Knowing and meeting the needs of diverse learners (V1, V3)
Contextual Background:
As part of UAL Online’s work to support the UAL strategy to bring a high-quality creative education to more students than ever before, we are empowering UAL academic staff to master online distance education fundamentals. I design and create asynchronous, self-paced Moodle courses to support this, although encouraging staff to find the time to engage with or complete the courses is challenging.
Evaluation:
As our students are members of UAL staff who do not have the luxury of time due to teaching and other commitments, I need to ensure that the course content is appropriately ‘chunked’ and presented in ‘a manner that encourages learner activities (…) and optimize(s) intellectual performance’ (Sweller, 1998). Spending more time upfront in the design phase to ensure that the learning outcomes of the course are constructively aligned to the learning and assessment activities helps to create an approach to mitigating cognitive overload in online learning. The effectiveness of this approach seems to work well, with staff feedback back that:
“The length of each section works well, and the clarity over what was to come. It was well paced”
Staff feedback
Moving forwards
Another strategy that I have been introduced to is providing opportunities for staff to set goals and reflect. I’m interested in creating a deep approach to learning that helps staff to reflect on what they are doing (Biggs, 1999). Incorporating moments in the course where staff can reflect on ways in which they can integrate flexible and inclusive approaches into their online teaching practice will be beneficial in terms of encouraging this deeper engagement with the course content.
Providing opportunities for staff to set goals and reflect
I want to create space for staff to set goals, share their work and broadly reflect on their experience. To achieve this, I have used the Journal tool in Moodle and included prompts to help with this.
Whilst student feedback indicated that they ‘really liked the journal and the fact that it is stored in Moodle’, I realised that the reflective prompts were mainly focused on struggles or challenges and were predicated on a ‘deficit model’ of reflection. Reading Joy Amulya’s work inspired me to design in opportunities for positive reflection into the course, to create ‘conditions that allow creativity to flourish’ and so that staff can ‘become more purposeful about how to work in more creative and satisfying ways’. (Amulya, 2011).
In future practice, I will incorporate elements of Strength-Based Design and Appreciative Inquiry theory to include positive prompts that focus on success as part of the Moodle Journal for future staff development courses. Some examples of this might include prompts to help staff identify moments of breakthrough as a result of taking the course, for instance: ‘Reflect on a recent moment where you felt a breakthrough in your online teaching. What led to this breakthrough, and how can you incorporate this learning into your future teaching practice?’
To conclude, implementing reflective practices with positive reflection prompts will hopefully deepen staff’s engagement with course content, emphasising the importance of understanding and responding to staff needs to maintain their engagement and enhance online teaching inclusivity.
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References
Amulya, J. (2011) What is Reflective Practice? https://communityscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/What-is-Reflective-Practice.pdf
Biggs, J. (1999) ‘What the Student Does: teaching for enhanced learning’, Higher Education Research & Development, 18(1), pp. 57–75. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0729436990180105.
Sweller, J. (1998). Cognitive architecture and instructional design. Educational Psychology Review, 10(3), 251-296.
Sweller, J. (1988) ‘Cognitive Load during Problem Solving: Effects on Learning’, Cognitive Science, 12(2), pp. 257–285.