A little progress every day, leads to big results - Mark Hetherington

The respective teaching teams are committed to encouraging their learners to reflect upon their progress. Sometimes students find it difficult to do so, especially when they are writing up their UCAS personal statements, for example. But they recognise it is a crucial skill in terms of learning development.

One such exercise is to ask them to (anonymously) note their thoughts down using four distinct questions, where they are free to express themselves in a non-judgmental way and to read what their peers think. This often stimulates positive, if informal, discussion on their progress to date.

In this blog post, SWAP Access to Nursing learners provided some excellent thoughts on skills development at the half way point on their Programme of study.

Their feedback is noted here: https://swapnurses2324.blogspot.com/2024/01/your-thoughts-on-your-learning-progress.html?m=0

The questions they were asked were as follows:

1. What were your biggest concerns about coming to college?

2. What do you feel has been your greatest educational achievement over the last 17 academic weeks?

3. Give me one word which describes how you’re feeling about the prospect of getting through the second semester…

4. In three words, describe your experience so far on the Programme you are on (keep it clean, please!) 

Quiz is the Biz - Amanda MacDonald

In this first entry from our Maths. and Numeracy colleagues, Amanda outlines really well, how an enforced teaching challenge (lockdown methodology) has turned into an inspirational and interactive way of learning for our learners. Amanda takes the story up below. 

In March 2020, we were all thrust from our traditional way of 'teaching at the chalkface' to having to navigate the digital world. There are some aspects from the online learning that I found were beneficial to students and so have continued with these since we returned to face to face teaching. One of these is the use of the Quiz feature within Moodle.

During online learning, the Maths & Numeracy Team at NCL used this to assess Numeracy as it allowed students to answer questions by inputting numerical answers, selecting multiple choice answers and dragging and dropping information into spaces within sentences and on to graphical pictures to name but a few features. Importantly, as soon as the student completes the 'quiz', it automatically corrects it for them so they know how many are correct and which one's they should revisit.

This seemed too good a resource to not continue to use when we returned to the 'chalkface' again. So I adapted what we were using so that students can still answer questions as I mentioned but it can give them feedback as well. It led to a useful revision tool and is also more interactive for a subject that can be seen as dry.

In the main, students seem to like this feature and many make use of the fact they can complete them multiple times as well. Students live in a world where technology allows them to have 'instant gratification' such as using You-Tube for walk through videos on how to complete something. So instant feedback on their Numeracy is perfect for engagement and leading to higher retention of material.

This is a great example of active learning, and when we are servicing our classes, engagement is key, always.