Remit

To identify ways of increasing interdisciplinary teaching in Human Communication Science.

Core Members

Mark Wiggins (Chair); Bill Noble; Jane Simpson

HCS Executive Contact Point

Kate Stevens [Chair, Training and Development]

Comments

Our discussions here so far have centred around two main ideas: one is the promotion of interdisciplinary HCS teaching within existing University programs, whether at undergraduate, honours or postgraduate level; and the other is the idea of summer/winter school activities.
We would like this working group to consider both of these broad areas and the interactions between them. It might be appropriate, for example, to begin by carrying out an audit of existing University teaching in Australia that falls within the scope of human communication science; the Network can provide administrative support for activities of this kind. This might lead to proposals for how new material can be brought into existing programs. One suggestion that has been made is that the Working Group might use the concept of a textbook in Human Communication Science as a focussing device for curriculum development: what chapters would this contain, for example?

The idea of a summer school was put forward as a way of overcoming gaps in the availability of taught units in individual institutions, but we have no particular preconceptions about how this might be organised. Some models worth looking at are the Australasian Language Technology Association summer school; the US Linguistics Institute; the ANU Machine Learning Summer School; and the European Summer School on Logic, Language and Information, and the recent MARCS Auditory Laboratories Summer School on Psychoacoustics. There will no doubt be many other examples that can be considered as sources of ideas.

In the original budget, we had allocated on the order of $40k per annum for the running of a summer school; this gives some indication of the level of funding we might expect to expend in this area. Note that the ARC guidelines preclude the funding of 'the production of teaching materials, even though some research may be involved in their production'.

Target Deliverables

By January 27th 2005:
* A five minute presentation on possible activities in this area.

By February 22nd 2005:
* A status report on where the Working Group has got to (pdf format), incorporating ideas generated at the HCSNet Launch Meeting and subsequent discussion.

By April 1st 2005:
* A proposal for the timing, scope and structure of a summer school in Human Communication Science, laying out a variety of possible models and providing a specific recommendation as to how our summer school should be organised, along with indicative costings.

By July 1st 2005:
* A report sketching the content of a curriculum in HCS, and proposals for how this could be promoted within universities.