University Teaching Fellows – A Growing Community by Helen Hathaway

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As the new academic year starts it seems a good time to focus on the Community of Practice of University Teaching Fellows (UTF). It is a growing community of teaching enthusiasts who are not only committed to teaching innovation and excellence, but to continuing professional development of themselves and their colleagues.  As incoming chair of the UTF Community of Practice, I am looking forward to continuing the theme of mentoring which developed under Richard Mitchell’s leadership, and especially to encourage others in support roles to consider themselves as candidates to become a UTF.  Michelle Reid, a Study Adviser, and I are currently the only UTFs working in an academic support and development directorate and we would welcome others.

One of the strengths of the community is the ability to draw on knowledge and experience across the University by networking in an informal, though structured, way. In the coming year the areas of excellence and good practice about which I would hope to encourage discussion and development are embedded academic skills. For an example of a current project where this is already happening in a tripartite partnership see http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/engage-in-teaching-and-learning/2015/06/05/mind-the-skills-gap-auditing-and-embedding-information-literacy-skills-development-across-the-curriculum-by-jackie-skinner-and-helen-hathaway/

Other ways in which the Community can contribute to the development of teaching – especially important in the context of any emerging Teaching Excellence Framework – are in offering its breadth of expertise of teaching matters on University strategies and plans, and to disseminate good practice.

If you are thinking of applying to be a UTF, my advice would be to look at the criteria now as it is likely you can plan your teaching for the Autumn and early Spring terms to strengthen any areas where you feel less confident of completing all four sections of the application. Most importantly it gives time to reflect on your teaching and achievements. No need to wait for the award to be launched in March with its strict deadline: start now to think about how to present your experience and expertise. You may also get double duty if you have already applied, or are considering applying, for Senior Fellowship of the HEA via the FLAIR CDP route: the necessary analysis of your teaching philosophy, looking at the UKPSF (UK Professional Standards Framework)and the reflection on the wider impact of your activities will also help in your UTF application. A mentor is the best possible support you can have in the process – everyone I have spoken to says so. Come and join us! Please contact CQSD or me for an informal discussion or to be put in touch with a potential mentor.

Congratulations to the new University Teaching Fellows 2015-16:

  • Dr Tabarak Ballal, School of Construction Management & Engineering
  • Dr Richard Harris, Institute of Education
  • Dr Karsten Lundqvist, School of Systems Engineering

Details of the 2016 scheme will be announced in the new year.

Introducing inclusive design to our new typography students by Jeanne-Louise Moys

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Breaking down Barriers has kicked off the academic year with a workshop in inclusive design with our new Part 1 typography students. Today we had our first session for the BA Graphic Communication Integrated Design Methods module. The students engaged with the new SEE-IT sight exclusive prototype for assessing visual inclusion/exclusion (currently being developed by the University of Cambridge as a new addition to their inclusive design toolkit). Working in pairs, they measured visual inclusion of typographic elements in business cards, leaflets and mobile apps.

The workshop was an engaging way of introducing typography students to the task-based learning approach used in this module. It also provided an effective introduction to inclusive design and the kinds of factors designers need to consider in their decision-making. The module focuses on user-centred design applied to a range of genres including: editorial design (‘design for reading’), pictograms and wayfinding, and digital design.

Typography lecturers Rob Banham and Jeanne-Louise Moys facilitated the workshop. We hope our students will continue to use inclusive design tools to support their decision-making in practical projects throughout their degree. It was also a great way to enrich the student experience with technology-enhanced learning.

Our thanks to Joy Goodman-Deane and Sam Waller who introduced us to the tool at Include2015 and gave us permission to use their prototype in our teaching.

To find out more about our Breaking down Barriers project visit the blog

 

Typography students Theo and Stephen team up to measure the ex/inclusivity of leaflet designs.
Typography students Theo and Stephen team up to measure the ex/inclusivity of leaflet designs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Typography student Polina setting up to measure ex/inclusivity in cover design.
Typography student Polina setting up to measure ex/inclusivity in cover design.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Typography students Kash and Kundai calibrating their phones to measure visual inclusivity.
Typography students Kash and Kundai calibrating their phones to measure visual inclusivity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Typography students Amber and Orla evaluating the visual ex/inclusivity of capitalised letters on business cards.
Typography students Amber and Orla evaluating the visual ex/inclusivity of capitalised letters on business cards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deepening Reflective Inquiry in Higher Education by Dr Geoff Taggart

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Consider these classroom examples. In an architecture class, students are invited to spend time examining natural materials they have found and to use their forms as the basis for a structural design. In a module on the philosophy of mind and how it interacts with the body, tables are pushed back and undergraduates engage in body awareness exercises. Mathematics students experience a peaceful workshop on origami to explore theoretical principles of geometry. Outside on campus, students in a botany class are asked to peg out a square foot of ground and do nothing for the first ten minutes but look more and more closely at it, so as to overcome engrained ‘plant blindness’. Politics students are cutting up Marx’s ‘Communist Manifesto’ and using extracts to make their own ‘found’ poems. Students training to be lawyers are engaged in an activity to increase awareness of their own automatic thoughts and the way these strengthen snap judgements and biased perceptions. Trainee economists discuss the relative rationality of their own desires and wants to interrogate the notion of ‘rational choice’ in the market. On an afternoon visit to an art gallery, fine art students are asked to spend time with only 3 pictures. Novice food chemists are asked to defamiliarise themselves from everyday tastes and flavours by using colours and analogies to describe them.

These pedagogical approaches were discussed during a weekend workshop I attended on the subject of deepening reflective inquiry in HE. A popular metaphor used to describe the approach was that of ‘slow food’. That is, learning which is deep and reflective is like eating a meal which has been lovingly prepared for hours using nutritious ingredients and sharing it in a convivial atmosphere.  By contrast, many students will have received a ‘fast food’ experience at school in which the culture of high-stakes testing has informed much of their learning. The idea of learning as purely instrumental and outcome-oriented has rarely been challenged. In my view, universities should (at least be free to) offer a richer and more sustaining dietary regime and teaching for deep reflection can help disrupt this engrained assumption.

PBL and ‘active learning’ of all kinds, especially where it makes use of learners’ own experience, is already known to bring about more secure and meaningful understanding than traditional didactic methods.  The ‘extra ingredient’ in the practices described above is the facilitation of deep reflection, often involving the ‘non-rational’ (but not irrational) language of imagery and feeling. The purpose of all of them is three-fold. The first intention is to make full use of the students’ learning resources. The popular idea of intelligence (endorsed by shows such as Mastermind) is based on factual knowledge combined with speed of recall. Yet, as successful innovation and entrepreneurship show us, original insight seems to involve something more. The educational psychologist Guy Claxton contrasts the ‘hare brain’ of the outcome-driven, Mastermind intelligence with the ‘tortoise mind’ involved in rumination and reflection.  Where space and time are allowed for the latter, creative responses and novel interconnections emerge. The unconscious is no longer seen as some kind of Freudian dungeon but as a useful assistant in effective learning.

The second purpose is to produce graduates who are not just knowledgeable but, having disturbed their own assumptions, are more confident in being able to justify what they know. The chemist Michael Polanyi famously argued that what we can explicitly claim to know in propositional terms is the tip of the iceberg, supported by accumulated ‘tacit knowledge’ held in our unconscious, feelings and bodies. Drawing upon and articulating this tacit knowledge in relation to new fields of study at university can help students ‘know that they know’ the material being presented to them and render their understanding more secure.

The third purpose is to deepen and focus attention in the face of mounting technological distractions. In order to solve a complex problem or devote time to honing a skill, one has to have the capacity to delay gratification, to ignore what is irrelevant or extraneous. One also has to acknowledge that what happened in the previous lab session or archaeological dig may not simply be reproduced in this one. Whether it is an engineer faced with a non-functioning machine, a lawyer with a fresh brief or an artist faced with a potential subject,  skilled and knowledgeable professionals do not begrudge the time spent simply looking at –‘beholding’ – the challenge that confronts them since they know that, whilst they are well-prepared for it, this particular challenge may have something new to teach them. Attention has a delicate quality to it therefore: we know something of our field but in order to be open to learning and/or professional development, we need to put this discursive, formal knowledge ‘on hold’ and allow time for the precise circumstances or features of the new material to reveal themselves to us.

I’m interested whether colleagues may already be experimenting with deepening reflection or may be interested themselves in doing so. In my own work at the IoE, one of my favourite activities for those who want to work in pre-schools is to give each student a basket of stones and ask them to tell me a story with them. The silent, absorbed and reflective atmosphere which follows, as they lay their stones out on the carpet, teaches them the value and meaning of play in children’s learning far more effectively than a lecture on the subject. We all had these learning experiences as children and some of our most transformative and memorable ones were characterised by these same qualities of sustained attention, beholding, rumination and openness to figurative, metaphorical forms of explanation. Even nowadays we often revert to this approach, such as when buying a new and unfamiliar mobile phone: why don’t we, as adults, instinctively start by working our way through the manual? The answer is because we know that learning flows when it attentive, embodied, playful and deeply reflective. This is not a capacity we need to lose on entering university.

Student-led Peer-assisted Learning (PAL) starts at Reading by Caroline Crolla

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Readers of this blog may recall Dr Patricia (Paddy) Woodman’s “Hot tip: Student-led peer learning: a win-win for everyone” posted on January 2015.  She wrote then that “The University of Reading is about to appoint a peer assisted learning co-ordinator and launch a number of trial schemes in 2015/16.”  Happily, I am that peer-assisted learning coordinator and I took up post on 22 June 2015. I would like to take this opportunity to describe how the implementation of peer-assisted learning is going so far at the University of Reading.

What is PAL?

As Paddy explain in her January blog: PAL is a framework that fosters cross-year support between students on the same course. Students work in regularly scheduled groups supporting each other to learn through active discussion and collaboration under the guidance of trained students, called PAL Leaders, typically from the year above.

Fact-finding visits

In June and July 2015, I visited other universities and attended national conferences on peer-led learning.  I quickly discovered that there exists a vibrant academic peer-learning community who are very welcoming and generous to a “new implementer” representing the University of Reading.

I visited three universities where PAL is very well-established across all faculties and schools and who have been running PAL – sometimes also called PASS (Peer-assisted Study Sessions) – for decades.  Colleagues at the University of Manchester, University of West England and Bournemouth University were particularly helpful in sharing their resources and experiences.

Reading’s early PAL adopters

During July and August, I met with colleagues in Mathematics, Psychology, Economics, English Literature and Systems Engineering.  I am pleased to say that five academics already would like to ‘pilot’ peer-assisted learning in specific 1st or 2nd Year modules or units that are cognitively challenging and in which students are known to struggle.

It has been a real pleasure to start collaborating with Tristan Pryer in Mathematics, Tom Loucas in Speech and Language, Pat Parslow in SSE and Simon Burke in Economics.   Each of these Academic Contacts is looking at the possibility of setting up regular, timetabled PAL sessions within these modules, as well as inviting successful and willing 2nd or 3rd Year students to agree to be trained as PAL leaders and run the PAL sessions.

As it is now September, the timing for implementation is tricky in some cases, so some academics like Rachel Pye, Jayne Freeman and Lesley Tranter in Psychology are considering implementing PAL in September 2016 in their Introduction to Neuroscience unit, which allows more time for timetabling, PAL recruitment and PAL Leader training.  Additionally, Cindy Becker and Nicole King are discussing how they might incorporate the support of two graduate interns in establishing PAL in English Literature.

How will PAL work at Reading?

PAL will be “discipline owned, student led, and centrally coordinated”.  Different Schools or departments may vary their offer where appropriate, but PAL will have recognisable features which will be consistent:

  • the School selects the module or unit which will have PAL integrated in the term it is taught
  • the School timetables and the PAL sessions
  • the PAL Coordinator will liaise with and support the Academic Contact/module convenor
  • the PAL Coordinator will train all PAL Leaders, and will assist with recruitment and monitoring student attendance at PAL sessions
  • experienced and successful students are trained in facilitation as PAL Leaders and then work in singly or pairs to:

a.  devise a structured approach to each session using their understanding of the material in conjunction with guidance from the Academic Contact

b. run the group sessions encouraging active discussion and collaboration amongst a group of between 5 and 15 students.

  • being a PAL Leader is voluntary, and the students who agree to become Leaders will be recognised and rewarded through the RED Award, inclusion of their participation on transcripts and in references and for some training activities Campus Card credit. We are also developing a credit-bearing module in coaching and mentoring to which PAL Leaders can apply.

What’s in it for…?

PAL participants

The students who attend PAL sessions regularly become part of a team who studies smarter. They share knowledge, experiences, and strategies with peers, helped by the PAL Leader.   PAL sessions offer a safe, friendly environment to revisit learning, compare notes, and ask questions. Participating in PAL sessions deepens students’ understanding of academic material by sharing problems and finding solutions.  PAL sessions can help develop confidence, independence and self-direction, communication skills and social skills further in participants.

PAL Leaders

PAL Leaders develop skills in facilitating learning and coaching other students, and their ability to tailor communication to different audiences. Leading PAL sessions helps develop time management skills, to plan and to problem solve.  These “soft skills” are valued by many employers.   PAL Leadership shows an employer that the leaders have gone above and beyond their degree and that they have been interested in contributing to the wider university community.  PAL Leaders get to know fellow students and develop a wider community of practice in their discipline. PAL Leaders have the opportunity to review and deepen their own understanding of their discipline, when they support the students who follow them in their learning.

Academics

Peer-assisted learning uses the talents many of your students already have to develop more independent learners who are self-directing their learning from where they are to where you would like them to be in terms of success. PAL has been shown to foster communities of learning where students learn more with and from each other.   PAL sessions provide students with additional structured learning time, independent of academics, although sessions are most successful when Academic Contacts provide guidance on the subject matter to the PAL Leaders.  In turn, the PAL Leaders can provide a rich source of immediate feedback to module convenors and to Schools about student learning.  PAL can only be developed in partnership with Schools and Schools identify and select content or modules deemed conceptually difficult.   Finally, offering PAL sessions on your course can develop altruistic and committed students who can help promote the course and meet with internal or external reviewers. Academics involved in PAL report that the scheme enhances a sense of School or Department community and identity.

Next steps

  1. Implement, evaluate and report on the five PAL “pilots” both from the students’ and Academic Contacts’ perspectives (watch this page)
  2. Promote PAL further with students and staff within selected Schools
  3. Extend provision of PAL across at least 5 more Schools in the light of experience of the pilots
  4. Have regular scheduled PAL Leader training sessions and in June / September / November
  5. Come to a Teaching & Learning Open programme session on “Another Student-led Scheme? How Peer-assisted Learning Raises Student Grades” on Wednesday 25 November 2015 from 14:00 – 15.00. Details are available at http://www.reading.ac.uk/cqsd/TandLEvents/cqsd-ComingSoon.aspx

If you are an academic interested in adopting PAL for one or more of your modules or you would like to find out more, please contact: Caroline Crolla, PAL Coordinator, c.s.crolla@reading.ac.uk or phone 0118 378 6593.   I work in the Student Success Team which is located in Blandford Lodge, G17, Whiteknights campus.

For examples of PAL / PASS at other institutions, please view:

https://youtu.be/95QLTaWLSuE  and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UERuCYeSzcw

Open Access to Languages (OpAL) presented at The Twenty-second International Conference on Learning in Madrid by Enza Siciliano Verrucio and María Pilar Gray Carlos

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The Twenty-second International Conference on Learning was held in Madrid on 9th-11th July 2015. It attracted over 300 delegates from the academic and professional arena across the world: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UK, United Arab Emirates and USA.

The theme for this year’s conference was “What counts as learning? Big data, little data, Evidence & Assessment”, a title that covered 10 different themes: Pedagogy and Curriculum; Assessment and Evaluation; Education Organization and Leadership; Early Childhood Learning; Learning in Higher Education; Adult, Community, and Professional Learning; Learner Diversity and Identities; Technologies in Learning; Literacies Learning; Science, Mathematics and Technology Learning.

Under such a variety of themes, presentations offered a multifaceted, multicultural and multidisciplinary view on the latest projects and research undertaken around the world. The University of Reading was represented at this year’s conference by a project led by Dtt. Enza Siciliano Verruccio (Department of Modern Languages and European Studies) and Ms. Maria Pilar Gray Carlos (Institution Wide Language Programme).

The theme Technologies in Learning focused on exploring the influence and impact of technology on areas such as “human values: learning through and about technology”; “access to learning in, and about, the digital world”; “new tools for learning: online digitally mediated learning”; “ubiquitous learning”. This formed the perfect platform for Enza and Pilar to present their project on “OpAL: Open Access to Learning”, a project that commenced towards the end of 2013. The project was partly funded by Routes into Languages, the Teaching and Learning Development Fund from The University of Reading, the International Study and Language Centre and Partnership in Learning and Teaching also from the University of Reading.

 

Why OpAL?

The aim of OpAL is to break down barriers to learning modern foreign languages. In order to achieve that aim we count on involving our students actively in the creation of materials. The materials created will be in turn available to the student community in the form of OERs (Open Educational Materials). The idea of the project came as a response not just to the language tutors’ experiences in language teaching in the higher education classroom, but to a clearly perceived difficulty of learning a second language by the students. These perceptions are evident in a national survey shown below which was carried out by The Guardian on 1001 students aged 14 to24 years old across the UK.

T&L Blog - Pilar

 

 

 

 

 

(http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/nov/07/-sp-do-young-people-care-about-learning-foreign-languages-data).

OpAL intends to encourage change in the UK language learner. It is inspired by two essential pillars of adult learning. The first is David Kolb’s learning theory (1984) on experiential learning or learning by doing. Our students explore areas of language on which they work to produce and test materials that at a later stage will be offered via the Web as OERs. The second is Alexander Astin’s and George Kuh’s work on Student Involvement (Astin, 1984; Kuh, 2009), that explores and explains how the involvement of students in co-curricular activities has a positive impact on student satisfaction and retention.

By engaging students in the OpAL project, they not only gain a deep learning of the subject studied, but they also become change agents in dispersing the fears and taboos related to language learning and, project an outward image that the higher education institutions are eager to portray: that of constructive change in the culture and nature of the relationship between students and the academic community within which they learn.

For further information on this year’s conference please visit http://thelearner.com/the-conference-2015/program-and-events/schedule-of-sessions.

If you are interested in attending or presenting at the Twenty-third International Conference on Learning, under the very suggestive theme of “Education in the Age of the Anthropocene” please visit http://thelearner.com/the-conference.

 

The PLanT Project and ‘Core Issues in English Language Teaching’ by Jess Fullam, Emily King, Daria Pominova and Megumi Kuranaka

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PLanT stands for Partners in Learning and Teaching. The project allows students and teachers to work together in order to improve a module using a small pot of money to fund meetings, focus groups and equipment. As a small group four of us (Jess, Emily, Daria and Meg) worked with our lecturer Clare Wright in the Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics to make some improvements to the module ‘Core Issues in English Language Teaching’.

Why we decided to take part:

Jess

The PLanT project was a brilliant opportunity for me to put into practice what we had learnt in the module “Core Issues in ELT” as some aspects directly related to the thinking behind the improvements we formulated for the module. It has been a really interesting experience and I’m delighted to be able to make a lasting difference to benefit more students at the university.

Emily

I decided to take part in the PLanT project because after learning about teaching practices in the Core Issues module I was keen to put my learning into practice in a real setting and see how we could improve what was already a brilliant module.

Daria (from Germany)

I decided to take part in PLANT project after taking the course “Core Issues in ELT” and learning about different approaches to language teaching. As an exchange student from a country where a very different approach to teaching foreign languages is taken, I became interested in the modern techniques and methods of ELT and took the opportunity of putting them into practice straight away by introducing some changes to the CIELT module as part of the PLANT project. While participating in the project, I also learned a lot about the use of IT in a language classroom.

Meg (from Japan)

What made me enthusiastic about this project was that it can provide me with the precious opportunity to integrate different ideas to come up with a new curriculum. Taking one module about English language teaching before my joining the project, I was amazed by my professor and other students because they were interpreting the same subject in a totally different way. I imagined if those who had different backgrounds and opinions could cope with each other and combine their thoughts, a brilliant curriculum must be brought which would be reasonable for all students. In addition, the project can contribute to not only improving a module curriculum but also developing ourselves. During the project, I was always inspired and excited to hear other members’ voices which I really appreciated. What is more, considering what can be done to enhance students’ motivations and autonomies in the language class should make what we learnt in the module more realistic and progress my career. Through the project, I experienced what are required as a prospective English teacher and how enjoyable to engage myself in the language education.

The PLanT Process:                        

We met up on several occasions to discuss what we had enjoyed about the module and how we thought we could improve it. The course aims to provide a summary of the main teaching practices and how these are affected by different factors as well as discussing the role of the teachers and learners. The course itself ran with one lecture and a seminar where the lecture material was discussed and activities took place based on the previous learning.

To begin with we found it very difficult to think of a way to improve the module as we felt in many ways it was already excellent. We had all participated in the course and had really enjoyed the seminars and felt that the level of interaction planned in the seminar tasks could be really good, as it meant that we could really get involved and enhance our knowledge. The class itself was reasonably large and a mix of part 2s and 3s, and we could see that not everyone engaged fully with the tasks. So we wanted to find a way to check everyone’s learning progression that was engaging for everyone to enhance engagement and help students to build their skills. We concluded that by integrating more technology into the seminars, we could really improve interaction between the students and help them learn about how to include technology into presentations, vlogs or quizzes to provide them with the skills that employers are looking for.  So Clare introduced us to the TEL team, part of Reading University’s enhanced IT support initiatives, which have been working with staff to include more IT in their teaching, to see what we could do for students.

Some of our original suggestions in this area included multiple choice tests with clickers in the seminars or small presentations using platforms like Camtasia (one of several platforms suggested to us by the TEL team). We also revised the structure of the module according to the relevance and importance of the topics. New tasks and types of group work were introduced in order to ensure active participation of the students and more interaction between them. The division of tasks between Part 2 and Part 3 students taking the course was discussed and how they could be encouraged to interact more in class. We held a focus group part way through the process in order to see how students felt about the changes we might make, and they were well received by all which allowed us to steam ahead with confidence to putting our plans into action.

In March we presented our work at the RUSU awards and received a very positive response from other members of staff and students. After this presentation we continued to have a further meeting with the TEL team to discuss other ways to integrate technology whilst having a bit of fun in seminars. Some of these suggestions included platforms like ‘Kahoot’ and ‘Nearpod’. The latter allows students to interact to questions on the board using their mobile phones or other mobile devices. We found that this was a fun and innovative option as a replacement for multiple choice clickers which had the potential to be expensive as well as technically difficult with regard to matching the software with what the university already has set up.

Therefore, after this experience we all felt that we have learnt volumes about ways to enhance teaching in the classroom with technology in a fun but informative manner and we are very grateful to the TEL team for that.  We have all really enjoyed working towards this and are incredibly proud of what we have achieved and hope that at least some of our ideas about using IT in seminars will be well received by next year’s cohort of students.

How online reading lists can help academic, information and digital literacy development. By Dr Kim Shahabudin, Kerry Webb and Helen Hathaway

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Online reading list systems can be seen as an easy win for the lazy student: ‘spoon-feeding’ them with the sources they need rather than encouraging them to develop their independent research skills. However, we believe that the new online reading list system at Reading will offer opportunities for tutors to boost their students’ independent skills at a number of levels.

– There will be benefits for the less able student by making it easier to find evaluated, recommended resources, avoiding the pervasive practice of ‘just Googling it’.

– There will be benefits for the more able student by making it possible to direct them to databases and other search strategies to train them in expanding their research.

– There will be benefits for all students in the capacity for tutors to add clear annotations for suggested use of sources and further reading.

– Tutors will be able to easily set exercises to advance and enhance student research skills, demonstrating good pedagogic practice and adding to learning outcomes for modules.

The online reading lists implementation project is well underway and Library staff have already uploaded 65% of the reading lists identified for Phase 1 of the project on to the system, ready for review and publication by module convenors. Training sessions are also being offered throughout the summer, to help familiarise you with the new system. If you would like to attend one of these, just let us know. Already training sessions have seen some exciting ideas suggested by tutors to make the most of the new system.

To show how the lists can help academic, information and digital literacy development, we have created an example list, which including a skills mapping note at the end of each section. We are aware that tutors at Reading are constantly involved in developing innovative teaching practices, and hope to keep sharing good practice and new ideas. Please do send any examples, case studies, or just off-the-cuff thoughts to Kerry Webb. We will collate them for further blog posts.

Internationalization: Assessing the Impact on Students By Dr Philippa Cranwell and Dr Elizabeth Page

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In Autumn 2014, the Department of Chemistry welcomed their first cohort of final year students studying for the [3+1] BSc Applied Chemistry course from NUIST, China. By January, we could already see that there were some valuable lessons that we could learn from these students. We decided to carry out a review, asking all students involved for feedback on the year. So we could reward them for their time and input we applied for PLanT funding and were successful.

This PLanT project was in collaboration with Shuwen Ma (a student from NUIST), Kirsten Hawkins (a third year home student) and Amie Parker (a second year home student), all from the Department of Chemistry.

 

Aims and Method

Our objectives were to: (a) determine the impact of the cohort of students from NUIST on our current third-year home students; (b) find out what preconceptions our second-year students had; (c) determine the parts of the year the students from NUIST found the most challenging and what we could offer to support future students. In order to achieve this, we organised three separate working lunch sessions with each of the three peer groups (second year/third year home students and the NUIST students) led by the students named in the PLanT proposal. During these lunches there was a brain-storming session where students were asked their opinions on a variety of topics and then wrote their notes on giant post-its.

 

Results

This approach was extremely informative with regards to the home students. The students from NUIST were less forthcoming with information, so in the end in addition to the working lunch we sent them questionnaires that they returned anonymously.

Analysis of the results showed that there was one main overriding theme between all three cohorts, namely the importance of English language skills. In the case of the home students, the level of English was important from a day-to-day perspective. The second years, with whom the next cohort of NUIST students would be integrating in 2015/2016, were concerned that the NUIST students would not be able to communicate effectively therefore there would be minimal integration so classes might become segregated, something they wanted to avoid. The third year students who had experienced mixed classes with the NUIST student in 2014/2015 said that the language barrier was not an issue in lectures, but made things difficult in practical classes due to the communication required between students and staff.

The NUIST students themselves also said that language was an issue and that although they had learnt English in China and had fulfilled the University’s requirements for English, they struggled due to the big difference between day-to-day English speaking and the technical language required for completing the degree course. However, the students all agreed that the help offered by the ISLI was invaluable. The English courses in the Autumn term were extremely helpful and that their English skills and confidence had dramatically improved over the year.

Additionally the students from NUIST were very worried about their final examinations, even though part of their final year grade was based upon coursework. We attributed this to two main reasons; the first came down again to lack of confidence with the English language, and the second was the difference in the education systems between the UK and China.

Written examinations in China differ significantly from UK style exam questions. In the UK students are required to recall information and apply it in unfamiliar situations, whereas in China many exams involve simple knowledge recall. Throughout the year the Chinese students completed tutorial questions of a style similar to the examination questions at the end of the year, to prepare them for the different assessment approaches. Our international support tutor provided additional classes and made video recordings of lectures. The English language tutor analysed our exam command words and trained the NUIST students in understanding the different requirements of words such as ‘explain’, ‘describe’ and ‘analyse’. However, the students were still concerned that they would not understand the questions they were being asked and they would be slower at the exams due to the language barrier, so might run out of time. Although we had anticipated that English language would be a problem and had tried to put support mechanisms in place, such as translating key chemical vocabulary, we were not fully prepared for the impact of this.

Future work

The information we have gained from all year groups has been extremely useful and will definitely be used to help future cohorts of students settle into University life. In terms of new initiatives for next year, we will try to implement the following:

  • A “buddying system” where current third year students act as guides to the new NUIST students.
  • Additional exam-style questions for the students to use a practise once they are in the UK
  • Contribute UK style examination questions to examinations set and sat in China so students are better prepared for their examinations in Reading.
  • Organisation of laboratory classes to promote cross-cultural exchange but avoid handicapping home students.
  • A greater emphasis on the technical language required for chemistry
  • Informal drop-in sessions where students can come and ask for help if they need it

Interactive Web Pages help make MOOC a success by Dr Richard Mitchell

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

On June 15th, Begin Robotics began – the second massive open online course (MOOC) from Systems Engineering running on the FutureLearn platform. One of its aims is to interest potential students in the areas of robotics, cybernetics, artificial intelligence and electronic engineering – following the success of Begin Programming, which we know has attracted students to do Computer Science at Reading.

A key novel feature of Begin Robotics is its use of interactive web pages both as exercises and to illustrate key principles – such as how a signal from a computer which can have a high or a low state only, can be used to set any integer speed from -40 to +40 using so called pulse width modulation. These pages build on work I have done and reported on the GRASS project blog:

http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/grass/blog/2015/01/30/screencasts-demonstrating-web-page-programs-for-tl/

There are two exercise pages each week, and those in the first week have proved to be very popular: for instance, Ed Ashby posted : “I thought the simulations were a fantastic way for distance learning, great to see instant results from our control inputs.” and  Ann-Kristin Abel commented : “Great course so far! Loved the simulations, as they really help me understand the movement of a robot. Looking forward to next week.”

In the first exercise, the participants are shown a simulation of a two wheeled robot and have to enter the speeds of the motors driving each wheel. They then experiment with these working out how to make the robot move forward or turn at different speeds.

In the second exercise, they have to define what the speeds should be for each of four actions: going forward, turning to the left, to the right and going backwards, and they then command the robot to do each action, watching the robot move around the arena provided. Having done so, they select a race track in place of the arena, and have to steer the robot round it as quickly as possible.

 

Second Exercise with the Race Track shown
Second Exercise with the Race Track shown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To prepare for these exercises, I recorded screencasts explaining the tasks, demonstrating the web pages and for instance showing me steering the robot round the track in around 15 seconds.

There have been many enthusiastic posts responding to these web pages. These included one learner commenting that he had steered the robot round the track in about 12 seconds, but his six year old grandson had, after just three attempts, done it in only 7 seconds!

In addition, a teacher doing the course asked if these simulations could be made available outside the FutureLearn platform as he thought they would be useful for his key stage 3 and 4 students. This we are doing, so for instance the two exercises are available at

http://www.reading.ac.uk/UnivRead/vr/OpenOnlineCourses/Files/robot3.html

http://www.reading.ac.uk/UnivRead/vr/OpenOnlineCourses/Files/robot4.html

The demonstration of pulse width modulation is at

http://www.reading.ac.uk/UnivRead/vr/OpenOnlineCourses/Files/desmoPWM.html

Interactive page demonstrating pulse width modulation
Interactive page demonstrating pulse width modulation

 

 

 

 

Although it has required much effort to first produce these web pages, and then to make them compatible with the FutureLearn platform, the very positive reaction to them from learners and FutureLearn is very encouraging, so the concept could be utilised both in other MOOCs as well as in other teaching.

The two Systems Engineering MOOCs, which are both running in June 2015, and which will run again later this year associated with the BBC’s Make it Digital campaign this summer, can be found at

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/begin-robotics

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/begin-programming

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Working in partnership… by Dawn Willoughby

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

With ever-increasing speed it seems we have reached that time of year again when teaching is finished, exam results are calculated and our thoughts start to turn from the current academic session to planning for the next one. This offers some time to reflect on successes and think about the areas of teaching where we would like to make changes. The “stand-out” feature of my module portfolio in 2014-15 has been the increased level of working in partnership with colleagues to teach and support our undergraduate students. Six of the seven modules I delivered this year were co-taught, an approach which has brought some challenges and plenty of rewards.

 

… with PhD students

In the Henley Business School, I am fortunate to work each year with a small team of PhD students who are responsible for supporting the delivery of lecture material in Statistics through weekly tutorials for undergraduates. This partnership provides an important opportunity for PhD students to strengthen their transferable skill set and become more effective facilitators; I have seen them gain a clearer understanding of pedagogy and an increased level of confidence. Similarly, there are benefits here for our undergraduates: they receive more individualised support for their taught course and they can also gain an appreciation of how their learning relates to the research undertaken in the School. And for myself, my motivation is improved by the enthusiasm of the PhD students and their “get-involved” attitude towards the programme delivery.

 

… with industry-based professionals

For my module in the School of Systems Engineering, there can be no doubt that engaging with IT professionals enhances the employability skills of our undergraduate students. In this case, the programme involves a group-based web development project for which employees of a local web design company act as the client. Developing this working relationship over the past few years has provided an extra dimension to my teaching. In recent discussions it has become clear that the company also values their involvement: “It offers an opportunity to gain skills and experience that simply would not be available to most of our staff members in their usual roles within the business. It has also afforded us an opportunity to give something back to the community by sharing our expertise – something we feel strongly about.”

 

Engaging in team-based teaching presents challenges especially in maintaining seamless delivery and providing consistent information to students. Sometimes there can also be logistical and communication problems associated with bringing together a diverse set of people with different working practices and other research-based or commercial objectives. However, all of these difficulties can be overcome when an inclusive environment is created in which open discussion is encouraged. From my experience, I have also learnt the importance of devising and sharing formal documentation to ensure consistency in assessment and provision of feedback to students.

 

When I first started working at the University, I expected teaching in higher education would be a rather solitary experience providing very little opportunity for interaction with colleagues. Ten years later, I can testify that this is certainly not the case as I work on a variety collaborative teaching and learning projects with colleagues from several Schools and Departments. It may be true that team-based teaching requires some additional commitment and effort but in my opinion this approach can bring benefits to University staff and students, and to external partners. And so, as planning gets underway for the next cohort of students, I would encourage consideration of team-based teaching as an option for module delivery.