In a collaborative project between the Crawford School of Public Policy and the Centre for Learning and Teaching, a small project team is working to build on the articulated desire of students in the school for connection between their peers and teaching staff, and the development of strong and effective professional networks.
The creation and nurture of personal, community and professional networks for and with students in Crawford has been identified as an important goal of students enrolling in the Masters programs and is a traditional strength of the School’s programs pre-2020.
The project aims to increase collaborative student engagement through the provision of collaborative learning spaces, strategies and tools that will allow both community development, and the development of personal and professional identity.
The CLT Educational Designers and the Manager of Teaching and Learning in the Crawford School provide in-kind support for the project, documenting existing good practices and defining the development of additional tools and strategies, with the aim of supporting collaboration and fostering student engagement.
The team is mapping the tools and strategies currently used to build the three-fold forms of engagement: peer-to-peer, learner-with-content, and learner-with-teacher. The project will be completed after these tools and strategies being gathered into a ‘Playbook’, have been implemented by academics in their courses and evaluated during Semester 1, 2021.
A particular strength of this project is articulated by Joseph Hughes, Manager of the Education Design Team in CLT:
The challenges that Covid-19 has pushed upon everyone this year have really highlighted importance of connectedness. This project draws upon the great experience that the Crawford School has in connecting with their students – it’s about our Educational Designers partnering with the Crawford School and seeking outcomes greater than the sum of parts, more than we each could have done alone. I’m excited to see how the playbook might be adopted or adapted across the University.
We anticipate this Playbook will be valuable across the University in documenting ways of better supporting multiple forms of student engagement, particularly in the context of remote and hybrid teaching.
For information about how your school or college can get CLT project support for a Teaching and Learning Enhancement project, please contact CLT.
Claire Brooks and Janene Harman are Education Designers in the Education Design (ED) team – one of three teams within the ANU Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT).
Alison Cumming Thom is the Manager of Teaching and Learning at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU College of Asia & the Pacific .
