Teaching Philosophy

Teaching and learning in higher education is a process that involves the construction of knowledge by the learner in collaboration with the educator, environment, colleagues, and the wider society. Teaching involves transferring new knowledge or activating prior knowledge by providing the resources and a conducive environment for the learner to gain the command of themselves, and to reflect and evaluate their learning process and its outcome. My teaching philosophy relies on promoting student-centred active learning that invites the learners to plan and drive their learning by utilising the resources provided to them by the educator. My teaching strategy aligns with the university's strategic objectives: Excellence in inovative curriculum with the focus on excellent, distictive teaching, learning, and assessmnent and Flexibilty in short-form learning and flexible learning pathways for multiple programs.

Methods

My teaching method in a higher education setting is based on applying active learning strategies where students become active participants in the learning process and will take the leadership of their learning journey. I use multiple active learning strategies such as inquiry-based learning (e.g. Alice's case studies in CA179), project-based learning (e.g. Database systems projects in CA218), and problem-based learning. I also use the mastery learning approach to ensure that the learners achieve an acceptable level of knowledge of the subject matter before they move to the advanced topic (e.g. implemented in CA179). My students will see several of these activities embedded in the modules I teach in face-to-face or online sessions. The students are stimulated with multiple means of engagement strategies to participate in active reading, inquiry, peer-learning activities, discussion forums, and practical activities. These approaches allow students to capture and converge their interest in the subject, deeply understand the content, and construct their knowledge individually and in groups. Experiential learning is another strategy I frequently use in delivering programming modules where students directly work on computers to design programs and solutions, discuss challenges, interact with each other and with the teaching assistants and solve inter-disciplinary problems instead of dummy problems. Further, I implement the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles in all my modules ensuring multiple means of representation, multiple means of engagement, and multiple means of action and expression. Data Literacy and Analytics for the 21st-century module is designed following these approaches.

Assessment and Feedback

In my teaching practice, I use assessment for learning, as learning, and of learning whenever appropriate. The assessment strategy I implemented for the Data Literacy and Analytics module relies on assessment for learning and assessment as learning. Several formative assessment questions are integrated into the module in the form of knowledge check questions, peer learning activities, and discussion forums. Feedback is an integral part of the formative assessment pieces where students receive feedback with pointers referring to the original content along with supplementary resources that are related to the topics covered in the assessment. Additional drop-in clinics are also organised to address specific issues encountered by students in their formative assessment.

Summative questions are used as an assessment of learning at the end of each microcurricula. To ensure the engagement and the quality of the learning, at the end of each microcurriculum, students are presented with summative assessment questions. I used a novel approach to the summative assessment in that students can take the assessment at any time as soon as they complete the topic, without waiting for the end of the semester. Students are also allowed to retry the assessment questions until they achieve the passing mark which is currently 80% or above. To ensure the robustness and integrity of the assessment, I used a large set of questions for each topic of a microcurriculum and systematically generated the questions ensuring that students got different sets of questions at any given time in a semester.

Currently, I have proposed an approach to further enhance the assessment using the co-creation of formative and summative assessments together with a selected number of students with a rationale of generating representative questions that improve the areas of assessment, and reduce the recycling of existing questions. This further allows the module to have multiple means of engagement by including student's perspectives. The implementation is planned at the end of the semester and will be integrated into the module in the 2024/25 academic year.

Student support

My approach to supporting students begins with understanding the requirements of the students. First, students with any special needs are identified from the GURU system. All the resources are designed following UDL principles. Further, I provide different levels of support for the students. There are dedicated Zoom Drop-in Clinics to answer any questions arising from students. Support is also available to students via email and chat. For the stand-alone 5-credit modules, an additional three face-to-face tutorials are organised. With the support of teaching assistants, we also provide continuous feedback to the discussion forums and peer learning activities of the students. Although it is extremely difficult to provide feedback for all students, we are engaged with the majority of the peer-learning activities and discussion forums. I also give general feedback when applicable.

Teaching Development and Personal Reflection

To equip my teaching practice with state-of-the-art theory and practice in education, I am engaged in several short-term and long-term training courses. I frequently seek feedback from students, colleagues, and the literature and reflect to improve or change my practice. Further to that, some of the completed and ongoing courses and training are listed below.

Introduction to ABC Learning Design by TEU, DCU
Graphic Facilitation by the Graphic Change Academy
The UDL Badge from the National Forum
The UDL Facilitator Badge from the National Forum
In progress: Masters of Art in Educational Practice course.

I also actively participated in the weekly Pebbles session organised by the School of Computing and delivered presentations related to my microcurricula design, novel methods of assessment, and UDL.

Yalemisew Abgaz's Teaching Profile for Data Literacy and Analytics

Yalemisew Abgaz

Confirm copying

Restore backup