The Government’s attitude seems to be that universities were foolish in putting all their eggs in the one basket and neglecting the domestic market. Yet it was Canberra that encouraged the Australian universities to be entrepreneurial as they pared back federal funding of higher education over the years.

Much of the revenue from the international education boom was spent upon hiring hot-shot researchers as well as erecting swanky new buildings to enhance student life on campus.

There is no doubt now that the higher education sector faces contraction. Universities have recently been culling the size of the executive ranks, tenured academics and rationalising their courses. Having a considerable pool of casualised staff means it's relatively easy to cut some costs. However, their greatest and most successful response to the lockdown and border closure has been to adopt blended learning using their digital platforms.

ECONOMICS

MEMBER EXPERT This revolution, though, has its limits. Graduation ceremonies where the names of graduands are rolled out on screens with pre-recorded speeches by university chancellors and vice-chancellors is a terribly awful look.

The big question is: if more courses are to be online and virtual ,then is there really any need to come to campus?

This unwinding of the student accommodation building boom and how students now do their learning has ramifications for the economy.

One irony is that Scott Morrison’s chosen people – tradies – and those small businesses that cater to meeting students’ needs or use their labour, will feel the pinch.

The big question is: if more courses are to be online and virtual, then is there really any need to come to campus?

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Alex Millmow is an Associate Professor of Economics at Federation University Australia

Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University (Chris Orr)

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PUBLICATIONS

NEWS & CAMPAIGNS

Advocate, March 2021 (vol. 28, no. 1) NTEU's member magazine, Advocate, was sent to all members in early March.

This edition covered a typically broad range of subjects: from course cuts and the Government's abandonment of universities, to academic freedom, university governance, as well as local industrial issues and international events.

Read online Book-Open

Connect, March 2021 (vol. 14, no. 1) The Union's dedicated magazine for casual staff, Connect, sent out in late March, looks at Labor's plan to fight casualisation, and the trends and stats behind it in our sector.

David Peetz writes on how casual became predictable; Ellen Smith on challenging the casualisation of academia; and Anastasia Kanjere on COVID, casuals and workplace safety. Plus member and delegate profiles, and much more!

Read online Book-Open

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