Project leader: Dr Matthew Tang Project team member: Dr Mona Jaber Project Advisor (QMA): Dr Anna Cabral
Co-creation with learners improves their engagement and also provides powerful feedback to educators on how to morph the curriculum design in future. It is one of the key embedded features in our Queen Mary Education Approach [1] and has been proven effective in UK higher education [2].
One of the recurring questions from our students in Transnational Educational (TNE) is the request for exercises and exam-style practice papers with suggested solutions. While there is a rich library of past exam papers, many of our students rely on the recitation of materials and even suggested solutions at the approach of exams, rather than taking the past exam papers as useful learning resources.
In this project, we experiment with the idea of asking the students to write their own exercises or even a simulated exam paper under the guidance of the lecturers. Through the process, the students will enhance their understanding of the lecture material to a level that they can draft exercises, and then try to answer questions drafted by their fellow classmates. This requires much more active learning and thinking than working on an existing paper. At the end of the activity, the questions co-created by students will form a question bank valuable to current and prospective students.
Reference:
1. Co-creation: educators and learners as change makers. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/queenmaryacademy/students/co-creation/
2. Teaching and Learning Conference 2019: A co-creation approach to strategic enhancement of assessment and feedback in Nursing and Midwifery. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/teaching-and-learning-conference-2019-co-creation-approach-strategic-enhancement-0
14th May 2024
Our JP student Mr Muyang Zhao (Internet of Engineering Programme) excelled in a co-creation assignment last year, going beyond expectations by refining his question to a professional standard and providing valuable feedback to classmates. He was interviewed for his experience and collaborated with Dr Matthew Tang to create an exemplary exam question for the class. We are thrilled that he was recognised by the SEED award from Queen Mary Academy for his enthusiasm and insightful suggestions that led to improvements of our project.
Muyang was presented the SEED award by the Queen Mary Academy in June 2024.
14th March 2024
Ahead of our second year of trial of the co-creation activity, Dr Matthew Tang interviewed four students (Leyan Chen, Muyang Zhao, Shuting Ma and Jinyuan Sun) from last year and collected useful insights on how to improve the organisation of the workshop and the assignment. They also agreed to revise their work and share with the class as examples. We hope to bring their ideas forward to make this project even better!
Dr Matthew Tang presented the project and reported on first-year evaluation results at RAISE Conference 2023 at the University of Leeds. The talk was well attended by in-person as well as online audience.
The slides for the talk can be downloaded here at RAISE23_MTANG-QMUL.pdf [PDF 2,826KB].
Two sessions of our first workshop, which aims to introduce the project and discuss the skills in writing good exam-style questions, were held on the BUPT campus (Beijing) on March 2023. The students engaged in the workshop and had their first taste of taking the role of a lecturer. The sessions were well received by the students and they are looking forward to having the first assessment.