Dr David Knight, Dr David Callaghan, A/Prof. Tom Baldock, A/Prof. Mehmet Kizil, Prof. Erik Meyer, Dr Liza O’Moore Teaching and Learning Week Faculty of Science/EAIT Showcase 31 October 2012

 Focus on Metalearning ◦ Goal: Make learning behaviours visible for students so they can take more ownership of their own learning success  Threshold Concepts ◦ Goal: Identify the concepts within courses that students must first understand so they can apply that knowledge to address more advanced, end-goal concepts of the course

 Administered metalearning instrument in: ◦ ENGG 1400 (n=169, class=423) ◦ MINE 2105 (twice) (n=97, class=143) ◦ CIVL 3130 (n=138, class=277) ◦ CIVL 3140 (twice) (n=204, class=276)  Collected written student reflections in: ◦ MINE 2105 (n=60) ◦ CIVL 3140 (n=147)  Lesson: Tie the activity to some form of assessment

 Course level ◦ High variation in students’ approaches to learning ◦ Saw consistencies across cohorts and across disciplines  Student level ◦ 84% who wrote reflections found the activity useful  “It opened my eyes to how important it is to understand a topic rather than struggle with it and just memorise the topic to get by.”  “It has definitely shaped how I listen and take notes in class as well as how much repetition of course work I do in order to understand the content.”

 Lessons learned ◦ Need a follow-up visit to class to explain interpretation ◦ Students indicate the activity would serve them best if done in Year 1 or early Year 2 ◦ Encourage academics to support learning strategies focused on understanding rather than memorisation

Academics StudentsAssessments Analysis of Concepts in a Course

 Engage academic staff to identify threshold concepts ◦ Two instructors of CIVL 3140 ◦ Develop concept maps ◦ Identified critical flow as a threshold concept

 Ask students to identify threshold concepts and report on how they learned ◦ Student written reflections (n=147); Hour-long focus group ◦ Concept mapping activity ◦ Learned critical flow in many ways  Variation between learning the concept versus preparing for assessment ◦ Students identified gradually varied flow, hydraulic jump, other/multiple flow types, math as being difficult to grasp  More advanced forms of learning (e.g., linking back to previously understood concepts) for gradually varied flow relative to other concepts

 Analysis of previous assessments ◦ Completed for CIVL 3130 (n=253) and CIVL 3140 (n=225) ◦ Score distributions  We expect a normal distribution of scores  Bimodal or skewed distributions may suggest that a threshold concept is embedded in a question (some students “get it” and others do not)

 Analysis of previous assessments Exam Total Concepts: Critical Flow Channel Choking Rapidly Varied Flow Concepts: Rapidly Varied Flow Hydraulic jump

 Analysis of previous assessments ◦ Multiple choice responses  Group these according to concepts  Result from this: individual feedback on MC questions

 Analysis of previous assessments MomentumEnergy Physical Modelling Channel Flow Gradually Varied Flow Inlet Control Outlet ControlBridges Total Exam Score

 Analysis of previous assessments Gradually Varied Flow Bridges Channel Flow

 Analysis of previous assessments ◦ Linked in-semester assessments to various concepts on the exam and adjusted accordingly ◦ Learning analytics: Performance on specific concepts could be used to predict performance on later assessments, and that information could be provided directly to students.

ACADEMICS Threshold Concepts Curriculum–Assessment–Feedback STUDENTS Metalearning Metacognition Improved Teaching and Learning

Dr David Knight, Dr David Callaghan, A/Prof. Tom Baldock, A/Prof. Mehmet Kizil, Dr Liza O’Moore, Prof. Erik Meyer Teaching and Learning Week Faculty of Science/EAIT Showcase 31 October 2012