My name is Damien Clark, and I am a Lecturer in Academic Professional Development – a lecture the lecturer role of sorts – with the Central Learning and Teaching Services (LTS) Unit at CQUniversity Australia.
My professional journey commenced in the Information Technology industry working for a government agency after completing a bachelor degree in computer science at Central Queensland University in 1996. I had a variety of responsibilities including system administration, desktop support, and development and delivery of classroom training for staff in the use of desktop software.
I then accepted a position with CQU within the Faculty of Informatics and Communication as a systems administrator in 2000. In 2002, I designed and built CQU’s first high performance computing facility – an 86 node Linux cluster running MOSIX, ranked 3rd in Queensland for its processing capability. I maintained this facility until 2007. During my appointment, I was also a part-time lecturer for a faculty undergraduate course in System Administration.
After working two years for CQU, I then applied for a tenured position as an academic and was appointed as an Associate Lecturer. I taught a variety of IT courses in areas such as System Administration, Networking, and Security in both undergraduate and postgraduate awards. In the meantime, I completed a masters degree in computer science at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) and was promoted to Lecturer. Part of my masters degree was the completion of a research dissertation. My dissertation involved the creation of an extension to an industry specification for describing online computer quiz question banks. Refer to my publications page for full details of my research. It was at this point, that my interest in the marrying of technology and education developed.
After working full-time as an academic with the faculty for 5 years, in 2007 I accepted a position with LTS (formerly Division of Teaching & Learning Services – DTLS) in my present role, with a special interest in E-Learning based on my previous research activities.
Not the traditional beaten track to be sure, with no formal training or qualifications in Education. Nevertheless, since working in this role, I have learned a great deal about education, and combine this with my background in IT to assist academic staff through professional development activities. These includes formal teaching into the University’s Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Education course available for free to all CQU academic staff, and more specialised workshops according to the needs of different work areas of the University.
I have contributed to a range of educational technologies initiatives at CQU, in conjunction with a number of colleagues. These include:
- Graduate Attributes (GA) Mapping System
- Self and Peer Assessment (SPA) – Questionnaire System
- Early Alerts Student Indicators (EASI) System – Predictive Analytics
- Moodle Activity Viewer (MAV) – Heat maps in Moodle for Teacher Reflective Practice
Damien Clark M. Comp (USQ), B. Comp (CQU)
Damo's World 