MOOC pilot underway

Dear Colleagues


The pilot of our Fellowship MOOC 'Contemporary approaches to university teaching' is well and truly underway with just under 200 colleagues enrolled. I had hoped that perhaps we'd enrol 100 colleagues in the MOOC and am therefore overwhelmed by the response.


Participant feedback on the MOOC has been extremely positive and we have gleaned very useful information from the participants which will help us when we revise the MOOC in time for launching early in 2018.


As well as the participants enrolled in the MOOC, approximately 30 colleagues nationally and internationally have requested guest access to review the MOOC. Again, their responses have been overwhelmingly positive with several universities indicating that they want to use the MOOC for their staff teaching professional development when we launch next year.


Teaching induction research
In the next few weeks the blog will host posts from colleagues who have recently had their teaching induction research published - Don Houston and Cassandra Hood from Flinders University Australia, and Schalk Fredericks from North-West University South Africa. Also expect to see a post from Denise Chalmers and Lynne Hunt on their recent publication on evaluating teaching.


If you wish to contribute to the blog about your teaching induction program, please do contact me at kfraser@swin.edu.au


cheers


Kym

The Teaching Today’s Diverse Learners module

The Teaching Today’s Diverse Learners module that Teresa De Fazio and I have been working on is aimed at supporting participants to think more deeply about the diverse student cohorts entering higher education and the richness this offers to the learning and teaching experience.

The module is designed to be taken after completion of the Learning and Teaching Theories and Principles and Collaborative Learning: Profiting from Peer Power modules and is intended to build on what participants learned in those modules. Given the breadth of ideas related to diversity we encourage participants to think about what diversity looks like in their teaching contexts, the support for both staff members and students that is available within their institutions and most importantly how they work with diversity so that students feel part of a more inclusive, motivated and inspired learning culture. The module involves the following sections:

1. Introductory Activity: Who are we referring to when we consider diversity?
2. Reflection: Acknowledgement of country
3. Defining diversity
4. Who are we actually talking about when we consider diversity in higher education?
5. Responding through practical strategies
6. Determining the role of the university and its staff
7. Final reflection, review and next steps

 

Each one comprises self-paced activities including videos; readings and reflection exercises. Is there anything missing from the list? We realise it may be difficult to respond as you cannot see what each area includes, but we are trying to determine if there is anything more general that we may be missing, bearing in mind that the idea of this module is to help staff think about how to best support students to learn, it is not about specifically addressing a particular cohort in relation to their diverse needs but thinking about how to be inclusive so all students regardless of their background feel they can participate and learn.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Ann  Luzeckyj and Teresa de Fazio