Dr. Ilma Brewer was elected an Honorary Life Membership in recognition of her research and development activities in the teaching of science. Ilma has had a distinguished career as researcher, academic and teacher. Born in Sydney, she entered Sydney University at 16. For her work on the ecology of the central coastal area of N.S.W. she was awarded a D.Sc. at the age of 27, being only the third Australian woman to achieve this distinction. (She also achieved the distinction of having her doctoral thesis, completed in 1942, impounded by the Army for security reasons!). In 1943 she became a lecturer in Ecology. 

 Dr. Brewer married a member of General MacArthur's staff during the war and moved to the U.S.A., but returned with her husband to Sydney in 1948 where her two sons were subsequently born. 

 Dr, Brewer re-entered the academic world in 1957 as a demonstrator in Botany at Sydney University and by 1968 had been Lecturer in Charge variously of first year Botany and Biology and had thus experienced the teaching and learning problems inherent in large classes. In 1968 she was lecturing in Plant Anatomy, a second year subject, when she met Professor Samuel N. Postlethwait and immediately became fired by the possibilities of his audio-tutorial approach as an alternative to traditional learning methods. She visited him at Purdue University shortly after this, and in 1969 she persuaded the Vice Chancellor to give her a special grant for the setting up of an audio visual individualised Learning Centre in the Botany School for teaching and learning in Plant Anatomy . 

 In a short 8 weeks of very hard work, Dr. Brewer bought equipment, set it up and wrote instructional modules for the subject . This system of independent study in carrels using taped programs and a variety of visual material allowed the lecturer time for contact with students in the laboratory on their individual problems. 

 In 1972 Dr. Brewer refined this instructional system by introducing regular interactive group meetings as part of the planned learning strategy, in order to encourage students to use the material as well as acquiring knowledge. By 1974 her investigations into the teaching of the subject had extended to an evaluation of the match between the levels of cognitive abilities overtly specified in the subject and the actual requirements of the examination. This led to changes in the exams to eliminate recall, which had previously accounted for 80% of available marks, and its replacement with questions designed to test the ability of students to think critically. The result of these changes was both to increase the level of achievement of students (the failure rate fell to less than 5%) and to develop their problem solving skills. 

 Dr. Brewer retired in 1978 from her senior lecture ship in the School of Biological Sciences at Sydney University. She is currently an Honorary Research Affiliate in the Department of Anatomy and is involved in collating various aspects of the research on self-directed indepen dent study and small group teaching which has been carried out in the Audio Visual Learning Centre of the Botany Department since 1969. Her publications encompass her interests in botany, educational processes and the use of AV media. · 

 Dr. Brewer is a significant pioneer in the systematic development of individualised self directed learning at the tertiary level in this country. Her enthusiasm for what she so competently achieved in those years and her accessibility and unfailing graciousness towards the many curious and interested people who came to investigate it remain an inspiration for those of us who see themselves as stimulating educational change and for all members of HERDSA.

News for Ilma Brewer 1999

Ilma Brewer Hrna spent most of her working life in the Department of Botany at the University of Sydney . Her research concerned the ecology of coastal areas of New South Wales and now at the age of 84 she is seeking to publish some of the quantitative analyses of vegetation from her D Sc thesis (degree awarded in 1942) and in comparing the change in floristic composition of particular sites in 1941 with the current flora.

In the area of teacher and learning llma is best known for her work in establishing an audio-visual learning centre in the Botany Department at Sydney University. and she published several papers on the method she developed, known as SIMIG (Self - Instruction by Modules followed by Interaction among Groups during discussion) . There were no lectures in the programme ; students worked in carrels through a self paced audiotape with a study guide to lead them through each weekly programme combining theory with practical work. In the week following each program 8-10 students met with a tutor in a purpose built seminar room , with double projection facilities for anatomy slide transparencies, on which interactive discussion was centred. Self assessment, using procedures designed specifically to test cognitive skills beyond recall and the development of problem solving skills were highly effective and were improved each year.

In 1985 Ilma published a book ' Learning More and Teaching Less' (SRHE & NFER-Nelson, Guildford, Surrey) which would, given the present situation, bear a close examination. It seems that many of her ideas were ahead of her time. On the current state of higher education she notes with satisfaction that interactive teaching and learning has been embraced by the Botany School at Sydney University for the last thirty years.

Tribute to Ilma Brewer
by Jackie Lublin

HERDSA is saddened to record the death of Dr Ilma Brewer, 1915-2006. Ilma Brewer was a foundation member of HERDSA, and was made an Honorary Life Member of this Association in 1999. Such was her eminence in her field that her passing was marked with an obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald on January 24, 2007, which noted her extraordinary achievements in her discipline of botany and also noted her innovative approaches to teaching in that discipline.

Ilma Brewer was a Renaissance person: she was a brilliant botanist who began study at Sydney University in 1932 ("when few women studied science" as the obituary noted). She finished a Master's degree in 1936, held a Linnaean Macleay Fellowship between 1937 and 1941, and was awarded the highly prestigious degree of Doctor of Science in 1942 for her work on plant succession on Sydney sandstone and the coastal dunes. During the war she worked with Army Intelligence in mapping coastal vegetation in NSW. In 1943 she married an American officer, and went to live in USA in 1945.

She returned to teaching at Sydney University's Botany School in 1957 as a part-time demonstrator, and subsequently became a temporary lecturer, temporary senior tutor, lecturer in Botany/Biology in 1963, and Senior Lecturer in Biological Sciences in 1970. In 1978 she retired from the university.

Her return to teaching in the late 50s coincided with the discussion and development in UK and USA of some exciting new directions in university teaching and learning. These included the use of educational technology as teaching adjuncts like audio-visual aids, tape-slide machines, CCTV lectures and even the overhead projector. Of more profound importance were the possibilities of self-instruction and self-pacing for the development of independence and mastery in learning (I remember the exhilaration of reading Keller's "Goodbye Teacher" (1) and wondering how we could persuade staff to give it a try), the specification of levels of cognitive skills by Bloom (2), and the use of small groups for discussion and learning rather than for mini-lecturing. All of this was encapsulated by Ilma when she asked "How ... can students be encouraged to develop higher order skills, to think for themselves, and to adopt a critical approach to learning? The challenge should be presented by those who teach them" (3). Finding conventional teaching inadequate, she rose to the challenge of teaching Plant Anatomy by devising a can-el-based, selfpaced, audio-visual teaching laboratory in which students worked in weekly sessions in their own time· and at their own pace, and which was supplemented by structured small group tutorials held at the end of each week. This she called the SIMIG model - Self-Instruction by Modules followed by Interaction among Groups.

SIMIG was implemented in 1969. After her retirement in1978 Ilma wrote a book "Learning more and teaching less: A decade of innovation in self-instruction and small group learning"( 4) which was an account of ten years of SIMIG and which reveals just how forward-thinking she was about how students learn and what they should be able to do with that learning; she showed, for instance, how during those ten years she was able to improve student learning and consequently deliberately raise the cognitive levels of exam questions i.e. by eliminating those questions which only required recall and by increasing the number of questions requiring analysis, synthesis and problem-solving abilities.

Her humanity, patience and empathy with students and her dedication to the improvement of teaching and learning are clearly seen in the book, which is primarily a description of an exciting innovation in teaching and learning rather than a piece of educational research; writing in 1985 she said "Perhaps the best testimony to the acceptability in the department of the course is that it has survived virtually unchanged since I retired from teaching at the end of 1978" (5). It is now more than 20 years since she wrote that, so perhaps the most impressive tribute to Ilma Brewer as an educational thinker is that her ideas and principles still continue to inform the present-day teaching of Plant Form and Function in the School of Biological Sciences at Sydney University. In the AV Laboratory (during Ilma's time known to students as "The Brewery") the caITels remain but the technology has been updated e.g. carrels still have microscopes but they now also have computer screens and interactive programs rather than audio tapes and work books; there is now an online interactive program for individual revision, not a tape-slide program; students as individuals still undertake the weekly sessions in their own time , and weekly HERDSA NEWS m September 2007 ~ By Jackie Lublin tutorials are still held. The possibilities of the new technologies are awesome for all of us in the way they are changing our conceptions of teaching and learning and the ways by which these are mediated, so I believe it is a great tribute to Ilma Brewer that the new teaching technologies have supplemented, not supplanted, the enlightened approach of SIMIG. A more formal tribute to her concern with student learning is the annual Ilma Brewer Prize, awarded to a first-class honours student in botany at Sydney University.

So, she was a remarkable person; she was described in the SMH obituary as "attractive, vivacious and stylish" when she manied Dick Brewer in 1943. I met her in the '70s when I was a junior member of HERDSA, and remember her vividly as charming, interested and helpful (and beautifully dressed). While she is to be admired as an outstanding scientist, it is fitting that HERDSA should also honour her as one of those fortunate teachers who grasped early on that student learning is the goal of teaching, and who had the interest and ability to apply the insights of the self-instructional and small-group movements to her own teaching.

References

1. Keller, F. S. (1968). Goodbye Teacher. Journal of Applied Behavioural Analysis, 1, 79-89.
2. Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: 1 Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay.
3. Brewer, I. M. (1985) . Learning more and teaching less: A decade of innovation in self-instruction and small group learning (p. 3). Guildford: SRHE & NFER-NELSON.
4. op cit.
5. op cit p. 7.

 I would like to thank Professor Robyn Overall, School of Biological Sciences, Sydney University, for her help in demonstrating how the present-day AV Laboratory continues Ilma Brewer's SIMIG concept and practice.

Jackie Lublin is a past President of HERDSA and has been a life member since 1999.She retired from higher education ten years ago when she was Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Sydney.