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Inclusive teaching resources: Teach Explicitly

This subject guide provides resources, exemplars, and key questions to support staff design, deliver and assess using an inclusive approach.

Useful links

Student centred learning: The New Learning Spaces library guide has resources on active learning

The Transnational Quick Guide Academic integrity, referencing & plagiarism offers useful advice to academics to support students to adhere to academic requirements.

 

Teaching to different genres

Genre: a 'text' type which is purposeful, socially constructed and has rules. 

  • Can you explain to your students explicitly what is expected when you ask them to write a report or an essay?
  • Are you confident you can describe the purpose, structure, and language features of a particular text type?  

The SLC's Learning Lab resource below gives advice on some different genres to help you deconstruct and explain how texts work to your students.  

Academic Integrity and Plagiarism Blackboard Shell

The College of Design and Social Context have developed an academic integrity and plagiarism Blackboard (Bb)shell where students answer a set of multiple choice questions to see how well prepared they are to write essays, specifically in the design disciplines and humanities.

You can request access to the Bb shell from ITS: DSCAI - DSC Academic Integrity Module).

Inclusive Teaching & Assessment Practices Project

Teach explicitly - Roula's story

'Learning in the tertiary domain is multi-dimensional: from the initial transitions into Western academic literacies, through to workplace and research skills.'

Roula teaches Pathology to a large multi-disciplinary class of 350 students including Chiropractic, Osteopathy, Chinese Medicine, Laboratory Medicine and Biomedical sciences students. This brings with it a range of problems when designing group assessments.  See how Roula tackles the problem, how she sets out her assessments, and her innovative plan to make group presentations relevant to all her students using slowmation video design.

See also Snapshots of inclusive teaching for more stories on innnovative assessment practices.

 Please provide us with feedback on the Video by clicking here.

KEY QUESTIONS: Teach Explicitly

  • What prior knowledge or experiences are students bringing into the learning environment and how can I build upon that?
  • How will I ensure that all students are equipped with the necessary knowledge and/or understanding to achieve the learning outcomes?
  • What are some of the conceptual, linguistic, and cultural barriers that may exclude students from succeeding?

Responding to questions

Watch this video to find out how responding effectively to student questions models good listening skills, encourages collaborative learning and develops deep thinking skills. 

Scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Access without support is not opportunity

(Enstrom and Tinto, 2008)

 

Opportunity confined to support is not equity

(Gale, 2009)

 An understanding of the notion of Scaffolding along with the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is crucial in understanding how we can actively support students to achieve their full potential.

Finding scholarly resources

This resource was developed for the Introduction to Management course in the College of Business to provides students with guidance on how to choose scholarly resources.

Writing a literature review can be a difficult task for students. Like essays or reports, the literature review also has a structure. These resources have been adapted from RMIT English Worldwide to assist in developing your students’ literature writing skills.

Activity 1:  Planning a literature review Student activity sheet and teacher notes.

Activity 2:  Synthesising different views for a literature review.  Student activity sheet and teacher notes.

Teaching your discipline

Strategies and ideas to support students to understand the discipline they are studying in.

Lesson Plans

A lesson plan ensures your lessons are relevant and well-structured so that you can engage students effectively. Choose from the following lesson plan options:

And here is a Podcast on using the lesson plan.

 

Reviewing sessions/Building on prior knowledge

A resource to review sessions and find out what students already know.

Wordclouds/Tagxedo

Tagxedos are a good way to draw on the student perspective on a topic, concept or experience.  You can then use them to visually represent the feedback from the class.