Monday 6 January 2014

Activity 6 Sustainable Flexible Learning


The Veterinary Nursing School has taken a very proactive approach in regards to their commitment and focus around sustainability, and the desire to produce sustainable practitioners at the end of each of the programmes. We have varying ways in which this has been successful from embedding relevant sustainable ideas and concepts into each of the course units, creating a sustainable working Veterinary clinic at the Dunedin campus for the fulltime students, and one of our staff members passionately takes the students through a journey on being future focussed throughout their studies via a weekly blog (I would have included this but the blog is currently being altered for 2014) The Veterinary Nursing School has also embraced sustainability at a school level by practises such as  making all assessments online submission only by 2014,  reduction of printing within the school, and using IT technologies such as Skype, link and adobe connect to connect with remote staff to reduce travel.

I can see that a key approach around how to get students thinking and engaging in sustainable ideas is by breaking down the concepts into relevant areas rather than bombarding them with a scary big picture.  This can often be far too daunting and can lead to disengaging them from thinking they can make any type of difference. It’s important to allow learners to provide their own ideas and actively question, analysis and reflect - for our care diaries students are asked to provide sustainable ideas for each species of animal on a discussion forum eg- when learning about caring for cats ideas discussed could be the use of making safe toys out of items that can be found around the home, rather than spending time and money on plastic toys that could potentially be harmful all because this is what  we have been encouraged to do as consumers.

My first blog post I mentioned about our fast paced world and how we strive to find the right balance in our lives which is also part of living sustainably. Finding this balance also extends to education where courses need to be both profitable for the organisation but motivating and engaging for students to want to study them. This is also where the importance of a suitable workload balance needs to be met. A great reflection for me was fitting this paper into my workload of having a young baby and working part time from home for the Veterinary Nursing School. At times this has proven very difficult but due to the flexible nature of this paper and a very supportive lecturer has given me the motivation and determination to succeed


References:

Lockwood, F. (1999). Estimating Student Workload: Implications for Quality Learning. Staff and Educational Development International, 3(3), 281. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/90875

New Zealand Government.  (N.D). Education for sustainability. Retrieved from Ministry Of Education website: http://efs.tki.org.nz/EfS-in-the-curriculum/Taking-action/Action-competence

New Zealand Government. (ND). Action competence. Retrieved from Ministry of Education Retrieved from Ministry Of Education website: http://efs.tki.org.nz/EfS-in-the-curriculum/Taking-action/Action-competence

New Zealand Government. (N.D). The New Zealand -curriculum effective pedagogy. Retrieved from Ministry of education website: http://efs.tki.org.nz/EfS-in-the-curriculum/Effective-pedagogy

 

1 comment:

  1. A very thoughtful post and I found it interesting on several counts. I enjoyed reading how the Vet Nursing School is embracing sustainability and integrating it in various ways which keep evolving and changing is very heartening. Also how the flexible approach to this study has assisted you as a practitioner. I would love to see the blog you mention.

    Another aspect you could think about is how the workload involved in the programmes impacts on sustainable practice for the teachers, and also the enjoyment of learning for students. Do you think there is too much content for students and too many assessments in any of the courses? Or too much marking? These are areas that can make teaching and learning unsustainable in the long term.

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