Working in partnership with students to signpost support structures to first years

30 August 202331 August 2023 By michaelkilmister Comment Closed

By: Vicki Matthews, School of Politics, Economics and International Relations (SPEIR), v.matthews@reading.ac.uk

Title screen from a video titled 'Embedding yourself in the academic community'. The text is in white and the background is deep green. — Title screen from “Embedding yourself in the academic community”, which you can watch below. © University of Reading

Overview

Transition to university is supported in varying ways not only across our university network, but also across the wider higher education sector. In the School of Politics, Economics and International Relations (SPEIR), explicit messaging relating to undergraduate transition has been a feature for several years, but a desire to incorporate student voice within that messaging at Part 1 led to a successful application for Teaching and Learning Enhancement Project (TLEP) funding.

The project, entitled “Using Student Voice to enhance communication of support structures to new Part 1 students“, involved a partnership between Vicki Matthews, Executive Support Officer, and students from the School, culminating in videos being produced with the themes of embedding yourself within the academic community, working with the academic community, and shaping the academic community. You can watch the videos, hosted on YouTube, below:

Implementation

The students collaborated to identify key points under each theme and then developed videos offering specific advice and top tips for a positive transition experience from a student perspective. Students in SPEIR benefit from core competencies sessions which outline guidance on how to be a successful student, and the videos were shared during these classes.

Impact

The videos were well received, especially in terms of peer to peer messaging, but following first viewing we felt some advice would be better received during Welcome rather than once term had commenced. As a result, the “Embedding yourself within the academic community” video will now be shared during our Head of School Welcome Talk during Welcome Week.

In sharing the videos with the Student Engagement Community of Practice earlier this academic year, suggestion was made to update the video annotation slightly to make them suitable for use across the wider university network. Additional funding from the Teaching and Learning Initiatives Fund was received to edit them and they are now hosted on the Student Life YouTube channel for wider dissemination to students by all schools should they so wish.

Reflections

Feedback following the classes when the videos were first aired, without exception, evidenced that students’ confidence in seeking support should the need arise had arisen as a result of the session. Each class also captured at least one student who had not yet registered a learning difference, emphasising the importance of this explicit key messaging in ensuring students are aware of the support structures in place to enhance their overall university experience. Colleagues across the university are welcome to utilise these resources during their transition activities with new students. For further details on the project, or to discuss how these key messages support our transition strategy, please contact Vicki Matthews, SPEIR Executive Support Officer (v.matthews@reading.ac.uk).

As a School we will shortly be expanding the suite of videos thanks to PLanT funding. This will draw on the conclusions from recent focus groups and feature tops tips on how to overcome loneliness at university.

Designing an authentic assessment tailored specifically for Part 4 students

14 August 202314 August 2023 By michaelkilmister Comment Closed

By: Dr Julia Abery, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, j.abery@reading.ac.uk

Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash

Overview

I designed a tailored applied statistics assignment for a UoR Part 4 Department of Mathematics and Statistics module (module code ST4MVA) which successfully met two distinct objectives. Firstly, the assignment tested advanced, specific masters-level skills, as outlined in the QAA framework. Secondly, the assignment incorporated the critical elements of authentic assessment as recommended by Ashford-Rowe et al. (2014).

Objectives

In designing the assessment, the objectives were as follows:

To test masters-level skills described in the QAA L7 descriptor and to conform to departmental guidelines for L7 assessment.
To align with the ALOs (assessable learning outcomes) of the Part 4 applied statistics module ST4MVA.
To incorporate the critical elements of an authentic assessment, aiming to improve student engagement and develop employability skills.

Context

I produced a Part 4 assessment in multivariate methods which tests specific, advanced level 7 skills including systematic subject knowledge, evaluation, analysis, creation and independent research, to align with our department’s aims for assessment at this level.

Following discussion with colleagues and students, I became persuaded that an authentic assessment could increase value and meaning to the student. This meant basing the assessment on engaging ‘real-world’ scenarios, and aiming to incorporate employability skills and to promote deeper learning approaches.

Implementation

I consulted ST4MVA ALOs and departmental guidelines for Part 4 assessment, and decided on a data analysis assignment requiring selection and implementation of a range of multivariate methods in the statistical computing package R, some of which are researched independently. I took direction from the QAA level 7 descriptor; ‘to deal with complex issues both systematically and creatively … communicate their conclusions clearly to specialist and non-specialist audiences; demonstrate self-direction and originality in tackling and solving problems, and act autonomously in planning and implementing tasks at a professional or equivalent level.’ I designed an open ended task, so students could be creative and direct their own work. I requested two written reports, for specialist and non-specialist audiences.

Having reviewed various articles, I elected to use a simplified version of Ashford-Rowe et al.’s (2014) list of critical elements of authentic assessment. The table below shows how the assignment addresses these elements.

Select here to download an accessible version of this table.

Impact

Feedback from internal and external examiners and other colleagues suggests the assignment successfully captures features of an authentic assessment and allows students to demonstrate higher level abilities and employability skills. Some colleagues thought a similar approach might be used elsewhere in our programmes. Writing an assignment with close alignment to the principles of authentic assessment was instructive and will undoubtedly influence the way I approach assessment in other modules and at other levels.

Students reported that the tasks were genuinely useful ones to practise and master, and tested higher level skills such as evaluation, creativity and analysis. The assignment was felt to be challenging and at least moderately engaging and interesting. One student commented ‘being able to apply the techniques we had learnt in lectures onto “real world data” made it very applicable to a real-world scenario[s].’

Reflections

At least three features helped to ensure success: Firstly, obtaining data from an industry partner, and working on the project with them, helped to maintain a real-world focus and ensured employability skills were assessed. Secondly, detailed scrutiny of the assignment by experienced internal and external examiners resulted in making some changes and improvements which led to a better and more challenging assignment. This highlights the benefits of collaborating with colleagues and other academics when developing authentic assessment, and being open to constructive criticism. Thirdly, consulting the literature and identifying a checklist ensured that I had clear objectives and maintained a wide perspective on different aspects of authentic assessment.

On reflection, a fuller understanding of authentic assessment may be achieved by consulting local employers, identifying skills they look for when they recruit and checking whether assessments align well with these. More feedback from students would be beneficial, clarifying the extent to which claims in the literature of enhanced learning, increased engagement and motivation play out in students’ experience.

The assessment has now been released, completed and marked but only for a small number of students to date, meaning that a full evaluation is yet to happen. A possible extension of the practice would be to implement authentic assessment at programme level – so each student can benefit.

References

Ashford-Rowe, K., Herrington, J., and Brown, C. (2014). Establishing the critical elements that determine authentic assessment. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(2), pp. 205–222. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02602938.2013.819566
QAA. (2014). UK Quality Code for Higher Education Part A: Setting and Maintaining Academic Standards. The Frameworks for Higher Education Qualifications of UK Degree-Awarding Bodies. https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/quality-code/qualifications-frameworks.pdf

Reframing success in a partnership project

17 July 20237 September 2023 By michaelkilmister Comment Closed

Associate Professor Amanda Millmore, School of Law

Objectives

Curriculum development – reviewing & designing materials and the Blackboard framework for a new elective first year module.
Peer mentoring – student partners in Part 2 offering support to students on the module, embedded within the module by linking student partners directly with each seminar group and including them in online drop-ins and in-person teaching.

Context

During the Covid-19 pandemic, our students had struggled with their sense of belonging, not feeling part of the School of Law community due to lockdowns, online teaching and restrictions on gathering socially. We were creating a new elective, Part 1 law module called “Law and Society”, and we wanted to work with students to develop the module. We were also conscious that we needed to improve support for our new first-year students to ease their transition into university and their studies by enhancing their sense of belonging. We came up with the idea of supporting the new students by building bridges with the cohort in the year above.

Implementation

Curriculum Design – the student partners worked together with staff to review the materials we had prepared and giving their thoughts on what would be helpful and work for the new Part 1 students.

Peer Mentoring – we embedded student partners as mentors with individual seminar groups. We introduced them online with a dedicated “Mentor” section on Blackboard, hosted a “Q&A” Padlet board for students to interact anonymously if they wished. The module was designed with the mentors embedded into it. Student partners were each paired with one of the teaching academics on the module to provide support. Mentors were timetabled to join online optional drop-in sessions (and the session was headed “Meet the Mentors”) and compulsory seminars to offer support with groupwork and formative activities. Academic staff highlighted the benefits of peer support and promoted the mentors and how they could help, while mentors encouraged formal and informal contact with the students in their designated classes.

When student mentees did not attend the optional drop-in (we had more student partners attending than we did students enrolled on the module) we pivoted to the student partners sharing their advice for new students, which we recorded in a document that we shared on Blackboard.

Impact

Curriculum Design – this aspect of the project was very successful, with student partners feeding into the design of the Blackboard module, reviewing the module materials to ensure that they were engaging and pitched at the appropriate level and on student recommendation we ensured the provision of clickable Talis reading lists.

Peer Mentoring – this aspect fell flat, as the Part 1 students did not want to be mentored. They did not attend sessions where the mentors were offering support, declined offers of help (even when they volunteered to join a WhatsApp group) and the student partners felt that we were flogging a dead horse trying to mentor first-year students who did not want to be mentored. Student partners then pivoted to carry out some research to find out what the barriers to engagement with the project were; beset with difficulties in seeking feedback from the Part 1 students who did not respond to questionnaires, offers of coffee and cake or focus groups, the few who did participate explained that they just did not feel the need for that kind of peer support.

Reflection

Whilst the mentoring aspect of the project did not land successfully with the Part 1 students, it was not due to problems with the partnership or even the design of the project, it was just that the Part 1 cohort did not want the support that we were offering. This may be peculiar to this particular cohort, who had been significantly affected by Covid at school, but it was not for want of trying.

Whilst not one of our explicit aims, the notable success of our partnership is the value to the student partners who worked as module designers, mentors and researchers, these students have had the opportunity to disseminate their experiences at conferences and in writing and can see real benefits to their partnership experiences, and they have developed tangible employability attributes, not least a high degree of resilience.

Amanda Millmore and student partners before presenting at the Change Agents’ Network conference 2022

Follow-up

Student partners co-presented this project at the CAN (Change Agents’ Network) conference at UCL in summer 2022 and we have now co-authored a journal article sharing our experiences.

We have continued with the good curriculum developments in the module, which continues to grow from strength to strength. The mentoring aspect of the project has not continued, but instead we ensure to signpost our students to their STaR mentors and PAL leaders for peer support.

Partnership working in the School of Law continues to be business as usual, and the hiccups on this project have not deterred us from trying new things with our student partners, ensuring that we see the benefits of partnership as part of the process and the positives for the partners.

Links

We contributed to a blog after the CAN conference: CAN Case Study: A Pivoting Partnership – Student Mentors Trying to Engage: a Tale of Trial & Error | CAN 2022 (ucl.ac.uk)

Forthcoming article (co-authored by staff & student partners) in the Journal of Educational Innovation, Partnership & Change in 2023 – currently in copy editing phase – will share a link once it’s available.

If you’d like to know more about staff-student partnership in the School of Law, you can reach me at a.millmore@reading.ac.uk

Decentring Ableism: Creative Applications of Film Accessibility in Film/TV Practical Teaching

12 June 202320 July 2023 By michaelkilmister Comment Closed

Shweta Gosh, Department of Film, Theatre & Television, shweta.ghosh@reading.ac.uk

Overview

In this blogpost, Lecturer in Screen Practices and Industries Shweta Ghosh discusses her recent exploration of a new approach to teach film sound design using captions. Based on Shweta’s research on filmmaking and accessibility, this exploration serves as the foundation for a toolkit of film practice teaching methods that she intends to develop through 2023/24, which draw on principles of universal design and decentring ableism in the creative industries.

Objectives

The primary aim of the activity was to explore possible pedagogical applications of research on film accessibility in practical Film/TV teaching at the Department of Film, Theatre & Television. Key objectives were:

To develop student awareness of disability and Deaf culture, and the need for accessibility
To develop student capacities for confident exploration of diversities in audio-visual experience and development of creative ideas based on accessible filmmaking principles
To build accessibility into creative work with a foundational approach rather than incorporating it as an afterthought

Context

My doctoral research on filmmaking and accessibility revealed that filmmaking continues to centre nondisabled perspectives and practices, both on and off screen. Accessibility measures such as captions and audio description are often inserted in film/TV/video content as afterthoughts and accessible filmmaking research as well as practice demonstrates that the same measures considered at early stages (ideation, pre-production and planning) can make film and TV outcomes more accessible by default.

Additionally, accessibility measures can offer exciting possibilities to develop creative aspects of one’s work. The University of Reading Curriculum Framework outlines the need for teaching and learning practices to be accessible to all, and a key programme learning outcome of the new BA in Film & Television at the Department of Film, Theatre & Television programme is to “Create creative practice that is informed by an understanding of accessibility, sustainability and/or social engagement”. In alignment with these visions and outcomes, my exploratory activity was aimed at understanding student and staff response to the use of accessible filmmaking methods in film/TV practice teaching and learning.

Implementation

The activity involved working with two tutorial groups in the Part 1 Film/TV practice in Autumn term 2022 called ‘Introduction to Filmmaking’ (FT1ITF).

The idea was to explore the creative potential and inclusive outcomes of using creative captioning in Film/TV outputs. Group A and B tutors (Dr. James Kenward and I respectively) used a video by Artist Christine Sun Kim on rewriting closed captions from a Deaf perspective as a prompt for seminar discussion (released in advance on Blackboard), and facilitated student reflection on how captions can communicate diverse sound perspectives and the filmmaker’s creative intentions.

Initial discussion explored how the use of captions is widespread and how it makes audio-visual content accessible for Deaf viewers. This helped gauge student awareness and understanding of disability rights and accessibility more generally. Further discussion explored creative dimensions of captions in relation to ‘aural worlds’ (i.e., how each ‘world’ within an audio-visual work is built with different sound components and perspectives).

Students were then encouraged to identify the different components of the aural world in the video as well as the classroom, and map these on to a sound design template. This template, used by Part 1 students as a formative development blog submission, facilitates thinking and planning for practical project sound design, where each column represents a component of the aural world (ambient sound, voice/dialogue, etc.) and which can subsequently be mapped on to sound design and mixing software.

A discussion connecting these various elements enabled students to apply insights to develop creative ideas for the sound design of their own practical projects. Questions used by tutors to facilitate discussion were based on the following themes:

How do the captions in this video describe the creator’s intention? For example, what is the intended mood and tone with respect to the violin music in the captions before and after Christine Sun Kim changes them?
How do the detailed captions help us imagine / create an aural world that is more complex + inclusive?
If you had to caption your 10-shot sequence, how would you caption it with your sound design intentions? Have a go based on your current rough cut (in class / before your next edit session with the rough cut copy / during the edit with the captioning tool).
How can your ‘captioned’ intentions be mapped on to a sound design plan (esp. Mood section)?

The activity was successful in achieving its intended objectives. Practical subgroups in A tutorial group used captions during the workshop to develop creative intentions for sound design. One of the practical subgroups in tutorial group B explored the use of creative captions in their final practical output. While their use of captions was not assessed summatively, formative feedback was provided at an editing supervision meeting, and their attempt to understand and engage with captioning was positively recognised.

Reflection

Positive feedback from the group A tutor summarises the strengths of this activity and reaffirms that this can be an effective and interesting way to teach students film practice and accessibility.

“This was a very useful exercise and encouraged students to think about their creative practice in new and inventive ways. Students were not ‘taught’ accessibility, but utilised standard accessible filmmaking practice as a foundation to explore sound design choices in their films. Accessible practice was thus a given, ingrained into the work itself, rather than something to be viewed as separate or additional.

As the exercise confronts practitioners’ inherent biases as well as their expectations for the viewer, it works effectively to encourage students to critically analyse and evaluate their sound design choices in a targeted fashion. Given improving the quality of students’ sound design is a specific area of focus for the department, this exercise would be beneficial for students across practical modules.”

This exploratory project has also confirmed that there is an appetite amongst students to understand and engage with audio-visual perspectives that are different to their own, whether on and off screen. This is crucial to develop future film/TV makers whose practices are built on the principles of empathy and inclusion.

Follow up

The verbal feedback from students and interesting themes emerging from the trail this year (such as creative intentions, creative control, accessibility tools as enhancers or limiters of creativity), will be used to develop a detailed yet flexible version of this exercise, which can be used in next year’s Introduction to Filmmaking module as well as adapted for relevant Part 2, 3 and MA Film/TV practice modules. A seminar + workshop format (or critical discussion + sound design template application activity) will support students to connect critical themes to creative applications fruitfully. Student and staff feedback at the end of these sessions will be invited to further my understanding of engagement with accessibility methods and how these might enhance creativity and empathy, as well as key pedagogical challenges.

If you’d like to know more or would like to talk about this project, you can reach me at shweta.ghosh@reading.ac.uk or my personal website.