Friday, October 30, 2009

ako aotearoa academy symposium - day two morning

A busy morning with variou presentations and workshops.

first up, three award winners provide a view of 'how did I get here?' The three presenting are Prof. Gary Bold, Karl Dodds (both Prime Minister award winners) & Dr. Rachel Fewster (winner of two awards - 2003 & 2009). Gary's humour came across well during his presentation on techniques for lecturing to large classes. Rachel covered 'how to make 90% of students love statistics?' providing a good example of how to make a subject interesting by building on what students know & providing relevant 'real life' problems & reasons for why they should solve them. Karl covered the more serious side of winning the award including increased levels of expectations from students & other colleagues.

Second presentation from Dr. John Reynolds on "the impact on curriculum change on health sciences first year students' approaches to learning". He presented on a study which used a learning inventory (the approaches and study skills inventory - ASSIST) to measure if curriculum change on students' approaches to learning. John provided good examples of how the curriculum has been changed in structure (eg. student study groups formed) and objective (deepening understanding & links between concepts to made) and the results of an evaluation using ASSIST to find out if there were changes in students learning (surface, deep, strategic). Found surface similar to pass cohorts, strategic increased but significant increase in deep learning.

Dr. Lisa Emerson then lead a session on the new criteria for the Tertiary teaching excellence award. Lisa is the academy representative on the TTEA panel & found the experience to be inspiring & a great privilege. Background provided to assist academy members in mentoring potential applicants for future TTEAs.

Great presentations from all :)

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