Preface
Welcome to the Ako Aotearoa Good Practice Publication Grant e-book. The e-book features the completed publications from our Good Practice Publication Grants Scheme. The goal of this scheme is to share and promote good practice, and encourage use among other practitioners.
This e-book includes a selection of teaching and learning practices that have been shown to benefit learners. These cover a range of topics with examples from across the breadth of the tertiary education sector.
This e-book has eight topic sections: Curriculum, assessment and moderation; Distance, flexible and e-learning; Learner access and learner pathways; Strategic leadership, quality improvement and change; Supporting Learners; Supporting Staff; Workplace learning; Teaching and learning designs. We will be adding content to this e-book on an ongoing basis.
Evidence of Learner Benefit
It is our view that the value of a project largely comes from the ability to demonstrate the resulting benefit for learners.
We have come to appreciate the difficulty that people are having regarding how to gather evidence, how to analyse evidence to indicate learner benefit, and how to then communicate these benefits more broadly. We also need to acknowledge that this not always easy and the issue extends well beyond this particular funding stream.
This scheme includes some publications from our 2008 scheme that describe practices that intuitively seem to be good practice, but robust systematic evidence was not always present to demonstrate this convincingly. We have placed greater emphasis on the evidence of learner benefit in later rounds of the scheme.
Part of our role as the National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence is to work alongside researchers and practitioners to support both capacity and capability development to create this evidence base.
Concluding Comment
In summary, we view this e-book publication in two ways. First, to illustrate a range of good practice activities that we hope will assist practitioners in their teaching. And second, as the starting point of an ongoing and constructive debate about how to gather, analyse and communicate evidence of enhanced learning resulting from our practice.
We hope you find these publications useful for your practice. We are keen to hear your thoughts about the e-book and the broader issues it has raised. Please feel free to contact us directly: