 Hi, my name is Sheridan Gentile, I'm a simulator at the University of South Australia. This year we trialled on task in molecules to tissues A. It's a first year core course in the School of Pharmacy and Medical Science. By the time we got to the end of the semester we had 242 students enrolled in the course. The way I see on task is that it's a tool which allows me to generate an automated yet personalised email to my students. This is particularly useful when you've got a large class and it becomes a bit difficult sending a personalised email to all 242 students. Essentially how it works is that you collect data on your students, their engagement in class, so it may be whether they viewed a video in your online management system, and that data would be in a spreadsheet. So let's say you've got a code zero if they didn't watch it and one if they have watched it. Then using the task you can write an email that then looks at that spreadsheet and so for every student that hasn't watched this video, they'll get an email that says, you know, dear student, hey I've noticed you haven't watched this video, it's really important that you keep on track of this because it's critical for the next topic moving forward. That could be half the class and the other half will also get an email but it will say something like, we've noticed you've watched the video, really great to see that you're engaging with the material, this is a critical one moving forward. So it allows those students who haven't been engaging, allows you to contact them and give them a bit of information as to why it's important and what they can do to move forward. And the ones that have been engaging it reinforces that positive learning strategy that they've developed. So what prompted me to use on task? Well for a number of years now I collect data throughout the study period on student engagement and then manually I go through and contact those students if they haven't been engaging to sort of particularly rank each of the points during the semester licence date for example all critical assessments that are coming up. But because of the number of students I often found that I was only contacting the ones that were engaging and I was I guess neglecting I guess the other group of students which were the vast majority of them that were doing a really good job and you just need that sort of that encouragement to move forward. So on task has allowed me to speed up that process so it's far less manual and it allows me to reach all of my students and give them a customized message to help encourage them in their learning. So having taught first year students for quite some time I find particularly in the first few months they really need that touch point to sort of see how they're going. So one of the things I really wanted to achieve using on task was to enhance that I guess student experience in that first point so they can get a bit more personalized direction on how they're going particularly if they're sort of in the middle and they're not tracking too well and it also opens up that door for them so that line of communication starts and they feel as though they've got someone here on campus that they can come and speak to because people are looking at how they're going. It's quite easy for a student to feel lost in a class of over 200 students particularly if they've come straight from high school where there's just smaller classes. So it makes it feel as though you have that personalized contact and I think that's really important to learning. What impact has it had? Well I think it's hard to measure the extent of the impact. I know after the mail-outs I'll often get emails from students or I've had students come up to me after class and say oh you sent me this email that said that I hadn't completed something I'm really sorry I'm just running a bit behind. So they feel as though someone's watching but it's also opened up the doors I guess for conversations a student may not have normally had with me so I've had students come to me and say okay I've got your email. Thanks very much I know I'm not tracking really well in this area can we talk about some learning strategies. So I think it's had a really positive effect on student outcomes. We've sent some surveys out to students as well to collect some more data and I can't share that with you right now but again it seems to have had a positive effect on students around moving forward in their studies. I think using on-dust has forced me to rethink how I structured my course because I guess the aim there for me was to be able to collect as much information as I can without me having to do any additional work. So I did have to think a little bit of how I structured and what are the key I guess pressure points within my course. So I guess in the first instance in some ways I had to spend more time so I don't want to say it was hard I had to put more time into thinking about other courses being delivered but long term I think once you sort of get that right and you know the pressure points and you know your critical days it would definitely reduce I guess some of that load and would have a beneficial effect on student outcomes. So if I were to sit down and chat with someone about using on-dust for the first time I would definitely say you need to have a really good think about your course and the structure of your course. Know what's important in terms of key concepts or learning activities and if a student doesn't complete that what impact does that have knowing that kind of information allows you to pull engagement data about that and generate an email that can be sent at a critical point through your semester or study period that will have maximum impact on the student. So knowing your course and I guess looking at your course through a different lens. Overall I'd say it was minimal time and effort but for the honest the first time I used it probably required a bit more of my time than the second time I used it. I wasn't as familiar with how to nicely sort of structure the email with the different conditions and rules etc. and uploading the student database and just getting all that right but overall I wouldn't have said it was any more time or more effort than the manual method that I'd been using for the previous six years. I don't think you need to be very techie to be able to use on-task successfully. If you're familiar with using Excel spreadsheets and learning management systems then it'd be no more complex than that. Everything has its quirks so once you sort of go through the instructions the first time or watch an instructional video the first time it's then becomes semi-inchilding so not too hard.