Dear All,
We are moving away from the established
delivery pattern of the academic year, away from terms, periods semesters
in other words, towards 30 weeks of scheduled learning activities. This
should be an opportunity for teaching staff to review how courses are structured
and delivered in a way that balances the requirements of content with those
of the teaching and learning processes. For example, course leaders
are being urged to consider different patterns of unit delivery and the
value of whole week events for employability, student run conferences etc.
There are clearly serious challenges
here, particularly in overcoming the practical issues involved in creating
course delivery structures that will ensure that students can be engaged
actively and directly in scheduled learning activities over 30 weeks. For
example we have a number of teams who would like to move from a diet of
'long thin units' to block teaching with regular summative assessment throughout
the year, but this raises issues around staffing and student workload that
I probably don't need to describe here.
Nevertheless the notion of 30 weeks
scheduled learning activities gives considerable scope for different models
of delivery and an opportunity to explore solutions to problems of this
sort. A colleague and I have been asked to produce some guidance, specifically
to identify and describe as many different approaches to course structure
and delivery as possible. We would like this to include tangible
examples and I would be very interested to hear from anyone who is going
through changes to course delivery structures or trying something new.
Not least of all, I'd be interested in finding out about problems encountered
and how they were overcome. At the same time I'd be delighted to
hear about any ideas, however outré for how we might deliver courses in
this 30 week framework.
Dave
Dr David Barber
Curriculum Learning and Teaching
Developer
Maritime and Technology Faculty
Southampton Solent University
t.02380319706 (3706)