Digital Learning Standards set to provide better experiences for ākonga and kaimahi

James Oldfield

An extensive overhaul of guidance on the use of our digital tools by James Oldfield and Te Puna Ako team will help address concerns raised in the most recent key indicator of student engagement, the Student Net Promoter Score (NPS).

The NPS for Semester 1, 2023, recorded a good result of 30 for new students (down from a high of 50 last Semester) and 22 for returning students, consistent with previous surveys.

International students scored at a record 37, much higher than the international benchmark across New Zealand. Unitec’s NPS places it at the upper end of all Te Pūkenga subsidiaries.

In the bi-annual survey, Unitec’s culture is overwhelmingly mentioned as a positive and appears to be one of our greatest strengths. Quotes from ākonga include:

• “I really enjoy the whanaungatanga here at Unitec. At first, I was really nervous about studying but the lecturers and my peers at Unitec made it really easy and enjoyable for me.”
• “Waitakere is such a friendly campus. It’s easy to get around and I truly think Unitec wants their students to succeed. I also love that they incorporate Maori culture into all aspects of the campus and course curriculum.”

Students also particularly appreciate our practical learning approach and small class sizes. Our support services were also ranked highly. Quotes from ākonga include:

• “This is the only place they merge academic and cultural environments together and embrace their co-existence in pursuing academic excellence.”
• “I like the smaller classroom size (35-40 students) and I liked being part of the mid-year intake as it gave me the opportunity to work and save for half a year after high school.”

Feedback from some of our returning students was to make their experience on digital tools across courses more consistent.

Over the past few months, James Oldfield and Fiona Dalton from the TPA team have been meeting with teaching teams to promote the new Digital Learning Standards (DLS) to help solve some of the issues that students have raised.  These include an improved Moodle interface, and guidance on good ways to design digital content. The DLS provides examples and support for making learning material easier to navigate, as well as ways to incorporate recordings and active learning activities to engage our learners.

More information about the DLS can be found on this Moodle page:

https://moodle.unitec.ac.nz/course/view.php?id=8221

As part of the roll-out of these standards across Unitec, our Bridging Education team has been making great strides to provide better experiences for its students and staff. They have adopted best practice across the programmes with three of the six digital learning standards completed.

Cheryl Henderson

Academic lecturer and Moodle champion Cheryl Henderson has been supporting staff to fix issues, building consistency across courses and introducing innovative ideas to improve digital efficiency, including adding videos, scanning codes, and addressing issues that students were having with uploading large file sizes and formatting.

A full set of survey results is available here.

For more detailed results, included individual programmes, you’ll find a dashboard which is linked in the report.