This year the ALDinHE conference had as its theme – “Engaging Students – Engaging Learning” and was a series of small, diverse but very practical sessions ranging from identifying successful work-based learning models to the effective induction of non-traditional learners. In amongst all of that I ran a small workshop on Wednesday 20th April using a single webpage on the wordpress site for the DiAL-e Project.
I had two posters at the conference, a solo effort with the SOLE model and a joint effort with Kevin Burden from the University of Hull featuring the DiAL-e framework work we have been doing since 2006. There was an excellent response to the SOLE poster and considerable interest in its potential use as a staff development stimulus. I was particularly keen to suggest it form a useful tool for course team development in the broader context of course design, but every conversation helps me refine my own ideas, which is after all why we go to these conferences!
VERSION OF THIS POST FIRST APPEARED spatkinson.wordpress.com from May 13, 2010
The following brief video presentation was prepared for a Course Team workshop at Massey University NZ in May 2010 to introduce the SOLE Model.
The SOLE model is intended to be developmental, diagnostic, evaluative and descriptive. It is borne out of a desire to make the learning design process transparent to students, to encourage staff to share ‘patterns’ of learning with each other and to provide a basis for self-evaluation and development of specific learning designs. The model is not concerned with the design of specific learning activities but rather the appropriate balance between the different modes of student engagement anticipated.
The model does not prevent an academic scheduling four hours contact time a week and delivering a didactic lecture, but it would illuminate clearly that that was the approach being undertaken. Likewise, the model in and of itself does not prevent staff from reproducing an identical pattern of learning every week through a paper or course, but again, the models’ associated toolkit would make that process clear.
The SOLE model is not prescriptive and it is possible for teams to change and modify any aspect of the toolkit to suit their needs. The intention however is to provide staff with a model of effective practice such that one might be concerned about the quality of the student learning experience if the model illustrated a consistently ‘unbalanced’ approach.
Phasing
One would anticipate that the visualisation generated by the toolkit would reflect a pattern of learning that differ from paper to paper, and from week to week. One could anticipate for example that in the first week of an undergraduate paper there would be significantly more ‘teacher-centeredness’ than in the twelfth week of a postgraduate paper. The visualisation will differ; the patterns can be expected to reflect different levels of engagement.
Centrality of Biggs Constructive Alignment
It is no coincidence that the model places the intended learning outcomes (ILO) at the centre. In each constructively aligned paper the pattern will be different because the learning outcomes, the assessment designed to illicit evidence of attainment and the patterns of teaching required to support that process will each be different. The SOLE model is precisely that, a model not a template. The model can, and should be adapted by staff to suit their particular approach to learning. It should reflect the nature both of their discipline, students existing context and the specific teaching environment.
