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Teaching and learning tricky topics
Teaching and learning tricky topics

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2.1 Activity profiles

Not all activities will be relevant for every type of learning. For example when this course was designed, it was decided to aim for the profile in Figure 3:

Described image
Figure 3 Profile of the course
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A bar chart showing relative proportions of the 7 activity types.

Figure 3 Profile of the course

The profile for this course reflects the following design decisions:

  • In order to explain the tricky topics process, there is quite a bit of reading and watching (assimilative).
  • It has been designed to provide some opportunities for you to find your own examples of issues which relate to your own context (finding and handling information).
  • Within a course such as this, there are limited opportunities to communicate with other students due to the fact that people are not all studying at the same time, but it is hoped that some of you will engage with IRIS Connect and its community members on our group (communication).
  • A number of activities require you to make notes or produce your own ideas on your chosen tricky topic (productive).
  • It is not possible to direct you to any real life work experience because there is not enough information to know at this stage who our students will be and whether you are able to apply your learning in a real world setting (experiential).
  • However there are situations where you can develop your materials in a simulated setting and it is hoped that you will be able to apply this in your own context. (interactive/adaptive).
  • To test your learning, there is a short quiz at the end of each week (assessment).

Activity 2 Create an activity profile

Timing: Allow approximately 40 minutes

Now that you are doing this course, what do you think? Does this profile reflect what you have been doing so far?

Imagine you are designing your own course. This might relate to your chosen tricky topic and to a specific intervention that you are planning to overcome one or two of the stumbling blocks, or you might want to come up with an entirely new topic for this activity. How about one of these?

  1. Level 1 Chinese language
  2. Level 3 Counselling skills
  3. Postgraduate Aeronautical engineering

Use this Activity profile template [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]  to decide on the balance of activity types you might use for your learning activity.