PS4 R3 Exploring high student agreement at a course level in a fully online Bachelor degree

Title

Exploring high student agreement at a course level in a fully online Bachelor degree

Author(s)

• Alison Canty, Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre, CoHM*
• Claire Eccleston, Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre, CoHM
• Lynette Goldberg, Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre, CoHM
• Hoang Nguyen, Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre, CoHM
• Alice Rota-Bartelink, Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre, CoHM

Subtheme

Digital connections

Presentation Type

Showcase Presentation

Room

Room 3

Time

11.35-11.50

Abstract

Context: First offered in 2012, the Bachelor of Dementia Care is a fully online degree that attracts thousands of students nationwide. Front-loaded with skill building units to suit mature aged students who may not have been in formal learning for some time, this degree seeks to develop specialist knowledge of dementia to optimise care. At both the unit and Centre level, the online units in this degree are regularly highly ranked by students in terms of percentage agreement in eVALUate surveys.

Initiative: We sought to explore the critical factors that contribute to this high level of agreement in core units of the Bachelor of Dementia Care.

Methods: We analysed the percentage agreement scores from unit eVALUate surveys in 16 core units offered in Semester 1, 2019; performed a course-wide thematic analysis of anonymous student responses to the eVALUate question ‘What are the most helpful aspects of this unit?’ and compared this to the top three reasons given by academic and professional program staff for the high level of student agreement.

Evidence: Preliminary analysis identified an average agreement of 95% in 16 core units across four levels (foundation/100/200/300), with a noticeable agreement ‘dip’ of 5% as students undertake 200 level units, rising to 96% for students who continue in 300 level units. In a subset of eVALUate comments three themes of ‘communication & support’, ‘content & design’ and ‘learning activities & resources’ were identified as the most helpful aspects across the units, which is in agreement with identified staff themes.