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THOUGHTS ABOUT EFFECTIVENESS
The learning design was effective in engaging all students
in Virtual Records as an authentic environment for communication
internship.
The industry mentors were given a mentoring handbook to
assist them in their role. They seemed to be most useful in
helping students understand some of the contextual influences
on writing choices. In the future, it might be better to have
an electronic mentor, who provides the "sage" comments
when students email with specific questions. When students
went into the city to see their real-life mentors, they sometimes
felt that they didn't know enough to talk about communication
issues.
UNEXPECTED LEARNING OUTCOMES
Peer collaboration: The learning environment
was effective in stimulating small-group discussion and supporting
spontaneous peer learning. Students engaged in the environment
adjacent to one another in a lab were seen to frequently engage
in discussion about the motivations, attitudes and communication
styles of the characters.
Even though this learning design was focused on the individual
student (thus simulating the work environment with someone
being given an individual investigative assignment), students
preferred to work in a group, and they worked collaboratively
to schedule their lab time so that they experienced "Virtual
Records" together, even though they were at different
levels in the program and provided with individual assessments.
Learner-driven tutorials: Although not
part of the original design, the lecturer facilitated peer
interaction and small-group work. The lecturer found that
the tutorial moved quickly to a problem-based one, with students
using the lecturer as a resource to identify many more sophisticated
writing concerns than would have been covered in a 'traditional'
tutorial.
HOW LEARNER ENGAGEMENT IS SUPPORTED
- Learners experience key concepts in multiple ways through
the audio, textual and visual cues, and through the variety
of viewpoints expressed by the characters.
- The learning experience does engage students affectively.
Engagement arises from the complexity of the organisational
environment (that is still easily navigable), from the narrative
nature of the interviews, from the personalities embedded
in them by the scriptwriter, and from the expressive performances
of the actors reading the scripts.
- The assessment tasks require engagement, in that they
are critically dependent upon the student's perceptions
of the organisation and its characters.
- Learners are encouraged to reflect on their learning experience
throught the feedback provided by their manager at relevant
points. Peer interaction and feedback can occur if learners
are co-located, but this is not an inherent element of the
design.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF LEARNING CONTEXT
- Activities link to the professional practice of writing
and to the organisational context in which such communication
must be used.
- Assessment tasks require students to articulate their
learning outcomes, which are assessed relative to the subject
expectations.
HOW THE LEARNING DESIGN CHALLENGES LEARNERS
The challenge to learners in this environment arises from
the complexity of the characters they must engage with, in
an environment where there is no one correct answer to the
task set for the students. the Virtual Records Library, being
web-based, is a doorway to ever-expanding resource collections
that students can explore, rather than being constrained as
a hard-copy Reader would be.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR PRACTICE
Students are required to articulate and demonstrate their
learning through production of reports and memos for their
manager, which are the assessable outcomes of their experience.
This environment does not provide sufficient practice to enable
expertise to be realised, but does allow students to demonstrate
their awareness of the issues being raised by the simulation.
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