Ruth Lemon has started reorganising the teaching and assessment schedules of courses in the Bachelor of Education (Teaching) Huarahi Māori specialisation to reduce student workloads and stress for better student wellbeing.
Retaining the same number of contact teaching hours, teaching schedules in the BEd(Tchg) were reorganised to more of a block teaching approach. This allowed for an increase in the immersive and collaborative in-class experiences for students, and enabled the assessment pattern to be shifted to a more sustainable workload schedule.
Background
Students across the BEd(Tchg) specialisations have heavy workloads, with many of their major assessments due in multiple courses, close together, towards the end of the semester. This causes high stress amongst students and is also a bottleneck for staff in their teaching and marking workloads. In particular, the student workload for Year 3, Semester Two is very intense, and they must juggle classes and assignments with their practicum. Out of their 5 courses, students have 4 courses where they have major assessment tasks due in the same week at the end of the semester.
In this programme, students tend to be mature, with family and community commitments and little time for themselves. Keeping up regular attendance is a struggle in itself, and the disjointed lecture-plus-workshop pattern meant that their work on projects for assignments was sporadic and not well focused or supported.
Trialling redistribution of teaching and assessment
To alleviate some of this pressure, Ruth trialled shifting the teaching and assessment schedules in EDCURRM 205: Hangarau me te Pūtaiao: He Whakawhanaketanga (Semester Two, 2022). The number of contact hours was retained but the teaching schedule was changed from 2 x 2hr sessions per week, to block deliver part of EDCURRM 205 over a 2 week period in 4 days: 6 hours, 2 hours, 6 hours, 2 hours.
The intention was to get students to the point where they are ready to submit their 50% assessment during this time (but they didn’t have to), so there is one less major assessment to submit in the intensive period at the end of the semester.
In the trial, students finished the course two weeks after their return from practicum. In future, Ruth aims to move the teaching into just two days of the week for 9 weeks, to complete the course delivery before students go out on their final practicum.
This enables the assessment tasks to be consolidated into a more focused and sustainable schedule, which in turn gave students the space in between to be able to critically engage and reflect on the content.
The shifting of the teaching schedules also provided the opportunity for students to have more time to try multiple attempts at in-class learning activities, e.g., to trial, evaluate, and reflect on the process of making bread as a tool for teaching. This same approach will be trialled in Semester Two 2023 for EDCURRM 111: Hauora, to accommodate occasional trips.
Considering student workloads across courses and throughout the year, and redistributing them, lessened the workload and time crunch students were experiencing. Also important was reviewing the size and scale of the assessment tasks set, and whether they are appropriate for the weighting.
They were taught how the quality of their peer review would be marked; the marking rubric was simple – students got the full 3% if they could complete the peer review with detailed constructive feedback that was actionable to improve the essay.
Students could do this H5P exercise multiple times. Grading was automated and integrated into Canvas’ Gradebook.
Impact on students and staff
The student response has been extremely positive with many finding it to be “a load off” to have one of their major assignments done. Looking ahead to when courses are relocated to the City Campus, the block teaching nature of class schedules would also make the need to come in to class more equitable and meaningful for students, who are often juggling other life commitments or may not be able to easily come into the city five days a week. Staff also found marking workloads more manageable with this shift.
This helped care for the students’ wellbeing and allowed them the time and space to engage with content and learn more effectively:
“It doesn’t matter what level you’re at. I know I got to the point at the end of last year with having overwork where you’re literally just looking and going ‘okay, this is my next deadline. This is the next thing coming up. This is what I’m capable of focusing on right now’. When you actually let students get to that point and they stay in that space, it becomes pretty dangerous… [In our courses] we’ve got parents, we’ve got grandparents. We’ve got people contributing to local council and contributing to Māori communities and contributing to kapa haka groups and all of these kinds of things as well. You need to try to spread the load so that there’s space for students to actually be able to critically engage and reflect with the content you’re introducing them to.” – Ruth Lemon
Extending the practice to other courses
Due to the success of the trials, Ruth has similarly reorganised the teaching and assessment schedules of EDCURRM 117: Ngā Toi (Semester One, 2023).
Year 1, Semester One is incredibly challenging for the students, so the General Education requirement was removed from the first semester and moved to Summer School, taking the course load down from 4 courses to 3 courses in Semester One.
However, there is still a very heavy workload over the last week of the semester because the majority of assessment requirements are due then. This is closely followed by their final exams, which means students have very little study time, and any extensions requested for assignments cross over this period, resulting in a lot of stress for students.
Teaching in EDCURRM 117: Ngā Toi will be reorganised into block delivery, 3 days from March 1st – 3rd (18 hours of teaching) so that half of the course is delivered through a block. Students will be able to complete 60% of their assessment tasks for the course during this period. This spreads out the assessment workload as no other assignments from other courses are due at this time.
After the intensive block delivery, teaching will go to 1 x 4hr session per week until just after the students spend their first two-week placement in schools. These longer sessions allow more time for students to establish relationships in their class and immerse themselves in, and complete, in-class activities and assessments in a more cohesive and collaborative way. For example, students are able to create visual, audio, and movement artefacts and share them in one continuous session (20%), students are able to work together as a group to explore theatre and movement (40%). For their final assessment, students will complete a reflective journal.
This reorganisation of assessment deadlines and teaching schedules will significantly lighten the student workload. The aim is for all assessments in the course to be completed by April, before students head out to their first couple of weeks of practicum, and will only have the assessments of their two other courses to complete for the rest of the semester.
“When you only have an hour and forty minutes, instead of six hours, you’re limited to how much you can do…. We did try to have our first oral presentation in week 3, which would have been after the equivalent of one day six hour block. But I think it’s just logistics. If you’re expecting an assessment, you need to have engaged with a certain number of core ideas. You need to have thought about them, talked about them, played with them. And you can’t do that without having the time.” – Ruth Lemon
Further resources
Darling-Hammond, L. (2017). Teacher education around the world: What can we learn from international practice?European Journal of Teacher Education, 40(3), 291–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2017.1315399
Thomas, M. B. (2022). Applying design thinking to develop an innovative assessment design framework in an Initial Teacher Education course. [Doctoral dissertation, Victoria University]. https://vuir.vu.edu.au/44684/1/THOMAS_Melissah-Thesis_nosignature.pdf
Page updated 01/03/2023