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One of the biggest challenges in course review is this whole concept about how do you eat an elephant? And the answer is one piece at a time. So nobody’s asking you to eat, you know, a whole elephant at once. And an analogy here is that your changes are incremental, so be kind to yourself. Nobody expects you to rewrite your course in a week. You might think about doing that, but acting on it would be a different story. So be kind to yourself. Think about what’s achievable so that you don’t burn out, and so that you’re achieving things that help to keep you motivated and going. And don’t forget that you are not alone. Universities have pretty big support networks for things that are related to course review.
So have a think about who at your university can help you. Do you have a central unit that looks after teaching and learning? Does your school have a set of learning designers or academic developers dedicated to your content area? Who are your learning technologists? Have a think about who these people are, where they sit, how you can contact them, how much notice they need, and engage them in your course improvements. And if you’re not ready to speak to somebody like this who might be considered formal, then do you have a close colleague or a peer that you went to grad school with that you can have a coffee with and talk about what went well and didn’t go well in your course? And just start that collaboration with a critical friend, so that you’re moving gears and starting to do a little bit at a time, so that in three years from now, that really starts to get a pace and you can see upward trends and upward experiences, and that you’re always building and continuing to build a course that you are proud of.
And lastly, something else to consider is that you can start a conversation here in OneHE with your colleagues from your area or around the world, myself, and also have a look at the other courses. So if you wanna improve your feedback, is there a course specifically targeted to feedback that you can take as one of your action items?
So far, we’ve engaged with a continuous improvement process for the purpose of reviewing and improving the course experience for your students. This included:
- Responding to questions about compliance, academic quality, and enhancement;
- Coding student feedback and triangulating it with other data points and self-reflection;
- Creating a change log for course improvements.
Each university will have specific support roles and units to support you in this space who are guided by the principles and policies that govern your institution. It is important that you are acting within these principles and policies so that you are creating a student experience that is best practice for your context. To do this, I suggest:
- Contacting your central unit that looks after teaching, learning, and quality to see what resources are available specifically for you and your context.
- Using your university policy bank to confirm if you need to complete formal processes when making changes to a course.
- Collaborating with a critical friend or a community of practice to share your practice, get feedback on what’s working or challenging you, and to learn from others.
Discussions
In your experience, what resources at your university for course content and approaches to teaching and learning have you found most useful?
Please share your thoughts and questions in the comments section below.