Learning in the Digital Age Seminar: 8th September 2015

Venue: HUED108, Bundoora campus
Regional video conference: AW Room 4245, Bendigo AP102, Mildura Seminar Room 2, Shepparton Meeting Room 102

Presentations

Ensuring student engagement and success: a multi-campus, first year subject using blended-learning technologies
By Ms Nicole El Haber, Mr Greg Jamieson, Ms Swati Nagpal & Ms Elaine Plant

Business Foundations (BUS1BUF) is a common first-year core subject in FBEL, which has been delivered across a number of our campuses from Semester 1, 2013. The vision for this subject as a common first-year core is to be aligned with the University's Future Ready learning and teaching goals. Specifically, by focusing on enhancing the student experience through delivery in blended-mode, improving student success and retention, and improving student satisfaction.

Within this context, the key features of the subject design and its contribution lie in the following key areas:

• Fostering a collaborative learning environment
• Subject delivery in blended-mode
• A student-centred approach to subject delivery
• Multi-disciplinary content
• Embedding the La Trobe Essential 'Global Citizenship'

Transforming undergraduate information literacy education through the development of a coherent learning and teaching model that is adaptable and responsive to curriculum design across disciplines
By Fiona Salisbury, Sharon Karasmanis & Jenny Corbin (Library)

Bringing information literacy education to large cohorts of students requires a sustainable, scalable and equitable approach to embedding this capability into the curriculum.

This presentation will examine a large scale research study that aimed to close the gap between evidence and practice for undergraduate information literacy education. The study involved a series of linked sequential projects that collected evidence of student learning and experience. A mixed methods approach was employed which included longitudinal tracking using a validated survey instrument of a specific cohort of undergraduate students in the Faculty of Health Sciences from 2009-2012; usability testing of flexible online learning resources and diagnostic tools 2009-2013; multiple-choice test item analysis (reliability/discrimination/difficulty) in order to assess validity of questions for use in diagnostic tools; and structured interviews with academic staff.

The results demonstrated that students arrive at University with existing skills, but limited understanding of scholarly resources; however with progressive scaffolding in place, students do indeed build this knowledge by fourth year. The evidence also provided further understanding of student information seeking behaviour and prior knowledge. Ongoing collaboration between librarians and academic teaching staff at the subject design level was enhanced by having evidence that demonstrated what and how students learn about information literacy. Intentionally bringing together evidence and practice has not only resulted in measurable student success, but new ways of working that are evidence based. The consistent level of faculty interest and engagement in this evidence-based approach to practice, has kept it relevant and dynamic, and enabled a broad foundation for undergraduate information literacy education within the curriculum at La Trobe University.