Case 6: Learning by engaging with cultures
Introduction to Asia: China and India
Dr James Leibold, Lecturer in Politics and Asian Studies, teaches this unit to over 100 students in Bundoora and more than 20 students at Albury-Wodonga
The Challenge: To make the experience of studying cultures other than our own personally engaging, flexible and student-centred.
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The approach:
The unit is organised around:
- one 90 minute lecture period per week
- one hour tutorial per week
- a 30 minute online discussion activity which leads to a 15% assessment
To promote flexible learning and provoke student’s independent learning, Jim has setup an individual blog space on the LMS. Each week students are given a set of learning activities and assessments which seek to reinforce key learning outcomes from the week’s lecture and readings. Adopting a media-rich approach, these online modules include short video clips, online readings and a shared blog-space for discussion.
One exercise in the course requires students to locate a short online video about India or China and then to write a 500 word analytical blog about their video for posting on the LMS.
Next, Jim posts a sample of these video clips and blogs anonymously (using the LMS Blog tool), so that students had a shared resource to discussion in their tutorials and on the online discussion page.