[BLANK_AUDIO] >> My online teaching predominantly occurs in our medical program. In which we have over the course of six year undergraduate program around 1800 students. Indeed I believe that assessment and formative assessment is probably the most important part of our teaching and the biggest drive of our learning. And in a large cohorts, such as we have, it's very difficult to do that on an individual basis. So, I turn to technology, to provide formative feedback on students responses. In our virtual microscopy teaching we use browser based viewing of microscopic sections of tissue, but students find it very difficult to understand what they're seeing. And to address that in our large prac classes we've used virtual microscopy adaptive tutorials. We're now looking at a macroscopic section of a diseased heart. And students are asked to drag different colored stars onto various regions. So, the last, the last one. I will deliberately get wrong. And, I'll now submit those answers. And I get the feedback the first three stars are correctly located, but the fourth one I didn't, and now I have a chance to try again. If I still don't get it correct, you get feedback again, if I fail to get it correct for a third time. [BLANK_AUDIO] I get feedback as to where the the, the stars should've been, been dragged. And I get directed to a remedial video about this particular tissue so that I can understand better what the areas that I need to, that I need to identify. >> Online concept mapping has really helped me understand how different things link together. Especially when I don't understand very much about a topic. It gives me a basis to work off and somewhere to start. >> So this is an online formative assessment for one of our phase one medicine courses. It encompasses questions relating to all of the disciplines which are integrated into each of our courses. And, and generally they tend to be based on clinical scenarios. So we have a scenario at the top and then there are questions related to it. Some of them MCQs. Some of them multiple response, occasionally true false and you, here we have drop down lists. We also have image based questions where students need to drag and drop markers onto images. This is a, of course a model of of the upper respiratory tract. And also microscopic images as well. So when students have completed the assessments they submit their work and they can get detailed feedback on those questions that they have responded to. And at the end of the assessment when we continue, we get a detailed assessment of how we did in each of the discipline components within that assessment. So, it gives students a a better idea about where they need to do more studying prior to their final exams. Because our medicine program is integrated we need students to integrate concepts across domains. And so, for that, we've used online testable concept maps to provide formative feedback. And to, get students to see the big picture. This is a concept map with some of the concepts and linking prices cut out of it. And, the student needs to drag and drop these concepts and linking phrases into the appropriate part of the map. Now put in three concepts there, and if I Submit I can then see which concepts are put in correctly. Which I did not. And, I even get a completed map as feedback as well. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Doing the formative assessments, at the end of each term, has save me time, in a way, in that it allows me to know which subjects I need to focus more energy on. And, and also which are my strongest subjects that maybe I would've wasted time doing extra work on. >> They particularly value the feedback provided by the formative assessments and the virtual microscopy adaptive tutorials. I value the integration that the online testable concept maps provide. And the overall big picture understanding that it enables them to gain. >> A student can use these online components, to consolidate what we just learned. And we are also up, also being informed that we could use it after the class for the exam revision. >> I think the feedback that we get with online learning is really helpful. And the fact that it's very non-confrontational I can get a bit scared to ask questions in class. Being able to take my time to go through what we're learning. And then, to see, how my understanding matches up with what we should know. It's been really helpful. >> For students, I think that they, they appreciate the capacity to use online technologies. Wherever they are, whenever they have the, the opportunity to do so because students have busy lives outside of their university schedule. >> Fifteen hours on a bus every week. It has encouraged me to use that time to study and it's been a good use of my time. >> It's more of a self help tool that student can decide on how often and when to access. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> The main issue for all of these things is to anticipate student's common misconceptions. And to trap those misconceptions with your questions and to provide appropriate feedback to remediate those misconceptions, that's the, the powerful learning effect of, of these tools. The rationale has to be absolutely clear as to what you're trying to achieve if the, if the online learning is an addition but not, but not embedded in the curriculum there's, there's a high chance of failure. So, very important that anything that is created is, is well thought out before hand, is embedded in the curriculum, and is appropriately evaluated, and continuously improved following feedback. For online formative assessments, we use a dedicated software package known as Question mark Perception. Where we find it to be particularly valuable, with in the image based questions. Because, my discipline, pathology, is a very image based discipline, as are many other medical disciplines. And we can use image based questions where students can interact with the images as well as typical multiple choice, multiple response and, and open ended essay type questions as well. The other aspect of, of that software is it provides very comprehensive analytics. So we can quickly learn where students are having difficulties. And we can actually adjust that teaching, in, in response to that. We've also got a large database of macroscopic and microscopic images of disease. And recently, we've converted that into an app for our students to be able to use in the mobile environment. This is important because our students have distributed widely, not just on the main campus, but in teaching hospitals throughout Sydney and also on campuses through northern and southern New South Wales. [BLANK_AUDIO] Online formative assessments have a beneficial effect on students learning outcomes at the end of their courses. We've shown them that participation in these and performance in those assessments makes a difference to their, to their final assessment scores. Online formative assessments are as something that could be used universally in, in almost any discipline. The rewards are in your students learning outcomes. >> It's so much better to have something that's specifically tailored to what we're learning in class and to what we're expected to know. And in that respect having the university based online tutorials has been very helpful and saved me a lot of wasted time using other online technologies that are less helpful. [BLANK_AUDIO]
