Activity 5 Trends

' Help people to determine how to learn on their own ‘ is one of Noam Chomsky’s concepts of education that really resonated with me as ultimately we are wanting our students to become lifelong learners beyond the course materials we provide.

Chomsky also termed the need of ‘learning for tomorrow’ and the importance as educators to keep up to date with the ever changing technology and pedagogy trends available for both teaching and learning.

This is a really interesting topic and I could see straight away the importance of utilizing technologies and trends that complement our educational sector of Veterinary Nursing.

After watching both Grainne Conole and Noam Chomsky’s presentations one of the concepts I really took on board is when students are given the opportunity of learning in real world situations, they tend to become more engaged and motivated which will led to further self-directed learning and even collaboration with peers.

This is something that I believe we do quite well within the Veterinary Nursing School. Our full time students based in Dunedin now have a functioning Veterinary clinic which they can learn side by side with our wonderful staff, and distance students are required to complete practise hours in a local Veterinary clinic of their choice where they get to work and learn alongside a Veterinary clinic team. This gives the students many opportunities to be involved in real life situations and a number of our unit assessments are based around these, for example US 5191 admitting and discharge the students need to complete a case study report on an animal that they have helped discharge to a client.

What I believe could work really well for some of our units like the one listed above is for our students to complete a formative reflection e-portfolio before the submission of their summative assessment. This would help them to identify and breakdown the whys and how’s of what is happening which can help to reinforce underpinning knowledge. Comments can be provided by the lecturers to help guide the student with their reflections around the topic but the mode in which they submit their reflection could be entirely determined by the student eg – audio, written or video just to name a few. This could also work well as peer collaboration where they can ask and discuss directly with one another about their experiences. Confidentiality of clients and Veterinary clinics is paramount so this portfolio would need to be set up as invitation only and have some very clear guidelines provided to the students about content.

I think this fits well within the flexibility continuum as students can access and work through their reflections about a topic when and how they choose. They have the autonomy to structure the portfolio however they wish however there would still be a time restriction within the programme to make this work as a formative assessment.

 

 

 

References:

Chomsky, N. (2012). http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/13/noam-chomsky-on-the-purpose-of-education/

Conole, G. (2013). http://play.op.ac.nz/video/09-October-2013-Polytech-Keynote---2/ee39bf8a34a068cf717cca8068cbb841 Navigating Digital landscapes]. Otago Polytechnic.

Hegarty, B. (2012). ePortfolios – getting to the nuts and bolts. Prepared for flexible learning 2012. Retrieved from http://www.myplick.com/view/0tvI1ZlEeKQ/

Image retrieved from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaNdq_c9SDlMw7aAJeoO4mQUjFKSZk45sB6r3WYS-gE-QUlwpGUE-Ul7vqJJQs4PjUw_J9vGbBJGPEIeO58RMDVkEBR4uP53wYZBK7io7Mk0e3iT5aBoL7KzmYHvYW3O2eF9lIinyKLwg/s400/Cat-Lookin-In-Mirror-01.jpg.(Nov 25 2013)