Students as partners. We mention the phrase often, and I think it has a variety of different ways of being implemented. Cliodhna O’Callaghan from the University College Cork, Ireland presented at ALT 2021 on the Teach Digi project. O’Callaghan is the project lead on this initiative for “shared learning and students as partners.” The Enhancing Digital Teaching and Learning (EDTL) approach is based on a couple of principles: not starting from zero, pedagogy first, discipline focus, and students as partners for empowerment and sustainability. O’Callaghan emphasized how student feedback on online learning informed their program and design. O’Callaghan summarized feedback from a large student survey in five categories:
- Students want clear organization of the content.
- Students want regular, informal, interactions with their lecturer.
- Students appreciate the flexibility that recorded lectures give them.
- Students need as much certainty from a timetable as possible.
- Students find long online recordings challenging.
The ‘Ag Caint’ (the Irish for ‘chatting’ or ‘talking’) podcast series was developed by O’Callaghan to include staff and student recordings grounded on one of the five categories above. Live Q&A sessions were offered too. The conversations were “focused on reflection on our shared experience, yet different perspective.” I had to include that phrase! The list of speakers included pairs of staff and students telling their stories. The conversations were then used to create summaries with staff and student suggestions for improving online learning experiences: flyers were displayed with both perspectives for clarity, regular interaction, flexibility, certainty, and chunking content. O’Callaghan described how they expanded the podcast experience to include professional services staff feedback. I love how O’Callaghan mentioned numerous times returning to the “5 pillars” from student feedback. We have been having similar conversations, and this has been one of few initiatives I have seen that had a campus-wide impact with sustained listening to the podcast and attendance to live sessions by both staff and students. Importantly, the perspectives from staff and students were combined to provide guides that help both create and learn in new environments.
