Here is the text of my submission for the first CCEL assignment: Who Are My Learners?:
LT704 Constructing Courses to Enhance Learning
Assignment 1: Forum Discussion: Who are My Learners?
Introduction
The course that I have selected as a vehicle for the Constructing Courses to Enhance Learning assessments is called IB304: Developing Computer Applications. This is a 15-credit, one-semester course that comprises a quarter of the Certificate in Information Technology (Level 3) programme in the ICT Department.
The CIT (Level 3) programme was launched in the second semester of 2010, and for various reasons, I had no time to prepare, and delivered my course “on the fly.” As it happened, we had a very small cohort - four students - so this did not cause too much obvious damage. In the first semester of 2011 I believe I made a better job of delivering the course, using my experience and lesson logs from the previous course instance.
There is obviously much room for further improvement in the course structure and in my delivery, and I am fortunate in that I will now have more time to work on this – the CIT (Level 3) programme has been suspended for the second semester of 2011 because the ICT Department needs the EFTS for other, longer term programmes. I aim to direct my efforts in the Constructing Courses to Enhance Learning course to improving the Developing Computer Applications course to the state where I would feel happy handing it over to a colleague.
Our Learner Profiles
Nearly all of my learners so far for this course have been young men. I have every hope that the programme will interest more ladies in due course, but the fact is that IT as a subject of study seems to be more attractive to males. This is especially the case for earlier-level courses – until the launch of this course, the ICT Department only offered programmes at Level 4 and later, and the proportion of female students seems to increase somewhat as the courses progress through the levels.
I am also looking forward to working with more mature students at some point, but these are likely to be rare at this level – the majority of these will have sufficient life and technical experience to enter IT study at Level 4 or later.
IT is famous for its “nerds” and “geeks”, and my students do often tend to reflect this. Many are socially awkward, very imaginative, interested in highly structured fantasy scenarios with minimal direct human interaction (e.g online role-play games), and unused to socially-imposed disciplines such as schedules, deadlines, consensus building and personal grooming. On the other hand, IT is also attractive to technically- and career-minded people with more highly-evolved interpersonal habits, and this programme interests good numbers of these too.
Thus far, I have noticed a number of typical traits for students on this course:
- Those whose ambition currently exceeds their abilities
- Those who find IT initially interesting, perhaps because of good experiences with games and social web sites
- Those who have already acquired some skills (sometimes impressive) in some aspects of IT, who wish to test whether they have the ability or discipline to formalise and extend their learning
- Those who would have performed well in the CIT (Level 4) programme, if they had had the confidence to apply
I have introduced elements of self-directed study and research into my course, and also increasing amounts of group work. So far, all students have coped well with these aspects. However, other courses in the programme test skills in presentation and interpersonal communication; these have proved more of a stumbling block to a number of the students.
In terms of VARK learning styles (what we used to call VAKOG), IT is usually considered to be the province of Read-Write people (what we used to call Auditory-Digital) but I have found that our cohorts, like the IT industry itself, also contain a variety of learners with Visual and Auditory aspects (Kinaesthetic IT people are rarer.)
Context of the Programme and My Course
The institutional vision for this programme is to provide a learning experience for students interested in IT careers, in particular with respect to entering a career via further study – there is little prospect of a CIT (Level 3) graduate gaining IT-specific employment at any meaningful level. The expectation is that successful students will progress to the CIT (Level 4) and thence to the Bachelor of Information Technology.
In terms of professional and industry anticipation, the introductory and pathway natures of this programme mean that expectations are circumscribed. The course is at NACCQ Level 3 and graduates are expected to have achieved this in the work they produce for the programme. The Developing Computer Applications course in particular is based on a set of three NZQA modules, and I have tried to incorporate expanded versions of all Learning Outcome specifications from these in my Course Description.
Apart from the students themselves, the main other stakeholder with an interest in this programme and course is the ICT Department. We are under pressure to improve our pass rates and retention rates, especially for the Bachelor programme, and a major issue identified was that of insufficiently prepared candidates getting into the original Certificate of Information Technology pathway programme (now renamed CIT (Level 4)), and scraping through into the BIT, where they often found trouble achieving. Direct entry into the CIT (Level 4) is still available, as indeed is direct entry into the BIT, but we now have the option to restrict these pathways to the more suitable candidates. From this point of view, the CIT (Level 3) programme serves its purpose well – it is popular: the 2011 Semester 1 cohort was oversubscribed, and we had a good number of applicants for the second semester before EFTS capping caused suspension of the programme.
A related aspect of ICT Department stakeholding in the CIT (Level 3) programme is the need to ensure that it does not “tread on the toes” of the CIT (Level 4) programme. This was especially apparent for the 2011 Semester 1 cohort, who were very strong in the main, and proved themselves capable of some Level 4 work.
My Aims for Meeting My Learners’ Needs
So far, this programme, and my course in particular, have been run twice, with very different cohorts. I am working under the assumption that future cohorts will be similarly varied, and I aim to construct a course that will embrace this variety. I plan to do this using the techniques that I learn from the Constructing Courses to Enhance Learning course, together with skills that I already possess, such as catering to different learning styles and matching complementary talents in group exercises.
Application development is generally considered to be the most technical aspect of IT, and my course is probably the most technically challenging in the programme. I aim to also make it the most rewarding, by ensuring that all students get the chance to complete development of realistic, useful and interesting IT applications to the state where they can be demonstrated to a panel of peers. This aim ties in with the culmination of the programme assessment, which is a four-week capstone group project to produce a showcase of all the IT skills acquired during the programme, with the developed application being the centrepiece. Beyond this, I plan to structure the course in a way that will challenge even the most advanced students, giving them an opportunity to deepen and broaden their existing skills.
In terms of non-technical skills in IT application development, I am fortunate that this course is embedded in a well-integrated programme that also covers such matters as study and work discipline, and professional and group practice. However, I would like this course to be able to stand largely alone, and am keen to incorporate coverage and assessment of disciplines tangential to IT application development, such as literacy and numeracy, group and professional practice, technical documentation skills and awareness of ethical and sustainability issues.
My Course Goals and Learning Outcomes
This course has been developed within the structure of the three basis NZQA module specifications, and is bounded above by its NACCQ Level 3 nature and by the requirement to tie in with the corresponding courses in the CIT (Level 4) programme.
Within this structure, there is plenty of room for course enhancement. I have selected a suite of application development environments that are freely available to all students, that can be used at this level, that have facilities for especially rapid development of IT applications, and that are widely used in industry. This selection engendered a slight mismatch with the CIT (Level 4) programme, where different application development environments have been selected. It does, however, match well with the BIT programme.
Beyond this, my intentions are currently nascent, and I am looking forward to sharpening my focus as I progress through the Constructing Courses to Enhance Learning course. I want to further integrate the material in an effort to present more skills within the course framework – one of the source NZQA modules builds on top of the first, but the third source module is less closely related, and I am not yet happy with how my course handles this. I also want to enhance the use of course material and assignments to cover relevant numeracy (and some literacy) skills, as well as ethical and sustainable practices.
One issue that has not yet arisen in the development of this course is that of provision for flexible delivery. Current plans are for this course to be taught in a classroom, to a schedule, in a conventional manner. However, I would like to develop the course to the stage where it could be made suitable for flexible delivery simply by taking suitable recordings of the material as it is presented. Despite the fact that I am unlikely to receive resources to do this, I consider readiness for conversion to flexible delivery to be a benchmark of a well-documented course.
One aspect of flexible delivery that I have tried to incorporate thus far is the ability for students to contribute their thoughts on what subjects the assessments will cover. This has worked well, engendering fruitful discussions about what material is suitably challenging and useful, and how groups can be assembled and managed for optimal development. However, I fear that incorporation of numeracy, literacy, ethical and sustainability subject material will crowd this out.
