The Australian Association of Writing Programs

I am writing to request assistance from my AAWP colleagues.

CHASS (Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences) meet in Brisbane on October 7th, for a full day workshop on the implementation and design of ERA (Excellence in Research, Australia) mark 2. As members of Creative Industries Disciplines it can be said that we achieved numerous gains under ERA mark 1 with creative works deemed research outputs for ERA quantification measurement. Yet there were also some unexpected consequences with Management selectively weighting the results to ensure best Higher Education Research rankings for funding. Whilst the ERA was set-up to avoid the compilation of defacto League Tables, this is precisely how it was used, and without detailed discussion prior to the design of the new phase of ERA "our"discipline remains at risk.

With the removal of journal rankings as metrics within ERA, and a possibility of the new Excellence indicator metric open to customised weightings, the Humanities and Social Science Disciplines are open to being neglected and mis-represented in terms of our research expertise, particularly practic-led research, artistic practice and qualitative research.

With discussion papers on the new weightings for research excellence and the formula for calcultaing the Ei, expected at DIISR By September 28th, at CAPA we have applied to have an extended time frame to respond as to how these changes will impact on our Postgraduate students across all disciplines. Thus for my attendance at CHASS in Brisbane to be of optimin use, I need solid evidence of what indeed happened under the ERA mark 1. 

Our discipline of Creative Writing is an excellent case-study for all humanities disciplines in that much of our research needs to have an Australian focus and expertise, and as such can contribute to the National and International pedagogical and theoretical discussions, yet we cannot achieve the highest metrics reliant on influential International publications and high citation rates common to STEM discipline research outputs. We cannot compete on Competitive Grant revenue as an indicator of research excellence or capacity.

I am personally asking all members of AAWP to volunatrily spend 10 minutes completing this brief exploratory questionnaire for my preparation for CHASS, Brisbane and my presentation on ERA mark 1 to ERA mark 2, at the International Conference on the Book in Toronto the following week.

Every respondent is saved as a unique indicator ID which cannot be retraced to the respondent or their Institution, thus responses are completely anonymous. The survey is being run in accordance with NMHRC Ethics standards and criteria, as CAPA, like ACER, LH Martin Institute and other associations and organisations are covered by Australian research best-practice. Surveys will be stored under password controlled and encrypted data storage and will be destroyed after the 20th October, 2011.

As the researcher I have completed through Swinburne e-learning the Information Privacy Awareness Certificate. I can be contacted should you have any queries as to the use of this data and I will be happy to provide feedback on what is the focus of discussions in our workshop group and Plenary session at CHASS, Brisbane, 2011. 
Thank you for your urgent attention to this matter
Yours
Carol-Anne Croker, .
cacroker@gmail.com

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