Simon Bedford's Profile

Simon Bedford’s passion for curriculum transformation comes from his life-long belief in supporting students to create their own roadmap through courses of study that too often contain knowledge that is large and nebulous but, has to be learned in order for students to be successful in their chosen discipline area. Simon engaged in collaborative curriculum design and development practice during his time at The University of Bath (UK) as a Director of Teaching where he encouraged the adoption of a holistic course approach to student learning with constructive alignment at its foundation. Here he was able to lead a curriculum embedded approach to work integrated learning (WIL) and personal and professional development (PDP) that students require to become the professionals of the future. This is also where his interest in assessment and feedback and quality assurance was sown during his work on the new framework for assessment policy (NFA). This focus continued at the University of Wollongong (AUS) where as head of curriculum design and development he led on key learning, teaching and curriculum policy reviews, their successful deployment into teaching practice, and evidencing that impact on the student learning experience by developing near synchronous Learning Analytics and post-declaration Data for QA methods. Simon Bedford now leads the Learning Transformations Team contribution to Western Sydney University 21st Century Curriculum project and the collaborative delivery of new staff development programs to support the design and implementation of that curriculum with in new technology enabled learning spaces. As a researcher in the field of higher education, Simon currently supervises HDR students all drawing on a range of conceptual frameworks, methodologies and methods in the arears of learning analytics, assessment literacy’s, and curriculum design. He has helped to drive several national projects including Institutional External Referencing of Assessment Standards (ERoS), OLT Inter-institutional collaboration through delivering formative assessment in large STEM classes, and OLT Assessing Assessments against threshold learning outcomes. Simon is leader of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) group looking at assessment quality and is working with Council of Australasian University Leaders in Learning and Teaching (CAULLT) on a national peer review of assessments project. He has been recognised for his achievements with Vice Chancellor Outstanding contributions to learning and teaching, and Australian Awards for University teaching (AAUT).