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1. Introduction
Learning is at the centre of all the activities of KIST
and KIST is committed to excellence in learning and teaching.
This strategy and its associated implementation plan will
ensure that KIST provides all its students with an excellent
learning experience.
The Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy (LTAS) is
designed to improve the quality of learning for all students
at KIST: their learning experience while studying on KIST
programmes should be enriching, effective and enjoyable. Whilst
recognising that departments are responsible for providing
subject specialist courses it is designed to encourage a development
culture for learning, teaching and assessment together with
adequate means for the assurance of high and improving standards.
It articulates the concept of the KIST LearningExperience
with an emphasis on a shift towards methods that encourage
the progressive development of independent learners, with
attainment standards for personal and transferable skills
as well as subject knowledge. The primary aim of the Learning,
Teaching and Assessment Strategy is to equip students with
the necessary subject knowledge, skills, attributes and confidence
to enter employment, undertake further study, and play a constructive
and creative role in society throughout their lives. The Learning,
Teaching and Assessment Strategy set out in this document
is intended to provide a framework within which programme
teams can design their procedures and methods to meet fully
the requirements of students taking their programme.
The LTAS must also acknowledge that the teaching staff themselves
should be provided with the resources and training for the
LTAS to be fully implemented. One aim of LTAS is to enhance
teacher effectiveness by supporting the role of the lecturer
as a manager and facilitator of students' learning. A key
element of the strategy is to move from an emphasis on didactic
methods of teaching to the management of the student learning
experience. It also recognises the need for the dissemination
of innovative or other effective practice, including e learning
and blended learning and the importance of links between research
and teaching and the ways in which each interacts with and
draws on the other. Research on pedagogy is also seen as important.
KIST is concerned to develop more opportunities for flexible
learning both on and off campus and to increase the numbers
of students studying part-time. The LTAS therefore addresses
the quality assurance and monitoring strategies, which apply
to all undergraduates and taught masters programmes offered
by KIST, including those involving part-time, work-based or
web-based study. (Postgraduate research programmes and doctoral
programmes are covered by separate regulations.)
2. Characteristics of KIST impacting upon the Institute’s
LTAS
KIST is one of the leading African University specialising
in science and technology education to meet the needs of countries
in the developing world and in particular to support the social
and economic development of Rwanda and contribute to the realisation
of the 2020 Vision. It has the following characteristics
- Facilitates learning and student support in ways that
serve the needs of students;
- Emphasises employability and entrepreneurship
- Provides all full time undergraduate students with the
opportunity to have an assessed community placement and
an assessed work placement
- Enables all full time undergraduate students to become
bi lingual in French and English
- Supports the economy of Rwanda by aiming to produce graduates
who can contribute to the development of the country.
It intends during the period of this strategy to enhance
the range of programmes it provides to:
- Offer a wide range of provision in terms of level, modes
and duration of study including work-place, work-based,
and community learning;
- Increase the use of ICT in programme delivery both on
and off Campus;
- Provide opportunities for progression to those who can
benefit, ranging from short courses through a range of Certificates
and Diplomas to degree and post-degree study to Doctorate
level.
This creates a number of imperatives for the University
which impact on the learning, teaching and assessment methods
and processes adopted within the University. These include:
- Providing effective student support;
- Assisting students to become self-motivated learners;
- Maintaining an academic portfolio of science and technology
provision which meets the changing needs of individuals
and Rwanda and the Great Lakes Region more broadly;
- Enabling students to gain a range of personal and transferable
skills, including ICT, information retrieval, literacy,
communication and study skills;
- Enabling students to gain skills of enterprise / entrepreneurship;
- Increasing the flexibility of programmes;
- Developing research and scholarship excellence in staff
to underpin the curriculum;
- Facilitating pedagogic research and the transfer of good
practice in teaching and learning across the Institute;
- Providing HE opportunities at a number of work and community
based sites;
- Increasing the provision of online learning opportunities;
- Providing Continuing Professional Development (CPD) opportunities
for external organisations and institutions.
- Developing ways of assessing and enhancing the quality
of teaching;
- Providing greater opportunities for staff development
and CPD in Learning, Teaching and Assessment;
- Improving as necessary the quality of teaching accommodation
and other learning resources, and enhance access to learning
technology.
3. Changes in the External Environment
The revised LTAS takes account of a number of significant
changes in the global and national context for learning and
teaching. These changes include:
- Increased demand for external accountability with the
establishment of the Higher Education Council
- A growing emphasis on flexibility and life long learning.
- Structural changes to academic programmes arising from
the development of a credit framework.
- Increasing focus upon the development of personal and
transferable skills including employability and entrepreneurial
skills.
- New forms of learning arising from developments in ICT
and other technologies.
- The need to increase the provision of part-time, community
and work based learning, including students learning off
campus.
Overview of Learning Teaching and Assessment Strategy
4. Aims, Objectives and Goals
4.1 Aims
The principal aim of the Institutes 's LTAS is to maintain
and enhance the quality of the student learning experience
in the context of the Institutes's mission and strategic priorities.
4.2 Objectives
- To provide a framework for the development of teaching,
learning and assessment strategies by academic departments
.
- To ensure that students are supported in their transition
to the Institute and are enabled to acquire the necessary
study skills.
- To provide a learning experience that will enable students
to become effective, independent, lifelong learners.
- To enable students to gain subject knowledge and expertise,
along with cognitive, employability and generic skills.
- To promote a professional and scholarly approach to learning
and teaching through effective staff development and the
sharing of good practice, and to engender in academic staff
an awareness of the need for ongoing professional development.
- To enable students to recognise the skills that they
have developed through work and community experence
- To encourage staff to engage in learning and teaching
development within their subject communities.
- To encourage academic staff to undertake pedagogic research.
- To promote the use of new methods in learning and teaching,
including the use of new technologies.
4.3 Goals
- Provide a framework through which staff can effectively
support all aspects of student learning.
- Ensure a systematic, coherent, structured and consistent
approach to the 'First Year Experience' to maximise retention
and progression.
- Provide a coherent range of guidance and learning support
mechanisms capable of meeting the needs of the student body.
- Ensure all students experience progressive development,
support and recognition of subject knowledge, cognitive
and generic skills necessary to maximise the likelihood
of progressing to employment or further study upon graduation.
- Ensure that all student learning is appropriately underpinned
by the academic research, scholarship and professional practice
of teaching staff.
- Focus staff development on key priority areas.
- Ensure that the necessary resources are allocated to
support learning and teaching including:
Lecture theatres, classrooms and labs appropriately equipped.
Access to ICT.
Learning materials including books, journals and electronic
resources.
Student services including guidance and counselling.
An ‘Effective Learning Support Service’.
- Produce graduates who have the skills and competencies
sought by employers/become entrepreneurs - having relevant
academic skills, flexibility and adaptability with an ability
to recognise their own skills, quick to learn and able to
deal with change.
4.4 Outcomes
- To provide a range of vocational higher education programmes
all of which
•Develop in students the skills of critical thinking,
analysis, synthesis and evaluation;
•Develop the students’ ability to be responsible
for their own learning;
•Allow students to gain access to and use subject knowledge
in the most effective and appropriate manner;
•Include a broad range of personal transferable skills;
•Exploit the potential of relevant developments in
technology-based learning;
•Have instruments of assessment which fairly and accurately
assess the learning outcomes of each module;
•Are supported by appropriate student records.
- To provide efficient and effective learning support services
for all students by
•Ensuring each student has access, both departmentally
and centrally, to comprehensive educational and personal guidance
and counselling services, with regular and reliable feedback;
•Providing structures for the development of independent
learning;
•Providing the widest possible access to high quality
learning resources including library and IT services;
•Providing both formal and informal space in a good
quality learning environment, including technological support;
•Providing facilities for, health promotion, recreation
and cultural activities.
- To ensure that new staff are trained and existing staff
have access to effective Continuing Professional Development
programmes by
•Requiring existing staff to undertake approved CPD
in an area related to learning and teaching on a regular basis;
•Requiring all newly recruited staff with a teaching
commitment, as a condition of service, to undertake the Postgraduate
Certificate in Tertiary Level Teaching Methods unless such
staff offer an equivalent teaching qualification or approved
experiential learning;
•Developing, mentoring schemes in all departments for
newly recruited staff;
•Establishing a programme of monitoring performance
in all aspects of teaching for all teaching staff including
peer observation of teaching;
•Establishing an annual programme where examples of
good teaching practice are recognised and disseminated in
the Institute.
- To ensure that high quality teaching supported by appropriate
scholarly activity is recognised by the University
• Including in the criteria for promotion criteria
relating to teaching performance, curriculum development,
dissemination of good practice, and appropriate scholarly
activity;
5 The KIST Learning Experience
The primary focus of this framework is the taught undergraduate
degree. It can be used, however, to inform programme designs
and implementation for post-graduate programmes and short
courses. It is based on the need to ensure that we produce
dynamic graduates who can take on responsibility for their
own learning. Students have to be taught how to learn as opposed
to lecturers transfering knowledge to them. Students come
to us as dependent learners – expecting to be given
the required knowledge and then assesed on it. We need to
educate them to take on responsibility for their own learning
as well as develop a range of skills and competencies that
employers expect graduates to posses. Learning will require
students to engage in a range of learning activities beyond
the traditional lecture and laboratry including for example
group work, independent learning, e learning, research, workshops
and seminars.
The primary emphasis is on the move from the dependent to
the independent learner, students being encouraged to take
an increasing responsibility for their own learning as their
programme progresses. The key skill a student learn while
on a degree programme is taking responsibility for their own
learning – they should learn how to learn in the 21
st Century knowledge changes rapidly and graduates have to
be able to take on resposponsibilty for updatinf their own
knowledge – for becoming lifelong learners.An important
component of the Learning Experience is to put in place the
support required to assist the development of every student
towards that role.
The framework is based upon a model where students typically
move from largely tutor-led approaches in the Transition and
Orientation phase of their programmes to a more comprehensive
student-led learning experience in the later phases (see Fig.
1). It recognises the continuing value of human interaction,
especially in undergraduate learning and teaching whilst encouraging
the development of new and innovative methods including C&IT.
It is also important that students are taught by staff who
are actively engaged in their discipline and at undergraduate
levels 3 , 4 and 5 and on postgraduate programmes staff should
be engaged in relevant research and scholarship
A Framework for Programme Design and Implementation
- The KIST Learning Experience
In the Transition and Orientation phase Levels 1 and 2 ,
students would be supported to enable them to develop the
skills necessary to study effectively and efficiently in HE
as well as being introduced to subject knowledge. As a result,
students will develop the necessary skills to take on more
responsibility for their learning in the later stages. Consequently,
the allocation of staff time will normally be 'front loaded'.
The learning and teaching approaches identified within each
phase are indicative. The main purpose of the diagram is to
indicate the type of approach which might be more appropriate
to the role of each phase of the student programme. The emphasis
is on a shift from teaching to learning - from an emphasis
on input and teacher effort to one on outcomes and student
achievements, whilst recognising that students continue to
need significant amounts of tutor input.
Assessment strategies are integral to learning and teaching.
Formative assessment is a key element in the Transition and
Orientation Phase to provide students with feedback so that
they can understand what is required of them. Summative assessment
should be designed so that all learning outcomes, including
employability, personal and transferable skills are assessed.
The KIST Qualifications Framework recognises this by awarding
distictions and honours degree classifications on the basis
of the work in the later stages. In the early stages students
are required to pass assesed work in order to progress to
the next stage. The fedback on this work is vital in enabling
them to learn what ir required.
The range of skills developed by students should include
but not necessarily be limited by those defined by the relevant
subject benchmarks and will normally include:
- Knowledge and understanding in the context of the subject
- Cognitive / intellectual skills
- Generic skills -
- Learning style and orientation to learning
- Communication skills - written, oral and listening
- Numeracy skills
- IT skills
- Time management - organising and planning work
- Working with others / group work
- Working independently
- Planning, monitoring, reviewing and evaluating own learning
and development
- Information retrieval skills
6 Assesment
Students should have in course assessment and end of course
assessment. All assessment should be designed to assess the
student’s knowledge and understanding of the course
learning outcomes – and all leaning outcomes should
be assess. Assessment can take a variety of forms including
for example, formal examinations, essays, presentations, participation
in e learning debates, reports, dissertations, reflective
learning diaries, laboratory reports, artefacts. It should
not be assumed that all courses have to be assessed by a final
examination. A variety of forms of assessment should be used
to ensure that students are demonstrating the development
of personal and transferable skills as well as gaining subject
knowledge. Oral presentation skills cannot be assed through
written work for example. The assessment strategy should be
devised for the programme as a whole While assessment is essential
to measure students achievement care should be taken that
students are not over assessed. While students may do more
than one piece of in course assessment the total amount should
not be more than indicated below. All in course assessment
should be combined to form one mark where students do more
than one piece. To this end the following table provides guidance
on assessment requirements.
Weighting of Assessment
The normal assessment for a 20-credit module should be as
set out below (a module should normally have two assessment
components – a dissertation for example should have
a proposal and final report assessment points) Assessment
can be weighted 50/ 50 or 27/75. The examples below are indicative
of how assessments might be combined. The actual assessment
for a course and the assessment strategy for the programme
will be approved at validation.
Levels 1 and 2
1 by 2 hour exam plus 1 by 2 hour in course exam (50/50)
or
1 by 2 hour exam plus 1 by 1500 word essay/report (50/50)
or
2 by 1500 word essays/reports (50/50) or
1 by 2000 word essay/report plus one oral presentation (75/25)
or
1 by 2.5 hour exam plus an oral presentation (75/25) or
1 by 2 hour exam plus one 1,500 word lab book (50/50) or
2 by 1,500 word lab books (50/50) or
1 by 2.5 hour exam and contributions to e learning forum
(75/25)
Levels 3 and 4
1 by 3 hour exam plus 1 by 2 hour in course exam (50/50)
or
1 by 2 hour exam plus 1 by 2000 word essay/report (50/50)
or
2 by 2000 word essays/reports (50/50) or
1 by 2000 word essay/report plus one oral presentation (75/25)
or
1 by 3 hour exam plus an oral presentation (75/25) or
1 by 2 hour exam plus one 2000 word lab book (50/50) or
2 by 2000 word lab books (50/50) or
1 by 3 hour exam and contributions to e learning forum (75/25)
Level 5 (Honours)
1 by 3 hour exam plus 1 by 2 hour in course exam (50/50)
or
1 by 2.5 hour exam plus 1 by 2500 word essay/report (50/50)
or
2 by 2500 word essays/reports (50/50) or
1 by 2500 word essay/report plus one oral presentation (75/25)
or
1 by 3 hour exam plus an oral presentation (75/25) or
1 by 2.5 hour exam plus one 2500 word lab book (50/50) or
2 by 2500 word lab books (50/50) or
1 by 3 hour exam and contributions to e learning forum (75/25)
Dissertations will normally be 40 credits. Typical word
limits will be 12,000 words, although variations may be appropriate
in some disciplines. Normally students will get a mark, weighted
at 25% for the proposal and literature review and a mark,
weighted at 75% for the completed dissertation. There will
not normally be an oral examination.
Level 6 (Masters)
1 by 3 hour exam plus 1 by 3 hour in course exam (50/50)
or
1 by 3 hour exam plus 1 by 3,000 word essay/report (50/50)
or
2 by 3,000 word essays/reports (50/50) or
1 by 3,000 word essay/report plus two oral presentation
(75/25) or
1 by 3 hour exam plus two oral presentation (75/25) or
1 by 3 hour exam plus one 3,000 word lab book (50/50) or
2 by 3000 word lab books (50/50) or
1 by 3 hour exam and contributions to e learning forum (75/25)
1 by 5,000 word essay/report
Dissertations will normally be 60 credits. Typical word
limits will be 12,000 – 15,000 words, although variations
may be appropriate in some disciplines. The programme validation
document will set out the weighting of the components of the
dissertation. Normally students will get a mark for the proposal
and literature review and a mark for the completed dissertation
weighted 25/75. However a programme team may decide to have
an oral examination. If they choose to do so the oral examination
should have a weighting of not more than 10% or less than
5% .....READ MORE
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