Course Catalogue

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In this course you will prepare for your professional future by questioning and critiquing current educational thinking. Expanding your thinking in this way will help you to evaluate a range of positions while justifying your own.

This course will be taught through Moodle. There will be some face-to-face sessions throughout the semester. Thus the time and place of learning will largely be at the student's discretion. The greater proportion of online learning in this blend is indicated by current research (Dunn, 2013; Greenhow and Gleason 2012; and Roblyer et al. 2010).

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Assessment

Students will be assessed individually and in groups. They will produce a group artefact of their own design that contains visual and verbal elements outlining their considered stance on a key issue in educational futures. Embedded in the artefact will be a considered educational research question as well as a summary and critical evaluation of an academic study to answer the question. As an individual task, students will write an essay about their personal learning growth through the course. The essay will include a discussion of the experience of working collaboratively using digital technology and an outline of the student's reflection on the potential links to future teaching practice.
 

By asking a series of provocative questions, e.g. 'Is sending children to school the best way to educate them?', the course will enable students to deconstruct their own educational experience as a paradigm for teaching and develop their critical mindset from Year 1 by evaluating a range of contemporary ideas about education and educational futures. The course aims to enable students to develop their capacities for working with conventional and new modes of communication and to see the potential of these modes for teaching. The course will also facilitate personal confidence and collaborative working.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

Evaluate a range of educational approaches

Articulate a considered stance on key issues in Educational Futures

Critically reflect and evaluate research findings from literature

Work collaboratively on assignments

Develop the teaching potential of new technologies.  

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.