Core Area 2: Learning, Teaching & Assessment
Learning Teaching and Assessment
I am aware of teaching, learning and assessment process and in this section I draw from my experience as a lecturer at University of Moratuwa Sri Lanka, teaching assistant and teaching fellow at University of Reading and now as an instructional designer at University College of Estate Management.
A) An understanding of teaching, learning and/or assessment process
As a lecturer at University of Moratuwa and a teaching fellow at the University of Reading it was part of my job role to set coursework questions, set exam papers, create marking schemes and mark them. Most recently, I have been responsible for 2nd year exam paper setting for the subject area I covered at the University of Reading.
In creating a lesson plan I always try to deliver knowledge and let the student absorb it, followed by an exercise or two in class that will allow them to apply the knowledge. I try to vary the activities to include individual activities as well as small group activities where students work with one or two students sitting next to them. This was the only way I could implement active learning in the classroom because in both Universities I worked, I was teaching large classes of over 100 students in one lecture theatre. When students knew that the lecture is broken at regular intervals with questioning and exercises they seemed to engage more actively and I believe this was because not paying attention in class would leave them hanging in air during the exercise sessions. I also had several differently-abled students some of them had note takers. During the exercise breaks I made sure to check with the note takers that they were clear about what was going on in the class – I found this to be useful because some of the note takers were from arts disciplines and were not familiar with some of the terminology used in the class.
As for evidence I have attached my Higher Education Academy recognition (Appendix 1 – Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy). I have also completed both FutureLearn courses, "Blended Learning Essentials: Getting started and Blended Learning Essentials: Embedding practice" successfully. Inspired by “Accessibility: Designing and Teaching Courses for All Learner” was an inspiring course offered on Canvas Network by Buffalo State and Suny Empire State College of the State University of New York, which I followed. The submission I have made for the peer review assignment is attached as evidence (screenshots) (Appendix 24 – Action Plan Implementing UDL Principles).
Reflection
At first as a fresh lecturer, I followed what I felt was ‘the right thing to do’. However, as I got into reading about pedagogy when I was doing my postgraduate studies I realised what I thought was good practice had already been identified in the research as theories. The more I got to know various theories I could draw on things that I have been practicing and put together the jigsaw pieces and altering my practice for the betterment of my teaching. I follow various MOOCs that I can take part free of charge while also attending HEA seminars (at least once a year) to improve my practice. I find that sharing practice in discussions and getting feedback on peer-reviewed assessments is an incredibly useful experience.
B) An understanding of your target learners
In this section first I am drawing on my most recent experience at University College of Estate Management (UCEM) as an instructional designer. UCEM is a distance education provider and our students in their anonymous feedback have complained of text heavy material. We have come a long way from then – now providing more varied resources designed for online distance learning. I have discussed some of the enhancements in my submission for “Accessibility: Designing and Teaching Courses for All Learner” peer review assignment which I attach here as evidence (Appendix 24 – Action Plan Implementing UDL Principles).
Now for each study paper (text heavy case study materials) as I have proposed in the previous analysis (Appendix 24 – Action Plan Implementing UDL Principles) it is made compulsory that we provide student instructions directing students to important sections and letting them know why they are reading that section providing more guidance.
The other example I am going to draw on here is my involvement with the University of Reading’s first MOOC, "Begin Programming: build your first mobile game". Programming is a difficult concept to grasp and here we were looking at a very diverse audience. When creating the final assessment, we wanted to recognise these diverse learners and their effort in the course while also wanting to gauge their understanding of the subject. Here we presented final assessment in three separate multiple choice quizzes: Speaking the language, Putting knowledge into practice and Bringing it all together. We recognised that it was important to acknowledge in such an open course the effort put in by non-tech savy learners who may have picked up programming terms and few principles of programming; while also recognising the majority of average learners and the other learners who have done well. With this design of three sets of quizzes we were able to recognise the varied levels of our open online course target audience. Screen shots are attached as evidence in Appendix 25 – Begin Programming MOOC Assessment. All quiz questions were authored by myself and have been through the scrutiny panel.
I am also passionate about accessibility and I have raised concerns of templates being used which are not accessible (Appendix 19 - Accessibility and Special Educational Needs). I am really pleased to say that with my new role as the Chair of Online Learning Research Centre I have pushed through accessibility research into action at University College of Estate Management and we will be presenting our case at the 3rd eLEOT International Conference on e-Learning e-Education and Online Training in Dublin this summer (Appendix 25 – Accessibility Paper).
Reflection
At the time of engaging with the MOOC for the first time in 2013, we did not have much idea about what to expect from our audience. In hindsight I am really glad that I proposed this three tired quizzing assessment for the MOOC as it had been successfully used over the years until now. As an instructional designer I am trying hard to become a change agent within my instructional design team to view accessibility as something built in or weaved into our work. I am really proud of my work on understanding our varied learner groups (we have 10.2% registered with disability well-being office) and being able to share our experience at the forthcoming eLEOT conference in Dublin. The fact that we have been able to write and get selected to present ourselves at the conference itself has given a fresh outlook to our team as this is, I believe, the first time the instructional design team’s work is being recognised.