Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Evaluation of the Clinical Practise in the Beauty Therapy Salon

How will you evaluate the success of your new course design?

  • I will be reviewing course evaluations that are taken as part of the Aoraki Quality Management Policy
  • I will be closely monitoring student satisfaction in the classroom and seeking feedback directly from students in the form of surveys and
    critical incident techniques
  • I will review assessment results to establish whether assessments need to be re-worked (e.g. are students able to pass without the need for re-sits on a high percentage
  • I will use observation of the classroom dynamic to seek insight into students thoughts on the course
  • I will run a trial/ pilot of the course with Diploma students to see what they think of the new course and seek feedback from them


     

Who will you ask to review your design and test it before you go live?

  • As above – I will run a pilot of the programme with the current Diploma students to gather feedback
  • I will ask for a peer evaluation of the course and seek feedback from them
  • I will ask industry stakeholders to review the course and feedback (this is my ideal evaluation plan!!)
  • Focus group of industry/peer/past student representatives


 

How will you monitor its success as you use it, and at the end of the first offering?

  • Success will be judged by student results in assessment tasks
  • Retention rates of students
  • Analysis of budget allocation for the course to establish profit!!
  • At the end of the first offering – the student success rate will be used as the first monitor
  • A further survey of student satisfaction
  • Analysis of data gathered from Moodle – e.g. hit rates for students on the site, monitoring of progress


     

What criteria will you use to judge success?

  • Answered above – student retention and success
  • Satisfaction in the feedback evaluations
  • Industry feedback – survey of their thoughts on the students that they employ

How will you gather your data?

  • Evaluation forms
  • Moodle
  • Assessment tools
  • Discussion groups
  • Focus group

What will you do with the information obtained?

  • Develop improvements to the course as required
  • Continually monitor the feedback to ensure student satisfaction
  • Re-write assessments/ re-model assessment tools as required

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Assessing at the correct level for the students

How do I ensure that the students are being assessed at the correct level - and what is the correct level for their assessment? We have been doing some interesting work with the International ITEC sample papers with the embedding literacy developements that all Polytechnics have been involved in and there have been some interesting findings! Some of the words that the multiple choice exams use come out as being at Level 8 literacy level - we are dealing with students on a level 4 programme! - therefore using the correct terms and the correct type of assessment is very important. Using the level descriptors from NZQA I can see that the requirement at Level 4 - our certificate level programme is that the students should be able to:

  • Carry out processes that: -a. require a wide range of technical skills b. offers a considerable choice of procedures c. are employed in a variety of familiar and non-familiar contexts So the activities that I am proposing to use for assessment would meet all these requirements - by assessing the students performing a range of activities in the simulated salon I will meet process a, by using a range of treatments for assessment will meet process b, and by assessing the students in a simulated salon where students work on members of the public I will meet process c.

  • The students responsibilty and therefore the assessment must include - self directed activities - the performance of treatments in the salon is a self-directed activity

  • The course will use moodle as a discussion forum and students will be required to engage in online discussion as part of the assessment for Learning outcomes 3 and 4. The level of this type of assessment would be suitable as students will again be using an unfamiliar context in most cases

Here is my presentation for the course



Monday, October 5, 2009

Staffing and Resourcing

What am I going to need?

New technologies will be the biggest issue to grasp for the tutors and students alike.

I will need to make sure that we have some training in place around the moodle system and how to utilise it to its best advantage - both for the students and staff members

Training will need to be given to those students who may be unfamiliar with computer based learning - especially those in our maturer age range.

Tutors will also need training in the use of some of the tools that will be available to them - the composing educational resources course may be of benefit to them? - and some may possibly need some persuasion that Moodle can be a suitable learning platform for the students.

I am going to do some more research on second life - I have just watched Sarah Stewart's link to the use of second life for interview skills as suggested by Terry at our get together - what an amazing tool that could be - need to find out how to go about creating that sort of learning environment for the salon and appearance side of the course - it would be a great activity

I need to organise video clips, audio and still images to use on moodle - this will need to be completed in the Christmas break - We have access to Diploma in TV students with film making equipment, we have Diploma in radio students, so I have access to audio recording devices and I have access to computer and digital photography students. We even have 3D animators - so hopefully my resources will cost nothing other than a cake for morning tea!

It may be a requirement to purchase a digital camera for classroom use - something with movie capability would be great - something like this one would be suitable