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SOLE Elements

The nine elements of the SOLE Model

sole model
SOLE Model elements

These nine elements of the SOLE model are designed to reflect a comprehensive consideration of the students learning experience. If properly 'populated'  these would afford an effective balance of activity, of learning ownership and opportunities, for higher-order thinking and deep learning. The SOLE model describes the nine elements of the model (a) and, in the associated toolkit, provides pedagogic guidance (b) supported with references to resources and literature  for design purposes. The additional text in blue appears following updates to Toolkit Version 3.0:

  1. Feedback / Feedback

    1. Supportive guidance on quality and level of evidence being demonstrated in achievement of the learning outcomes.
    2. Feedback could be self-generated, peer generated or teacher focused. What opportunities exist for feedback within your given teaching context? Will students see you each week, for how long, and are classes sizes such that feedback will necessarily be peer provision? Would learning sets or group strategies support more effective feedback? If I am teaching online, or supporting the learning online, is there an opportunity for personalised feedback?
  2. Assessment / Assess

    1. Both formative and summative assessment.
    2. Assessment could be for the purposes of evaluating progress against achievement of the learning outcomes (formative) or be for demonstration of that progress for evaluative and credit purposes (summative); what is the balance within your course? Have you provided opportunities for engagement with the marking rubrics? Have you optionality or negotiated assessment possibilities in your course? Are there opportunities for students to relate assessment tasks to prior learning, to other pre-requisite courses? Does assessment design give the students anything to ‘take-away’ of practical benefit to their future learning career of life-work?
  3. Reflection / Reflect

    1. Identified as a reflection-on-action to reflection-in action process through the course life-cycle.
    2. What opportunities exist to capture the reflection on feedback and assessment? What artefacts might be stored for later consideration? What occasions exist to engage in the individual’s social context and with peers to evaluate the learning in progress?
  4. Personal Context / Personalize

    1. The individual life context, which the learner occupies, is a source of real-world activity we can build on in our learning design.
    2. Is the learner face-to-face or online? Are they working part-time or full-time, studying for a professional degree, trade or craft or some life-work as yet ill-defined. Is this something that can be developed as a theme for personal reflection? What prior-learning, pre-requisites or co-requisites might be drawn on in the learning design?
  5. Social Context / Contextualize

    1. The non-course context in which the learner lives is a source of real-world activity we can build on in our course design.
    2. Is the cohort a homogenous or heterogeneous group? What ‘external’ social contexts can we reference in our learning design, are students working and could contexts be cited? Are there diversities in life contexts which afford opportunities to encourage contextual learning, can learners be asked to share social differences? What learning might occur with other non-peers, elders, siblings, social or leisure contexts?
  6. Peer Moderation / Collaborate

    1. The direct engagement with fellow students on the same learning cycle, which can be reasonably directed.
    2. What opportunities exist for in-class, or online, exchange of views, co-construction and co-resolution? What opportunities for negotiation, sharing, joint inquiry or critical-friends exist within the course? Is collaboration, critique, or inquiry an identified learning outcome? Are there reasons why group work would contribute to the ILO; are there skills to be learnt through particular forms of collaboration?
  7. Tutor Facilitation / Engage

    1. Time and activity allocated to asynchronous engagement involving the teacher.
    2. What level of direct engagement with learner activity is required of you to support and progress student learning? What degree of online intervention is commensurate with your learning design; are students online and require your guidance? To what extent is your presence required and motivational? What periodic interventions might you make to contemporise the learning context, drawing on current literature or social contexts to make the learning real-world relevant?
  8. Tutor Contact Time / Connect

    1. Time and activity allocated for real-time synchronous engagement.
    2. What balance of face-to-face, or virtual contact time, is appropriate throughout the course? Does institutional timetabling allow variance throughout the course; might you choose to engage to a greater extent at the outset of the learning process and again for summative purposes? If learning materials are supporting domain knowledge acquisition, what is the most effective use of your time?
  9. Learning Materials / Inform

    1. The materials provided, usually in advance, to support domain knowledge acquisition.
    2. What pre-existing material exists? Have you explored existing Open Educational Resources (OER) that could be adapted to suit your learners’ needs? Would a single set-reading be a helpful reference point? What capacity for deep engagement with resources exists? Are seminal texts identified to students as such, if not, are they truly necessary? What opportunities exist for learners to assist in developing and refining the creation of learning materials, for example in the joint creation of an online glossary or a shared annotated bibliography?

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