Designing a Meaningful Student Experience
What does it mean to design a meaningful student experience?
A meaningful student experience is one that considers the learning objectives of the unit, coupled with the learning objectives of the week in question, and then decide upon the most effective way to support the learning of new materials, and provides resources that reinforce these fundamental understandings, whilst supporting the students to go beyond – building upon these and applying these in ways that are authentic and representative of how the skills or understanding would be used ‘in the real world(tm)’
Fundamentally, it’s about ensuring that everything the students are engaging with (in lectures, tutorials, online) is supporting their learning and has a direct application to both their learning and the work they would be expected to do as graduates in the workforce.
Being critical of the resources and the expected tasks or activities students are being ‘made’ to do is a vital first step in helping eliminate extraneous workloads and meaningless tasks.