Evaluating enquiry-based learning in the Faculty of Health Science at La Trobe University

This project has been cut short due to employment issues.

A Ladies Learning Code workshop in Toronto. By Jon Lim at Wikimedia Commons. (This image to be replaced with our own imagery)

Here documents a suite of projects evaluating an enquiry-based learning (EBL) framework in the Faculty of Health Sciences at La Trobe University, Australia. Data relating to the framework implementation and development has been collected since 2009. If you have experience and input to this evaluation, please consider this wiki an open invite to contribute. We anticipate this documentation will be valuable for La Trobe staff and students and a wider public. We intend to highlight successes, identify challenges and propose realistic strategies to improve learning outcomes for those engaging in enquiry learning.

Background

The Faculty of Health Sciences has undertaken some major reforms since 2009. These include new courses, new models for delivering existing courses, flexible and combined degree pathways, a new Rural Health School, and new Clinical School Networks. Underpinning much of this reform has been a move away from fragmented disciplinary approaches towards more combined approaches that minimise duplication and encourage enquiry-based, inter-professional and team-based learning.

A range of evaluation initiatives have been, and continue to be undertaken to monitor progress and inform refinement of these innovations.

These include:

1. At least one annual surveying of Core First Year (CFY) students (and each semester when specific modifications have been introduced)

Methods

Faculty position

• National trends
• Student and staff demographics
• Student staff ratio
• Infrastructure
• Governance

Findings

• The experience of enquiry-based learning
• Methods for enquiry-based learning

See also

• Inquiry-based learning