SkillCity aims to provide university teaching staff (referred to as 'lecturers' here in Australia) with a place to share information and materials that can improve their students' communication skills. Materials on SkillCity are meant to complement and enhance usual, discipline-based teaching material. Ideally, SkillCity's materials can save a lecturer from attending a course in small-group behaviour before assigning their engineering students a team project.
What makes a suitable submission to SkillCity?
SkillCity's Material Should ....
Lecturers and staff developmental officers are encouraged to submit materials and other resources, which they feel will benefit others. Submissions should address the following communication skill areas:
- Presentation skills
- Facilitating teamwork, meetings and consultations
- Producing professional documents
- Handling media interviews and addressing the public
- Producing videos, websites and other multimedia products
What counts as a suitable submission?
Submit a description of a 20-minute groupwork activity that other lecturers could try in their classes. Or, submit guidelines for an assignment or tips on how to split students into teams. In essence, submissions comprising descriptions of learning activities that develop students' communication skills are preferred.
Try to send items that are ready to be used by busy lecturers who are not well versed in the communication field. Materials should be designed to assist rather than merely to impress. For example, take an involved and complex assignment that you think works wonders, and break it down into 'digestable' chunks, elements that might improve any assignment.
On SkillCity, you can submit discipline-specific or more generic plans for in-class activity, or you can simply send handouts that you have developed. Also submit relevant research articles (e.g., a case-study of a departmental programme incorporating generic skills), book reviews, or links to websites.
You can post details of relevant news and events or start a discussion on a bulletin board to address a topic of interest. Alternatively, request information that you have not found on SkillCity (e.g., do you need to see examples of student team contracts?). In fact, it is our aim that lecturers can submit any information, insights, or questions relating to communication skills that are potentially helpful to others.
Intellectual Property and Copyright
The donated materials contained in the SkillCity database are to be used by lecturers for non-profit educational use only. As a donor, by submitting to SkillCity, you are agreeing to allow your material to be used and copied for these purposes. You may wish to include your name and the following statement on items such as handouts or printouts: ''This handout may be copied and used for non-profit educational use only''.
Where a lesson, assignment, or handout is adapted from another source, the original source must be credited.
It is okay to submit a description of a relevant website or a review of a book that you have found useful, etc., even if you are not the author. However, you must list yourself on the submission form as the submitter. Avoid any ambiguity in who is the actual the author of the book or website you refer to.
You will see such submissions in the SkillCity list of materials where the ''Author'' column lists the phrase ''Submitted by Pat Smith'' or ''Submitted by Lee Young''. That is our attribution convention for enabling you to submit material that you find. The point here is that you are taking responsibility for publicising the material that you have identified, and you are not representing yourself as the actual author or as acting on behalf of the author. Instead, you are playing the role of reviewer.
In some instances, though, an author has agreed to have us submit their material. They might be too busy, too modest, or too technophobic to submit it themselves. In these cases, we have listed the author in the "Author" field of the SkillCity submission form, and we have listed their contact details. Then, in the text of the submission summary, there is phrasing to the effect of "Submitted on behalf of Tex Anders".
Due to copyright restrictions, we are not able to accept submissions of Microsoft Word documents or other attachments of materials that are not your own. You can, however, describe such documents and refer to a URL or other means of locating or requesting them. In fact, SkillCity already has submissions of this type, referring to URLs for finding helpful PDF ''tip sheets'' or an ''ideal'' student report.
In terms of intellectual property rights and copyright of materials, our experience has been that the most prolific producers of useful material are more than happy to have them employed by others.
