September 2022

On student motivation (and perseverance)

Let’s be frank, we all want to be masters of student motivation and have our own ideas about how to achieve it. In this Conversation, I show some tricks, which include the colour pink, a candle, an amplifier, and the Russian for ‘no’ to achieve student bliss. Sceptical? Come to the Conversation to find out how this works.

In this Conversation Dom discussed how we find out about what motivates students, and how we can use that knowledge in our teaching. Did you miss the event? Catch up now! We recorded the session, listen here and the slides are available here

May 2022

A case study on student perception of online lecturing

In this Conversation Dom presented a case study addressing the question of the importance of online lectures for student learning.

We recorded the session, listen here. The paper is available here

This case study looks at implications of transitioning live to recorded lectures, a subject that has acquired an acute importance given COVID19 and the unexpected need to move lectures online. Over a period of six years, from 2015 to 2020, a questionnaire was handed out at the end of a ‘unit’ on environmental geoscience; a ‘unit’ at Australian universities represents a ‘course’ in the European and American tertiary system. This is a 2nd semester, 3rd year core unit of an Applied Geology course meaning that (most of) the polled students were about to acquire a Bachelor of Science finishing their undergraduate studies. The students were asked multiple questions related to iLectures and their attitude towards this asynchronous content delivery approach as integral part of a flipped classroom. Provided that such a STEM unit with 40-120 students can be deemed representative of the wider student community, the findings indicate that students in general have come to terms with online lectures, way before COVID19 gave them no other choice. Acceptance rates for iLectures were over 50 % across all years, except for 2020, a clear indication that COVID19 marred the online experience, probably due to oversaturation and isolation. The majority of the students saw benefits in this asynchronous lecturing approach, irrespective of whether the rationale behind it had been explained in detail. Despite seeing benefits of the flipped classroom and recorded lectures, one out of three students preferred live lectures. This number has increased after COVID19 to 40 %, yet another sign of the negative impact of the pandemic on online lecturing. This inference is unrelated to the quality of the recordings which was deemed high. Finally, the importance of meaningful extended lecture notes to complement the recordings is highlighted.

March 2022

In this Conversation we discussed concepts explored in another classic paper ”Learning and Teaching Styles In Engineering Education” Felder, & Silverman, Engineering Education, 78(7), p. 674–681 (1988)

We recorded the session, listen here

October 2021

Our first AUGEN Conversation was held on Thursday 14 October, 2021

We began with an old (but now debunked) classic, The Dr Fox study, to approach the question:

Do teachers need to be field experts or performers to entice student engagement?

The original study was carried out in 1973 and revisited 40 years later in 2014. This is what the latter publication has to say: “From its initial publication, the Dr. Fox study evoked tremendous interest that has not subsided in 40 years as a focal piece of evidence in the ongoing debate over the validity of student evaluation of teaching.”

Read the papers here : Dr Fox 1973 and Dr Fox 2014

We recorded the introduction to the session, presented by Dom Wolff-Boenisch - watch and listen on this link. For privacy we didn’t record all of the discussion but do have some excerpts from the lively chat available here