Abstract

Three major mining education providers implemented in 2007 a highly innovative approach to educating mining engineers in Australia with the establishment of Mining Education Australia (MEA). In July 2006 a Joint Venture Agreement was signed between the three universities: Curtin University of Technology, The University of New South Wales, and The University of Queensland. An important aspect of MEA is the linkage with industry which through the Minerals Council of Australia has provided significant financial support. MEA is a world first collaborative undergraduate mining program that provides a common curriculum for the final two years of the four year degree program. The program has incorporated a range of collaborative teaching and learning tools. For example as each partner university has a different learning management system, MEA registered its own web domain within Moodle in mid-2007. In 2008 the majority of the courses used Moodle as the common learning management system in MEA. Most MEA courses also use a project and/or problem based learning approach resulting in more group work by students. This required a strategy to ensure group work standards were consistent across the program including peer assessment. As part of this, MEA trialed different peer assessment tools such as iPeer and SPARK and is investigating new tools for learning/teaching such as online and digitally mediated tools. This paper describes the collaboration success of MEA and also discusses the teaching and learning management systems and peer assessment tools used across the MEA universities.