Would you like to ‘blend’ your subject but are not sure how to go about it?
Are you new to teaching at UTS and need help aligning your subject with learning.futures?
If the answer is yes to any of these questions, we encourage you to sign up the Teaching for learning.futures program. This program is aimed at subject co-ordinators and is made up of five ‘blended’ modules run over a period of around 10 weeks. It guides you to make your classes more engaging for your students, and to ‘blend’ your subject making better use of UTSOnline tools and technologies. Each module involves online and face to face activities – just like your subjects – and tackles a key element you need to get across, not only to teach well but to make sure your subject aligns well with UTS learning.futures (see here for details).
10 weeks! Does that mean it involves a lot of time?
No. While it runs over 10 weeks, each module only involves around 4-5 hours of work over a fortnight – and that’s the face to face as well as the online bits. Plus the work you do is focused on getting things done to improve your subjects, as a Lecturer from the Graduate School of Health commented “In Pharmaceutics, calculating the dose administered to the patient has always been a topic students struggled with. Last semester I implemented the “show cards” technique where students work together on a problem, explain it to each other before giving their answer as a group. The feedback from students was very positive and they requested more sessions to run using the same setup.
Okay – what’s so good about the program?
“It’s the best blended learning program I’ve done”
Scholarly Teaching Fellow, FEIT
Well as this participant commented, the program ‘walks the talk’ and models a blended approach. And as it’s run in UTSOnline the whole program has the ‘look and feel’ of a UTS subject. You, just like your students, participate online between attending face to face classes, doing activities designed to build engagement and interaction. So while you are learning about how to enhance your teaching, you are also experiencing – as a learner – the approaches, tools and technologies you can use in your subjects with your own students.
The program also tackles the why along with the how. We marry a practical focus with the chance to think about and critique the thinking behind the focus on learning, blending and learning.futures.
You’ll also get to meet others who are tackling similar challenges and bounce around ideas together. Given they come from different disciplines and diverse backgrounds you’ll get to hear lots of perspectives and ideas, and have heaps of examples you can draw from in planning your own subjects.
And that’s not all – you also get the space to think about how teaching and learning fits into your career and the sorts of evidence you could and should be collecting to get ready for that next promotion – plus you’ll have a portfolio you can draw on to do this.
We hope we’ve piqued your interest. If so come along to the introductory session and see what you think – here you’ll also find out about other programs you can take to develop your teaching. To register your interest simply fill out this form.