In this assignment, students are to demonstrate their understanding of the processes and activities involved in the planning, performance and conclusion of a financial report audit through the creation of a hypothetical scenario. The assignment also aimed to help students develop key skills and attributes of a effective auditor, according to a survey by Forbes and KPMG (2015):
This assessment format has been implemented in many Auditing and Assurance units, not only at Monash campuses but also in a graduate audit unit at San Francisco State University. With its four-year history and counting, this assessment has become a remarkable tradition.
This year, I caught up with Damien, Ashna Prasad and Lisa Powell to learn more about how they have managed to successfully facilitate role play when students are not physically in the room. The answer is, unsurprisingly, technology. More specifically, empowering students to showcase their creativity through the use of technology.
Which aspects of assessment design have stayed the same?
Students are in groups of 4-5 members
Provision of written instructions
Detailed marking guide for storyboard (group) and role play (individual and group evaluation)
Group activities to help students connect with group members and build rapport
Role-play/presentation tips videos created in collaboration with Monash Centre of Theatre and Performance
Visual illustrations and visual performance art workshop run by a professional artist
What's new?
Hybrid cohort: some groups met face-to-face, and some worked completely online
Format of the role play performance: video submission, instead of live performance
Instructional videos for the assessments and other resources
Students experienced less stress and anxiety of role-playing live, while showing more creativity through the creative process of making videos.
Show time!
Here are some highlights from student performances. Enjoy!
These snippets of student role play are a testament to the power of students' creativity when they are given the space, guidance and autonomy to express it. The team and other colleagues have also written a paper about their teaching practice, and highlighted "enhanced creativity and human skills", as well as "high levels of engagement, motivation, and enthusiasm" among students.
"Creativity in intelligence having fun."
Albert Einstein
It goes without saying that contextualised and creative forms of assessment bring about challenges in terms of time, resources and student reception. Upon reflection, the team shared about a small minority of students who struggled with the lack of structure and ambiguity from the revised assessment format (Powell et al., 2015). Improvements such as more visual aids, video demonstrations and scaffolding towards dealing with ambiguous situations and uncertainties are in store for future student cohorts.
How have you innovated to transform your teaching for a hybrid or online environment? We'd love to hear about your experience in the comments below.
I visited Caulfield's STARLab (Simulated Teaching and Research Laboratories) to observe the BFX5260 Treasury and Financial Markets teaching team in action, and I was in for a treat. The morning started out with great energy. Students were lining up to get their ID card scanned for attendance, and looking eager to get started.
This semester, the BFX5260 teaching team have implemented co-teaching, the flipped-class model, trading simulation, and digital in-class assessment all at once. How do they do it? Let’s dive in.
Co-teaching
Wayne Huf, Amale Scally, Simon Yap, Long Pham and Linh Nguyen make a great teaching team. They did a fantastic job collaborating to facilitate two classrooms simultaneously. One of the goals was to keep the two classes going at the same pace, and timing of in-class assessments to be in sync.
In order to achieve that, responsibilities are shared among the teaching team. Everyone takes turn to instruct, facilitate activities and provide technical support to students every week. The co-teaching model got everyone in the team on their feet, and actively attending to every group in the class. It was great to see how much attention and support students received throughout the session.
Flipped-classroom model
The concept of a flipped-classroom model has been around for some time, and has earned its place in the current landscape of higher education. Exploration and familiarisation with the new weekly topic happens prior to class time, and that's what has been implemented in BFX5260.
'Pre-load' materials including short videos, reading and exercise files have been provided for students to engage in independent learning every week. Moodle resources were referenced frequently during the session, which was a fantastic way to reemphasise the significance of the Moodle site as a one-stop-shop to assist students with their study.Workshop times are dedicated to hands-on activities and peer-learning where students exchange ideas and consolidate new knowledge. What's more, is that students are incentivised to complete pre-class work by a weekly test at the beginning of class. Even though questions are randomised, students were allowed to discuss and work collaboratively through this assessment.
An important note to take here is that the link between pre-class and in-class work has been well illustrated. Without having done their work prior to coming to the session, students' learning experience would not have received the same benefits and impact.
Excel classes were offered to students to help them
become more confident with using the software
Trading simulations
Throughout the session, students went through a range of simulated trading scenarios. Pre-programmed prompts were scheduled during some of the activities to increase interactiveness and sophistication of the exercise. This was a fantastic illustration of how complex and fast-paced a real trading environment could be.
The design of these workshops has thoughtfully taken into account valuable opportunities for students to apply what they have learned, and go from knowing to doing. What's more, is that students go to practice making decisions promptly and effectively, to respond to the dynamic nature of their future employment context.
To guide students through these simulations, procedural knowledge was demonstrated on Excel by the facilitator, followed by time for repetition on students' computer.
Students working on their Excel sheet
Learning is then solidified by peer learning. The trading simulations happened as individual exercises as well as group activities. Conversations were buzzing among students in the room to discuss the process and results of their practice.
Students discussed during the exercises
By closely watching and assisting students while the simulations occurred, the facilitator was able to recognise and showcase outstanding work from individual student for the whole class. The students were also rewarded with very encouraging comments from the instructor and their peers, adding even more energy to the atmosphere.
In-class assessment
In-class assessment was conducted at the end to solidify everything new students have learned throughout the session. To ensure the integrity and authenticity of students' attempt during the assessment, a software called AB Tutor was run in the control room. Excel files containing students' work were pulled from their Monash computer and deleted once the transfer has been completed.
The control room - where the "magic" happens
The vision
The learning activities in STARLab do not only provide an opportunity for students to gain simulated trading experience, but also expose students to ethic considerations, encourage them to be professional and understand the value of their human inputs behind machines. Click the video below to hear from the teaching team and a unit alumnus themselves.
A closing thought
It was inspiring to see the amount of thought and effort that went into designing and delivering the unit. Perhaps it took trial-and-error to continuously improving their teaching practice, but the team have been rewarded with the level of participation and engagement among students.
We look forward to observing more active learning strategies in your classroom.
This month, the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics (EBS) welcomed Paul White, the Associate Dean Education at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at their departmental welcome for new teaching associates. Paul ran a fantastic session on workshop facilitation and active learning for our colleagues at EBS, and we hope you will enjoy reading about some of the highlights from this session.
Paul and a group of participants
Whether you are a seasoned educator, or new to teaching, facilitating a workshop effectively can be a challenging task. The active dynamic and demanding nature of a workshop may mean that the facilitator needs to acquire many skill sets to engage and guide students. Throughout the training session at EBS, the whole group had a great dialogue and took home great insights into effective practices. We saw small and large-group discussion, mini role-play activity and many opportunities for colleagues to reflect.
Role-play activity to re-enact different student behaviours
Key takeaways
Here are a few key takeaways on how to effectively run workshops. We hope this can be your food-for-thought:
1. Establish a culture of effective learning
As the facilitator, you have the opportunity to lead by example. By modelling being well prepared, you will have a great chance of establishing a good culture of effective learning among your students. Planning and preparation is the key to facilitating a workshop effectively, and it is also the key to successfully participating in and contributing to a workshop.
Depending on your disciplines, the facilitator may have the ‘right’ answers to questions most of the time. However, such questions often address the lower order thinking skills such as recalling information, understanding basic concepts or applying concepts to simple examples. On the other hand, the Socratic method of asking thoughtful guiding questions to stimulate discussion among students, without giving them one absolute answer, is the best way to help students develop higher order thinking skills such as evaluating and critical thinking.
3. Know the key characteristics of an effective facilitator
Exercising good body language, patience and empathy, and showing enthusiasm from the facilitator, just to name a few, are great characteristics that a facilitator could have. How do you achieve these? Unsurprisingly, practice makes progress.
Involving all participants. Try ‘tracking your heat-map’, i.e. how you move around in the room and address each group of participants. It is also advisable to keep some distance and not to be too intimidating to students.
Communicating with a personal touch. For example, a great idea a participant shared was to get in touch with students prior to the semester and connect with them personally during the first session. This got students to keep coming to the following sessions. It is also good to get to know students on a first name/ preferred name basis.
4. Build and maintain a positive students’ perception of you
A facilitator’s energy can be contagious, and students can be influenced by how you carry yourself throughout your workshop. Enthusiasm and attentiveness can help facilitators go a long way in making and keeping a good impression to students.
5. Gather feedback from students
No teacher is perfect, and there is always room for improvement and enhancement in your facilitation practice. Gathering quick formative feedback from students, whether by verbal or written mean, may help you uncover great potential for your practice.
A closing thought
Throughout the session, our colleagues at EBS were very enthusiastic in sharing about their own teaching and facilitating experiences, and it was rewarding to hear the buzz from many great conversations about the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ in running a workshop. We look forward to having more inter-faculty collaborations like this, in which we share knowledge, learn from each other and feel inspired to try new things.
It is very easy to let multimedia content go by unnoticed these days, only because they have become so ingrained in modern society. Ever since the rise of video-sharing platforms like Youtube in the last two decades, and the dominance of other social video players such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat (to name a few), videos have disrupted the way we absorb and digest information for good.
More videos are being watched every day on Facebook (over 8 billion videos in 2016), videos are getting shorter (up to 2 minutes long), and more than 50% of videos are watched on mobile devices (TechCrunch, 2016; Wistia, 2016; Ooyala, 2016, as cited in Lua, 2017). MOOC providers such as Coursera, Lynda and edX have attracted millions of users and are proving the demand for e-learning options. This speaks volume about the future of information consumption, and the inevitable changes in education alike.
Young generations are now considered “digital natives” who are growing up with every aspects of their life submerged in technology (LiteracyPlanet, 2016). Education at K12 level has been preparing children to be equipped for future work in the 21st century, so it is imperative for higher education institutions to continue with this roadmap and incorporate digital technologies in teaching and learning.
Why should we care about teaching with videos?
You have probably come across this video of Salman Khansharing inspiring stories on how he accidentally embarked on a journey to lead a global change in education technology and pedagogical methodology.
The idea is by that by utilising technology that is seemingly dehumanising, specifically talking into a microphone and illustrating on a screen, Salman was able to bring a human touch to the learning experience in three ways:
First, by allowing lectures to be watched online prior to class, valuable time in class is now devoted to meaningful interactions between teacher and students, as well as among fellow students.
Second, learning is personalised to students’ pace and to their level of understanding. Teachers are enabled to identify students’ deficiency and have more meaningful conversations with students about their progress based on video analytics.
And third, videos have removed boundaries in terms of time and space, i.e. limited class time and physical classroom space. Now students are able to watch, pause, rewind their lessons in the comfort of their own home.
All of these benefits point to an increase in efficiency in education, which has been threatened by the increase in size of cohorts and restricted time and space at many institutions. As a result, our effort in maintaining high quality teaching is facing critical challenges, and video teaching could be the answer. Ljubojevic and colleague’s research (2014) echoed the same sentiments when they found that using videos in teaching has led to an increase in students’ engagement and efficiency of the self-learning process, their satisfaction, and overall improved quality of learning experience.
More importantly, this approach puts students in the driver’s seat and encourage them to take ownership of their own learning journey. Videos could assist students in mastery learning, allowing them to explore and review a subject matter as much as they would like to in private, while taking the load off of lecturers (Galbraith, 2004).
What’s the catch?
The blended teaching method and flipped classroom model have sparked many fascinating debates regarding its efficacy and its impact on the effectiveness of teaching and learning. It is an evidence-based practice, and whether these models are suitable for every educator is subject to professional judgement. The literature has not offered a systemic look on the outcomes of using videos in teaching, and a consistent framework in how videos could be used to optimise the teaching and learning experience.
What is the best practice for using videos in teaching?
What we can suggest, however, is how to best adopt videos in your teaching to achieve the optimal results:
Videos could be considered as a complementary element of lecture delivery, not necessarily a substitution (Ljubojevic et al., 2014; Ramlogan et al., 2013). Keep your videos short and sweet, as this keeps students focused on the relevant information and support students' self-learning process(Ruiji, 2012).
Videos need to be accompanied by interactive learning activities (Meguid & Collins, 2017). A few simple examples include using Mars and Poll Everywhere in real time to keep students engaged and gaining immediate feedback on students’ understanding, or accompanying online lectures with interactive content such as H5P activities on Moodle. For more ideas on how to engage students on Moodle, visit the support site.
Constructive alignmentis still at the core of teaching, regardless of the chosen tools and teaching approach. A connection between video materials and other components of the learning package must be clearly and actively communicated to students. Lectures are advised to be mindful of closing the loop between pre-class, in-class and post-class activities, and how videos could support the achievement of learning outcomes.
What is available to us?
Monash has been progressive in this space for years. We have seen a significant growth in the use of lecture recordings, online lesson packages, internally produced animation videos and YouTube content to support teaching. This year, we are excited about the introduction ofPanopto, the new video management platform to help manage your teaching video content. From Semester 1, 2018, you will be able to create, edit, upload, store, search and share videos all in one secure place. Panopto will be integrated fully with Moodle so that all learning materials are centrally stored. Read more on Panopto in our blog, and be sure to get yourself up to speed by watching a quickstart guidefor Panopto.
Further reading:
Galbraith, J., (2004, September). Active viewing:
and oxymoron in video-based instruction?. Paper presented at the Society
for Applied Learning Technologies Conference. Retrieved from designer.50g.com/docs/Salt_2004.pdf
Khan, S. [Ted]. (2011, March 09). Let’s use video to
reinvent education. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education
LiteracyPlanet. (2016). eLearning in Australian
classrooms [Report]. Retrieved
from https://www.literacyplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/LiteracyPlanet-eLearning-Report.pdf
Ljubojevic, M., Vaskovic, V., Stankovic, S., &
Vaskovic, J. (2014). Using supplementary video in multimedia instruction as a
teaching tool to increase efficiency of learning and quality of
experience. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed
Learning, 15(3).
Lua, A. (2017, February 16). 50 Video Marketing
Stats to Help You Create a Winning Social Media Strategy in 2017 [Blog
post]. Retrieved
from https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-video-marketing-statistics
Meguid, E. A., & Collins. M.
(2017). Students'Perceptions of Lecturing Approaches: Traditional
versus Interactive Teaching. Advances in Medical Education and
Practice (8), 229–241.
Partnership for 21st Century Learning.
(n.d.) Framework for 21st century learning. Retrieved January 29,
2018, from http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework
Ramlogan, S., Raman, V., & Sweet, J. (2014). A
comparison of two forms of teaching instruction: video vs. live lecture for
education in clinical periodontology. European Journal of Dental
Education, 18(1), 31-38.
Ruiji, L. (2012). The development on multimedia
teaching resources based on information processing theory. International
Journal of Advancements in Computing Technology, 4, 58-64.
In this series of blogs, TaLT would like to explore the active and student-centred learning and share with you some great experience from our academics. In many cases, you will find the approaches quite handy and useful creating a student-centred and collaborative learning environment for our learners.
Dress Up to the Class
On 09.10.2017, the students in the BTF5340 Regional Trade Governance S2 2017 class all dress up and gather in the Racecourse Hotel function room next to the Caulfield campus. Their teachers Dr. Nicola Charwat and Ben Grunberg have set up the function room with round tables and afternoon tea for the simulated TOP Negotiating Round. About 60 students representing 10 Asia-Pacific countries are sitting in 6 negotiation tables and spend the afternoon to negotiate agreements on regional trade issues such as compulsory licensing, grant of patents, patent term extension, pharmaceutical data and marketing protection, biologic data and marketing protection, and tobacco-related exemptions.
The lecturers have prepared instructions for negotiation, negotiation issues summary documents, TOP - IP outstanding issues negotiating text, and other resources/readings on the faculty ePorfotilio system Mahara and use it as the virtual space for each country group to work on. Students have worked together throughout the semester to prepare negotiation strategy and discussion paper, position statement, this simulation, and the debrief/reflection. Two teachers move from table to table during the negotiation to observe and evaluate student performance.
The negotiation simulation encourages students to take initiative and actively engage in the study. Students organise the negotiation process quite nicely by sharing the agenda and prepare their materials in advance, use timer to keep each countries speeches in time so that every country can have a voice in negotiation, use technology to keep voting results and negotiation minutes.
The simulation finishes with a short report from each topic chairperson and the following debrief/reflection submission. An online survey is also published on Moodle to collect student feedback. Nicola has been doing this simulation for several years and has received very positive student feedback.
If You'd Like to Try
It is an interesting learning activity for the students. And if you would like to have a try, one lesson that we have learnt in the past is to break down the simulation into specific tasks with due dates. It will help the students to understand what they are supposed to do by time and prevent them from getting overwhelmed in the simulation. If you are interested and would like to talk to someone, TaLT is always there for you.
Reference
Faculty Focus (2017, 11 07). Using Role Play Simulations to Promote Active Learning: https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/instructional-design/using-role-play-simulations-to-promote-active-learning/
University, C. (2017, 11 07). Teaching with Simulations. Retrieved from Carleton University: https://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/simulations/index.html
