Moving towards Flexible Learning & Teaching

Reflect on your course and current outcomes.  Ask yourself the following:

• How do I know my students are learning? 
• Is my teaching plan functioning well?
• Are my students actually learning the right things?
• Can my students "demonstrate" the right things?
• Where are the gaps in the learning?

2. Seek and observe reaction - Gather feedback from your students

The measurement of student reactions through simple surveys following a learning activity. Surveys provide a window into how your learners are responding to the learning event, will they be enough to back you up when there is a need to change or alter what activities you are providing?

• Observe and engage with your students
• Use a Moodle Discussion forum activity to ask students to post about their experiences during the course (can choose anonymously if preferred)
• Run an online survey, using Moodle feedback survey, Microsoft Office Form, Google form  etc
• Engage in the SGID practice. (check with your TPA liasion regarding this)

3. Has student competency increased and/or behaviour changed - Measure change

To measure change you can provide pre and post quizzes to assess knowledge on a specific subject has increased. Through practice exercises and knowledge checks, you can track some general measures of learning change.  However, learning does not necessarily equal improved performance.

• Can learners demonstrate the learning outcomes for the course?
• Successful learning involves memory. Although there is still much to learn here, are we sure the  learning is reaching deeper long-term memory?
• Are learners given every opportunity to offer you feedback to your on activities/teaching approach?
• Are students engaging in your Moodle course content.  Moodle provides teachers with course Live logs and activity logs which may help with this analysis.

4. Seek feedback and collaborate with others

5. Results - can student changes in behaviour be quantified

• Set measurable, specific task learning objectives
• Evaluate the quality of your course objectives
• Ensure the course objectives encourage the inclusion of student graduate profiles - communication, collaboration, digital and information literacy etc.

Tip: Use Bloom’s taxonomy to help identify where you are on the learning hierarchy and then which verb might be most appropriate. The competency level (1-6) can give you a clue as to what level of Bloom’s taxonomy your objectives should be. (Please note: The competency levels DO NOT have any relation to the NZQA levels).

1. Do you have enough content?  Too much content?
   
2. Are the instructions clear? Do students know what to do?
   
3. Does the visual LMS (Learning Management System - in our case, Moodle) experience work? Or are students muddled or confused?