3.2 Teaching, Learning, Assesment: Understanding of learners

Evaluation of my learning and teaching activities occurs through the performance appraisal process in place at Anglia Ruskin and includes periodic meetings with my line manager and pathway leader. Discussions are informed through feedback on the design and delivery of modules from both students and fellow teaching staff via the University Field Pathway meetings. This is an opportunity for me to plan to address issues that have arisen as well as new ideas for developing innovative approaches and evaluate the implementation of my strategies at subsequent appraisal meetings.

As an action researcher, I seek to identify issues related to teaching and learning that I can have an impact upon. This can be at the level of reflection on my practices shared in my professional weblog and the Ultraversity/Ultralab online communities, or through formal action research inquiries that demonstrate a rigorous process of data collection, analysis, identification of findings and evaluation against research questions with conclusions that inform planned phases of action.

The BALTR approach encourages students and staff to engage in discussions about modules, their design, delivery, and approach to teaching. At one level, this is a very informal approach but it yields some of the most useful feedback on approaches I take including changes implemented to try and address issues identified. These interactions take place in online communities where focussed and planned discussions as well as informal observations and questions take place. Any changes or actions taken, often receive evaluative feedback especially when they have failed to achieve the desired outcome.

Ultraversity project meetings that take place three times a year over a three-day period support the above activities. Issues of pathway and module development from the starting point of the experience of the learner are addressed by the team as a whole and smaller working parties. As a project specifically set up to identify new and innovative ways for delivering a HE experience, this activity is at the heart of my working practice. At these meetings, discussions and activities to develop our practice are informed by ongoing evaluation and research.

Particular examples of how these findings have improved the student learning experience and learning activities include:

• student feedback over the first year of the BALTR expressed concern about the running of modules concurrently. We identified this as a particular issue for online students studying on a programme like ours who do not have the discipline of a timetable to help structure their studies. As a result, we implemented changes to our timetable that meant only a maximum of two modules would run concurrently;
• learning sets form an important strategy in the BALTR programme and student feedback has helped design how they operate. Initially, I selected students concerned that self-organisation would lead to complex management issues. Naturally, for students who had developed friendship groups this wasn’t ideal, although a case can be made in its favour in terms of developing their skills to work with different students, etc. However, feedback was strong that students wished to be in control of this process and in handing it over to them we have found that greater degree of variety of composition of sets decided by students works well;

• dissertation at level 3 of the BALTR takes the format of a workplace exhibition to colleagues and stakeholders. This first cohort of students that undertook this module reported many issues and difficulties they faced. In response I developed an earlier module with a small-scale pilot exhibition that enabled students to ‘test the waters’ in their place of work. This approach has proved to be very successful as demonstrated by the better success of students in their assessment products for their dissertation and final exhibition.