Teacher performance-linked pay, teacher performance generally and student achievement – these are three issues that are never far from the headlines. But are the debates founded on sound evidence or merely the thought bubbles of politicians and populist commentators?

We spoke to Professor Debra Hayes from the University of Sydney about these issues and more. She's concerned that teachers are no longer considered the trusted professionals they once were, and is also sceptical about plans to increase ATAR-entry scores for teaching – further stripping universities of their prerogative to make judgements about who will and won't make good teachers.

Professor Hayes also highlights one of the most important issues affecting Australian students' international results – inequity.

While today's learning platforms can provide basic feedback on, say, how much of text a student has read or whether they have completed a section of a course, the learning analytics of tomorrow will provide more nuanced feedback that will close, in real time, “the feedback loop” between teacher and student.

In this promising new world of analytics- and AI-driven feedback, students can expect the strengths of their arguments to be evaluated as well as the quality of their writing and referencing. It will offer students "much higher definition feedback" than the periodic tests and exams of old. It will also flag course material students find challenging and, most importantly, reduce the amount of "labour intensive" feedback educators have to handle.

Campus Review's sister publication Education Review spoke to University of Technology Sydney learning analytics Professor Simon Buckingham-Shum at EduTECH 2019 about this new age of feedback and some of the potential dangers.

That’s the message from the federal government in a YouTube video featuring Scott Cam, host of Channel Nine’s The Block program. Amid shaky footage and low-angle shots, Cam said there are many careers that can come about from learning a trade. The video cost the federal government $4125 to produce.

“[The kids] don’t realise there are 400 different apprenticeships you can take on,” Cam said.

Karen Andrews, assistant minister for vocational education and training, paid a visit to the set of The Block to interview Cam about apprenticeships for the video. Andrews encouraged people to consider apprenticeships as career options.

“Having a sneak peek at all the hard work that goes into The Block renovations highlights the amazing things that can be accomplished by skilled tradies and the enthusiasm of creative minds,” Andrews said.

Cam is a federal government Australian apprenticeships ambassador. A spokesperson for Andrews said that Cam volunteered to be an ambassador and to appear in the video, and was not paid.

Meanwhile, the latest figures from the federal government show a 10 per cent decline in apprenticeship numbers from last year. The rate of apprenticeship completions declined by 20 per cent over the same period.

The federal government pledged $400 million in the last Budget to incentivise employers into taking apprentices.

The University of Sydney’s Dr Richard Shine and professor Richard Payne, Macquarie University’s professor Michael Aitken, and University of Queensland associate professor Kerrie Wilson all received Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science in Canberra last week. The University of South Australia’s Dr Colin Hall and school teachers Gary Tilley and Suzy Urbaniak were also awardees.

Dr Richard Shine, Prime Minister’s Prize for Science

Shine received the award for his work on cane toads. He successfully taught native snakes and lizards in Western Australia that cane toads are toxic and that they shouldn’t eat them. Shine said he did his research because he loves snakes.

“Some people love model trains, some people love Picasso; for me, it’s snakes,” Shine said.

Professor Michael Aitken, Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation

Aitken, chief executive of the Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre and finance lecturer at Macquarie, developed the SMARTS software tool, which enables real-time surveillance of stock markets at the rate of 2 million trades per second.

SMARTS has been adopted by more than 40 national exchanges and regulators and 150 brokers across 50 countries. Aitken eventually sold the software to NASDAQ, the world’s second largest stock-exchange hosted in the US, for $100 million.

He used a significant portion of the proceeds to set up a venture firm, which funds Australian technology start-ups and research scholarships.

“What excites me about my work is the work I do with PhD students, 130 of them; they will be the new round of innovators, they’ll take innovation to the world,” Aitken said.

Aitken won the award for SMARTS and for his other contributions to Australian innovation.

Professor Richard Payne, Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year

Payne, a USYD biochemist, received his prize for re-engineering peptides and proteins into drugs for curing diseases – including tuberculosis, malaria and emerging antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

His work has been picked up by researchers and pharmaceutical companies around the world, and is the subject of four patent applications.

Associate professor Kerrie Wilson, Frank Fenner Prize for Life Scientist of the Year

Wilson, a UQ conservationist, is helping governments around the world save the planet – by putting a price on environmental sustainability. Wilson can put a monetary value on clean air, water, food, tourism and the other benefits that forests, rivers, oceans and other ecosystems provide.

Wilson can also calculate the most cost-effective way for governments to protect and restore these ecosystems.

On the island of Borneo, Wilson and her colleagues outlined how the three nations that inhabit the island could retain half the land as forest, provide adequate habitat for the orangutan and Bornean elephant, and achieve an opportunity cost savings of more than $50 billion.

Meanwhile, in Chile, Wilson and colleagues are helping to plan national park extensions that will bring recreation and access to nature to many more Chileans, while enhancing the conservation of native plants and animals.

Back home on Australia’s Gold Coast, they are helping to ensure that a multimillion-dollar local government investment in rehabilitation of degraded farmland is spent wisely – in the areas where it will have the biggest impact for the natural ecosystem and local communities.

Dr Colin Hall, Prize for New Innovators

Hall, from UniSA’s Future Industries Institute, and his team, created a process that will allow manufacturers of cars, aircraft, spacecraft and whitegoods to replace components of their products with lighter, more efficient materials.

One of the innovations was a combination of materials that bind plastic, which can then be used in a new type of car mirror that performs as well as glass and metal, for a fraction of the weight.

 Gary Tilley, Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary Schools

Tilley, a specialist science teacher at Seaforth Public School in Sydney’s Northern beaches, was awarded the honour for mentoring younger teachers and Macquarie University education students on how to teach science to primary school students.

“Communicating science, getting children inspired with science, engaging the community and scientists themselves with science to make it a better place for the kids – that’s my passion,” Tilley said.

Tilley also said, “I’ve never seen a primary school student who isn’t curious and doesn’t want to be engaged in science.” He argued you just to need to teach the teachers how to effectively engage the students.

Suzy Urbaniak, Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools

Urbaniak, a geoscientist and high-school science teacher, claimed the prize for teaching science practically, not out of a textbook. Urbaniak was a geoscientist for 30 years before becoming a science teacher at Kent Street Senior High School in Perth.

She outlined that during her school science education, all she learnt was theory. When she began teaching, she said, she realised that nothing much had changed since her school years.

“I decided then that I wanted to make a difference," she said. "I wanted to turn the classroom into a room full of young scientists, rather than students learning from textbooks. The science in my classroom is all about inquiry and investigation, giving the students the freedom to develop their own investigations and find their own solutions. I don’t believe you can teach science from worksheets and textbooks.”

NERVO, made up of 29-year-old Victorian singer-songwriter and sound engineer sisters Miriam and Olivia Nervo, produced "People Grinning" as part of Made By Me, a collaboration between a national consortium, which also includes the University of Wollongong, the University of Western Australia, the University of Queensland, Monash University, the University of Melbourne, the Australia National University and the University of Adelaide, and Engineers Australia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHejlJaxUbI&feature=youtu.be

The aim of the campaign is to challenge stereotypes, showing the relevance of engineering to all aspects of our lives in order to change people’s – especially young women’s – perception of the profession, said Dr Alexandra Bannigan, UNSW Women in Engineering manager and Made By Me spokesperson.

Bannigan explained that despite engineering being a challenging, rewarding and varied discipline, it had for decades suffered gender disparity and chronic skills shortage. In fact, a study conducted by Engineers Australia in 2012 showed of the 18,000 engineering positions needing to be filled annually, more than 65 per cent – or 12,000 engineers – come in from overseas to alleviate the shortfall.

“When people think engineering, they often picture construction sites and hard hats, that perception puts a lot of people off,” Bannigan said. “Engineering is more than that; this campaign shows how engineering is actually a really diverse and creative career option that offers strong employment prospects in an otherwise tough job market.”

She also noted the partner universities involved, who would normally vie against each other for the best students, saw the need to collaborate this time round.

“We normally compete for students with rival universities, but this is such an important issue that we’re working together to break down those perceptions,” Bannigan said.

Behind the scenes of NERVO's latest music video. Image: UNSW

Packing dance-floors across continents and, according to Forbes, one of the world’s highest-earning acts in a male-dominated genre, NERVO professed how they jumped on board when they were given the opportunity.

“When we did engineering, we were the only girls in the class. So when we were approached to get behind this project it just made sense,” they said.

Along with the music video clip, Made By Me also includes advertising across desktops and smart devices, a strong push on social media and an official website, all of which were released concomitantly.

The Sydney Conservatorium of Music (The Con), part of the University of Sydney, is set to open the musical, Odysseus Live, on Sunday. It’s the collaborative brainchild of Luka Lesson, an Australian-Greek slam poet and self-styled “conscious hip-hop artist”, US music producer Jordan Thomas Mitchell, video artist Claudia Dalimore, and The Con’s very own Dr James Humberstone, Odysseus Live’s composer and a music lecturer.

Backing this team is a 30-strong choir and 40-piece orchestra. All are students.

Humberstone told Campus Review that Odysseus Live teaches the students about blending classical musical traditions with modern genres. This is a new direction for The Con, marked by the release of its, and USYD’s, very first MOOC, which outlined the changing trends in teaching music.

“They're [the students] used to working with a composer like me who writes everything down on paper and comes into the room saying, ‘Play these notes’,” Humberstone said. “But quite often, Jordan Thomas Mitchell, the producer, especially on his tracks, would use words to describe what he was after, or he would sort of sing it. Quite often, the students improvised, composed the music themselves for the tracks, if it was better than what we had prepared or if we hadn't actually prepared anything [and] something came up. It's a much more organic sort of music experience.

“In classical music we tend to … have specific roles: the composer, the performer, the audience,” he continued. “I think in modern music-making that stuff gets mashed together and it's much more collaborative and creative.”

Students work on Odysseus Live voluntarily. It doesn’t contribute to their coursework but it gives them exposure to industry, and experience in producing a musical that has sold out. Humberstone said a representative from Apple also popped in to take a look.

Odysseus Live’s themes reflect the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe. Lesson wrote the libretto. He said he sees parallels between the Odysseus in Homer’s ancient text and the refugees of today.

“I view the Syrian refugee crisis and the struggle that people face right now as they escape war, death and tyranny as a parallel journey made by the Greek king of Ithaca, Odysseus, during the Trojan War,” Lesson said. “I see Odysseus’s battles with the giant Cyclops as a metaphor for our own struggles with dystopian governments that have a singular vision of profit over what is good for people. I also see the Sirens as the constructs in the world that are designed to distract and undermine people in their own Odyssey.”

Lolita Emmanuel, a third-year music student, one of Odysseus Live’s lead vocalists and a choir member, said the theme of displacement in the musical resonates with her. Emmanuel is of Assyrian descent. This now predominantly Christian ethnic group once established the Assyrian Empire around 25,000 BC. It was located in what is modern-day Iraq, though it included parts of what are now Turkey, Iran and Syria. Its capital was Nineveh, the same city referenced in the Bible’s Old Testament. Assyria fell in the 6th century BC, and since then its people have been absorbed by various nations and empires.

Many Assyrians migrated out of these areas during the 20th century because of persecution and upheaval, such as the Assyrian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

“As an Assyrian, the notion of displacement is very familiar to me and my community,” Emmanuel explained. “I feel like there is this constant sense of displacement in the back of our minds. After the fall of the Assyrian Empire in 612 BC, we haven't had a country to call our own. Assyrians were spread out all over the Middle East and the rest of the world. Like Odysseus, we are geographically and temporally separated from our land.

“The story of Odysseus depicts a long, dangerous journey filled with hidden obstacles, which I see reflected in the current refugee crisis. Fleeing with nothing but the clothes on your back, being separated from your family, showing up on people's doorsteps and hoping they won't turn you away. Refugees fleeing the Middle East are experiencing all this and more today.”

The brains behind Odysseus Live hope the work will be picked up nationally and internationally through orchestras and other ensembles adopting the music score to play alongside a core group of touring artists.

Rap musicals are trending lately, spurred on by the success of Hamilton, which is about US founding father Alexander Hamilton. Such was the success of this musical, it helped lead to the US Treasury reversing a decision to take Hamilton off the $10 note.

Click below to listen to "Suitors", one of the Odysseus Live tracks, written by Luka Lesson, James Humberstone and Jordan Thomas Mitchell. Performed by Luka Lesson and students of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, USYD. Audio provided by USYD.

Researchers from UNSW’s Water Research Laboratory have conducted tests examining how small and large cars behave when they go through floodwater. The tests are a world first, as previous experiments used vehicle miniatures, rather than actual cars.

A 2.5-tonne Nissan Patrol 4-wheel-drive vehicle can be rendered unstable by floodwater 45 centimetres high with a flow speed of 3.6 kilometres per hour. Once the water reaches 95 centimetres, the Patrol can completely float, and needs almost zero force to move it by hand.

A small car like a Toyota Yaris, weighing 1.05 tonnes, can be moved by water only 15 centimetres deep and with a flow speed of 3.6 kilometres per hour. It completely floats away in 60 centimetres of water.

The scientists said an able-bodied adult is more stable in floodwater than most cars.

“What was surprising was just how little water it took to make even a large vehicle unstable,” said principal engineer Grantley Smith, who led the research. “They became vulnerable to moving floodwaters once the depth reached the floor of the vehicle. Even in low water depths and slow flow speeds, floodwaters had a powerful enough force to make them float away.”

Three men died last week after being swept away while trying to drive through floodwaters in separate incidents in the Australian Capital Territory, the NSW Southern Highlands and Sydney's south-west. The NSW State Emergency Services launched more than 80 rescues of stranded cars.

“People need to rethink their actions and not drive into floodwater, because by doing this they are not only placing their lives at risk, but the lives of our volunteers who have to go out and rescue them,” said NSW SES Acting Commissioner Greg Newton. “Entering floodwater is the number one cause of death and injury in a flood, so everyone should stay out and stay alive.”

The experiments were funded by UNSW and the NSW State Emergency Service, and the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. Insurance Australia Group provided the cars.

ANU has received $7.3 million from Australian Capital Territory Health to set up Canberra Clinical Genomics. This centre will work to cure patients with complex diseases by sequencing their genome and finding treatments personalised to their condition.

Professor Matthew Cook is the new centre’s director, from ANU Medical School and the John Curtin School of Medical Research. He promised the facility's work would make a real difference to patients' lives.

“This enables doctors and researchers to collaborate to implement what is truly 21^st-century medicine,” Cook said. “It will provide a pathway for true translation of discoveries to make a meaningful difference to the management of patients.”

The new centre will also put research done by ANU’s Centre for Personalised Immunology, which studies personalising cures of immune disorders, into action.

“We are bringing the era of precision medicine to patients in the ACT for the first time ,” said professor Carola Vinuesa, co-director of the Centre for Personalised Immunology. “Patients will be diagnosed according to their genetic makeup and we will tailor a therapy to the patient’s individual genetic defect.”

AAS’s election citation – released with a list of 21 new fellows this morning – stated Finkel was elected because: “[He] has distinguished himself in Australia’s scientific and engineering community by his passion for science and engineering education at school, university and community levels, and by his creative leadership, initiatives, philanthropy and innovative scientific publishing.”

Reflecting on his election and career, Finkel summarised that the so-called "science gene" had given him a lifelong passion for his field. He is a neuroscientist and engineer.

“From my earliest days, I can remember being interested in the human body, [and] in gadgets,” Finkel continued.

Prior to his current role, Finkel was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Australian National University, before founding Axon Instruments, a science and tech start-up. He then founded science magazine COSMOS, and – along with a host of other achievements – was elected Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering president. These experiences formed his “training ground” for becoming chief scientist, Finkel said.

Finkel also said it was an honour to be elected into AAS.

“[Being elected] is also an opportunity for me as chief scientist to be engaging with like-minded scientists whose only objective is to contribute what they can to the betterment of Australia,” he said.

Joining Finkel as an elected fellow is professor Susan Scott of ANU. Scott is the first gravitational wave scientist to join AAS and earlier this year was one of a handful of Australian scientists involved in a joint international project that helped discover gravitational waves. The discovery ultimately proved Albert Einstein himself to be correct.

She said she hopes her election “will highlight our new field of gravitational wave astronomy”.

Professor Andrew Holmes, AAS president, congratulated all of the new fellows, for having each made significant and lasting impacts in their scientific disciplines. They will be admitted into AAS tomorrow, during a ceremony in Canberra.

The Australian Academy of Science is made up of about 500 leading Australian scientists. Scientists judged by their peers to have made an exceptional contribution to knowledge in their field may be elected as a Fellow. About 20 new fellows may be elected every year

All of the 2016 fellows are listed below:

•   Dr Ian Allison, University of Tasmania
•   Professor David Bellwood, James Cook University
•   Professor Benjamin Eggleton, University of Sydney
•   Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Fincher, University of Adelaide
•   Dr Alan Finkel, Office of the Chief Scientist
•   Professor Simon Foote, ANU
•   Professor Justin (John) Gooding, UNSW
•   Dr John Kirkegaard, CSIRO
•   Dr Anna Koltunow, CSIRO
•   Professor Geoffrey Lindeman, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
•   Professor Alexander McBratney, University of Sydney
•   Professor Patrick McGorry, Orygen: National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, U. of Melbourne
•   Professor Neville Nicholls, Monash University
•   Professor Stephen Nutt, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
•   Professor Sarah Robertson, University of Adelaide
•   Professor Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop, University of Queensland
•   Professor Susan Scott, Australian National University
•   Dr Daniela Stock, Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute
•   Professor Fedor Sukochev, UNSW
•   Professor Toby Walsh, UNSW
•   Professor Naomi Wray, University of Queensland

Last Friday, Turnbull and the federal minister for industry, innovation and science, Christopher Pyne, opened a quantum computing complex at UNSW in Sydney – where Turnbull praised the researchers.

We are global leaders in quantum computing – that's why we've invested $26 million in the CQC2T lab at @UNSWhttps://t.co/1f6QyP1lWK

— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) April 22, 2016

Turnbull went on to describe the research as the world’s very best and praised acclaimed team leader Michelle Simmons, director of the new complex – dubbed the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC²T).

"You're not just doing great work, Michelle, you're doing the best work in the world,” Turnbull said. "You're not just solving the computing challenges and determining the direction of computing for Australia, you are leading the world and it is a tribute to your leadership, your talent ... that you've attracted so many outstanding scientists and engineers from around the world.”

Call it coincidence – or maybe the PM oozes an innovation aura – but on this same day the team announced a breakthrough. Researchers demonstrated that a small group of atoms placed precisely in the right spots in a silicon chip can work together as a quantum simulator.

“Our success provides a route to developing new ways to test fundamental aspects of quantum physics and to design new, exotic materials – problems that would be impossible to solve even using today’s fastest supercomputers,” explained Dr Joe Salfi, lead author of the breakthrough study published in the journal Nature Communications.

“The behaviour of the electrons in the silicon chip matched the behaviour of electrons described in one of the most important theoretical models of materials that scientists rely on, called the Hubbard model,” Salfi said.

The federal government is investing heavily in Australian quantum computing development, committing $26 million last year at the announcement of its Innovation Agenda. Private investment is also significant. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Telstra have committed $10 million each.