Learning design in Numerical Methods

Description:

Context
The learning design described here is to be used in the 10 ECTS course Geoelektromagnetism and Numerical Methods, which is an obligatory 2nd year course at the Department of Geoscience, Aarhus University. About 20 students attend each year, constituting a mix of geology and geophysics students. Specifically, the learning design described here is intended for the part of the course covering Numerical Methods (7 weeks, 5 ETCS). This part of the course includes theory and hands-on exercises on numerical methods, and consists of a combination of lectures given by an instructor (2 x 2h per week) and theoretical exercises supervised by a teaching assistant (TØ; 3h per week). The final assessment is an oral exam where the list of questions is given beforehand.

Learning design
In order to optimize the learning of the students and facilitate a deeper learning, I explore the possibility of adding new out-of-class activities, as a complement to existing lectures and TØ. These activities will mainly be implemented as online e-tivities, and I will follow the 5-stage model by Salmon (2011), in order facilitate a successful online learning experience for the students. In the first week of the course, the online e-tivities will focus on stage 1 and 2: 1) familiarize the students with the digital learning tools (discussion boards in Blackboard, making a tablet cast), and 2) promote interaction between students, whereas all following weeks will have e-tivities on stage 3-5: 3) information exchange, 4) knowledge construction, and 5) development.