Getting on with it

Introduction

Me, myself and I

I should introduce myself.  My name is Lisa Short, and I am Mum to a beautiful little girl called Briar.  It seems odd to start with information about my personal life, but it is the essence of who I am as a person.  

I work in the School of Natural Resources, or Horticulture as we often call it.  Natural Resources is now officially part of ABE, although we have been based at L Block for a few years now.  I was originally employed to teach the Diploma in Horticulture, but after ten years, I have taught many different courses and programmes within the horticulture field.  There is probably a pun in there somewhere.


I am currently teaching on the National Certificate in Horticulture (Level 4), and my current focus is Plant Propagation and Landscape Design.  I also facilitate the Diploma in Horticulture, an on-line 'distance' programme developed by the Cromwell campus.  We will get to this later.

Horticulture

Horticulture can be a profession, a science or a trade, depending on how far, or where, you want to take it.  Many of our students are very practical, and prefer to be 'doing' rather than sitting in a classroom, others are very interested in the science and background information.  We try very hard to cater for the individual learning needs of our students.  Regardless of whether we are running a practical or teaching theory subjects, the reality is that horticulture deals with nature, and nature is a dynamic changing system.  The most effective way to teach horticulture is in the field.  The challenge, is to teach flexibly and still try to maintain that connection.

Flexible delivery

So Far

• As well as our on campus students, we have students based at the botanic garden.  These students work full time, and study towards the National Certificate in Horticulture (Advanced) (Level 4).  Learning material is delivered by weekly tutorials, printed learning packs, block courses, and on job training.

• The Diploma in Horticulture is traditionally considered a distance programme, that is delivered through industry experience, on-line via Moodle, and block courses.  The programme has been designed to be studied part time whilst being employed with the horticulture industry.  In Dunedin, the programme is usually studied full time, but there is only one weekly tutorial.  This gives the student the flexibility to study where or when they want, but the schedule of assessments is controlled.

• In addition to this, a couple of colleagues use either Moodle or Wiki educator as part of their teaching tool box.

• Personally, as well as using Moodle for the diploma programme, I use the I: drive, and Moodle to store resources, and copies of PowerPoints.  My Moodle site is best described as a library of information, which is why it is called The Study Room.

Oddly enough, for someone who has managed to become a technological dinosaur, I quite like technology.  (Even if I freely admit that it may take a while for me to fully embrace social media.)


We are a very small School, and somewhere in the back of my mind a little voice is saying 'innovate or die'.  From a more pragmatic view point, I use Moodle to reduce the amount of wasteful printing that I do, and at the same time make sure that resources are available to students at all times.

The Plan

• We teach a one year certificate, which staircases into a two year advanced certificate.  For students who wish to do the advanced certificate, we try to give the students as many options as possible, but it is impractical to teach (face to face) a course for one or two students.  Flexible delivery would allow us to increase the number of options that we can give to our students.

• There are students throughout the country who would like to staircase from their current certificate to the advanced certificate - flexible delivery would allow us to facilitate that.

• In addition, there are always students who wish to study part time, or cannot simply stop working to become a full time student.

• And finally, I have vague unformed ideas about using net-books in class, and students driving their own learning... but that may be part of another discussion later on.

The Goal

My overall goal is to set up a full course (Plant Selection) on moodle using dynamic content/best practice rather than simply sticking on a few pdf files and some hyperlinks.