Innovative Teaching Strategies

Use of technology to enhance efficiency 

I am happy with the way I have integrated technology into my numeracy module. As I previously mentioned, I have converted all ICE Tasks into autograded quizzes. In my opinion, this has enhanced overall efficiency. It allows students to get immediate results and feedback. It also substantially reduces my marking load. The numeracy module's exam is broken down into 5 questions. Question 1 is multiple-choice and questions 2 - 4 are longer written questions. The multiple choice questions count for 60 out of the 120 marks so it's important that students are exposed to these kinds of questions. I then address the longer written questions in my worksheets that we work through in class.

Activity-based teaching

In 2021, a major contributing factor to my 92% module success rate was my activity-based teaching approach. Constructivism considers learning to be a mental activity and suggests that people actively "construct" their own knowledge and meaning. It is my role, as a lecturer, to design and facilitate opportunities for knowledge construction and I do this through my scaffolded activity-based approach. This approach encourages social interaction and collaboration with peers and me. As a class, we construct knowledge and build understanding by working activities.

Promoting group working in a numeracy module

With numeracy, one of my biggest challenges is incorporating group work. In 2021 one of my aims was to develop an activity to promote collaboration in groups and active learning. 

Excel is one of the learning units in IQTT5111. The content is very practical, for example it provides step-by-step instructions on how to create a bar graph in Excel. However, there was no practical time factored into the module or scheduled into the timetable. No time allocated to actually putting the steps into practice. In my opinion it's not good enough to simply read about how to do something. To truly understand and remember how to do something, one needs to do it for themselves, in practice. With this in mind, I decided to get students to work collaboratively on a real-life scenario-based activity in the computer room. This activity was the perfect preparation for an upcoming assignment that I felt students would be ill prepared for without this practical experience. 

The activity in the computer room was such a huge success. I was surprised by how little students knew about Excel and how difficult it was for them to complete the activity even with the step-by-step instructions in the module manual and in the "cheat sheet" I created. This is where I really saw the benefits of group work. They discussed and experimented and together found the solutions. Some students had stronger math skills while others had stronger computer skills, and together they were able to complete the activity successfully. When one group got something, they shared it with the other groups, and I could see their confidence building. Overall, I was successful at getting students to work collaboratively in groups whilst still adhering to COVID protocols. I also got exceptionally high marks for the Excel assignment.