Monday 27 June 2011

Presenter profile - Track A: Trish Hafford-Letchfield, Asanka Dayananda

Asanka Dayananda: Using Digital Storytelling to Enhance Student Skills in Thinking about Quality Improvement in Public and Community Services

Digital Storytelling
As part of the summative assessment of the Service Development and Quality Improvement module, students were asked submit a digital story. Find out how students were guided through online activities and lab sessions to create their digital story. We will share our experience of using this method of e-assessment, and will feedback on student impressions and the hurdles we had to overcome.

In this hands on workshop you have an opportunity to plan and create your own digital story.

Profile
Asanka Dayananda, Educational Developer, Centre for Learning and Teaching Enhancement, Middlesex University

As part of her role, Asanka is involved in looking at ways of encouraging Educators to consider the benefits offered by e-learning practices. This usually involves examining teaching, learning and assessment strategies employed for appropriateness of alternative online practices that could enhance and improve the student learning experience. Involvement in recommendations often requires supporting staff through five stages; staff training, planning implementation in teaching, delivery to students, dealing with any issues that arise and finally evaluating practice, process and student experience.

Delivering experiential knowledge and skills online is one of Asanka’s current interests. This has given rise to an online staff development course that gives lecturers an opportunity to experience a number of alternative online teaching practices. The online course runs over three weeks and takes around 5 hours to complete. Through hands on experience of both teaching and learning perspectives, it gives educators a taste of reusable learning objects, e-assessment and feedback, online discussions, e-workbooks, e-reflections and audio feedback. Each alternative approach is compared to traditional practice, and learning is encouraged through hands on experience. The course is embedded with walk through video demonstrations, research findings, discussions, reflections, planning exercises and guided activities. The course targets programme teams in collaborative online learning. It is hoped that this method will encourage non-enthusiasts to engage in staff development and also seeks to increase participation by utilising the flexibility afforded by anytime, anywhere online learning.

Asanka's co-presenter: Trish Hafford-Letchfield

No comments:

Post a Comment