Cloud of Engagement [A-181] Home : ALT Annual Conference 2019

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Wed, Sep 4 2019, 3:30pm – 4:30pm

Authors: Anuj Bhargava

Room: Room 2.12

Theme: Wildcard

Type: Research/practice (20mins)

Description

Session Description

Our talk will address the conference theme of creativity across the curriculum and providing opportunities for teachers to be creative with assignment design.

We think our talk also fits into the wildcard theme- the audience can pick and choose ideas to from our experience with the cloud-based technology implemented in a clinical programme.

Our talk will discuss the rich qualitative feedback given by the participating students and highlight student learning in places and spaces for future graduates through our consideration of the place of blended learning approaches across current, and future tertiary programmes in a clinical programme at the university of Auckland.

The participants will gain the following from attending our session:

Sharing of the experience of cloud-based learning in a clinical programme.
Design thinking concepts and implementation in a clinical programme.
Interactive assignment design ideas.
Blended learning approaches and it’s success and challenges.

Blended learning, which combines face-to-face classes with e-learning modules (Voos, 2003), offers the possibility, when thoughtfully developed and employed, to enjoy the advantages of “both” teaching methods (Graham, 2004; Harding, Kaczynski, & Wood, 2005).

Blended learning can offer greater flexibility to teachers and students. However implementing blended learning approaches does not guarantee ‘deeper’ or necessarily ‘better’ learning. To prepare future graduates who are critical, and deep, thinkers we need to ensure that the blended methods we implement are carefully designed to support learners to make meaning and connections for themselves.

Our initial data from our medical students suggests that our MBChB students find the blended methods we have implemented in physiology labs via kuraCloud support such lofty aims. Our talk will highlight important areas for consideration for other educators embarking on blended approaches to teaching content-rich and complex curricula.

Traditional boundaries of learning ‘spaces and places’ have drastically shifted with varied blended tools and methods now available to educators. We present results from an evaluation project examining the impact on student learning of kuraCloud, an online blended learning platform. We have implemented kuraCloud in our clinical physiology laboratory-based teaching within the MBChB (medical) and BPharm (pharmacy) programmes at our institution over the past 3 years.

We will report on results of questionnaire data from students currently enrolled in these programmes.
Students at Stage 2 and 3 of the MBChB and BPharm programmes are invited to complete an anonymous online questionnaire and attend focus groups to uncover their experiences using blended modules of learning in kuraCloud in their pre-lab, during-lab, and post-lab coursework. We will synthesise questionnaire data from the MBChB cohort (n = 41) who completed 7 clinical physiology labs during June – August, 2018.

Our study has sought to understand how ‘deeper learning’ can be supported in physical laboratories where numerous ‘distractors’ can derail deeper learning (e.g. technical equipment issues and jargon-filled, pre-work not always completed prior to labs).
Data from our research suggest that the use of more blended approaches to such teaching has enabled students to feel more connected to the deeper learning purpose than in previous traditional lab-based sessions.

References

Voos, R. (2003). Blended learning what is it and where might it take us? Sloan-C View, 2 (1), 2–5.

Graham, C. R. (2004). Blended learning systems: definition, current trends, and future directions. In C. J. Bonk, & C. R. Graham (Eds.), The handbook of blended learning: Global perspectives, local designs (pp. 3–21). Zurich: Pfeiffer Publishing.

A. Harding, D. Kaczynski, L. Wood (2005) Evaluation of blended learning: analysis of qualitative data, Proceedings of uniserve science blended learning symposium, pp. 56-61.

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