student feedback and leadership - Office for Learning and Teaching

Student Feedback & Leadership
Staff started to talk about their teaching experiences in the staff meetings.
Based on the staff comments regarding teaching matters, the Head of School
has invited IT staff to the school meeting so that staff can discuss their IT
problems with them and raise their concerns in delivering on line materials.
Were there any tangible outcomes eg Grants, scholarship etc
The most significant outcome was the success of an RMIT LTIF grant
application to the value of $48,000 entitled “New ways of Learning - Teaching
and Assessment of Large Classes”.
The grant addressed the following:
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Innovation 1 – Student diversity in multi-discipline large classes by
providing relevant disciplinary context-related exemplars in teaching
service classes.
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Innovation 2 – Tutor teaching practices by trialling innovative ways
of providing and supporting tutors in large service classes.
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Innovation 3 - Exploring and implementing effective ways to provide
feedback to students in large service classes.
The integrated learning system utilized existing IT infrastructure currently
available at RMIT and blended with what is available via resources such
as WebLearn.
Innovation 1
This innovation led by Dr Mali Abdollahian and Dr Yousong Luo used the
course Maths 2123 to develop, pilot and evaluate relevant discipline specific
examples for teaching the course. During semester 1, 2008, five 3rd and 4th
year students from the relevant disciplines were selected to develop relevant
data and examples for teaching statistics and mathematics in the first year
multi-discipline large class. These examples were reviewed and validated
by the chief investigators, then uploaded into the course material on the
Distributed Learning Management system (DLS). The redesign of the online
component of the course included changing the resources and exemplars
into sub-categories related to the multiple disciplines and student cohort
taught in the service teaching classes. This project is ongoing.
These exemplars will be used for teaching and will be evaluated in terms
of their effectiveness in improving student learning experiences and outcomes.
The GTS score and retention of students will also be indicators for the success
of this initiative. The examples will be refined for use in 2009. A full evaluation
of the initiative will be completed and will feed into the overall project evaluation.
The project findings will be reported and lessons learnt and good practices
disseminated to the school, RMIT and the higher education community
nationally and internationally.
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