Practical things to try

So let’s have a look at practical things to try. And in this section, I’ve put together some overview to guide you, because really the practical things that you end up trying are going to be quite personal to you and quite specific to your course. So if we have a think about the improvements that you’d like to see and maybe scroll down to the table and we can talk through that together, in the first column you’ll notice is an improvement. So an improvement doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going from something that’s not so good to better. You could also be going strength to strength. What’s something that you wanna try? What’s something that when you read the data, you see could be done to make your course an even better experience or to solve an ache or a pain for the collective student experience? And make a statement, an action statement about what you want that improvement to be.

So in order to keep our improvements honest per se, the next column forces you to have a rationale for the improvement that you’ve just authored. And basically, with that rationale, you should be able to point to the exact evidence from your last table and say, this is why I’m doing it. And that gives you the reason and the data. Because remember, we use three data streams to get here for making that change.

After you’ve had both the improvement and the rationale, it’ll be time to think about, okay, so if I do this, what’s my success indicator? What lever do I hope to see move? What do I hope changes? And make a note of what that is, because guaranteed in six months time you won’t remember what you hoped that lever was that changes. So if it’s a downward trend, if it’s an upward trend, it could also be a change in the emotion that you feel or you want to hear the student saying something different about your course, and make notes about what that success indicator is. I recommend one, no more than three.

So once you’ve got your improvement, your rationale and your success indicator, putting it into your course and taking action will be the next step. And you might need support with this. Have a think about, is this something that I’m going to do on myself? In which case, you don’t need anybody’s support or approval. But if you plan on doing something more complex, you might need approval from an admin or you might need funds to redesign your course. Either way, not every change can be done in a vacuum. So make a list of all the people that you’d need support or permission from in the next column.

And now when we think about the data that we’d like to see moved, the support that we might need, this starts to add complexity into what we’re doing. So if it’s just a tweak in the way that I’m delivering something, that’s low complexity and I should be able to do that in the next delivery. But if I wanna add a whole new component to the course, like internships or work-integrated learning, I’m going to need to engage with colleagues at the university, different offices, maybe my dean to get permission, a course change, so maybe the policy office. When you start to bring in these different stakeholders and partners, it starts to increase the complexity of what you want to do. So something that now involves another department, you’re probably going to like a three to six-month lead time for that. I’ve given you very specific definitions for high, medium, and low complexity. And it’s really important. Keep track of these. You know, don’t hold back on an improvement because it’s complex. Keep track of it because there might be a funding opportunity or a grant opportunity where suddenly something that was complex is now closer in your reach.

And that final column, which you won’t complete now because this is when you revisit this, is you monitoring each one. So next time when you deliver the course, you’ve got your table, you’ll bring this out again, and you’ll look at each one and you’ll say, yep, I did that and I did it well, give yourself a big green tick. And then there’s gonna be other ones where you’re like, actually, you know, things have changed. We’ve had a pandemic and we’re online, that one’s irrelevant. Or this is something that I haven’t had the time or head space for, so I’d like to continue that one. And just keep track of those changes. Definitely delete the ones that you don’t need to do anymore, that you have no desire to do anymore. And you can continue to add to this list as well. This kind of becomes your course narrative over time and it starts to tell both your teaching journey and the course’s journey. And it’s one of those artifacts that’s really good to have at a handover or for when you’re onboarding new teachers.