The new Avondale experience

Schools to demonstrate innovative teaching and learning for students in isolation

While the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown has changed delivery of education across schools at Avondale, it has also sparked innovative practice in teaching and learning.

While lecturers are already delivering many classes in mixed or distance modes, the need for social distancing means they are now moving all but the most practical components of teaching and learning online. Here is a summary of the initiatives in each school.

Avondale Business School
Avondale Business School is scheduling classes delivered by videoconference at 10 am Australian Eastern Standard Time to cater for students connecting from different time zones. The classes, limited to one hour and broken into 10-minute segments, will emphasise collaboration and interaction—students will watch pre-recorded lectures and join a Zoom meeting prepared to ask and answer questions. The school will use the platform’s breakout rooms feature for group work. The pre-records will not just feature voice-over-slide but also video of the lecturer presenting the lecture. These initiatives are based on feedback from students.

Avondale Seminary
Avondale Seminary Head Dr Wendy Jackson will trial use of Kialo, a web-based “rational debate” platform for “empowering reason through friendly and open discussions.” The benefit to students: it will help them collaboratively develop in an abbreviated form the strongest arguments for and against an issue. Jackson will use Kialo in the unit, Ecclesiology and Sabbath, as students examine the ordination of women. She is also leading an Avondale team trialing a collaborative annotation platform as part of a pilot the software company is running. Hypothesis will gives all students in a unit annotation access to the same document at the same time. The open “conversation” may lead to a deeper reading and understanding. Other initiatives will see lecturers posting weekly devotionals to a seminary Facebook group and students adding requests to a seminary prayer wall on digital canvas platform Padlet.

School of Education
Teacher education students will teach each other via videoconference. In face-to-face mode, they would break into microteaching groups but now, in distance mode, they will do so via Zoom and record the meeting before discussing each other’s lesson plans. Other School of Education lecturers are using Padlet in creative arts and physical education and health classes to create virtual noticeboards of students’ comments and video clips for sharing with others in the class. And use of PebblePad is ramping up. The learning journey platform offers eportfolio capability, which lecturers will use to assess students completing practical tasks.

School of Humanities and Creative Arts
The Communication Strand has access to Listen Up Podcasting’s online course and producer Kel Butler is offering an online question and answer. Students in the writing classes will participate in an online workshop with poet Charlotte O’Neill and a question and answer with Sydney Morning Herald journalist Josh Dye, both alumni of Avondale. O’Neill will discuss her lyrical poetry and Dye journalism in an emergency environment. The students have also created a Facebook group in which they are publishing a poem a day as part of National Poetry Month.

In the unit, Responding to Global Issues, part of the International Poverty and Development Studies Strand, students will participate in online forums and Zoom meetings with project managers who will speak about the Adventist Development and Relief Agency’s response to COVID-19 in the Pacific islands.

Professor Daniel Reynaud has video recorded a colloquium about his new book, The Anzacs, Religion and God, which will be released in the lead up to Anzac Day. Music students will have personalised access to tutors via Zoom. Students in ceramics and counselling will complete the theoretical components of their classes online in real-time and on demand now and the practical components when face-to-face mode returns later in the year.

School of Nursing
Clinical practice for second- and third-year nursing students continues after mid-semester break. First-year students in the unit, Nursing Science 1, however, will watch lectures pre-recorded on the Kaltura video platform and participate in compulsory tutorial-type workshops via Zoom. The lecturers, Linda Cloete and Kerrie Boddey, will schedule the workshops at different times of the day to facilitate small group learning. They will also schedule other Zoom meetings for students to consolidate learning and ask questions about content and its application. These meetings will be enhanced by polling techniques and draw as you learn options using a Wacom pen tablet. Additional support material will include websites offering virtual anatomy access and tips and techniques for studying anatomy and physiology.

School of Science and Mathematics
The School of Science and Mathematics is also breaking its videoconference-delivered classes into shorter time blocks and interspersing the classes with rest breaks. Several lecturers have purchased pen tablets to draw and share with students figures, mathematical calculations, chemical reactions and the like. The school front-loaded the practical components of classes before the mid-semester break and will, from now, rely more on clear instructions accompanying carefully selected videos, often ones the lecturers have filmed themselves. It may even deliver kits by post to enable students to complete science experiments at home. Lecturers are prioritising communication with students by responding more quickly to emails and scheduling Zoom meetings to deliver announcements, check in with students and answer questions.