When I took on coordination of MSCI0501- The Marine Environment for S1 in 2012, a course which had been through many coordinators prior to me, I found that several course assessments did not align with content or learning outcomes, some of the field trips were inauthentic and there were several inefficiencies in the course logistics which was utilising a lot of academic and BEES professional staff time. For example, the BEES Student Office was handling student field trip sign up (including personal requests from students to change times), collection and return of all assignment submissions and OHS forms and photocopying of worksheets and exams for the approx 200 students enrolled in the course in S1. I redesigned several elements of the course to:

• Make better use of digital and online tools in Moodle (e.g., field trip date sign up, online quizzes, a virtual field trip to Shark Bay, WA and Turnitin assignments) to improve the logistical delivery of a course with over 200 hundred students,
• Deliver field trips with more authentic experiences inline with student feedback (e.g., swapped a field trip to the aquarium which promoted passive learning to a beach field trip which promoted active learning)
• Constructively align (Biggs, 2003) the course   (e.g., due to changes in guest lecturers over the years, the lecture material being delivered had no links to the final field trip in the course.I revised material to ensure alignment from learning outcomes, through to lectures, field trips and assessments) to improve student learning.

After implementing these changes, the BEES student office no longer had any responsibilities in the daily running of the course in S1 other than the odd specific student inquiry and CATEI course trend for S1 showed a consistent improvement in student satisfaction. I further advocated to the head of school for this course to be completely redesigned with more substantial resourcing. As a consequence, this course has now undergone a digital uplift (2018) with a flipped model and is now convened by other academics. 

References:

Biggs. J. (2003) Teaching for Quality Learning at University – What the Student Does 2nd Edition SRHE / Open University Press, Buckingham