Complete thesis - Murdoch University

in effect a small collection of texts and articles that could be useful during the semester, andthat would normally have been placed into ‘Closed Reserve’ in the campus Library. Thephilosophy behind establishing a collection within the Studio Lab was that students shouldbe able to access resources outside the web environment with minimal effort. These items(twelve books and sundry photocopies) were not to be removed from the lab – they also actedas an incentive for students to spend additional time there.8.2.3 What actually happenedThe floundering that had been a characteristic of the first four weeks of semester in 2003 didnot seem to be an issue this year – students appeared comfortable with the class environment,and were willing to work towards the milestones. Minutes of meetings indicated reasonablework-breakdown (see Table 8.3 which provides sample entries), while activity logs showedmost students were willing to spend time outside of class to achieve the objectives they hadset (Tables 8.4 and 8.5 also has sample entries). Students were able to spend some of thistime within the Studio Lab – as the semester progressed, students were increasingly presentat this time, for group meetings or for individual work. The teacher could also be called inas required.Comments from the Week 4 Year survey support this perceptions – only one negative commentwas recorded (heavy workload, takes up a lot of time) while the majority of commentswere positive ([good]lecturers/facilitators; lots of learning to do; seems well structured). Itshould be noted that this is in contrast to feedback in other Studios running at that time –where comments related to common themes:workloadhaving to learn everything ourselves; heavy workload; takes uptoo much timestructureseems disorganised at times; poor unit organisation; structureis not clear; no set text; would prefer a set process to learn;no lecture notes and structure350