Reflection on the design and development of a new subject ITC293

Description

What?
My role was to lead and facilitate the design and development of the subject. That included finalizing subject topics, outlining topics' delivery, selecting a textbook, finalizing assessment items, and guiding other team members to develop the topics' content, review, and finally approve them. Thank you, Mostafa and Louis, for their excellent work and support in developing this subject. I recognize that the creative input and the technical skills of L&T staff were central to this task - in implementing novel approaches to the presentation of learning activities and in allowing the subject to meet its brief of being "fully online, active and engaging". Thanks for the consultancy/ED support by Chelsea Kovacs. The very practical nature of this subject and the following content/resources have been created to support the students.

A remark from the education designer Chelsea Kovacs related to my role: "In 2021/2022, I worked with Ashad and the broader teaching team to design and develop a NEW subject for delivery in 2022. Ashad was the academic lead on this subject, and he demonstrated leadership skills by coordinating the responsibilities of individual team members during the design and development process. Ashad was able to share clear expectations about the design process and the timelines we were working to, based on his experience developing ITC322. He shared his ideas in a way that was easy to understand for everyone, including stakeholders that were external to CSU and teaching here for the first time. The team developing the subject were very creative, and Ashad showed an ability to inspire and support others while effectively managing decisions, especially when changes needed to be made. As a result, the subject development and build process was seamless and all timelines were met."

A remark from the education designer related to leading ITC293 development: "What an absolute pleasure! … I’ve never been so impressed with a teaching team in all of my history working here at CSU, and that’s saying something because I have worked with some great teams. These guys are so passionate about their discipline and the student experience, and they are so organized. " – Email from Chelsea Kovacs to HoS, 12th Oct 2021.

So what?
The subject itself featured the following qualities (commented by the education designer Chelsea Kovacs):
• Development of quality content and the various curation of interactive resources with touch points to provide feedback loops for students to reflect on learning.
• Topics developed in sequence with scaffolded learning activities that were aligned to assessment tasks.
• Assessments tasks designed with an industry focus including the development of an electronic work portfolio for students which demonstrated their skills in as many relevant areas (of their degree) as possible.

ITC293 was delivered for the first time in 202230. The QUASAR report shows an overall successful delivery of the subject and its successful incorporation of current content and appropriate assessment design are evident from the PPR score of 75% in both SuES question 8 - "This subject incorporated study of current content (e.g., up-to-date texts, research, issues, software, other learning resources)" and question 11 - "The assessment tasks in this subject helped me to learn effectively". In summary, this activity presented me with a valuable learning experience that will see me better able to develop or redesign other subjects to help students become job-ready and to adopt the most current industry practices.

Now what?
I will continue to observe in the next offerings regarding students' learning experiences and success. Collect more evidence from SuES on PPR score and students' feedback.

Period	2021 → 2022
Held at	Computing, Mathematics and Engineering