Students help to re-design one of their course modules

Three students at Northampton Business School have had the opportunity to give their input into looking at new ways of working for a module on the BA Human Resource Management programme.

Robert Pugh, Kelly Mole and Sharmin Begum had already taken the Information Management module in their first year and contributed to re-designing it into a flipped learning module with the intention to develop digital literacy for future employability.

Lecturers, Rachel Fitzgerald and Hayley Henderson-Martin wrote a paper called ‘Transforming the First Year Experience: Digital Literacy via Techno-Social Engagement and Evaluation’ which discussed the rationale and the approach for the re-design. The paper was accepted at the European Conference for eLearning (ECEL), which was held at the University of Hertfordshire at the end of October, which the students were invited to present at.

Robert Pugh attended on behalf of the students. He said: “I studied for the Information Management module in my first year and although I enjoyed it and achieved a good grade, others in my class didn’t have the same enthusiasm. I believe the idea of changing the module and the way it was taught was to improve attendance of the module by using e-Learning.

“My contribution along with two of my fellow students was to give feedback on our experience of the module, and how we would have improved it. I then attended the ECEL conference in Hertfordshire and presented my experience of the re-designing process during Hayley and Rachel’s presentation.

“I believe this was a valuable experience to undertake as a student. Firstly, you get to see the amount of effort that goes into creating a module, rather than just attending. Secondly, it was great to see our ideas actually being implemented, highlighting the importance of feedback.”

Rachel Fitzgerald commented: “Robert made a valuable contribution to ECEL and he confidently shared his experience of curriculum design with conference attendees from the UK, Europe and beyond. It was a great opportunity for him to attend a European conference, gain new experience, new skills and to network with a wide range of people. We would also like to thank Dr Mairi Watson, Deputy Dean at Northampton Business School for enabling our students to have this opportunity.”