HERDSA in Print

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An early priority of the newly founded Society was to produce a newsletter which would be distributed to all HERDSA members soon after the election of the first HERDSA Executive in 1973.

Peter Blizard, who worked with newly elected HERDSA President Fred Katz in Tertiary Education Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, edited the initial newsletter. The newsletter format was based on the AVCC newsletter produced by Kol Star. The first issue was largely written by Fred Katz to introduce the Society to its members. That included an explanation of how a society dedicated to the study of higher education and to the facilitation of improvements in university teaching could help to ensure that those involved in colleges of advanced education, universities, and teachers colleges would have opportunities to participate in meeting the challenges the sector was facing.

Anthony Dare was elected onto the HERDSA Executive as the inaugural editor of the HERDSA Newsletter. He was able to fill the first 4 issues of the newsletter with a backlog of material from Barbara Falk, Norm Henry and Jackie Lublin on themes like participation, colleges, and research. The newsletter then centred its reporting on the HERDSA conference which was to become the preeminent event of the society. 


HERDSA Newsletter edited by Anthony Dare pictured in a meeting at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1976.
Source: RMIT University Archives

In 1976, Peter Sheldrake at Flinders University took over as editor and began experimenting with new cover designs and introducing regular contributors to the newsletter. Bob Cannon suggested to Peter that abstracts of research papers would be a useful regular section of the newsletter, as abstracts were not yet a common feature of journal articles. As there were so few journal articles in higher education with abstracts, Bob believed writing their abstracts would give him confidence that he had read just about everything published on higher education in the English-speaking world.


HERDSA Newsletter edited by Peter Sheldrake pictured in 1970s Source: Flinders University Archives

David Boud joined the HERDSA Executive in 1977 when he moved to the Tertiary Education Research Centre at UNSW. It was suggested to Dave that the Executive was looking for a new Editor of the newsletter and he agreed to take on the role. His first decision as editor was to change the format and to name the publication HERDSA News. Dave was very clear that HERDSA News was not for the publication of academic research and he introduced the editorial to direct readers attention to issues for higher education that came up from time to time. The primary aim for HERDSA News was to disseminate ideas and information on interesting ideas in teaching and learning in higher education. This was only possible because there was less of a focus on publishing in journals at the time. Disciplinary-based academics saw HERDSA News as a way of announcing what they were doing in higher education and getting an interesting innovation better known.

Mike Prosser sees HERDSA News as an opinion journal rather than a research journal. He says it is quite important to have a place where people can write an opinion informed by the literature. From working with people in the disciplines who were getting started in the scholarship of teaching Mike was feeling quite strongly about the issue of generic attributes and he through it was important to present his opinions on these in HERDSA News.


HERDSA News edited by David Boud. David''s photo source: UNSW Archives

In 1981 Dave Boud introduced the idea of having a Guest Editor for one issue of HERDSA News. The first Guest Editor was Brad Imrie who selected articles concentrating on New Zealand contributions.


HERDSA News edited by Brad Imrie Brad's photo source: Upper Hut archive

HERDSA News also included inserts that were mailed to members. This included the report from the AGM and the newsletter from the Special Interest Group on Individual Instruction. Dave Boud was happy to support any enthusiastic group who wanted to promote their ideas, which is what he thought HERDSA News was for.

In 1986 David Boud invited Peggy Nightingale to be the Guest Editor of an issue on student writing. Peggy demonstrated that she had a flair for editing, and she was asked to stay on as HERDSA News editor. Peggy took HERDSA News into a new direction with the aim of publishing articles that were research-based, but very practical for real life teachers in real life classrooms. Peggy Nightingale was herself becoming increasingly interested in gender bias in the classroom after coming across research studies that showed that bias impacted on female students in higher education as much as it did in school. She used her editorials to call for issues that impact women to be identified and discussed in HERDSA News, encouraging others to use HERDSA News as a platform to debate how academic achievement and engagement is different for female students.


HERDSA News edited by Peggy Nightingale Peggy's photo source: UNSW archives

After five years as HERDSA News editor Peggy Nightingale stepped down and Margaret Buckridge became its new editor. Like Peggy, Margaret was an English literature major who was working at the Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching supporting the School of Humanities at Griffith University.


HERDSA News edited by Margaret Buckridge Margaret's photo source: Griffith University archive

In 1995 Alison VIskovic joined the HERDSA Executive and took over as HERDSA News editor from Margaret Buckridge whose five-year term had come to an end. Alison brought in a designer and changed the layout of the newsletter that had remained the same since 1978 when David Boud became editor. Alison had just got HERDSA News started on a new direction when she found it too difficult to juggle work and the editor's role, and felt she was not able to do justice to the work required by HERDSA News .


New look HERDSA News edited by Alison Viskovic. Source: Alison's photo Massey University Archives

In 1996 Roger Landbeck retired from his position as Director of the Centre for Advancing Learning and Teaching at the University of the South Pacific and Alison passed the new look HERDSA News over to him a year later. Roger’s goal was to create a stable of regular contributors to HERDSA News. He had got to know Bob Cannon when Bob was establishing an academic development unit at the University of Indonesia. Through their shared experiences, Roger suggested to Bob that there was space in HERDSA News for a regular column about working on academic development overseas. Bob was inspired by some of the writings of John Powell who was a renowned humourist capable of delivering a sober academic message in a humorous way. Inspired by John Powell's 'Browsings' written for the early editions of HERD, Bob decided to make HERDSA News his creative outlet and produce a short set of humours pieces that he called ‘Meanderings’. The articles were not always taken in the spirit in which they were written, with one article about the proliferation of acronyms in higher education research leading to complaints that required intervention by the HERDSA President.


HERDSA News edited by Roger Landbeck

An index of almost 20 years of articles published in HERDSA News was created by Alan Prosser in 2000 and published on the HERDSA web site.

In 2001 Roger Landbeck wanted to showcase the warm connections that New Zealand had with HERDSA and dedicated an issue of HERDSA News to research in New Zealand. Pip Bruce Ferguson was asked contacted possible contributors as Chair of HERDSA New Zealand and wrote an introduction describing the challenging context within which New Zealand higher education researchers were working.

Maureen Bell started contributing to HERDSA News because it was a place where she could publish material that would never get into a peer-reviewed journal. Maureen had been working on a research and development project at the Royal University of Bhutan and HERDSA News was a place where she could let people know about her project along with making observations about the Bhutanese higher education system. Roger Landbeck liked Maureen's articles and invited her onto the HERDSA News Committee. Maureen had a lot of experience writing educational resources in the NSW Department of Education and had produced a newsletter to keep teaching staff in New South Wales schools in touch. With her keen eye for typographic errors, Maureen was happy to support Roger with editing future editions of HERDSA News.

Maureen Bell took over the editorship of HERDSA News in 2014. The new-look magazine comprised a stable of regular contributors on policy and perspectives, Articles were written about the HERDSA community, including the Executive, HERDSA Branches, Fellows, and Members. The Showcase section was a space for HERSDA members to report on their projects and activities.


The magazine style HERDSA News with Maureen Bell

In 2018 Maureen Bell replaced HERDSA News with HERDSA Connect. In keeping with the name change HERDSA Connect aimed to inspire members and non-members to become involved with the HERDSA community by celebrating HERDSA's achievements in research, development, and higher education practice. HERDSA Connect continued the tradition of providing opportunities for members to build their academic profile by informing the field about activities that might not be published in peer reviewed journals. Articles could be written by anyone interested in furthering the HERDSA mission with most of the feature articles coming from member and non-member thought-leaders.


The final issue of HERDSA Connect was published in 2023 after more than 50 years of keeping HERDSA members informed of HERDSA activities.