2016: Certain Habits Die Hard

To fully conceptualise the journey and decisions made up until the year 2016 it is recommended that you refer to:

- 2013: Humble Beginnings

- 2014: Learning the Hard Way

- 2015: A New Start

Based on 2015’s feedback, the literature reviewed, the reflections from my practical based experience in lower and higher socio-economic schools and my personal reflections on my own ability to change to a student-centered approach the following was implemented in 2016:

I started collaborating and reflecting on my teaching strategies with Ronelle Plaatjies (CTLM staff member). As our collaborations only started later in the year my content was not reviewed in time for me to upgrade it. As I had updated my course material each year without critical reflection on my content by an external person I decided to wait before I upgrade content again.
I maintained the mentorship program but I applied for the Teaching Grant so that facilitators could get subsidized for their effort. Ronelle Plaatjies could help me with the final mentorship evaluation via a focus group. Find the feedback on the focus group here. The success of the more reflective and joint mentorship program is shared by a senior student here.
I kept the moodle site as a central point of communication and as I had not had someone critically analyse my content, I did not want to re-create content. A reader was provided to students .
As opposed to group work written assignments I Included weekly activity cards that require students to work in groups so as to reflect, practically apply and implement what the student facilitators did with them in the afternoon. I decided that I need to find out how to integrate soft skill and academic literacy training in my module upgrade before updating my content.
I decided to facilitate students in a 1:10 ratio on a weekly basis with their programming creation so that I could spend more time with them and understand student dynamics better. As my reflections thus far had mostly been questionnaire based with open ended questions or linkert scales, talking to students seemed like a more appropriate way to monitor and probe for answers.
I decided to keep class test reflection lectures but additionally include a mock tests to send to students before class test. This was aimed at helping them prepare more.
Keep morning and afternoon lessons and keep groups split into group A and B. Aim to add fun activities to the morning sessions that would include collaboration and active learning.
Based on real world experience, I added an activity box where students had to make their own equipment.

Table 1 highlights student feedback on the upgrades made in 2016. A linkert scale based on the value added between 1 to 5 was used to evaluate the success of a teaching strategy.

What becomes clear when reflecting on the 2015 and 2016 results is that the mentoring of facilitators and dividing the large class group into more manageable sizes had a very positive effect on the students learning experience. Adding the activity box in which the students had to be creative and make their own ball, skipping rope, bean bags and so forth out of recycled equipment was positive. This aligns with large class pedagogy and active and collaborative literature.

However, what additionally becomes clear is that the actual content and my lecturing style is possibly still teacher-centered and that the academic literacies of students may be subpar for the types of activities I provide them with. It is not easy to explain the results without qualitative research (interviews and or focus groups) but when listening to my facilitators feedback via a focus group (see link above), communication and consistency in application of teaching styles is what seems to frustrate students most.

It should be noted that, similarly to the years 2013 to 2015 years, many positive experiences occurred during the module implementation. The figure below highlights the positives. It was noted that 70% of students felt they would recommend the module to a fellow peer. Hence regardless of the many improvement points noted by students, all the upgrades and reflections done over the 2013 to 2016 added positively to the student experiences.

Hence in conclusion the following recommendations were implemented in 2017 in preparation for the module:

Include a scholarly approach with the facilitation of an expert in Higher Education Institute and undergraduate first year education. The goal would be to review my course content, my lectures and my student interactions so as to update content to a student-centered approach
Investigate students readiness to engage with the content and student-centered pedagogical approaches
To re-introduce reflective journals
Convert content and teaching styles into a more humanized pedagogy in large classes
Refer to literature on educational theories for first year students and physical education teacher education

To review the scholarly approach aimed to be implemented in the second semester of 2017 (whilst keeping these aforementioned reflections in mind), refer to 2017 teaching innovations.