Foundations of University Learning and Teaching

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This course provides an introduction to approaches and methods used to evaluate and enhance your teaching, and your students’ learning. The key question we answer is “How do you know you are doing a good job?”. In this course we will help you to improve your practice and the student learning experience to make learning and teaching in higher education more effective.

Explore a model to help you with the enhancement and evaluation process

In the course we will present a systematic approach to enhancing learning through evaluating your teaching using a model that guides you through a number of questions including:

• What is the purpose of evaluation?
• How can you evaluate your teaching, educational materials or courses?
• What is the context of the evaluation?
• Who are the stakeholders affected by the evaluation process?
• What evaluation tools are already be available to you?
• How can you design your own evaluation tools?
• How can you best reflect on the whole evaluation process to enhance your teaching and your students’ learning?

Reflect on your own teaching

Through the course we will encourage you to reflect on your practice, carry out a mini self-evaluation and share your findings to demonstrate the variety of methods and tools that can be used to evaluate practice.

By the end of the course you will be able to:

• Describe ways to evidence quality in learning and teaching
• Compare different approaches to evaluation
• Evaluate forms of feedback for enhancing educational practice
• Demonstrate the application of an evaluation process in your practice

This course is suitable for teachers, educational designers and those supporting teaching and learning within higher education.

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Central to effective teaching is providing students with strong educational design that offers opportunities to independently and collaboratively explore and acquire knowledge. Students can then apply what is learned to different contexts, in order to demonstrate that the learning outcomes have been achieved

This course will introduce you to effective educational design - taking into account the evolving higher education environment and current research into curriculum, educational design, assessment and feedback that supports student learning.

Explore what makes good educational design

Developing effective educational design requires careful planning and structured thinking to scaffold learning in order to maximise students’ potential for success.

In this course you will identify the principles and key steps teachers need to take to design effective educational opportunities for their students.

The course is based on the recognition that learning is most effective when it is guided by clear expectations, academic standards and an integrated curriculum, where the various components of the program, courses, classes, field trips, etc. are identified, aligned and linked to assessment.

Learn how to apply educational design in your own context

Students learn best when they are actively engaged: when they interact with their peers, tutors and course resources, when they are reflective and have opportunities to apply this knowledge.

Successful design therefore needs to ensure that students are given opportunities to take an active, interactive and reflective role in their studies. This course will provide you with an educational framework and an opportunity to design effective educational materials you can use in your own higher education context.

Understand learning experiences from start to finish

This course explores the relationship between the focus of the course, learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities and assessment.

By the end of the course you’ll be able to:

• Describe established curriculum and learning design principles which support student learning in your context

• Identify the role of constructive alignment and the principles of assessment and relate them to your context

• Compare and contrast learning design models

• Apply an integrated model to (re)design components of a course of study aligned to a program

This course is suitable for teachers, educational designers and those supporting learning and teaching within higher education.