Empowering faculty and students at University of the Free State

Large-cohort logistics

The co-ordination of over 8,000 students’ learning in mixed course settings is a self-evident challenge, particularly with a highly diverse student cohort. As with many universities today, an increasing number of learners come from lower-resourced educational backgrounds in South Africa and consist of more first-generation students. Measuring student performance and satisfaction, as well as gathering and acting on feedback was therefore crucial to ensure quality of teaching and learning. Previously, participant questionnaires were used to gather this data, but this proved a ‘nightmare’ of organisation, yielding little useful data for teachers or students. ‍

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‍“We need to look at all things about the student that we can collect data on, in order to make informed decisions… about what is needed for them at that time.” - Melanie Ridgard

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‍Two foundational modules were facilitated with over 100 teaching assistants, (TA’s) responsible for the preparation and delivery of study content to sections of several hundred students at a time. The goal of the first module, catering to around 6,500 first-year students, is familiarisation with Computer literacy, time management, study skills and financial literacy, communication skills, and other basic competencies, while the second module, taken by more than 8,000 students, covers areas related to the world of work, career development and employability. Learning activities consist of both synchronous face-to-face and online classes and asynchronous readings and exercises which can address several thousand students at once. The course co-ordinator sought to ensure asynchronous activities were engaging to all students by “moving away from static reading exercises”, while gathering data about student engagement in order to make evidence-based decisions on iterative improvements to the course design. Especially post-covid, traditional methods for disseminating knowledge to students would not suffice. 

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“Gone are the days where we are forced to sit in huge lectures and have somebody talk at you for the entire time.” - Oarabetse Khunyeli

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This is where Melanie came across FeedbackFruits. Aware of the impact of peer learning and the cruciality of student engagement for achieving learning outcomes, Interactive Video was investigated as a means of facilitating social annotation, and peer interaction, while analytics could help monitor student progress and performance with each piece of study material. 

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A hybrid approach

With a student-centered approach in mind, the UFSS module team sought flexibility for students to self-regulate and pace their learning asynchronously. For this to succeed they wanted to measure how much students were ‘getting out of’ the content they consumed aside from the attendance mark, ensuring the same quality and standard for students regardless of whether they attended in person or followed along with lessons and content online. FeedbackFruits covered these needs with tools integrated into Blackboard to enrich the teaching and learning experience.

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‍“We take pride in the quality and the evidence-based approach we take, the asset based narrative, and that is always in the students best interest.” - Melanie Ridgard 

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Explanation videos were enriched with reflective and open questions using Interactive Video, prompting responses from students as well as the ability to compare thoughts between themselves. This added a layer of social interaction to otherwise passive study activities, and combatted the isolation and disconnection prevalent among many distance learners. Furthermore, student anonymity helped create a safe space for responses so fear of giving an ‘incorrect’ response was reduced or removed. To help incentivise students to complete these activities and see the importance of the participation, the completion of these interactive activities built up towards an attendance grade for students.

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‍“FeedbackFruits activities played a role in terms of attendance which is worked into the modules final mark and is weighted at 10% per semester for UFSS1504 [first module] students and 20% for the UFSS1522 [second module] students for the second semester.” 

Outcomes

Overall, educators have moved further away from static content and provided an interactive space for student engagement with peers and course material asynchronously. Pre-recorded lectures became interactive with embedded questions. Additionally Skill Review activities provided another actionable source of feedback and data for teaching assistants, which proved effective for their continued professional development. Within the reviews, TA’s received feedback on how they mark, teach and provide feedback themselves, in order to maintain consistent assessment at scale.

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As Melanie put it, “Technology and innovation are inevitable.” With this curricular transformation students develop the 21st century skills needed to be employable. Self-regulation, reflection and collaboration are all abilities that when practiced regularly, enhance later learning and provide the conditions for students to reach their potential. In this way, students can be considered as ‘empowered’, with a faculty using evidence-based decision making to facilitate this development.

The UFSS teams’ evidence-based approach combined with flexible and scalable combination of FeedbackFruits activities provides both the insight and means to adjust accordingly as needs change. 

“I think what makes us successful is our ability to always use the evidence, and being able to make informed decisions to make a better standard for students. I always tell our teaching assistants: “even if your impact is on a small group; even if it’s just on one student - you know you've done something for that student’s whole life.” As teachers, that's what you want to do.” - Melanie Ridgard