ACICIS receives a 2008 ALTC Award

The Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC, formerly known as the Carrick Institute) has announced that the Australian Consortium for 'In-Country' Indonesian Studies (ACICIS) has been selected to receive a 2008 "Australian Award for University Teaching" as a Program that Enhances Learning.

The award acknowledges achievements in the category Educational Partnerships and Collaborations with Other Organisations.

These awards recognise learning and teaching support programs and services that make an outstanding contribution to the quality of student learning and the quality of the student experience of higher education. The programs and services that receive these awards must have demonstrated their effectiveness through rigorous evaluation and will set benchmarks for similar activities in other institutions.

ACICIS has grown into an international consortium of 19 Australian universities together with the University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies), Leiden University in the Netherlands, and the Asia New Zealand Foundation.

The small group of ACICIS part-time and full-time staff in Australia and Indonesia have displayed the highest level of dedication to ensuring that our programs are engaging and supportive of all student participants.

The Award will be presented at a formal ceremony to be held at Parliament House, Canberra, on Tuesday, 25 November 2008.

See Murdoch University announcement.

Application Synopsis

The Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies (ACICIS) is an innovative national educational partnership involving collaboration between 21 member universities in Australia, the UK and the Netherlands, working with a broad range of partner universities in Indonesia. Via ACICIS students from any member university may enhance their educational experience through in-country studies in Indonesia. Options extend well beyond simply studying Indonesian language, and include unique programs in Islamic business, Arts, a Journalism Professional Practicum, a supervised Field Study semester, together with regular courses taught in Indonesian across all disciplines at our partner universities.

A non-profit consortium, ACICIS has the very clear and specific objective of maximising opportunities for Australian students to undertake quality semester-long, in-country study at Indonesian universities, credited to their home university degree. ACICIS provides an academically rigorous, organisationally streamlined, and pedagogically sound mechanism for the coordination, implementation and reflexive evaluation of such in-country study.

Instead of individual universities expending considerable (scarce) staff time and resources in an effort to manage Indonesia placements for their own students, through ACICIS these universities collaborate in offering a well-supported common conduit for their students to study in Indonesia. ACICIS employs a dedicated Australian academic as Resident Director in Indonesia to provide pastoral, academic and administrative support for students. The quality of ACICIS study programs is a powerful endorsement of the benefit of collaboration above competition. By working together, drawing upon Indonesianist skills in universities across the country collectively, ACICIS provides the best possible experience for students from around Australia, irrespective of their home university.

The Consortium was established to overcome the substantial linguistic, academic, bureaucratic, and immigration impediments that had prevented Australian students from undertaking credited semester study in Indonesian universities. Prior to ACICIS, virtually no Australian student had ever undertaken such study.

With the support and collaboration of organisations such as the Myer Foundation, Australia-Indonesia Institute, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, International Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies, and a variety of Indonesian community organisations, ACICIS has now facilitated more than 1100 student-semesters in Indonesian universities with participants from more than 30 universities since 1995. Anonymous end-of-semester surveys of student satisfaction are routinely in the high 90s with some semesters achieving 100% satisfaction levels. Endorsements by hundreds of past students attest to the life-changing impact of the ACICIS experience in enhancing student learning, building new cross-institutional social networks, and fostering intercultural understandings, while optimising career trajectories.