Co-authored by Soli Le-Masurier (he/him) and Marko Antic (he/him). Soli and Marko are learning designers in the UTS Learning Design and Technology Unit.
Can you remember the first time you bumped into the lane ropes in a swimming pool? Was it your hand as you swam freestyle? Was it your head as you swam backstroke? What about swimming at the beach? I (Soli) can remember a time when my cousins and I didn’t swim between the flags. It was quite terrifying being caught in a rip but thankfully we went with the rip, not against it and ended up coming back to shore.
Lane ropes in pools and flags at beaches help swimmers explore the water safely. In the pool, there are often different lanes to cater for how fast or confident a swimmer you are. At the beach, you can safely swim between red-and-yellow flags. On smaller, unpatrolled beaches you might need to look for general signage to help guide your choice to swim that day.
For learning, we can use digital equivalents of lane ropes, flags and signage to help our learners navigate through their subjects. This is particularly important when a subject moves quickly and when there are large numbers of students in each cohort.
Clever digital learning design can support learners to help themselves at scale. Providing a distinct opportunity for learners to set their own goals at the start can increase engagement in online learning (Sun et al., 2023) due to increased learner agency (Archambault et al., 2022). Clear expectation management early on can also help learners to plan how they will complete their online learning (Brown, et al., 2022). Providing opportunities for learners to self-check along the way can help learners to develop the skills needed for driving their own online learning (Korhonen, et al., 2022). These are all versions of signs, flags and lane ropes.
Consider using these learning design approaches to support your learners as they navigate through their subjects.
Help students choose what they learn
1. Set expectations early and support learner autonomy
A version of ‘choosing your swimming lane’ at the beginning of 010065 Practising Inclusion: Working and Teaching for Social Justice – students are informed that parts of the learning are optional, that there is a lot of content and that they are to ‘choose their own adventure‘. For some modules, they are instructed to explore only the case studies that are relevant to their interests. This helps focus their learning and makes it more manageable.
2. Provide strategies early and support personalised contextualisation
Another version of ‘choosing your swimming lane’ in 014222 Designing Innovative Learning – before any learning content is delivered, students are introduced to the idea of building their own ‘toolbelt’, which they can reflect on and add to throughout the subject. This helps students choose which concepts, frameworks or resources they want to use in their workplace. Again, this helps focus their learning and make it more manageable.
Help students check if they are ‘swimming between the flags’
3. Provide ways for learners to self-check early
A version of ‘looking out for the flags’ in 570003 Understanding Communication in Society – students are invited to select a topic of focus that they will progress through all the assessments. A quick self-check tool is provided so students can evaluate the suitability of their chosen topic. The tool is an H5P quiz that provides high level automated feedback.
4. Let them know when they are choosing to ‘swim outside of the flags’
Another version of ‘looking out for the flags’ – in 014220 Learning and its Trajectories – some content is provided in a ‘want more’ drop down. It is explained at the start that this is optional content, provided for those who want to go beyond the core content. While this additional content is not ‘dangerous waters’, it is marked to indicate that you might be exploring this alone, not with other students and not with the lecturer.
5. Provide automated feedback on analytical and reflective writing
Another version of ‘swimming within in the lane’ in 570005 Emergent Communication Practices and in 570002 Application Implementation with Microsoft Dynamics – UTS’s AI writing tool AcaWriter provides personalised feedback on analytical and reflective writing. Either as a distinct activity or an optional support resource, this software can help students check if they are ‘swimming within the lane’, where the lane signifies good academic writing.
Swimming together
This analogy could expand to thinking about sub-cohorts of learners ‘swimming together’ by providing sub-spaces online for students to discuss together. Additionally, the idea of ‘bumping into lane ropes’ as redirects could help students who find themselves going too far down rabbit holes. The redirect can help the students get back on track with a clear and relevant focus for an assessment.
Whichever way you want to explore and extend this analogy, finding ways for the signs, flags and lane ropes to be digital, scalable and personalisable helps all students navigate confidently through a subject. Additionally, this can be done in a way that is sustainable for the teaching staff.
References:
Archambault, L., Leary, H., & Rice, K. (2022). Pillars of online pedagogy: A framework for teaching in online learning environments. Educational Psychologist, 57(3), 178-191.
Brown, A., Lawrence, J., Basson, M., & Redmond, P. (2022). A conceptual framework to enhance student online learning and engagement in higher education. Higher Education Research & Development, 41(2), 284-299.
Korhonen, J., Naukkarinen, J., Niemelä, H., Järvisalo, H., & Silventoinen, P. (2022). Continuous assessment with self-checking tasks. In Towards a new future in engineering education, new scenarios that european alliances of tech universities open up (pp. 1283-1291). Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.
Sun, W., Hong, J. C., Dong, Y., Huang, Y., & Fu, Q. (2023). Self-directed learning predicts online learning engagement in higher education mediated by perceived value of knowing learning goals. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 32(3), 307-316.