Online learning communities are frequently created for higher education students; however, these are most often designed to cater to a particular unit or subject. In an effort to strengthen the Bachelor of Arts course at the University of New England, the author sought to create an online space that would promote an interdisciplinary and collegial dialogue among their broad on- and off-campus student cohort. This paper examines the building of an academic community among a large and diverse group of undergraduate students on a Moodle platform. The paper tracks the development of the multi-layered portal from the initial stages of planning to the indicators of strong engagement taken up by students, and eventually leading to the creation of similar portals across the university. In examining this process this paper highlights the shared desire by distance education students and academics for authentic and personal higher education participation regardless of the students' location.

Through data drawn from conversations with academics in history and their students, this paper will offer an insight into the strategic importance of first year studies in Australian History, at Australian universities. It will be evident that this inclusion reflects good pedagogical and epistemological practice.

This paper will explore the personal narratives of my experiences encouraging a diverse cohort of pre-service teachers to think about gender and sexuality. It will demonstrate how self-reflection is such an effective tool for both teaching and learning. The paper will draw from my involvement in teaching the gender component of a broader social justice unit in a school of education. In particular, the paper will articulate the interdisciplinary influences of self-reflection, historicism and feminist theory as interventionist pedagogical practice.

Australian Educational theory has drawn largely from the authoritative metropole described by Connell in Southern Theory (2007). In this article, the perilous nature of global north/ south power relations that are embedded in research work is given consideration. Through a collaborative process, the researchers create an assemblage of poems that embody a range of voices from their respective research fields. Drawing from contexts in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, these examples of southern theory fieldwork are used to problematise the notion that it is possible to simply bring the south to the centre. The geospatial politics inherent in Connell's attempt to categorise knowledge production is critiqued. The complexity of 'doing southern theory' is considered as one of many approaches to working with voices from the south.

The highly imagined and contested space of higher education is invested with an affectively loaded 'knowledge economy optimism'. Drawing on recent work in affect and critical geography, this paper considers the e/affects of the promises of the knowledge economy on its knowledge workers. We extend previous analyses of the discursive constitution of academic subjectivity through the figuration of 'emotional knots' as we explore three stories of the constitution of academic subjectivities in institutional spaces. These stories were composed in a collective biography workshop, where participants constructed accounts of the physical, social, material and imaginative dimensions of subjectivities in the 'academic-city' of higher education spaces. Identifying moments of 'perturbation' in these stories, this paper considers the micro-contexts of 'becoming academic': how bodies, affects and relations become knotted in precise times and places. The figuration of 'knots' provides an analytical strategy for unravelling how subjects affectively invest in the promises of spaces saturated with knowledge economy discourses, and moments of impasse where these promises ring hollow. We examine the affective bargains made in order to flourish in the corporate university and identify spaces of possibility where optimistic projections of alternative futures might be formed. These stories and their analysis complicate the metanarrative of 'knowledge economy optimism' that is currently driving higher education reform in Australia.

When writing about the teaching of history in universities, three contexts become apparent. The first is the enormous diversity and sophistication of historical practice and historical thinking. The second is the existence of Threshold Learning Outcomes (TLO) to standardise history teaching. The third is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning which has provided an international intellectual and practical framework within which to discuss discipline teaching. In this chapter, we position this book within those contexts and introduce its purpose.

This chapter considers the importance of leadership in creating an environment in which history teaching can flourish and evolve. It argues that 'enabling leadership' is a way to support individual and collegial endeavour that reinvigorates professional commitment within the context of the managerial revolution.

This book discusses the discipline standards of History in Australian universities in order to help historians understand the Threshold Learning Outcomes and to assist in their practical application. It is divided into two sections: The first offers a scholarly exploration of contemporary issues in history teaching, while the second section discusses each of the Threshold Learning Outcomes and provides real-world examples of quality pedagogical practice. Although the book focuses on the discipline of history in Australia, other subjects and other countries are facing the same dilemmas. As such, it includes chapters that address the international context and bring an international perspective to the engagement with discipline standards. The innovation and leadership of this scholarly community represents a new stage in the transformation and renewal of history teaching.

Heterotopias are counter-sites of enacted utopias through which reality is simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. They are physical or mental spaces where, although norms of behaviours are suspended, there are connections with a plethora of other spaces. This article constructs a collective biography as a heterotopology of the academy. Academic subjectivities are produced and often constrained within powerful Higher Education discourses. Constructing an affective assemblage of becomings as a heterotopology, the authors deploy poststructural philosophy to re-story academic life experiences and conceptualise agency in the academy. Taking licence with the notion of academicity and heterotopia, the article describes how spaces in the measured university can be deterritorialised through generative lines of flight. An affective assemblage is presented that ruptures the discursive orientation of category boundary work where academics are constituted as 'productive metric-minded knowledge workers'. The collective biography research approach facilitates a mapping of affective cartographies as a heterotopology and a critique of the discursive production of selves. The subjectivations of identity politics in matricised assemblages may be, even if momentarily, evaded, refused and agentically resisted.

This paper will primarily discuss a national study, Historical Thinking in Higher Education, undertaken in 2008 and 2009 (Nye et al, 2011). In addition it will reveal the impact of that research and the projects that have grown from it, as well as other undertakings within the history education community. The Australian History SOTL research community is collegial, dynamic and productive. It has been energized by a growth in interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning and by the development of national teaching and learning standards. The Historical Thinking in Higher Education study encompassed twelve Australian universities seeking out students and staff perceptions of teaching and learning in history. As a scoping study it drew upon a participatory action model of research and aimed to create a community disciplinary dialogue about the teaching of history. The student participation rate was unprecedented with 1455 students agreeing to fill in a questionnaire and less than 10 declining. The staff participants numbered fifty academics across 6 states and territories. The questions put to students included: What is historical thinking? What are the skills and benefits of historical thinking? The research with academic staff involved extended qualitative interviews. The findings of this study represent a snap shot of perceptions on teaching and learning within the discipline that can now contribute to the contentious discussions about benchmarking and national standards, professional development, transitional learning in tertiary education and academic identity. Analysis of the data from the students' questionnaires led to a rethinking in two areas: the use of primary and secondary evidence and student interaction with teachers. The data indicated that students had a clear preference for secondary evidence over primary evidence, which is in contrast to much of the disciplinary dialogue. This prompted further research on student expectations and access and analysis of evidence.