The Challenge of Developing Reflective Practitioners

In my role as a teacher educator, I teach both on- and off-campus students. Over the last decade, the numbers of on-campus students has declined drastically, so that in my core unit in the current trimester there is one group of 10 students rather than 10 groups of 25-30 students. At the same time there has been an exponential increase in the number of distance education students studying online. The large numbers have led to multiple offerings of the unit in each academic year, both for student flexibility and staff workload management. Both on- and off-campus students study exactly the same unit and complete the same assessment tasks, but the equivalent of on-campus workshops for the distance education students is a series of activities and discussion forums that allow interaction with and feedback from other students and the teaching staff. On-campus students can participate in the online environment in the same way as the off-campus students so there is also interaction between the two cohorts.