Applying for credit in recognition of prior learning (RPL)

Students are able to:

• identify factors that influence the success of learning experiences
• identify variations in students’ approaches to learning and study
• distinguish amongst a range of learning theories applicable to higher education students
• apply knowledge of learning and learning theories to designing teaching episodes
• write learning outcome statements
• plan both teaching and assessment to align with learning outcomes
• trial and apply reflective practice approaches in their own teaching.

In your teaching you might have interviewed your students to discover variations in their study approaches, which you then used to design parallel learning experiences that allowed choices between structured and self-monitored study [relatable to outcomes 1 and 2].

In your Engineering subject, you might have found that learning to execute the steps in a computation is not sufficient; your students also need to be proficient at recognising situations in which those computations are applicable. You therefore deliberately built in explicit practice at choosing appropriate computations, separately to practising the calculations themselves [relatable to outcomes 3 and 4].

In planning your ecology unit you might have begun by first deciding the soil and climate conditions that you wanted your students to identify, and the plant forms that they should predict as fitting those conditions. You might then deliberately have chosen soil and climate examples to use in your lectures, and field trip sites that would illustrate those conditions, all with quite explicit reference back to your initial descriptions of those expected student learning outcomes [relatable to outcomes 5 and 6].

You might have kept an on-going diary in your first year subject, recording your teaching decisions along with your rationales. Periodically during the semester you might then have used your diary records to reflect back on the outcomes of your decisions, and how you might need to modify your pedagogical thinking [relatable to outcome 7].

Students:

• are competent in specific teaching methods drawn from a range including lecturing, tutoring and other small group approaches, flexible learning approaches, and working with individuals (eg. counsellor, supervisor and resource developer/ learning manager)
• distinguish amongst different teaching approaches in terms of the support that they effectively provide to students’ learning
• use the literature on higher education teaching to derive principles of good teaching, and apply those to own teaching practices.

Over a period of years you might have systematically experimented with different formats in your second year literature tutorials, varying ways of allocating student responsibilities and involvement, different chairing and activities, variations in small and whole group work [relatable to outcome 1].

You might have designed your history unit around individual student readings, a web-based annotated reading guide that includes supplementary multi-media materials, an email based student-to-student and student-to-teacher consultation system, and extended seminar discussion classes. But yet, you might still give a small number of lectures, not to present basic content, but to provide overview frameworks at times when students are beginning new topic areas. You find them effective for that particular function [relatable to outcome 2].

From your reading on how teachers conceptualise their teaching, you might have concluded that ‘teaching effectiveness’ seems to ally with a focus on students’ learning processes. Prompted by that, you might now decide amongst different possible ways of presenting a particular point in a lecture by consciously imagining what might happen in the students’ minds as they watch/listen. Thinking about students’ thinking has become a deliberate part of your detailed planning [relatable to outcome 3].

Students are able to:

• design a range of assessment tasks that reflect as directly as possible the attainment of learning outcome objectives
• use indications of validity, discrimination, reliability in judging the effectiveness of assessment tasks
• differentiate between criterion referenced and norm referenced marking procedures
• design marking scales based on described student performance levels
• differentiate between summative and formative assessment, in terms of their assessment purposes and the teaching roles that they imply
• use a variety of information sources and approaches in evaluating teaching
• identify sources of evaluation information that match specific evaluation concerns
• incorporate evaluation and reflection as components of their normal teaching practice.

In your third year elective, you might have allowed individual students to propose to you how they could demonstrate their attainment of your expected learning outcomes. You might have provided your students with a detailed list of those learning outcomes, and then negotiated with those taking up your offer to ensure that whatever tasks/work were proposed truly sampled what your learning outcomes described [relatable to outcomes 1].

You might have maintained a data base of all the test questions and assignments that you have used over the years in your first year subject. You might record how well each question distinguished amongst students’ levels of attainment, how clear each was for the students to understand, and for you to mark, how closely each reflected a learning objective’s attainment. You might then use this data base to modify/improve ‘faulty’ questions, and to select proven questions for re-use [relatable to outcome 2].

Over a period of years, you might have used the same or similar project assignment. Each year you might have retained samples of student work representative of each of 4 or 5 mark levels. You might then use those samples as benchmarks when defining mark levels for your current marking scales. You might also use them to check your marking consistency over years [relatable to outcome 4].

You might systematically use a variety of feedback sources on how your teaching is going. You might have established a website where your students can post comments. At the end of especially core lectures, you might ask students to write a paragraph on what they thought were the main points. You might use small student reference groups to sound out ideas for your teaching. You might inspect final exam responses for any misconceptions that would signal modifications needed in your teaching [relatable to outcomes 6, 7, and 8].

HED 5004 Action Research Project (Elective)
Provides students with an opportunity to undertake a negotiated project targeted at changing personal teaching practice and improving student learning; integrate learning from the GCHE course.

Students:

• develop improvement projects related to their own teaching responsibilities
• engage in deliberate and systematic investigation into topics within higher education teaching and learning, or with relevance to their own teaching responsibilities.