‘Relationship-Rich Education’: Promoting Student Belonging for Success
A sense of belonging and personal connection can be argued as essential for both staff and students alike regardless of the learning context. In this pandemic era, 'Relationship-rich education' philosophies for universities are considered more vital than ever due to increased online learning (Felten & Lambert et al., 2020). To-date, higher education students' sense of belonging is a concept that has not been adequately conceptualised. The current literature on 'sense of belonging' spans a number of disciplines, with no apparent consensus on definition between these, complicated by the fact that sense of belonging is temporal and context-sensitive such as during COVID-19. Whilst there has been recent studies outlining the student experience of belonging in the online space (Peacock et al., 2020), investigation of teacher/educator experiences have been relatively overlooked. This presentation will present interim findings from the SoE CSSP that explored students' sense of belonging to their education units.
PST Online: Learner voices guiding learning design
Online teaching has become more pervasive throughout the 21st century, partly a result of new technologies allowing for interactive online learning environments and partly to meet the needs of students who cannot access traditional face-to-face classrooms for all or part of their schooling. Pre-service teacher education has lagged behind this uptake in online teaching, failing to prepare new graduate teachers for the possibility of teaching wholly online to students in a range of learning environments. Pre-Service Teachers Online is a website designed to address this gap by providing pre-service teachers with resources to assist in building online teaching skills. Current pre-service teachers' awareness of online teaching skills were sought, providing the foundation for the website. Presented is how the website was designed to meet identified pre-service teachers' needs allowing participants to reflectively consider how their current perceptions of teaching practices could apply in a blended or fully online classroom model.
PST Online: Meeting the Need for Teaching Innovation for Virtual Schools
Virtual schools are no longer a pipedream: they are already with us. Pre-service teachers need to be prepared for this alternate teaching medium. Unlike blended learning in the classroom, new virtual schools have no need for physical classrooms, and students can be geographically distant from both each other and the teacher. This change in education delivery in schools will necessitate a new approach to curriculum design accompanied by a reshaping of discipline-based courses in higher education institutions in regard to teacher education. Exclusively online teaching changes the teacher/student dynamics and new skills, techniques and strategies should be developed. While there has been some online teaching for many years, initial teacher education has not prepared students for this new way of teaching. In this article the authors present the conceptual underpinning of the need for changes in teacher education and the perceptions of pre-service teachers in terms of their preparedness for virtual teaching. The data from a survey conducted with these pre-service teachers will inform the development of online resources that are part of a funded, ongoing project.
Developing Resources for Pre-service Teachers to Promote Online Teaching Support
Over the last few decades there have been significant shifts in the ways students engage with both formal and informal learning. This has occurred through the improvements made in available technologies, the advent of new technologies and an increased popularity in the use of online learning spaces. Online learning spaces are particularly important for the distance education learning experience and the rise in virtual schools is a reflection of this. These schools and other online learning environments such as blended learning classrooms and School of the Air provide significant learning opportunities to deliver education opportunities to students who might otherwise be unable to pursue particular studies due to a range of factors such as isolation, mobility (such as with military families), health issues, disabilities, lack of qualified teachers in the area or emotional issues such as bullying (Roblyer, 2006; Toppin & Toppin, 2015; Vasquez & Straub, 2012).
As these changes in teaching and learning environments occur, it becomes increasingly important to reflect these new changes in teacher education courses. Teaching online presents the need for its own separate skillset in order to provide meaningful and rich learning experiences. This project was designed to support pre-service, as well as inservice, teachers in the development of this skillset.
The project, named Pre-Service Teachers Online, surveyed current pre-service teachers in 2015 about online teaching and found that they are, in the main, ill-prepared to meet the skill requirements of online teaching. While their teacher education programs assist them to use Information and Communication Technologies in the traditional classroom setting, solely online teaching is neither discussed nor practised. To assist in redressing this gap, the main output of the project is an open access website with a range of resources to foster learning about, and aid in, developing online teaching skills.
There are three main learning modules on the website (www.pstonline.info) exploring connecting with students and the provision of engaging and authentic learning experiences. The modules include short, informative videos from academics experienced in online teaching and its requirements. The videos are supplemented with a number of relevant readings and, where practicable, examples of applications that can be used to enhance online learning experiences.
This final project report provides an overview of the processes used to develop the website and also, in the appendices, examples of the surveys used which may benefit other institutions interested in replicating the project. There is also a more detailed report of the findings from these surveys.
ARTefacts: Managing children's art portfolios
Increased access to tablet and mobile technology within the early childhood classroom can allow for new approaches for creating, capturing and presenting children’s art. Not only can the use of iPads in the early childhood classroom allow young children in the pre-literacy stage of development to engage with the devices, it can also offer a robust and flexible ‘ePortfolio’ option of children’s learning. A digital collection of children’s work − including examples of literacy, numeracy and visual art works − can be collated in clearly navigable and shareable folders which can be added to over the teaching period. In this paper, we present one example of a syncing service, Evernote, and how it can become an easy-to-manage repository for various types of learning artefacts. These artefacts can be gathered during children’s participation in less formal, exploratory free play, intentional teaching moments, or more structured lessons. Artefacts can be created directly by the child from other interactive iPad apps or through using the iPad to record images, audio or video, of more traditional forms of art and creative play. An ePortfolio of children’s work can show progress throughout the year, and be an opportunity for reflection by the children, parents and educators. It can also be added to during future years while the child remains at the service. In this example, technology can help create a sense of belonging and community within the classroom and a sense of ownership by the children over their own work and the way in which their progress is captured and presented.
Building Relationships Through Learning Design as Signature Pedagogy: Re-connecting Mature-aged Online Students with Educators
The Commencing Student Success Program (CSSP) comprises 13 evidence-based strategies for online engagement underpinned by the Universal Design for Learning principles of inclusive access to improve learner retention and engagement (Sasson et al., 2021), promoting first year student engagement and retention at the tertiary level. The program's impact has led to it being adopted across the University's School of Education as its signature pedagogy. The University's unique regional context provides education to a high number of students studying by distance; often rural, mature-age, or first-in-family. Applying these strategic elements into online course design ensure a sense of support and connection is embedded, and reducing sense of isolation, throughout their studies.
PST Online: Preparing pre-service teachers for teaching in virtual schools
Improvements in available technologies and an increased popularity of online learning spaces have seen a shift in the dominant ways students engage with formal and informal learning in their day-to-day lives. This is especially true for the distance education experience through the rise in virtual schools. As this shift occurs, it becomes increasingly important to reflect these new changes in curriculum design for pre-service teachers. Increasingly, these pre-service teachers will be engaging with students, not just in the traditional, physical classroom space, but also in online spaces and via distance. These new virtual learning environments require their own separate skillset to be properly navigated by both the learner and teacher to provide meaningful and rich learning experiences. In order to develop resources to facilitate the learning of these skills, current pre-service teachers have identified their own understandings of online learning and their readiness to teach within these new spaces.