The Practice orientated education nexus : 'ivory tower' meets practitioners in 'muddy trenches' - mentoring industry practitioners in developing assessment for postgraduate programs

The Postgraduate Maintenance Management Programs at Central Queensland University are offered in a flexible mode of delivery to domestic and international students. Almost all of our lecturers are active practitioners in the Maintenance Management field and bring an experienced and cutting edge profile to the delivery of our programs to our students. The introduction of the Blackboard 6.2TM software platform has required the lecturers, who are not qualified educators, to achieve a greater understanding of the complexities of educational delivery and the necessities to map assessment criteria to learning objectives to delivery practices. Industry based students are being provided with the experience of learning in a range of environments such as studying in a virtual mode as individuals, in virtual groups and through residential schools and using paper-based materials. Lecturers are mentored through face-to-face and teleconferenced meetings to equip them with the necessary skills to meet these requirements. The success of the strategy has been that students are being provided with a more interactive and interesting learning environment which has been achieved in a virtual group dynamic and involves their critiquing and being more active in sharing their experiences and participating in their learning.