Dr Deanna Meth

Academic Division,
Education Portfolio,
Curriculum Design Studios
Biography
Deanna is a Senior Lecturer, Curriculum & Learning Design in the Learning & Teaching Unit at QUT. While new to an academic role in 2019, she has over 20 years’ experience leading and supporting strategic developments related to learning, teaching and research at universities in Australia, U.K. and South Africa. This is evidenced through her recognition as Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2017. In this capacity, she has also acted as mentor and reviewer for applicants to the scheme, locally, nationally and internationally.Deanna’s experiences have translated into a wide range of research interests spanning higher education policy analysis, curriculum development and student engagement across institutional ecologies. This is exemplified in her 2016 doctoral thesis “Questioning the machine: academics’ perceptions of tensions and trade-offs in undergraduate education at one English university”.
Since joining QUT in 2018, Deanna has collaborated with Design academics to establish a program of research linked to the roll-out of the new Bachelor of Design degree (launched 2019). With a host of sub-projects, the research has yielded rich data on transdisciplinary design education, student partnerships, authentic learning, and exploring the digital-analogue divide in design visualisation and design graduate portfolios. Most notably, in-depth research on the global award-winning Impact Lab suite of transdisciplinary design units, People, Place, Planet and Purpose, has allowed for consideration and critique of notions of ‘impact’ in design education, and the critical role designers might play in collaborating to solve complex 21st century challenges concerning, for example, poverty, climate change and global health.
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Personal details
Positions
- Senior Lecturer, Curriculum & Learning Design
Academic Division,
Education Portfolio,
Curriculum Design Studios
Keywords
curriculum, higher education policy, discourse analysis, design education, transdisciplinary education, education for sustainability, digital learning, partnerships
Discipline
Curriculum and Pedagogy, Other Built Environment and Design, Specialist Studies in Education
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2008
Qualifications
- EdD (University of Sheffield)
- MSc(Geology) (University of Natal)
Professional memberships and associations
Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA)
Associate Fellow (Indigenous) of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA, Indigenous)
Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) member
Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) member
Selected publications
- Meth D, Thomson S, Brough D, (2021) Design Curricula: Navigating Process and People. In A Blackler & E Miller, How to be a Design Academic: From Learning to Leading, CRC Press, pp. 245-268.
- Lane M, Meth D, (2021) Exploring impacts on students as givers of teaching feedback, Quality Assurance in Education, 29 (2-3), pp. 225-237.
- Meth D, Russell H, Fitzgerald R, Huijser H, (2020) Enabling Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Activities Across a Curriculum Design Framework: A Lever for Faculty Engagement. In RC Plews & ML Amos, Evidence-Based Faculty Development Through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), IGI Global, pp. 347-364.
- Fitzgerald R, Huijser H, Meth D, Neilan K, (2020) Student-staff partnerships in academic development: the course design studio as a model for sustainable course-wide impact, International Journal for Academic Development, 25 (2), pp. 134-146.
- Meth D, Finger M, Brough D, (2020) The Graduate Professional Portfolio as 'synergy tool': navigating the complex role of portfolios in future-focused design education, Proceedings of DRS 2020 Synergy: Volume 4 Education, 4, pp. 1803-1816.
- Meth D, (2018) All-singing, all-dancing experiences? Interrogating the discourse of transformation in undergraduate education, Research and Development in Higher Education: (Re)Valuing Higher Education, 41, pp. 151-161.
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Deanna, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).