Case Studies and resources

learning.futures drives staff to redesign the learning experiences on campus, and online. Some examples of what just some of our academic staff are doing across campus can be seen below.

Week One Activities

In 2016, UTS introduced a new learning calendar to include three teaching periods. The new learning calendar was designed to create a platform for the future where: 

  • Students have the option of a more flexible study pattern across three teaching periods;
  • The objectives of learning.futures are optimised;
  • Academic staff members have greater flexibility in balancing teaching and research objectives; and
  • Organisational sustainability is supported by expanding our capacity, maximising our available space year-round to enable a major expansion of our academic workforce.

As part of the new learning calendar, Week One activities were designed to enable students to begin their new subjects with interesting online and face-to-face activities to ready them for the face-to-face experience. Below are some case studies outlining innovative approaches to Week One activities.

Authentic Assessments

The focus of Authentic Assessments is on testing 'what students can do with what they know', not simply testing 'what they know'. For many academics at UTS, it's not a new thing, with students already being graded based on authentic work such as developing student design portfolios, creating marketing plans, or submitting real journalism stories. 

In defining whether an assessment is 'authentic, you could ask:

  • Is the task testing more than students’ ability to recall and reproduce a narrow body of factual knowledge?
  • Does the task mirror or connect with what students will be doing as graduates in the world beyond university?
  • Does it ask students to apply what they have learned and higher level thinking skills to solve complex problems, in a similar way to something they would do in professional practice?
  • Is it measuring the development of the broader capabilities students should have acquired by the time they graduate? (ie, the graduate attributes of the course).

If the answer to any of these is no, then that’s an indication the assessment task isn’t authentic.  Below are some case studies of authentic assessment across UTS. 

Resources

Breakthrough the jargon with the UTS Futures blog's write-up on Authentic Assessments in a nutshell [opens UTS Futures blog]

Read more on Authentic Assessment principles and read a detailed guide to authentic assessment produced by IML [PDF] 

Large Collaborative Classes

Collaborative, active learning is core to learning.futures. Designing learning experiences like this for large class, however, can sometimes be challenging. The Large Collaborative Classes case studies provide real-life examples and tips from UTS academics across a range of discipline areas who have had success in engaging larger cohorts.
 

Flipped Learning: combining online and face-to-face

Student Experience and Engagement

Graduate Attributes

Inquiry-based Learning Approaches

Staff Development

Learning and Teaching Grant projects

UTS awards Learning and Teaching Grants, annually awards that support staff in re-engineering their approaches to teaching and learning in line with the learning.futures strategy. 

 

Professional development for UTS academics
Looking for inspiration or support to improve your students' learning experience?
Visit the Futures Blog, an online blog community for UTS teaching staff; drop-in to the LX.Lab, for academic workshops and events, meet-ups and one-on-one learner design support; or enroll in for The Teaching for Learning Futures (TLF) program.

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.