Open up the classroom - A class on the Lawn

BTB3221 - Taxation law and practice is a unit that many students (especially those with international background) find difficult to study. As it is a specialist technical discipline. Our colleague Toan Le tried to make tax law easier to learn for students by introducing group learning workshop and presentations.  But in Semester 1 2018, he was allocated a seminar room that was not suitable to conduct the 3-hour long group learning workshop. The room had no window or no screen on the wall. And it was in a long rectangle shape which made it difficult for the students at the back to see the front.

We had to improvise - with the help of Deb McCormack and Tristan Cui from the TaLT, we moved the students out of the traditional classroom and we facilitated the outdoor on the lawn of the Peninsula campus.

Each week, after the 90 minutes lecturers, Toan took the 38 students out to the lawn in front of the Peninsula library and ran a 90 minutes workshop there.

How it works is that like in the traditional classroom students were broken up into groups and allocated a space to work and then to present their group work. As the students did their work Toan would facilitate their learning by going around each group and joining in the discussion, assisting them to answer their allocated tasks.

To communicate with the larger group and deal with the occasional noise, Toan carried a portable microphone that the TaLT supplied.

Feedback /outcome

The workshops proved to be successful. Students enjoyed the different learning setting! Happy students generally correlated to a better learning experience!

Perhaps because they were being outdoor and have an open space to work, students showed better engagement than when they were learning in the classroom. They did not check their mobiles or access Facebook or Twitter on laptops and they were even taking selfies for the special classes.

When it was time to present, the students listened inattentively as the picture shown. The noise was not a problem. Thanks to the portable microphone I was heard and the student presenters did not experience any issue. In fact, students overcame it by moving closer in to listen.

However, you need to consider the students with health issues for this setting. Also, the cold weather stopped us from doing that for the whole semester.

Overall, it was a successful experiment of a flexible and new approach to teaching and learning. And it is FUN!