The Strategy of Group Work - Essay Example

? Curriculum Design and Development Introduction Education plays an important role in the development of a society given that it is a critical part in creating and modeling young people to be responsible beings. For it to play this vital role effectively, it must ensure to address personal, intellectual and social development of each person. A good curriculum must be developed for this kind of education to be realized. A good curriculum must ensure to show an understanding and acknowledgement of the current changing nature of knowledge acquisition1. It must contain the challenges and demands of the students to ensure to shape their future professions. It must be designed to meet specific goals that are evaluated towards setting a concrete foundation in knowledge, skills, understanding and values in all fields of work2. This document provides a proposal of changes and addition of some new information to the MAF of Orthodontic Therapy training. The new changes are meant to cater for new developments in technology and incorporate research based proven techniques that work to develop learners with capability of meeting the diversity seen in the current job market. As seen from the module descriptor, the MAF does not incorporate a relationship with any other module in the field of education. This means the entire course is just taught based on knowledge applied in the field without the consideration of other important courses that can add value to the professionalism of a student. The course descriptor lacks the element of diversity that is highly required in the current society that demands more than skills from individuals3. As seen from among the aims of the paper, the training offered aims to train individuals ready to accept professionalism through appreciating responsibility for contribution to high quality and effective care. However, the descriptor does not provide any measures to ensure that this aim is met. Relationship with other Modules In the proposed new model, there is proposal to create a relationship between this course and the study of professionalism and ethics. The expectations of the society are constantly changing and this necessitates that learners are subjected to a wide set of adaptive skills and values that will guide them to meeting these changing expectations. The integration of teaching ethics and codes of conduct will help students develop professional responsibility in all that they do4. By knowing the expectations of the people they will be serving, they will be able handle the needs of the people dependent on them such as pain management. Basically, a good curriculum should include the development of ethical behaviors among the trainees. This involves the willingness, capacity and determination to think and make judgments that will work for the good of the people they serve5. This will not be instilled through experience but needs to be incorporated in the curriculum design of the module of the institution for students to understand and act in accordance to ethical and moral principles6. This is the reason for proposing the inclusion of a relationship between Orthodontic training and Professional Ethics as relates to the field. A link must be created between this two learning areas to ensure students develop competency as they learn technical skills. Aims The aims of the course have been modified to incorporate the strategy of group work. This should be incorporated into the MAF to drive teaching and learning towards a cooperative learning system. This system of teaching will encourage small groups of students to work together in order to achieve a common goal. The curriculum must ensure to incorporate both the student and the faculty in the process of learning and sharing knowledge as this will prepare the students to doing the same in the future7. Knowledge sharing is an important aspect in the job field as it ensures the creation and distribution of new knowledge and this eventually helps ensure higher performance8. The instructors must understand how to create effective groups that will encourage an active learning environment to ensure that students have successful sessions of cooperative learning. Learning Outcomes Group learning can also be an important aspect in stimulating discussions in the classrooms and other environments of study. Through discussions, students can share what they have learned with colleagues as well as get knowledge from others. The learning activity among students is usually enhanced when students are made to become actively involved in the process of learning. This is because such engagements will open up students’ awareness to other perspectives in the field of study and this will important in ensuring the development of the desired professional9. To promote group work, the MAF has been integrated to include group sessions once every week. In such sessions, students will be presented with topics to research on before engaging in the discussions to share the acquired knowledge. An extra 8 hours will be integrated into the indicative class contact as hours dedicated to the weekly group sessions10. The course module should also be designed to promote interactive learning between the students11. This is achieved in the course module through the integration of electronic exchanges of students in the learning process. The suggested creation of the online website through which students can share information is meant to promote the sharing of experiences in the field on orthodontics while allowing the integration of theory learned in class to practice from labs or the job experience. The proposed online interaction for students goes hand in hand with the current needs of integrating technology into education to improve performance. Through the orthodontic website, students will share experiences, learned through the day and acquisition of help from other students at all times. According to Toohey in his article, the content of a course should focus on activities that create a link between life experiences in work or social contexts, theory learned in class, reflective observation such as through discussions and personal ideas and active experimentation. Through integrating the sharing of this activities, students will be able to learn new perspectives given that such integrations can allow the creation of new knowledge; knowledge that is drawn from the experiences of the learner and the people they interact with12. The Problem Solving Approach The proposed changes in the strategies of teaching and learning processes are meant to drive towards a problem solving approach in learning13. This is learning that is driven by the need to know and understand the course of a certain problem14. Ensuring the creation of groups and learning through experience sharing allow students to collect information in a self-directed manner. The problem solving approach will make the students know what they are supposed to do and given them the motivation to study hypothesis, and analyze data on their own they until they reach the desired solution15. This helps the students to understand what is expected of them and how they should be done thereby increasing their knowledge base. The approach has been shown to increase critical thinking, mutual respect, teamwork, information seeking and interpersonal skills16. There are various benefits of implementing the proposed changes that push towards ensuring problem solving learning in the learning and teaching strategies. First, orthodontic studies being a scientific field contain many challenging concepts that are difficult to understand when traditional teaching methods are used as the main approaches. The proposed problem based methods such as group discussions and interactive learning process will present learning approaches in a way that students will comprehend with much ease. This is because it presents opportunities for students to learn by incorporating real-life situations in the scientific methodologies thereby gaining knowledge easily as well as preparing well to tackle after school life easily17. In the research by Sungur and Gebano, they concluded that the use of problem based methods was shown to make learning more enjoyable among students thereby reducing the amount of time wastage and class disruptions that result from time wastage thereby resulting in better comprehension of what is being taught. When students are engaged in something that they like doing, there is a higher probability that they will take ownership of what is being taught and whatever that its outcomes are18. Assessment Strategies There was need to change the assessment strategies used in the training to make it more learner centered. The assessment strategies employed should ensure to focus on evidence of achievement and knowledge acquisition rather than of making students score more in exams. The assessment procedures should not focus on exams and other traditional methods of assessment but should emphasis on methods that will display student understanding of the learned material and their ability to put it into real life situations. This is the reason as to why I proposed an increase in the number of take home assessment exams that will be used to assess the understanding of the intended skills rather than mastery. The increase in take home exams will give the instructors better opportunities in realizing the weak points of each student and thereby give them opportunities to employ the necessary changes. The exams should be made to incorporate more application of methods that are research centered and not theoretical short answer questions. The assignment of this section should be increased to a total of three before students complete the course they undertake so as to give the faculty more opportunities to interact with students as well as ensure the coverage of the entire curriculum module19. Further, by increasing the number of assessment assignments, it will give the instructor opportunities to give feedback to the students on what they have learned. This will ensure a focus on task learning and delivery of feedback. In such cases, the lecturer can give the students feedback on their first assignments and then give another assignment to see what the impact of the feedback will be. Assessment should be ensured in all aspects. Assessments will open opportunities to show students where they had gone wrong in the first assignment as well as give them tips on what to do to ensure an improvement in the next assignment20. The feedback should also be given to the students whenever they have done well to make them understand the better part of their work and how they can develop further. Introducing more take home exams to the system will give the students and the faculty more opportunities to employ these techniques and thereby initiate a development centered assessment21. The suggested changes are meant to ensure that more emphasis is put on formative assessment rather than summative assessment. Research as shown that formative assessment is more efficient in that it focuses on learning from the assessment methods employed22. The giving of more feedback to students will present opportunities for the students to improve. Ensuring that the best assessment standards are engaged into the curriculum and learning process will make students develop their own conceptions of what is expected from them, standards as well as make them to supervise and monitor their own learning23. The way students are assessed can have a major impact on the course outcomes and what has been shown to work efficiently should be employed. Irrespective of the changes suggested to this module, it can be considered a great and deliverable module in that it depicts a lot of positivism in it considering the various aspects of module design. The section of module content is well structured and covers most of the relevant information that must be covered to ensure effective orthodontic care. The module emphasizes on educating the learners what is expected of them while in the field through teaching the role of the orthodontic therapist. A learner must be equipped with knowledge of what they should do and how they should accomplish whatever is expected of them for a program to be considered effective. The module covers most of the appliances that are used in the field, how they work and the proper methods of using them. The curriculum depicts the need for the students to be enlightened for the need to understand the extent of their knowledge; what they should do in certain cases and what they should avoid doing. Such aspects are meant to ensure that the students will work to be responsible beings in the society. With such designs, the overall beneficiary will be the society; the people who need the care. Another strong aspect of the document as pertains the kind of materials that will be referred to in the entire training. The referencing list contains academic documents that are based on approved and research-based content that will be useful in ensuring the provision of relevant information to the students. The various journals given provide peer reviewed articles that present up-to-date information as regards the field of orthodontic care and this will also be important to ensuring the students are equipped with information of what is going on and what should be done in the current society as regards orthodontic care. Conclusion In curriculum design, the quality of learning should be given more emphasis. All the expectations of the course must be recorded and communicate clearly to ensure that all role players have something directing them towards attaining the expected outcomes. A collection of models that analyze the extent to which students acquire and process information individually and how such information and understanding can be enhanced by group discussions have been developed and documented. These models vary from one discipline to another and in searching for the best models, many aspects should be considered24. However, the main aim should be to ensure that the best quality of learning has been attained at all standards. The course descriptors such as aims, outcomes, teaching and learning strategies should be focused on ensuring that the students understand what is expected of them as well as ensure to motivate students towards knowledge acquisition and development rather than achievement of high scores25. The suggested changes are an aspect of this kind of study. These changes if implemented as expected will instill knowledge sharing and acquisition practices among students. They are meant to ensure personal development of each student through the sharing of knowledge, development of new knowledge and development of better assessment methods that will instill learning among students. The curriculum must be created in such a way that it dwells around the main challenging but more significant conceptual sections of the course26. This course design propose changes to include active experimentation through more practical sessions, emphasis on giving learners more opportunities of real life implementation of what is learned in class and the opportunities to develop others through the sharing of knowledge. These will create a new kind of knowledge that is centered and draws meaning from proven methods of teaching and learning. References Biggs, J. B. and Tang, C. (2007, 3rd edition) Teaching for Quality Learning at University, Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press/McGraw Hill, 2007. BRADY, L. (1995). Curriculum development. Sydney, Prentice Hall. REIGELUTH, C. M. (1983). Instructional-design theories and models: an overview of their current status. Hillsdale, N.J., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Barnett, R. & Coates, K. (2005). A schema. In Engaging the curriculum in higher education (pp67-69). Berkshire: SRHE & Open University Press. O'NEILL, G. (2010). Initiating curriculum revision: exploring the practices of educational developers. International Journal for Academic Development. 15, 61-71. Biggs, J (2004) Constructing Learning by Aligning Teaching: Constructive Alignment, in, Teaching for Quality Learning at University. pp11-33. 2nd Edition. Berkshire: SRHE and Open University Press. Hussey, T, & Smith, P. (2008) Learning Outcomes : A Conceptual Analysis. Teaching in Higher Education. 13 (1), 107-115. Hussey, T. & Smith, P (2003) The Uses of Learning Outcomes. Teaching in Higher Education, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2003, pp. 357–368 O’Neill, G. McMahon, T. (2005) Student-centred learning: What does it mean for student and lectures. In: Emerging Issues in the Practice of University Learning and Teaching RUST, C. (2002). The impact of assessment on student learning: How can the research literature practically help to inform the development of departmental assessment strategies and learner-centred assessment practices? Active Learning in Higher Education. 3, 145-158. Toohey, S. (2000). Beliefs, values and ideologies in course design. In Designing courses for higher education. (pp44-69). Dochy, F., Segers, M., Van den Bossche, & P., Gijbels, D. (2003). Effects of problem based learning: a meta-analysis. Learning and Instruction, 30, 533-568. Sungur, S., Tekkaya, C., & Geban, O. (2006). Improving achievement through problem based learning. Journal of Biological Education, 40(4), 155-160. Rust, C. (2007). Towards a scholarship of assessment. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 32, 229-237. Brown, S. and Knight, P. (1994) Assessing Learners in Higher Education, Routledge Falmer Read More