Enhancing Learning and Teaching Through Student Feedback in Social Sciences

Professor Sid Nair is currently Executive Dean and Dean Learning, Teaching and Student Experience at the Victorian Institute of Technology (VIT), Australia where he is responsible for the learning, teaching, student experience and quality matters of the Institution.Previous to this appointment at VIT, Sid was the Executive Director of the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), Mauritius, the apex regulatory body where he was responsible for the formulation and execution of strategies, policies and procedures in the higher education sector in Mauritius.Prior to joining TEC, he was Professor of Higher Education Development at the Centre for Education Futures (CEF), University of Western Australia. His role was to build the capacity of academics in the digital delivery of their teaching. His career path also had him as Interim Director and Quality Advisor (Evaluations and Research) at the Centre for Higher Education Quality (CHEQ) at Monash University, Australia where he headed the evaluation unit at Monash University. In this capacity he restructured the evaluation framework at the university. The approach to evaluations at Monash has been noted in the first round of the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) audits and is part of the good practice database. His research work lies in the areas of quality in the higher education system, classroom and school environments, and the implementation of improvements from stakeholder feedback. He has extensive lecturing experience in the applied sciences in Canada, Singapore and Australia. He is an international consultant in quality and evaluations in higher education.

Dr Patricie Mertova is currently a Research Fellow in the Department of Education, University of Oxford, England. She was previously a Research Officer at the University of Queensland, and, prior to that, a Research Fellow in the Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching (CALT) and the Centre for Higher Education Quality (CHEQ), Monash University, Australia. She has recently completed her PhD focusing on the academic voice in higher education quality. She has research expertise in the areas of higher education and higher education quality. Her background is also in the areas of linguistics, translation, cross-cultural communication and foreign languages.