Seven classroom-based experiential learning designs were implemented and evaluated to inform this toolkit. In line with the project’s Design-Based Research (DBR) methodology, activities were evaluated and designed iteratively. Over 1000 student contributions have been gathered through surveys, focus groups and interviews. In some instances, students’ assignments have also been analysed to understand what kind of learning these activities have prompted and led to.
This DBR-led process highlighted the importance of understanding the rapidly evolving landscape of SoTL. Grasping the different strands in SoTL and how HASS disciplines, in particular, have been represented and encountered in SoTL became increasingly important as the project progressed towards its final stages and the dissemination of its findings. To share what we learned, a HASS-specific SoTL guide will soon be added to this toolkit. Here, we share a few practical suggestions for evaluating your learning designs and teaching innovations.
-
Interviews and focus groups are useful in getting students to explain their own thinking and probe further into why aspects of activities worked from the student perspective.
Both interviews and focus groups can be richly detailed (Hermanowicz, 2020) and may be conducted to draw out themes and threads which emerged from other forms of evaluation in greater depth.
We utilised semi-structured interviews and focus groups, which is where questions are scripted beforehand as a guide, but these can be adapted and new questions can be formulated and added spontaneously according to students’ responses and how the conversation is going. There may be a need for more detail, for example, or a question may have already been answered by a student in an extended response to a previous question. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups have the advantage of consistency without being too constrained (Lewis-Back et al., 2004). Power-dynamics with students were equalised as much as possible by having the sessions conducted by staff members who were not part of the academic teaching team for the subjects being evaluated and ensuring their anonymity. This was important to empower students to tell their stories in their own ways (Lewis-Back et al., 2004).
Below are the activities that utilised interviews and/or focus groups in their evaluation:
-
Where activities fed into assessment tasks or outputs, students’ assignments served as evidence of learning and captured what students took away or learnt from the activity. This was particularly valuable where the task followed the activity immediately or where it involved an intentional metacognitive reflection, as in the case of Building a chatbot to learn with and about learning with AI.
Below are the activities that utilised students’ work in their evaluation:
-
Where activities fed into assessment tasks or outputs, students’ assignments served as evidence of learning and captured what students took away or learnt from the activity. This was particularly valuable where the task followed the activity immediately or where it involved an intentional metacognitive reflection, as in the case of Building a chatbot to learn with and about learning with AI.
Below are the activities that utilised students’ work in their evaluation:
-
Hermanowicz, J. (2002). The great interview: 25 strategies for studying people in bed. Qualitative Sociology, 25(4), 479-499.
Lewis-Back, M. S., Bryman, A., & Liao, T. F. (2004). The Sage encyclopedia of Social Science research. Sage Publications, Inc.