Dr Stacey Ward is the recipient of a 2022 Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence (Early Career)

Dr Stacey Ward's passion for teaching creates a supportive learning environment for her students. Dr Ward’s students feel inspired by her and consider being in her classroom a “valuable experience”.

“I believe in the power of education and learning,” Dr Ward said. As a lecturer in Biological Anthropology, Stacey leads the delivery of courses on human skeletal analysis in the School of Archaeology & Anthropology. For her teaching efforts, she received a CASS Award for Teaching Excellence (Early Career) in 2021 and was further recognised in 2022 with a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence (Early Career).

“It has been an incredibly humbling experience and I feel privileged to have received these awards,” Dr Ward said.

Stacey’s inspirations include her former teachers, who created a positive learning environment with their innovative approaches to classroom teaching.

“My Year 8 teacher used an unusual approach that emphasised collaborative, self-directed learning and gave the students the freedom to explore things for themselves. I loved being in his class and so I try to bring a similar approach to my classroom,” Dr Ward said.

“In an interactive and collaborative learning environment, students learn from each other by discussing and sharing knowledge. This sharing process also helps them to refine knowledge and identify any gremlins in their understanding.”

Dr Ward advises students to not be afraid to make mistakes, as mistakes are a good learning process.

“Today’s students have grown up seeing everyone’s supposedly ‘perfect’ lives on social media. These carefully curated images create pressure on students to try and be perfect too. Learning doesn’t fit with this perfection though, as it’s a messy process and you’re bound to get things wrong. This can be confronting for lots of people, but sometimes, making mistakes is the best way to learn,” Dr Ward said.

For Dr Ward, creating a safe learning environment where everyone’s opinions are respected and valued is crucial for supporting ‘messy’ learning.

Dr Ward’s passion for education has extended into her research. She, along with Dr Katharine Balolia and Associate Professor Laura Wilson, have recently published the preliminary results of an ongoing, CASS-supported study exploring the effectiveness of online practical learning in biological anthropology.

“Our preliminary results indicate that although students feel that they learn less online, they actually learn the same amount as they do in person,” Dr Ward said. These results suggest online labs may be an effective way to provide practical training to students.

Read the inspiring stories of 2022 Vice-Chancellor Awards winners currently on an exhibit in the RSSS foyer until 11 August.

Written by Neha Attre