This is a wonderful example of where a Lecturer encounters and addresses a specific curriculum challenge, reflects upon that and then actions a possible change of unit delivery. In this case, Amanda has done a great job in assessing the situation, carefully suggesting another way to support her learners in a meaningful way. As servicers, we are often bound by rigid Programmes of Study, where units we teach are mandatory. Sometimes we adapt summative assessment(s) to augment the learning of our students and sometimes we go that extra mile to ensure learners have adequate scaffolding to perform well at the next level of their academic journey. I also like the positive use of AI too, which is another example of good practice. Amanda takes up the story here, detailing the process of change so very clearly.
In March 2024 I was given a class to take over after a colleague had resigned. They were SWAP Paramedic Science students and studied a generic National Numeracy unit with my previous colleague before moving on to a Maths unit.
Upon chatting to the students to get to know them, they told me that they had recently sat university entry tests. It quickly became apparent that the Numeracy element of their entry tests were heavily based on Drug Calculations, which wasn't within their units taught by the Maths & Numeracy team. However we do teach this to our SWAP Nursing and Health and Social Care students who cover Core Skills Numeracy units that we contextualise to include drug calculations. Clearly this would be of a great benefit to the Paramedics. So I opened the discussion with their Academic Leader who liked my suggestion to change units, as he could see the benefit of this for his students.
He consulted SWAP and the option to 'swap' units was there so it was implemented for the Academic Year 2024/25 and I was going to take the class on from the start. So these students would meet drug calculations in class with me early in the year and build their confidence with them, well ahead of entry tests.
I contacted UWS early in the semester to ask if they could give me information about the entry test. In their reply they informed me that my students would have 20 minutes to complete a test with 75% required to pass. It turns out it's 20 questions in 20 minutes so a tall order for our future Paramedics to show both accuracy and speed skills. UWS also sent me an example of practice questions which the applicants are given.
So I got to work using some of my preparation time to work on similar style questions and creating quizzes of these on Moodle (as this is the system UWS also use to administer their entry tests). Given that the medical field is not my background, it took time to create relevant and accurate questions. I used free materials on the internet, took ideas from textbooks and also used ChatGPT for inspiration.
Last week my students let me know that they have started to receive their emails from UWS to complete their entry tests by the end of the month. In class this week, several told me that they had sat and passed it, being extremely complimentary of the work covered in class, the quizzes and worksheets I had created to prepare them for the detail of questions involved.
It gave me great satisfaction to hear the change of units implemented to their course has helped as intended and the extra effort that I went to to create quizzes to practice also helped them.
