Students like live lectures (and online ones as backup) by Rebecca Reynolds

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Amy with pots 3
Dr Amy Smith, Ure Museum curator

Every year, students on the first year Analysing Museum Displays optional module have a talk from Dr Amy Smith at the Ure Museum, looking at the display there about the Greek symposium. This year I put the lecture online along with a transcript, photographs of the display, and a worksheet. I told them to use the materials instead of attending the weekly lecture that week.

Eighteen students filled in a questionnaire the following week giving responses to the lecture and saying whether they preferred it online, live or both. Nine students would prefer both, eight would prefer the live lecture only, and one student preferred the online lecture only.

Students liked the interactivity of live lectures, so the lecturer can go off script, students can ask questions and also learn from their peers. Students also preferred being in the actual museum, with four students saying this made the lecture more memorable. Two students said that they paid tuition fees for more than online learning. The main advantage of the online lecture was its usefulness for revision and its controllability.

In other words, what students valued was not the lecture format per se but the fact that they were with a real person in a real learning environment. Affective aspects connected with students’ reason for liking the live lecture could include some less easy to define such as the passion for their discipline shown by the lecturer, the fruitful discoveries and moments of realisation which can occur in a learning environment but which may be unconnected with the main topic of the session, and approaches to the subject shown by other students.

Recommendations are to make lectures as interactive as possible, and use online resources as backup. Tutors might also wish to ask students to listen to online lectures in their own time and save contact time for more interactive sessions – however, this holds practical challenges.

The online resource was developed as part of a JISC-funded digitisation project called OBL4HE (Object-based Learning for Higher Education), a partnership between UoR, University College London and the Collections Trust. The Reading side is based at the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL).

The full report is here response to educational resources

Project blog: http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/oblhe/

Other resources developed as part of the project are available here (scroll to the bottom of the page): http://www.reading.ac.uk/merl/LearnatMERL/merl-museumstudies.aspx

Contact: Rebecca Reynolds – r.m.reynolds@reading.ac.uk

Presenting the brand new Placement Guide for staff by Em Sowden

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managing placements 3The new placement guide has been written for all University staff involved in managing student placement options, internships, work placement programmes and volunteering schemes in and outside of the curriculum.operational processes involved in managing placements, alongside the details of key people within the University who can provide support. The guide also refers to national guidance on managing student placements, in accordance with the QAA and the University Code of Practice on Placement Learning and has useful templates and downloadable materials for you to use.

http://www.reading.ac.uk/closed/managing-placements/mp-about-this-guide.aspx

Placement Community of Practice

We will be holding our first Placement Community of Practice  of the year on March 5th 12.15pm-13.45pm in HumSS room 44 – lunch will be provided. It is expected that anyone with a placement remit should attend this community of practice to ensure we are sharing best practice across the University. Please contact CSTD to confirm your attendance.

If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact Placement and Development Manager, Em Sowden e.l.sowden@reading.ac.uk ext. 8354

Academic Placements by Dr Cindy Becker

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In the Department of English Literature we have been working hard, as have so many of our colleagues across the university, to make the most of the intellectual, personal and career advantages that placement learning can offer our students. We have devised a system of academic placements which is open to all undergraduates studying in the department.

In recent years we have seen a continuing appetite in our students for ‘real world experience’ and we believe that our academic placements offer this in the best sense possible by giving placement providers a tangible benefit from the activities of our students and by offer our undergraduate the chance of high quality, prestigious placements.

To support our work in this area, and to ensure that present and potential undergraduates are up to date with developments, we have created a dedicated webspace to cover this aspect of our work with students. It can be found through our department homepage by clicking on ‘See how our academic placement system works’ or by going to http://www.reading.ac.uk/english-literature/Undergraduate/ell-academic-placements.aspx

The department’s placement tutor, Dr Cindy Becker, would be happy to talk to any colleagues with an interest in academic placements. She can be contacted on l.m.becker@reading.ac.uk.

NSS success: It’s the little things?

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I was asked to contribute this after the Business School scored highly in the NNS survey for Management & Business degrees, and was invited to focus on things the School has done that have contributed to the maintenance of and improvement in our NSS scores that might be shared.

The category includes our Accounting programmes, where staff have been awarded the RUSU Gold Star for the past three years and that must help. Continue reading →

Becoming a Senior Fellow of the HEA

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As part of its remit, the Higher Education Academy offers professional recognition to its members – colleagues are able to apply to be an Associate Fellow, Fellow, Senior Fellow or Principal Fellow.

I was very recently successful in gaining recognition as a Senior Fellow, the first at the University of Reading. The process is relatively straightforward, although it does take time, especially as it can easily fall down the ‘to do’ list with all the demands on HE staff.

Continue reading →

I-TUTOR: Intelligent Tutoring for Lifelong Learning

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The University of Reading is a project partner in a prestigious project to develop a multi-agent based intelligent tutoring system to support online teachers, trainers, tutors and learners: I-TUTOR.

I-TUTOR, which stands for Intelligent Tutoring for Lifelong Learning is to be applied in open source learning environments, and will monitor, track, analyze and give formative assessment and feedback to students within the learning environment while giving input to tutors and teachers involved in distance learning to enhance their role during the process of teaching. Find out more on the project blog and website at http://www.intelligent-tutor.eu.

Funded with support from the European Commission, the project started in January 2012 and is a partnership between the University of Macerata as coordinating institution, and the University of Palermo, University of Reading, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, ITEC, Militos, and Eden.

Reaching the midterm in the project, the partnership has published its first project newsletter to share the results achieved – including a comprehensive study of intelligent tutoring systems as well as an open source code for a survey chatbot that anyone is welcome to test.

The team would welcome any feedback and suggestions. To find out more, or let them know what you think, contact Karsten Lundqvist, Lecturer in the School of Systems Engineering here at Reading.

Flexible Learning: Blended Learning for the Biosciences

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Recently, we had the opportunity to participate in the Teaching & Learning Showcase event on ‘Flexible Learning’, put together by the CDoTL team, during which we presented the Existing and Emerging Biotechnologies (EEB) Framework. You can read more about our presentation on our blog: http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/bioscience-skills/tflexible-learning-presentation.

Continue reading →

As good as it gets: Reflections on 2012 NSS in Clinical Language Sciences by Dr Tom Loucas and Carol Fairfield

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Having students say they are 100% satisfied with what we offer is not an everyday occurrence.  This is what happened in Clinical Language Sciences in the 2012 NSS.  All of the students who responded said they definitely agreed with the statement: “Overall, I am satisfied with the quality of the course”.  We were obviously extremely pleased, but wanted to reflect on what we do that might have led to this feedback and share our thoughts with colleagues at Reading.  Looking through students’ comments we picked out three themes in what our students had to say.

Teaching and learning

“…Standards of learning are high, we are challenged appropriately and I feel I am beginning to reach my potential.”

While we are a small department there is a broad range of specialism across the academic staff.  Having research active staff helps bring real enthusiasm to the subject which students experience, but this is not unique to CLS.   In addition, the  majority of academic staff are also speech are language therapists whose engagement in research creates a culture of evidence-based practice which translates into an increasing emphasis on inquiry-based learning.  This approach is well aligned to the aim of the programme which is to produce independent critically evaluative evidence-based practitioners.  Applying new knowledge in this way is not easy and our students clearly enjoy rising to this challenge.  For several years the clinical teaching team has used away-days  in the summer to review clinical and professional modules. Following the positive experience of this informal process to developing our programme, a departmental away day last year included colleagues teaching on non-clinical modules where we were able to discuss how to better integrate academic and clinical modules to facilitate the students’ development as evidence-based practitioners.

Departmental culture

“Passionate clinical staff … very supportive academic and administrative staff.” “Staff treat you with respect and value your opinions.”

CLS is a small and closely knit department which fosters a collegiate atmosphere.  Academic staff, the experienced therapists who act as clinical tutors, and administrative staff work closely together to deliver the programme. We recognise each other’s complementary skills and knowledge; this mutual respect is embraced by the students.  Students experience this in the Student-Staff Liaison Committee where they see they are listened to and their views are acted upon.  Our relatively small numbers of students offer a lot of opportunity for group work which we readily seize to develop a critical dialogue with them about their practice, offer them the opportunity to try out their clinical problem-solving and provide evidence-based rationales for clinical decisions. These are essential clinical skills and over time we can see students growing into professionals in this space we provide for them to develop as independent practitioners. It is reflected in how they see themselves and how they see us.

Experience of clinical placements

“Placements have been varied and interesting with the university giving us ample opportunity to feedback.” “Also, a lot of hard work has gone into arranging placement, they are very varied.”

Clinical placements are a key aspect of the programme and probably the most significant aspect of the student experience.  Sourcing and supporting high quality clinical placements requires commitment from the clinical teaching team and experienced administrator/s.  Effective placement experience also requires good communication between the University clinical tutor, the placement educator outside the university, and the student as equal partners in the student’s learning.  This is achieved by good initial educator training, on-going dialogue, and prompt action if issues arise. The quality and variety of our clinical placements has been achieved over many years of consistent collaborative working with partners in the NHS.  A key process over the last five years has been the placement educator development ladder which offers a programme of Continuous Professional Development for all speech and language therapists that take our students on placement.   The ladder offers training for different levels of experience and expertise. Feedback on our training has been very positive and training has been requested by whole-services.  Developing the educators’ skills has increased availability, variety and quality of placements.  This provides enhanced placement learning for our students and this very positive experience of placement is evidenced in NSS.

Blackboard Quizzes To Help Students to be Prepared for Laboratory Practicals by Dr Richard Mitchell

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It is important that students turn up for our three hour laboratory practicals suitably prepared, but just providing the Lab Scripts in advance is not enough, as often students don’t read them! Now in Systems Engineering we embed a series of questions throughout the Scripts which are available on Blackboard in the form of a quiz.

Students are expected to do the quiz before they go to the Laboratory. As the associated theory behind each quiz questions is in the lab script, the students need to read much of the Lab script to do answer the questions!

A further benefit to this approach, as Judy Turner has pointed out, is that it benefits students with special needs: information in advance of the lab is useful for those with difficulties with multitasking and getting organised (dyspraxia), those who take longer to understand text (dyslexia), for people with anxiety issues. It can also be helpful for those with Aspergers syndrome who like to be organised and have routines.

In addition, feedback to Part 1 Systems Engineering students in their first term is provided through our ‘engagement’ system (see http://www.reading.ac.uk/engageinassessment/videos/eia-video-richard-mitchell-engagement.aspx, which assesses whether students are ‘engaging’ in each module. Participation in these quizzes is used to inform the judgement as to whether the students are engaged for the associated modules.