In a wholly online environment, getting to know students and understanding their unique perspectives poses a particular issue for teaching. Knowledge of the student, their context and background becomes even more critical when meaningful and individualised feedback is required to support the student’s learning journey.

In the case of our postgraduate Learning and Teaching program, targeting those teaching in Higher Education, contact points and assessments were manipulated to meet both the program requirements and to gather contextual information around student background, experience, philosophy, and discipline context. This information provided a deeper background when it came to providing quality feedback tailored to the individual.

To provide some background, the Learning and Teaching focused program consists of four units and is delivered part time over two years. Students are typically current lecturing academics, along with a small number of non-academic participants, including librarians, other learning support professional staff and those wishing to enter university teaching. Because of this the students come from a diverse range of backgrounds, not just socially and academically, but also in discipline areas. This diversity poses a level of difficulty for lecturing staff, as an understanding of each individual student’s context is needed to be able to deliver targeted and purposeful specific feedback to each student. Traditional icebreakers alone at the start of semester are not effective enough to gain the required level of personal understanding of each student’s context.

To help address this issue a selection of strategically designed and placed activities and assessments were established throughout the program. These activities can be loosely divided into two categories, Reflective and Contextualised.

Reflective or ‘tell me what you think and why?’ assessment activities create an opportunity for students to consider personal feelings towards teaching issues. This prompts exploration of the connection to their prior knowledge and experiences, and the impact that this may have on future teaching practices. For the program lecturers it provides critical information around the student background, philosophy, and level of experience in teaching.

Contextualised activities allow students to apply the concept or learning into their current practice or setting. This provides both an opportunity for real world application and rehearsal, but further provides greater understanding for the lecturer of the student’s context and emerging issues within their practice.

Out of the forty assessable activities across the whole program, eleven are reflective and twenty-one are deeply contextualised to the student’s individual teaching situation. Examples include reflection around prior learning experiences, considering the role of learning and teaching before and after content stimulus, and visual representations of metacognitive processes.

Using a range of assessable activities across the program provides the lecturers with a greater understanding of each individual student. Initially students start the program as a name and number, however through the program they develop an individual personal identity contextualised into their teaching setting and background. Because of this, lecturers can provide more meaningful and specific feedback as there is an understanding of the student’s setting, issues and areas of development that need enhancing. Students become individuals and can be taught accordingly. This personalisation respects and acknowledges the student’s place along the learning spectrum and facilitates a more coaching-based approach, allowing for greater connection and customisation.

Currently evaluation of the approach is exploratory only, having organically evolved to address a pedagogical gap experienced by the lecturers. Official and unofficial feedback from students generally report this approach as having a positive outcome on both their learning and engagement with the program. Students often comment around the cognitive process that the course guides them through and the positive impacts that it has had on their practice and understanding of their place in academia.

Unofficial evaluation reports, from lecturers delivering the Learning and Teaching program, show that this combination of reflective and contextualised assessment tasks leads to a greater connection to the student cohort and makes the task of delivering highly individualised feedback easier.

Photo Juan Encalada on Unsplash modified for publication purposes