Taking a ‘students as partners’ approach, the UPSKILL Team Project became a flagship assignment of the agile flipped classroom design introduced in WORK3205 Organisational Communication, Semester 2 2020. UPSKILL required students to prepare an evidence-based professional development resource for the company/industry of their choice in a video format, present it in class and run a ‘live’ class debrief. Instead of repetitively addressing 1-2 pre-defined textbook case studies during 1-2 tutorials as in previous semesters, we explored a variety of burning organisational communication challenges aligned with each weekly topic. Additional features of UPSKILL included no individual marks, the use of peer feedback, and student-led tutorials in the second half of the semester with tutors acting as observers/silent markers. Students across both remote and on-campus classes showed high levels of engagement, yielding the highest WORK3205 USS results to date, and exceeding the Semester 2 2020 average on all criteria, especially for online learning and feedback satisfaction.
Teaching@Sydney