It’s in the subject outline!

• A practical way to encourage students to read the Subject Outline and Getting Started Module and reduce email and discussion forum load related to questions that we as educators know students should have the answers to if they had completed pre-session activities.
• A confirmation that students understand their responsibilities and are unable to claim that they were not aware at a later date.

Suitable for

This activity can be ideal for a subject with a large student cohort.

When to introduce

Before the start of the semester.

Time required

The amount of time required for this activity can vary depending on two key factors: the number of questions and the level of detail provided in the subject outline document. However, on average:

Technologies

Canvas Quizzes. The activity can be implemented in any learning management system that has a quizzing tool.

Attribution

Associate Professor Amanda White, Faculty of Business, UTS

• In this activity, I created a quiz based on the information in the Subject Outline document and the Getting Started module pages in Canvas.
• This quiz then sits in its own Module and completion of the quiz becomes a Requirement for all future modules (where Learning Content is contained). 
• Students are required to complete the Quiz and score 100% so that learning content can be unlocked.
• Questions in the quiz included covering topics such as
  • How to contact the teaching team
  • Process to apply for assignment extensions
  • Weightings and due dates of assessments
  • How to access online Zoom classes
  • How often students should check their emails
  • How to ask a question about content

Create a new module and make sure it is located before the subject modules. Then add the quiz to this module.

Use Prerequisites so that students must complete the quiz before unlocking subject content by going to every other module that follows and enforcing the prerequisite.

Repeat for the rest of the modules. Each module will display text indicating the prerequisite.

Download an example

Example for UTS users. Please import/download from Canvas Commons

Example for users outside of UTS. Please download from Canvas Commons public folder, then import it into your Canvas site.

The theoretical foundation for implementing a hurdle activity like this one is Transition Pedagogy (Kift, 2009) to help all students start the subject with an understanding of what is expected of them. This is important because subjects can often have differing requirements. In a subject of 1600, this reduced the number of pre-session and early queries that were not related to personal circumstances to only a handful.

References

Kift, S. (2009). Articulating a transition pedagogy to scaffold and to enhance the first year student learning experience in Australian higher education: Final report for ALTC senior fellowship program. Strawberry Hills, NSW: Australian Learning and Teaching Council.