Understanding Teaching, Learning and/or Assessment Processes

I was teaching for fifteen years before I started my current role as Learning Technologist, during that time I also completed a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education. One example I highlight here is the use of the ‘Workshop’ Moodle module that I developed in my previous role.

There is an increased awareness of the limitations of the conventional lecture-based format, and how a variety of e-learning opportunities can improve the teaching and learning experience in further education. Blended learning that combines the traditional face-to-face lecture and tutorial format with a variety of other modalities to enhance the learning experience are said to increase engagement, motivation and accessibility for a diverse student population. Virtual learning environments (VLEs) and educational apps are providing an increasingly rich toolbox for educators to enhance their blended learning offerings and engage with students on multiple levels. The lockdown has increased awareness and ability to delivery this mode of learning and I discuss an example of this below also.

Since working as a Learning Technologist, I have learnt about and come to appreciate the student-centred ABC Learning Design that foregrounds experiential and practical learning. In my previous role, I worked with colleagues to adapt the learning design wheel to our College’s context – I have referred to this the 'Communication and Working with Others' section.

Description

For a Masters class I pioneered an application of the ‘Workshop’ Moodle module to enable online anonymised student peer-reviewed exercises that improve preparation, peer learning, and self-assessment skills for a Masters class. I was invited to produce a training video for the Arts Faculty at Monash University (below).

Students were asked to write 3-400 words in response to a question that related an academic reading to a news item, and then anonymously assess three other students’ responses. The criteria were clearly explained before they started the assignment, and were available via dropdown menus in the assessment section. There were six of these spread through the semester (avoiding weeks where other assignments were due), and the four best scores were retained for the final grade.

Flipped Learning

Flipped learning is a form of blended learning that reverses the usual sequence of in-class content delivery followed by at home application exercises and uses additional media to deliver interactive and compelling content to stimulate student interest and address a variety of student learning types. Its most simple format is to provide an asynchronous video lecture online and then use the synchronous in-person time to carry out practical applications and answer questions.

The development of skills by lecturers during lockdown has made this format much more achievable, however a flaw in this process is that students may not watch the video before attending the synchronous session. To address this, I produced a mock course that replicates this flipped approach and demonstrates how to use the ‘Completion tracking’ functionality in Moodle to require students to complete some actions (such as watching a video) before they can access other content (below). I also worked with two lecturers to implement variants of this approach in their courses – I have provided more detail of these in the next section.

Principles of Multimedia Design

While we were working on redesigning some Moodle courses, my colleague introduced me to Mayer’s 15 Principles of Multimedia Design (Clark and Mayer, 2016: 39; Mayer, 2020). I found the empirical basis of these principles to be compelling, and we drew on these principles to redesign some courses and later presented our work in a learning and teaching conference (video).

Reflection

Workshop

The constructivist approach enhances student learning by engaging learners as active participants in the learning process, and I found that the anonymous peer assessment was an effective way of delivering flipped learning and improving student engagement. Many students are notoriously averse to preparing before classes, and using this method meant that they arrived having had a varied and layered experience of some of the preparatory material. First by reading and reflecting on the question in order to write the answer, then having to understand the other perspectives and approaches of the other students whose work they marked anonymously. By giving each exercise a relatively low score and taking the best four out of six, students felt more secure in experimenting and critically engaging with the exercise.

Part of the grade included the quality of their assessment. The Workshop module does have an automated grading of the assessment, but this works by comparing the grade the student gives with the average of all students’ grades given. The closer the grade is to the average of all grades, the higher the assessment grade is. This method may work when assessing objective material such as mathematics or coding, but it did not work well for the qualitative content that was expected in the social science class I was teaching.

I also found that sometimes weaker students were not always able to understand the stronger students’ answers, and could mark them down. Therefore, I found that it was necessary to spot check to avoid students not taking the assessment seriously or assessing inaccurately.

Some of the positive feedback that I received from the student assessments were:

• “The peer review exercises are good. It encourages students to read some relevant articles and understand them. Great teaching and engagement.”

• “[the] peer review system leaves no room for doubt whether my work is up to par.”

• “the peer-review ensured that we diligently completed our readings, while also exposing ourselves to interesting perspectives from our fellow classmates”

Flipped Learning

There is evidence to show that students appreciate the increased use of flipped learning (Jisc, 2021, p. 16) which is more adaptable to different learning types and provides more ability to use in-person time to work through practical issues and engage in discussion. It is important to note that the flipped approach can be used in all circumstances: hybrid, online, or in-person – it is not an either-or choice. Emphasising this to staff is important, and adopting a ‘minimum viable solution’ approach – such as encouraging them to use those lectures that they have already recorded as the ‘front-loading’ content – is a positive way of building on their work and not adding too much extra workload.