Working with students as Instructional Designers in a professional practice unit
In episode 59 of the Tales of Teaching Online podcast Laura Tubino talks to Rob McHenry, Lecturer in Professional Practice in the School of Engineering, about working with students as partners on the development of work integrated learning resources.
Rob talks about the process students went through, first auditing their own courses and learning experiences to identify where key professional skills such as self-management and social responsibility were being developed. Industry partners were then identified and interviewed by the students to inform the content. This was followed by planning and developing learning resources to further support the development of these skills in the curriculum.
Although this program came out of a need for student placements through COVID-19, it proved very popular, moving quickly from one student to more than ten. The learning resources produced by students varied from the classic style commonly found in other units, to some gamified experiences, decision trees and animated videos. Rob mentions that, although it was difficult at first to release control of some aspects of teaching to students, he can’t go back to creating learning resources in isolation without the input of students and industry.
A strong focus of this program was to empower students to adopt a role that would be reflective of the professional workplace. It was very successful in this respect, with students moving on to ambassadorial roles at Engineers Australia, and developing the confidence that led them to secure roles in industry.
Listen to episode 59 of the Tales of Teaching Online podcast for the full conversation.