The collaborative approach has contributed greatly to the positive
outcome of these projects. Before the interventions, not all students
could access the support and expertise provided by the librarians and
learning advisers. In the postgraduate course, this problem was due to
the location of many students and in the case of the undergraduate
course, it is not feasible to provide support to several tutorial streams operating at the same time. Following the collaboration, all students
from both courses could access the necessary support provided. Reflective
sections of the undergraduate and postgraduate assessments
indicated that students were thinking about and could understand the
research process and focus their learning beyond the subject of their
literature reviews, thereby hopefully applying the research process
they have learned to their other studies. Markers in the undergraduate
course reported that assessments showed an improvement in the quality
of ideas and synthesis of various readings and literature sourcing was
well developed and integrated.
Changes could be made to the activities and content of the assessments
based on feedback from students. For example, feedback contributed
to developing the second iteration of the POPLHLTH 202 assessment.
The feedback indicated that students gained more general methodological
lessons about the process than simply ‘doing’ and ‘completing’ the
assessment tasks. Marking rubrics and assessment examples are commonly
asked for by students and when provided, students gave positive
feedback.
For the academic staff, the process improved the quality of materials
available for teaching and assessment. The collaboration resulted in the
construction of a sustainable blended learning resource that the academic
staff could maintain and modify as required. The subsequent
changes in the assessment in the undergraduate course exemplify this.
The online resources created as a self-paced assessment for learning
with student-centered activities, required minimal intervention from
staff and were found to be efficient and sustainable.
Resource development in each case was reviewed and improved in
response to usability testing of the online activities through feedback
from lecturers, librarians and students. This process created a cycle of
review and improvement practice, beneficial to all parties.
Fig. 12 summarizes the collaborative practice realized in this project
and illustrates a universal model for establishing an informal and iterative
process for integrating AIL into academic curricula at various degree
levels.