Always learning...
Ahead of the start of Semester 1, teaching staff from across the School of Biomedical Sciences gathered in the WEBS building for their Annual ‘Learning & Teaching Day’.
It is a day for all the SBS team involved in teaching to meet up, share approaches and learn new ways to enhance the educational experience of our students.
The program included a number of panels and provocations, with small group discussion, opportunities for reflection, and covered various challenges and opportunities faced in tertiary education today.
The event included an opening presentation by the newly appointed Director of Education, Professor Robyn Slattery who shared her vision for the school - to offer the best biomedicine course in Australia!
The program covered a range of topics from facilitating learning for neurodiverse students to redesigning assessments in the age of AI and hearing from recent graduates about undertaking SoTL-based Honours project.
Thank you to Graham Mackay, Angelina Fong, Ashley Anderson, James Ziogas, Robyn Slattery, Raoul Mulder, Gillian Waters, Makhala Khammy, Ger Post, Isabella Phillips (student), Alexandra Chua-San Andres (student), Alex Saville and Heather Verkade for your contribution to a successful day.
Feedback
A/Prof Amber Willems-Jones said the topics were timely with really concrete takeaways.
“I particularly liked the session on how to improve potential subjects and the focus on ensuring constructive alignment. I also found the session on neurodiversity really enlightening - it was great to hear of how we can make simple adjustments to the presentation of information in our Canvas sites to make the material more accessible, something I will continue to work on over the semester.
While the session on GenAI highlighted what we already know - which is that the university's stance on not permitting access to existing platforms (and the limitations of SparkAI and AILA) is hampering our efforts somewhat, it was good to share our view points with colleagues and to hear what others are proposing to do in terms of their assessment and student permission of using GenAI tools through the informal discussions.”
Keit Loi found the day to be quite productive and engaging – covering many topical and relevant areas.
“I particularly enjoyed the morning sessions hearing about Robyn’s vision for L&T within the school and the little things we can do to improve accessibility of our learning materials.
Dr Charlotte Clarke highlighted the value students brought to the program.
“The best session for me was the session on recruiting and supervising Honours and Masters students, and in particular, Alexandra and Isabella talking about their experience doing Honours in the SOTL space. They were open and honest and gave an excellent account of their experiences.”
Dr Yu May Soh also highlighted the value of the student experience.
"I really appreciated the presentations by Ashley Andreson and Raoul Mulder. They were definitely food for thought in how we create the learning environment on LMS and assessment planning.”