Task 4:
Describe an
example of teaching and learning in your context where you believe that access
to learning may be compromised or inequitable.
Many of our students in the School of
Veterinary Nursing have limited literary and numeracy skills. These students are not utilizing a large
proportion of the course materials provided because they either cannot read
them at all, or the materials are too difficult for the student’s level of
literary proficiency, or they are not receptive to this format of information delivery. Quite a few of the students with known
literacy limitations either never access these resources at all, or only
briefly glance through them. In fact,
some students have expressed frustration after examining one set of course notes,
finding them too difficult or unappealing, and subsequently never use the course notes as a
resource for learning again. A recent
review of the full time CVN students’ activities revealed that over on third of
the students had never opened their course notes on Moodle for 5200 Fluid
Therapy, and an additional one third has only looked at the notes briefly. A majority of students did access the demonstration videos on Moodle, however. This implies that a significant percentage of
our students are relying mainly on attendance at lectures and practical demonstration, in real life or on videos. An evaluation of course
assessments also revealed that the vast majority of students are capable of performing
the practical tasks associated with Fluid Therapy, but about two thirds did not fully
understand the underlying deeper principals of fluid therapy. This was exemplified by a Not Yet Competent
scoring of nearly two thirds of the students on an assessment which required
the students to perform full fluid monitoring of a hospitalized patient over a
period of at least two consecutive days.
The students were successful at recording the factual data well, such as
physical parameters of the patient, but were unable to interpret their results
adequately to recognize dangerous warning signs of fluid overload, or severe
dehydration. These results exemplify the
difficulty of trying to ensure deeper understanding of complex advanced
scientific material to incoming students with limited background preparation,
limited reading comprehension, and a variety of learning styles.
Reflect on
factors of diversity associated with your students that impact on equitable
access to the environment and their success. This may relate to the subject,
resources, technologies, learning culture, socio-economics, ethnicity,
assessments, learner motivation, engagement and abilities etc.
Students with limited literacy skills may
come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Although cultural differences may be
one factor in the incidence of illiteracy rates, there may be many other
factors such as socio-economic, regional educational opportunity variances, immediate
family values, or even gender issues which contribute to the student’s previous
education and learning, or its limitations. In addition to the actually level
of literacy, students may have impediments to learning by reading the written
word, due to their inherent learning styles.
For some students, reading the material in a text or the course notes
has a very limited effect on their grasp or retention of that material.
Veterinary Nursing has a tendency to attract
young students, often with limited scientific or mathematical background,
because the image of a veterinary nurse is often unrealistically that of a
person who loves to work with and care for soft furry small creatures rather
that someone who needs to possess a significant amount of medical knowledge and
training. The students often enter the program naively believing that the
veterinarian will be responsible for all the medical decisions, and the nurse
will only need to perform simple tasks to care for the animal such as give an
injection, or dress a wound. The sudden realization about the amount and level
of scientific and medical knowledge required and used daily by a veterinary
nurse comes as a shock especially to those students with a limited prior
education.
Learning styles described by Honey and
Mumford (2000) may have an important degree of influence on the overall
development of a learner by affecting or interfering with their individual
progress on the learning cycle, and therefore may be an important factor in the
lower starting performance levels in reading comprehension of some students. Are the students with poorer literary skills
simply students with learning styles which did not promote their use of written
material from an early age? Perhaps students with poor reading comprehension
are displaying the result of an inherent natural tendency to avoid unpleasant or
inappropriate learning experiences that did not match their learning style. Students
displaying limited reading comprehension may be, in reality, students whose
learning style is more of an Activist or Pragmatist described by Honey and
Mumford (2000), who learn by doing, or by interaction or role playing with
others.
Even the different personality types described
by Carl Jung, as cited by Donald Clark (2004) might be influential in forming a
student’s preference for certain types of learning experiences, which therefore
would affect their relative performance, based on how well their personality
fit with the teaching formats offered to them.
Discuss what
your learners might need to access the learning environment more fully, and
what you can provide.
We have clearly identified that some type of
barrier or resistance exists between a large portion of our students and
utilization of the resources, especially those in written form. Therefore, by extension, we need to ask, how
can we reduce that barrier to our students, or provide an alternate route
around the written material that will encourage our students to learn the
theory behind the tasks which they will be performing in practice.
What are the barriers?
Some current barriers to accessing the
course materials include illiteracy, poor reading comprehension, lack of
previous scientific education, limited computer skills, and limited computer
access, or that the presentation format of the written material is not
attractive, or interesting to the student because it does not match well with
their learning style.
What support is needed?
To improve the student’s opportunity to
learn, several approaches might be taken simultaneously. To address the barrier of limited computer
access, student computers might be made available in the classroom, or in a
separate open access study room. It
might even be possible to rent or loan an I-pad or laptop to a student for the
duration of their program with a refundable deposit. Computer skills might be improved by offering
optional computer skills training sessions, and Moodle utilization training sessions
might be offered in person or via Adobe Connect or similar on-line interactive community
access programs.
To improve student literacy, especially with
regard to reading comprehension of scientific material, we might offer optional
terminology classes. Additionally, we might challenge the students with a
medical reading comprehension assessment early in the program to identify which
students might require more assistance to understand this terminology. It might be advantageous to offer a
pre-requisite reading comprehension course(s) for students with significant
limitations. Identifying students with specific needs or difficulties would
offer an opportunity to address those needs at an earlier time, but
controversially, it might have some negative effect by labeling students as
less likely to succeed. These course improvements are directed primarily at
addressing the areas in which the student has shown previous difficulty, but are
approaching it from the same perspective as traditional teaching methods.
We might also improve delivery of the course
material by offering a wider variety of formats of the material, such as
listening texts (read aloud), or a podcast of lecture sessions, or interactive
game formats, which could be used by students with alternative learning styles. Alternative learning formats might be
designed such as interactive oral sessions of some kind or cooperative problem
solving sessions. These options may offer new approaches which may be better
suited to the diversity of learning styles of our students, and potentially may
open new pathways to learning which the student may not have been afforded
access previously.
References:
Honey, P. & Mumford, A.
(2000). The learning styles helper's guide. Maidenhead: Peter Honey
Publications Ltd
Clark,
D. (2004). Concepts of leadership. Retrieved from http://nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html