Engineering Materials Wiki
Design Pattern Tags : Program, Learning engagement/activities, Blended learning, Online learning
Engineering Materials Wiki Rahul Gupta, Frank (Yanan) Wang, Greg Plumb
December 2015
Abstract/Snapshot:
The Associate Degree in Engineering Technology (AD026) is a two year program offered in the School of Vocational Engineering. This program provides training in basic engineering skills, and can lead to a pathway into other engineering degrees. It is a first year, first semester course and students require a lot of support as they struggle with the volume and complexity of the text based learning resources.
The team redesigned the course to make it more activity based and engaging for students. This included the development of a self-paced learning guide and a Wiki based learning tool to enable students to work at their own pace to develop a better understanding of engineering materials and their application.
Learning Context It is anticipated that this pattern could be applied to other courses where there is significant body of discipline theory to be understood and applied to various contexts.
The pattern could also be incorporated into the first year of other relevant Engineering degrees, which would ensure closer alignment with the associate degree.
Rationale This pattern provides
A dynamic and engaging learning experience which will provide students with an opportunity to work at their own pace to explore complex concepts regarding engineering materials and their application.
Design and develop an interactive course framework that will enable students, individually or in groups, to progressively construct knowledge of engineering materials and their application.
Learning Design It extends and focusses the broad skills and knowledge developed in this course. This is especially useful for Associate Degree students who will move into various higher education programs at third year level. It may also be useful for offshore students where they will be able to focus on their local context.
Resources/Technology This wiki tool was created by EduTAG and they created all of the resources.
Case Studies/Implementation How do I go about adopting this?
Use wiki tool within Blackboard classroom for your course
Design a selector or commission a customisation of the Engineering Materials Wiki (preferably not Drugs in Sport as Flash is no longer supported).
Select a primary and secondary focus—the secondary focus should be the customisation of the key learning outcomes of the course.
Select sufficient aspects of the primary focus and secondary focus to produce a matrix of points that will give unique opportunity to all students—selections are on a first-come first-served basis—once a selection has been made no other student can make that selection. If sufficient matrix points can’t be found, students can be grouped.
Design how the wiki will be addressed in the course delivery (week-by-week, topic-by-topic ….) and build it into the Blackboard Classroom for the course, integrating with Grade Centre.
Provide a video ‘how to’ (or text ‘how to’) to show students how to use the wiki and what is expected of their submissions.
Provide a video ‘how to’ (or ‘how to’s) to ensure all staff are familiar with the functioning of the wiki tool.
Provide an assessment rubric to guide students (self-assessment, peer assessment and academic assessment as required).
Outcomes Students will develop a richer understanding of engineering materials and their application. They will gain confidence in searching for additional learning (online, library, video etc.) and in contextually evaluating and critiquing what they find.
Students will be able to access the Engineering Materials Wiki through multiple channels and in multiple locations.
Translate this work into a curriculum design pattern that can be adapted for other curriculum areas.
It will also enable students to the Associate Degree student the capacity to direct their learning towards the way they would like their higher education to continue).
