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I believe that the basic strategy of the tutor is to improve the student’s academic achievement and professional targets. There is also agreed that high eminent coaching improves retention and advancement in higher education which positively impacts students who attends regularly (Girves, Zepeda & Gwathmey, 2005). The major challenge is to incorporate student engagement activities that have to be interconnected with high-quality learning outcomes. Thereby I am in an agreement that once the student joins in the course it is my responsibility to guide and establish that she/ he has the knowledge, skills and personal attributes to be a competent Civil Engineer [A4, A2]. As a Lecturer my current roles are

·      Lecturer – who imparts or shares knowledge with Students from HE4 to HE6 (Interactive sessions) [A2]

·      Dissertation Supervisor – who support and guide  to complete dissertation which is based on real time issues [A2]

·      Personal Tutor – Students can discuss the personal issues if that impact their academics [A2]

·      Mentor- Trainer and provide guidance to the new staffs with repect to the module delivered

·      Peer Assessor- A critical friend, evaluator by providing constructive feedback

·      Assessor- An evaluator who critically analyze and mark the formative and summative assessment [K2,K3]

Background

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has its unique identity as it is of having rich cultural diverse society. Multiculturalism is one of the beauties of UAE.  Thereby the students have good vibe with each other. Mostly our students are from Asia and Africa. The background of education also varies as most of the countries follows their country’s curriculum. However the student interaction and participation was not problematic

During the start of semester, a module guide is prepared based on the University’s specification and a teaching plan is prepared [A1] [K2]. This provides my students a clear understanding about the duration of lectures, portions enclosed and the period of independent study required[A2][A4]. Teaching plan is set based on the student’s understanding and the learning outcome [K3][V1]. The focus of my teaching planning is mainly on

·      Design instructions that facilitate learning and encourage autonomy independent thinking in students.

·      To  critically analyze and write effectively based on the task

·      Problem and project based learning

·      To narrow down the gap between industrial developments and teaching practices [A1,A2,K4]

I strongly trust that a tutor must go beyond the classrooms to guide, support and inform about the student opportunities for further academic and professional development. The best way to prepare them is to get them look out of the box. The graduate should have to

·   Plan, and participate in, unconventional partnerships (Professional Networking).

·   Seek more technical training (Internships).

Look beyond the semester system (Participating in conferences\0.

Know how to appeal to different audiences (Improving presentations).

Enthusiastic to enter into or create opportunities outside of academia (wordpress.com,2012)[K5,A5,A4,K6]

General overviews of the teaching strategies are mentioned above and let’s overlook a specific module and critically evaluate effective learning on my teaching. Here the module considered for the critical evaluation is of HE4, Mathematics and Structural Analysis (CIE4011). The module briefs fundamentals of Civil Engineering which is also a prerequisite of modules of HE5 and HE6.  Its purpose is to develop the students’ ability to solve problems using engineering mathematics and structural analysis techniques in order to change from surface learning to an inductive approach of learning. [A2,A4,K2,K3,K4]. The class strength is only 10 and the level of understanding of students is a below average, the transition from school to college can be a reason.

Therefore the main goal is to design instructions that facilitates learning which encourages autonomy and independent thinking of students (wordpress.com,2012)

Initial Critical Evaluation (What is required? What are the issues?)

Only basic algebraic mathematics operations are required to underpin the engineering discipline. The advantage is that the class is small. Initially, a diagnostic test is conducted to check the basic knowledge of algebraic and arithmetic’s using LEAP online test. Based on the assessment and personal tutoring sessions (provided to each individual), the major challenges faced during the lecture of this module are

·         A notion that mathematics is tough

·          Lack of interest to Mathematics and just get through it to become engineers

·         Lack of observing basic algebraic solving skills

·         How students can grasp the understanding of ideas as a consequence of exploring    problems situation

Critical Analysis of challenges Underpinning Learning Theory, assessment and feedback

The learning theories that can be related on the challenges are mainly due to self- efficacy and surface learning approach [K2]. As stated by Bandura, (1997), the individual believes that are able/unable to perform task which is correlated to their past performance. The surface learning causes fear of failure, routine memorizing and intuition to bound minimally on course requirements. This has to be transferred to deep strategic learning that can relate ideas and create interest using evidences that create meaning to their knowledge (Center for research in to instruction and learning,1997)

Therefore students have to unlearn the traditional learning methods such as the tutor explains the theory and based on it several practice problems are worked and some tutorials are awarded to practice. Simply telling the students these are the knowledge that’s required for the future will not create a motivation. Instead a preferable inductive learning and teaching can be considered. For example a case study or complex real time problem can be solved based on theory taught. Taking into consideration [A2,A4]

·         Initially the instructions should be based on the student’s knowledge likely experience based on the cognitive approach.

·         Materials should be provided on an easily understandable format.

·         Provide instructions to fill the gaps and extrapolate the materials provided this can improve self-learning of students[A4]

Group work should be encouraged this attributes to social constructivism (Prince,2006)[A4]
The motivation of the students can be also improved by tutor’s self-disclosure (Cayanus, J.L, 2004). According to Sorensen (1989) a teacher with self-disclosure is linked positively with student views of affective learning. Downs et al (1988) also found that teachers who narrate knowledge along with humor and self-disclosure, improved the clarity of understanding to the students. A positive feedback given from the students is that they liked the energy and enthusiasm in me which influenced their motivation. According to Collins and Newman 1987, a cognitive apprenticeship approach can be adopted. The cognitive apprenticeship approach allows students to integrate cognitive and metacognitive strategies for utilizing, managing, and discovering knowledge. The 6 teaching methods used for this approach is modeling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection and exploration. (learning theory.com) [K6,V1,V2]. The cognitive rigor matrix is more suitable for instructional and assessment practice at higher education level and is a combination of Bloom’s revised taxonomy and Webb’s depth of knowledge. This provides a means of analyzing the emphasis placed on each intersection matrix. (Heiss et al 2009) . Therefore most suitable taxonomy for mathematics is Cognitive rigor matrix.

The said learning theory and taxonomy underpins the current practices and was mostly beneficial but some actions had issues as well. The actions, issues and revised plan are tabulated below in the Table 1.

Table 1: Issues and Revised Plan based on the current practices

| Actions | Current Issues | Revised Plans for the future
| Acute Observation ·   Observe the Surrounding [K1,K2,A2] |  Good Practice. No issues |  -
| Traditional teaching [K1,K2,A2]   | Explaining the theory first and relating to the issue | ·      The issue is provided ·      Analyze the problem ·      Arrive to the solution ·      Relate it to the principles ·      Use  real time scenarios and application oriented task
| Interactive session ·   Encourage to ask questions ·   Variety of ideas created [K1,K2,A2]   | ·   Few students were observed to be silent ·   Immediate response from few students | ·      Encouraged group works with the students with similar understandings ·      A set of tutorials are provided for the students who complete the task quickly
| Enhance Confidence ·         Initial few reinforcing sessions ·                  Gradually increase the intensity of tasks ·                  Tutorials ·                  Weekly Quiz [K1,K2,A2] |  ·   Fewstudents:Continuous absenteeism for the lecture session ·   Irregular in submitting the tutorials   |  ·         Personal Tutoring and warning provided for absenteeism ·         Strict monitoring of tutorials and Quizzes by incorporating to the reflection student profile
| Monitoring Students involvement ·      Clarifying doubts during the session ( especially careless errors)when tutorials are provided ·   One to one tutoring [K1,K2,A2] ·               Peer tutoring |   ·         Peer tutoring, students of similar understanding should be grouped or else impacts the confidence level of students |   ·         Similar students are clubbed for peer assessment
| Encourage Playing Puzzles | Good Practice, Creates Interest to learn mathematics | -
| Use of Information Communication Tools ·         Uploading  lecture handout on moodle ·         Videos of lectures ·         Podcast |   ·         Irregular in lectures due to the belief that notes are available in the moodle |   ·         The tasks and description of the content to be provided. ·         Provide solutions only during lecture sessions

.

. A critical analysis is carried out to improve the standard of student. The assessments are set to meet the learning outcomes. Formative assessments are highly encouraged to check student’s learning process and level of understanding as it involves a close relation between the tutor and the student(black 1993). The types of formative assessments are provided in the Table 1. Regular feedback will be provided for the formative assessments to improve their performance. Assessment helps to recognize the beneﬁt of feedback on learning (Black and Wiliam 1998a). A continuous formative assessment is characterized for the learning enhancement of students that indents to achieve academic and professional goals. Including students in assessment provides authentic student centered learning and helps them to apply judgement of their work (Black et al., 2003) .The effectiveness of learning were observed in majority of the students as their confidence level started improving and consistent learning was observed as the formative assessment requires continuous learning.  Fluckinger et al suggested that peer feedback was observed to be encouraging which is less time consuming for me[K2,A3,A5]. The students had the tendency to restrict themselves to only the materials and much hesitant to self-learning. In order to encourage self-learning they were advised to work out scenario based problems from the references cited in the Moodle. Initially most of them were reluctant to get involved but when the quizzes were related to tutorials provided influenced them to practice the tutorials. The practice was carried out to all the students irrespective of their proficiency in module and this helped the weaker students to improve and reach in par with their fellow mates[K2,A3,A5]. This enabled to test the student’s knowledge and encourage self-assessment (Klenowski et al 2002). Sadler’s 1989 also noted that improvement requires 3 key elements i.e. Student should have a proper aim to achieve· They should be aware about their current standing to reach the goal (feedback) and what actions to be considered in order to reduce the gap between them (applying feedback to future assignments). Timely feedback is provided with positive attributes initially followed by negative feedback. Grow model can be used for providing feedback. Assessment involves making judgements about students’ summative achievement for purposes of selection and certiﬁcation, and it also acts as a focus quality assurance. In this module, students will gain 20 credits when they complete both components successfully which is requirement to complete HE Level 4.

Assessment and Feedback provided are analysed based on the following criteria.

a.       Validity

Summative assessments and feedback provided are valid since was based on module specification and satisfies the LOs which were verified by internal and external verifiers.

b.      Reliability

Marking was reliable since written examination is marked based on the moderated answer scheme and then the marking is moderated by two moderators.

c.       Effectiveness

Assessment promotes learning in students which develops subject knowledge.

Q & A Effectiveness can be improved by giving chances for all students using online Quizzes.

d.      Transparency

Assessment guidance is given in the classroom in common and also uploaded in Moodle so that the criteria are transparent to all. Marking schemes are created and moderated for the exams.

e.       Authentic

Assessment are said to be authentic when the tasks are student centred, related to real-time implementation and test the knowledge of the students. The inclass assessment and examination is authentic as it is based on a real-time scenario which includes how mathematics is applied to engineering applications.

f.        Fairness

Assessments are fair since the assessment guidance and marking scheme are transparent as well as moderated. All students have given equal opportunities as it is individual work with same assessment guidance, resources and duration.

Conclusion

Critical reflection to my teaching and learning allowed me to synthesis from different perspective. It helped me to critically think, explain, justify or challenge on my own practices. The learning theory, styles, taxonomy, feedback and assessment provided a clear idea about how a subject can be taught focusing on the performance of students. The major challenge faced by the students are mostly due to surface learning and lack of motivation which is  critically analyzed and tackled using various strategies such cognitive apprenticeship, process oriented learning, formative assessments and self-efficacy. Incorporating ICT initially seemed to be a brilliant idea from the literature however some ICT techniques such as uploading worked out answers in learning platform reduces the class strength. The module always challenged my philosophies on how to learn and molded me as a better learner in order to become a better tutor.

References

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