Mary-Louise Roy Manchadi

What are the motivators for attending lectures and other learning activities, directly assessed or not?

In association with the Spaces Management team at UQ, we have access to accurate student numbers across the university so as to track lecture attendance based on body heat entering and exiting lecture venues. Aligning the use of these sensors with course, lecturer and topic will give a rich qualitative data set. In addition to this, surveys will be done with key courses across the university for those which have high attendance and those with low – and drivers identified and shared with the Course Coordinators, along with such learnings being used to inform the Teaching and Learning Community.

A former Honours student has shown that the biggest motivator for lecture attendance between professional, science and therapies students is feeling part of a student cohort. As the professional and therapies students tend to do all of the same courses through their degree, the bonds of friendship and community can run deep and being together with friends in educational spaces has been identified as a main driver for attendance. Science students, however, do not have this profile, as there can be wide variation in courses chosen after first year.

I have data from second and third year science students which asks them to reflect on their experiences as a university student in learning spaces, and such data can be analysed for quality statement and frequency of responses to better inform academics around what students are actually experiencing.

“Embracing the Unknown” Experience

In our third year Pharmacology course for Science students (BIOM3401), we have a practical called “Identification of Unknowns”, in which students are given an unknown drug(s), and they are asked to design experiments around identifying which drug class this might be over 2-3 weeks. This has caused some minor (and major!) anxiety in some students, as the activity is assessed as a lab report, with marks being awarded for the arguments made, and not the correct identification.

Students were surveyed before and after the experiments to capture their thinking and concerns, and these data are available for thematic analysis. Such analysis can enable future students to be better supported, or even less supported, depending upon feedback.

To Lecture or not to Lecture….that is the question…

We have meta-learning data from second and third year science students about their habits, preferred types of learning and access to information, and their perceptions of live lectures. This data can be analysed thematically, and thus contribute meaningfully to the development of blended learning courses.