Using recorded vignettes to enhance learning for distance students

Title

Using recorded vignettes to enhance learning for distance students

Author(s)

Dr Alison Canty, Ms Jo Hanusewicz, Dr Jenna Ziebell, Dr Lyn Goldberg, Dr Sorrel Standish-White

Presentation Goals

• Understand the design process and production requirements for producing vignettes as a learning resource
• Increase awareness of approaches to enhance student engagement in online learning
• Consider the effects of such approaches on retention of ‘non-traditional’ students, as well as their progression to further study

Subtheme

UTAS Blended Learning Model

Presentation Type

Spotlight on Practice

Keywords

online delivery, learning resource, student engagement, non-traditional students

Room

Social Sciences 210

Time

11.30-12.10

Abstract

The Bachelor of Dementia Care is a fully online, open access degree program that attracts a diverse, predominantly part-time, mature-age, non-traditional student cohort normally classified as 'high risk' of failing to meet the demands of a university level degree. As the first of five neuroscience units, an important challenge with this cohort is to immediately engage, inspire, and equip the online students for self-directed learning as they continue their studies. In a departure from traditional lecture-based content delivery we use informal webcam recorded sessions to introduce academic staff, each module of study, host question and answer sessions and laboratory-based vignettes. As effective representations of the live classroom [18, 19] these vignettes can elicit discussion, develop knowledge, challenge thinking, foster problem-solving, promote decision making, and initiate reflection (Herbst & Chazan, Int J Res Meth Educ, 2015). In addition, teaching through collegial discussion has proven to be effective in other context (Goldberg et al, BMC Med Educ., 2015). These sessions culminate in a virtual tour of the R. A. Rodda Pathology Museum where the unit coordinator discusses a range of disease states using human tissue specimens. Student feedback to this tour, collected via discussion boards and eVALuate surveys, demonstrated an overwhelming positive response; "cemented…my learning as I could see the actual diseases/issues that we have been studying and hear these described in the language we are learning…I felt like I was really there" and "…a great incentive. I would enjoy more 'hands on' like this as it brings everything to life." As a result of feedback, two further laboratory vignettes have been developed in which academic staff explore the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system using plastic models and human specimens.