Talk:Health Education Development

Where is this heading?

Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Health Education and Development might be more accurately named Health Education Through Groups. This is a formal title used at la Trobe University. It is part of the Community Health project on Wikiversity. This year (2014), we are simply moving the existing course into Wikiversity, and changing what we can toward it becoming a course that can be studied on Wikiversity, no matter your location or circumstances. While we are doing this for a number of subjects, it will be particularly challenging for this subject owing to its dependence on group work. But we can see many ways that people outside the La trobe University setting might self organise, learn and implement the skills taught in this subject. Leighblackall (discuss • contribs) 01:17, 30 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

Development meetings and notes

2014 Feedback

Quantitative feedback results
Qualitative feedback results (also copied below)
Project Audience 177
Responses Received 35
Response Ratio 19.77%

Which two or three specific aspects of this subject have contributed most to your learning?

Ice breakers
Lectorial
The amount of presentations having to be done attributes to my public speaking learning.
The essay on cooperative learning contributed most to my learning
the tutor usually have a good preparation for the workshop and classes, so there is no time to waste. We use all the possible 2 hrs of workshop effectively.
I think the idea that the students facilitate the classes is a good way to get students involved in their learning.
It's fantastic how passionate the lecturer is about the topics he's presenting.
The subject content pertaining to cooperative learning and the discussion surrounding various vulnerable groups identified. The essay I had to write about cooperative learning and interesting discussions raised by students relating to vulnerable groups.
Class group discussions
Presentation of Icebreakers
icebreakers
wikimedia
online discussion forum
Great size of class.
Running the ice-breakers have been great in getting me to think about things from a different perspective and having to work things out rather than being told exactly what to do. It's also improved my presentation, speaking and discussion skills and confidence.
weekly icebreakers
lectorials
class discussions
cooperative learning in groups
lectures
videos
assignments
Group work due to the class being educational
Lectorials
The group work is good for presenting
the pectorals have been good
lectures
assignments
team building
working purely in teams
Knowing what the task is about
Relevance of this activity to my studies
'ice breaker' activities
Really enjoyed being engaged in the workshops with the groups running activities. Really practical way to learn has been fantastic.
Youtube series good for broad understanding of topics. I find more engaging and easy to understand and learn than just doing a bunch of readings.
Icebreakers and Co-ordinator always clarifies questions and has useful information on LMS
The group presentations have helped me gain much confidence on giving information out on a particular topic.
I now understand how to plan a lesson which is a great skill to take away
Formulation of interesting, engaging and educational lesson plans. Learning how to teach and be taught by fellow students gives a real insight into what we might be doing in workplace.
peer run classes
the group interactions and class ice breakers are a great way to express ideas, opinions, get to know students and work on communication, confidence and organisation skills in a creative and safe friendly environment.

Please suggest two or three specific, practical changes which could improve learning in this subject

provide criteria sheets as the assessments outcomes are a bit unclear, especially for the program logic narrative. It would also be useful if we were provided with lecture notes. It was also hard to keep up with the readings and youtube videos along whilst we had to focus on the icebreakers plus additional assessments.
notes from lectorial be placed on LMS
Stand at microphone for entire lecture so we can hear the lecture recording
clear content at the start of the semester indicated what the subject is about
not repeating the same tasks over and over each week
The amount of effort we put into ice breakers are worth more than 15% of the overall marks.
I believe they are worth more than 15%.
We need more feedback. Facilitated three classes and only really got very brief feedback in class. We weren't able to actually understand where we went well or where we could improve and we had to ask to get each of our grades back. Also, it's been an entire month since handing in our first essay - no feedback yet! It's difficult to improve ourselves if it hasn't yet been identified where we are going wrong, or where our ideas are lacking. This is true even when receiving a high mark (like above 80). I understand that this is a substantive mark, but nevertheless, it is 20 below perfect and there is little feedback advising where we could improve. It's like tutors say "very well done", but give you nothing to work with when obviously you can still do better.
A simpler document (1-2 pages) that would guide and explain teaching on specific topics (especially those that use technical terms like "limits" and "supports") from the cooperative learning guide would have been helpful
Providing criteria sheets for assignments
Providing feedback for assignments in a timely fashion so that students can understand and improve other relatable
assignments.
more clearer detail into what should be done for assignments
no
The lectorial content was interesting but at times I felt like there wasn't much content in them, while at other times I felt there was a lot of important content that wasn't given enough weight in other aspects of the subject, such as tutorial discussions.
make sure content on LMS is easy to find, for example the readings were hard to locate sometimes
organize time of assignments , too much work
Explain the point of the icebreakers? Slightly confusing
Have a greater level of accountability for students who do not contribute - however, in saying this, the level of accountability in this subject is FAR HIGHER than in any other subjects that I have had previously
Clearer layout of learning goals and work requirements less icebreakers, more discussion in workshops
more connection between lectures, readings and workshops
have a more structured marking criteria for major assessments
release information and resources for the coming week earlier, as some classes don't get enough time to work on the icebreakers the instructions on LMS are not organised well
Have an outline of the purpose of ice breakers
Have more ideas or examples of what can be done for ice breakers
Content is very vague.. It is sort of a "whatever" subject as I do not understand how it all relates back.. Subject overall I feel is vague and random with all the different assessments we have
Too many assessments to keep up with... Having 3 icebreakers every 3 weeks on top of 3 other essays is a bit too much to handle for one subject as most students have other subject and commitments too.. Maybe 2 icebreakers would be better...?
do not like how the workshops are run... Every week we listen to 2 teams present their icebreaker and participate in their activities. But that's all we do.. It's only about the icebreaker. I feel as if I missed that class I wouldn't have even missed out on anything as I don't really learn much from the icebreaker activities. Workshops should consist of more than just two teams presenting. I don't learn much from the activities and they do not relate back to the content we are studying that week or the lectures.. Workshops should consist of not only the icebreaker presentations but of tutor going over the lecture material covered or assessments.. I find assessments are too hard to keep up with and tutors do not do a good job in explaining them unless you actually book a time with them or go and seek extra advice. The activities from the book are all very vague and random and hard to understand what we actually need to do...
The group class sessions seem to be the main focus of the semester with meeting and working with team to construct 3 different activities. These collectively should be worth more grade-wise, as I feel I put more overall time into these than into other assignments which are worth double or more.
Classes and information presented is not interesting and sometimes does not seem relevant to assessments
More guidance on how to go about the group presentations - most of the topics were very difficult
It would be good to receive feedback from the tutor after each presentation to know what they think we should work on
Perhaps longer lecture times or more than one lecture a week, I feel like the lecture content has to be 'crammed' into the hour
clear marking critearia
clear link on LMS to wikiversity
the addition of a short workshop in order to look more into the lectorial material and concerns about assignments.

Additional comments?

Less icebreakers
We literally come to class to listen to other presenting, no learning is done.
Although i can see the value in the subject, i did not enjoy this subject. From my essay I learnt that an essential factor for the successful outcomes of cooperative learning is time. We do not have enough time in this subject, for cooperative learning to be effective. Result was that my team could not arrange a time to meet outside of class as we are all from different disciplines and could not coordinate a time when we were all free. This negatively impacted our team presentations. In the team we had one person who is an ESL student and was not confident in raising questions or ideas and another student who was just plain lazy. Myself and another student were left to pull the weight of the team adding to our stress and workload. We did not have enough time in the subject to actually resolve these issues. when they were discussed with the facilitator, the outcome was that we should not worry too much about it as the teamwork component is only worth 20% of our overall mark. Essentially i felt that this wasted my time, rather than providing me with a valuable learning opportunity. There was no cooperative learning, just unfair distribution of work to achieve the same marks.
It's very important to effectively understand group dynamics and how people learn, so I think overall, this is a very important subject.
Sometimes it was difficult to practically link the topic of the week with the learning objectives, and therefore made engaging difficult.
The lecture recordings NEED to be clearer! It's very frustrating when listening on Echo and there are parts which are so loud that they are distorted and parts which are so quite you can't hear them. I think the group interaction in lectures is a good idea, but if you're listening in, you can't hear student responses - the lecturer needs to repeat these.
After learning in-depth about cooperative learning, I can see how group work has many positive benefits and negative. I think that the idea of giving students the role of teaching is great, relevant and challenging, but I also feel (judging from some of my teammates) that the teachings will only be successful if everyone has an equal interest in the subject (some have verbalised a lesser interest) and that more verbal guidance in the tutorials are given to address how all the concepts are linked. This is in particular to "teaching sessions" whereby students have to teach a topic based on a subject chosen from the Cooperative Learning guide. That being said, I really appreciate all the assistance and material given to us, and the videos that help to link the subject to the 'bigger picture'.
The subject was quite different to others Ive done in the past, but still revenant. This made it new and enjoyable.
Rick Hayes is fantastic, by far the best lecturer i've ever had. He provides great feedback and is an inspiring presenter with lots of valuable experience. I thoroughly enjoyed my tutorial and the lectures with Dr. Hayes
A clearer aspect of 'what we are to do' and 'how we are to do it' would further enhance my understanding of the subjects and their intended learning outcomes too much of a focus on icebreaker activities and not enough focus on theories and models that are being discussed in the readings
There were plenty of interesting things worth learning in this subject but they were never discussed. 2 hours of icebreaker activities each week is pointless, we should be discussing things to further our understanding and learning. The assignments were hard to make heads or tails of, it felt like you were playing detective to try and work out what you were meant to do, fair enough to keep it vague if we have actually been discussing the elements as we go, but this didn't happen.
its a different type of subject than first year but has greatly improved my skill set and given me confidence. thank you

Ice-breaker activity and group-based resources

See http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-11/08/how-to-find-love-in-45-mins/viewall - may be useful for Johari Window or group forming exercise