Year
2024Credit points
10Campus offering
No unit offerings are currently available for this unitPrerequisites
THMM513 Mission: Transforming the World AND THMM502 Interpreting the Bible for Leadership and Mission AND THMM512 Theology for the Future: Reimagining Leadership
Teaching organisation
This unit involves 150 hours of focused learning. Participants will take part in weekly online scheduled and interactive meetings with the course instructors and other course participants to be mentored in the professional skills of preparing and presenting at a public academic seminar. The unit will culminate in a public academic seminar at which the participants will present their vision of leadership for mission and receive feedback from women who are leading in mission.
Unit rationale, description and aim
Current research indicates the importance of bringing women’s experiences to visibility and affirming women as creative and authoritative. [1]
This final unit of the Leadership for Mission program assists participants to integrate their learning across the units of the course, drawing on the course materials and dialogue among participants to express their personal vision of leadership for mission. It provides participants with the opportunity to present their vision of women leading mission today to peers and to an audience at an academic seminar. It will engage participants in experiential learning regarding professional practice related to seminar presentations and encourage and facilitate their on-going contribution to mission conversations.
The aim of this unit is to help make visible women's experiences and thinking about leading for mission and to facilitate their contributions to creative and responsible dialogue within and beyond Church. The unit also enables women to develop constructive networks and relationships for mission beyond the course.
[1] Nicola Slee. Women's faith development: Patterns and processes. Oxon; N.Y.: Routledge, 2021.
Learning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
| Learning Outcome Number | Learning Outcome Description |
|---|---|
| LO1 | Participants will develop the professional skills associated with presenting at an academic seminar or a comparable professional context. |
| LO2 | Participants will demonstrate the capacity to engage in dialogue and academic discourse concerning mission. |
| LO3 | Participants will articulate a vision for women leading in mission today and in the future that is embedded in the commitments of each woman and engages their experience with scholarship in the fields of mission, biblical studies, theology, and leadership together with learning from dialogue with peers. |
| LO4 | Elicit and use feedback from learning partners to reflect on their learning and to build their understanding of their presentation topic. |
Content
Topics will include:
1. Identifying a topic from fields of mission, biblical studies, theology, and leadership together with learning from dialogue with peers.
2. Researching and preparing a proposal for a seminar presentation.
3. Protocols and etiquette for participating in academic seminars.
4. What makes a good theology seminar presentation?
5. Structuring and researching a seminar presentation.
6. Personalised feedback on draft presentations from peers and instructors.
7. Reflecting on feedback received at a seminar.
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
This unit involves 150 hours of focused learning. The purpose of the teaching approaches used in this unit is to scaffold a progressive sequence of learning activity which supports participants’ integration of their learning throughout the course in a personal vision of leadership for mission. The 150 hour total includes presentation at a face to face or online public seminar, scheduled online sessions, and asynchronous online learning. The remaining hours involve reading, research, and other preparatory tasks for assessment such as consultations with the lecturer-in-charge.
Participants will form a learning community that will support one another to reflect critically on experience in dialogue with scholarship, faith sources, and one another to articulate and present their vision of women leading mission today at a face to face or online seminar. Critical and reflective thinking as well as collaborative and peer learning are also emphasised. These strategies help ensure learning that is interactive and, at the same time, critically meaningful and relevant for the participants.
The unit utilises this strategy because a key task of leadership is the articulation of vision and mission. This strategy aims at facilitating participants' appropriation of unit content in relation to their own learning needs and personal growth. As a result, this strategy generates readiness for personal engagement and meaningful impact in leadership for mission.
Assessment strategy and rationale
In order to pass this unit, participants must submit all assessment tasks and achieve a grade of Pass (50% or higher) for each of them.
The assessment tasks for this unit are designed to allow participants to demonstrate achievement of each learning outcome.
Task 1 requires participants to develop a proposal for a seminar presentation. This task enables participants to provide evidence towards the achievement of LO1.
Task 2 requires participants to make a presentation at an academic seminar, providing further evidence of the achievement of LO1. It requires critical reflection and communication skills and provides evidence of the achievement of LO2 and LO3.
Task 3 requires participants to prepare a critical reflection engaging with feedback on their presentation. It will provide evidence of the achievement of LO1, LO2, LO3 and LO4.
Overview of assessments
| Brief Description of Kind and Purpose of Assessment Tasks | Weighting | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|
Task 1. Proposal or creative statement (1,500 words) Prepare a proposal or creative statement for a presentation at a seminar. | 40% | LO1 |
Task 2. Presentation Make a presentation articulating a vision for women’s leadership for mission today. | 50% | LO1, LO2 |
Task 3. Critical Reflection (500 words or 5-minute multimedia presentation) Critical reflection on feedback from seminar participants on one’s presentation and consideration of further ways of engaging in mission. The reflection will indicate how the presentation could be amended to respond to questions or critiques and improved in the light of insights received. | 10% | LO1, LO2, LO3 |
Representative texts and references
Adeney, Frances. Women and Christian Mission: Ways of Knowing and Doing Theology. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2015.
Cornish, Sandie and Andrea Dean (eds). Still Listening to the Spirit: Woman and Man Twenty Years Later. Alexandria, NSW: Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, 2019.
Gibson, Poppy and Coombes, Samuel. “Confronting the impostor: the role of conference presentation for confidence building in academics,” Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol 13, No 2, 2020.
Golash-Boza, Tanya. “6 Tips for Giving a Fabulous Academic Presentation”, The Wiley Network, https://www.wiley.com/en-us/network/publishing/research-publishing/writing-and-conducting-research/6-tips-for-giving-a-fabulous-academic-presentation 11 January 2022.
Graham, Elaine L., and Heather Walton. Theological Reflection: Methods. Second edition. London: SCM Press, 2019.
Harrison, Simon. “Showing as Sense-Making in Oral Presentations: The Speech-Gesture-Slide Interplay in TED Talks by Professor Brian Cox.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 53 (2021): 101002–.
Mount, Katherine. “Planning and Presenting at Academic Conferences”, Sage Research Methods ND https://methods.sagepub.com/video/planning-and-presenting-at-academic-conferences-introduction
Nicola Slee. Women's faith development: Patterns and processes. Oxon; N.Y.: Routledge, 2021
University of Melbourne. “What is an Abstract?” ND https://students.unimelb.edu.au/academic-skills/resources/essay-writing/writing-an-abstract
________. “Presenting at Conferences” ND https://students.unimelb.edu.au/academic-skills/resources/graduate-research/presenting-at-conferences