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.
Forrest (Forensic Research and Teaching) is an annual conference partly organised by Higher Education Academy. Two of the strengths of this meeting are its multidisciplinary nature; chemists, biologists and physicists meet with lawyers and that it genuinely brings together research and teaching – both areas inform each other during the meeting. Continue reading →
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.
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.
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.
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.
The University of Reading, like any other Higher Education Institution, is a diverse place, with many stakeholders, but – at least in theory – one mutual mission: ‘our mission is to educate talented people well, to conduct outstanding research, and to promote the responsible application of new knowledge.’
Unsurprisingly, the various stakeholders have diverse, sometimes downright conflicting ideas as to how to achieve the objectives outlined in the mission statement. In between Senior Management, the Centre for the Development of Teaching and Learning, the Admissions and Student Recruitment teams, and – last, but certainly not least – the academics in the teaching units at Reading, it will be difficult to find much common ground, as these groups’ respective agendas will shape their views.
As an academic it appears to be increasingly difficult to voice one’s concerns in this context (or so it seems, anyway), as financial considerations (fair enough!) and ‘wider developments in the HE sector’ (it would be nice to hear of those in advance occasionally, rather than only whenever convenient in response to perfectly reasonable considerations!) may be hurled one’s way at any one time.
The Normative Force of Verbal Imagery
Promotional material is designed to send out messages to an audience that has an interest in one’s offerings, highlighting those aspects that the advertising business regards as particularly relevant to their potential clients’ interests. Our University webpage is nothing but admirably clear about what is good about us and about what should make potential applicants consider coming to Reading as their University of choice: there are many reasons, but first and foremost it is the ‘great student experience’. Academic excellence comes fifth, the relevance and the rigorous standard of our degree programmes does not feature on the menu at all:
Screenshot from http://www.reading.ac.uk/Study/study-why.aspx (12 December 2012)
This observation gives me an opportunity to combine my research interests in the interdependence of language, text, and power with my professional interests as an University educator, and to reflect on what it is that we actually tell our potential applicants.
Human language is a sign system. It enables exchange of information between those who, implicitly or explicitly, agreed on the set of signs as well as its underlying sets of principles and rules. Furthermore, it enables its users to express their views and ideas. This use of language that, at first glance, seems to suggest that one is somehow in control of one’s words as well as one’s thoughts, and that one is able to think and express whatever one pleases however one chooses to do so.
This optimistic view is wishful thinking at best, however. Partly due to its pre-agreed nature, partly due to the all too human reluctance to challenge traditions and practices, language exercises considerable normative force over the mindset and attitudes of those who agreed to abide by the rules of this system. The extent to which language regulates, restricts, and positively reduces our imagination becomes obvious when it comes to the use of metaphors and verbal imagery.
Recent years have seen an excessive use of the phrase ‘student experience’ in the Higher Education sector. This phrase, although objectively neutral (an experience can be good, bad, or inconclusive), has a deceptively positive ring to it: ‘experience’ is a decidedly sensual term, seemingly taking into account as to how one feels about what one encounters in a certain environment. It also seems to imply a certain sense of adventure, of controlled exposure, and of unrestricted subjectivity. In other words, it is a term designed to encourage a consumerist attitude. Those who use this term for advertising purposes are fully aware of this aspect:
Screenshot from http://www.reading.ac.uk/Study/study-why.aspx (12 December 2012)
In turn, however, it is reasonable to assert that those who choose to use the term ‘student experience’ will deservedly encounter an attitude that tends to be self-centred and devoid of responsibility on the side of those who find themselves at the receiving end of such an ‘experience’. This must not come as a surprise, since this is exactly what the term ‘experience’ implies. Advertisers may not care about that, but those who are responsible for the delivery of the ‘experience’ must know this: for it is the normative, thought-structuring force of the metaphor that haunts those who cherish the term’s positive connotations in advertising jargon, but in actual fact rather dislike the expectations of the ‘customers’ who came for what has been promised.
The view of a University education as an ‘experience’ is a paradigm that, with its quasi-mystic and holistic subjectivism, can safely be assigned to the intellectual world of the New Age movement. It has largely replaced harder, more challenging synonyms, including ‘study’ and (now heavily dated) ‘read’, with an implicit assumption that the threatening, industrial implication of hard work may put off those fearful souls who go to University with the aim ‘to get a degree’, ideally with little effort, and certainly with very little actual regard for the world of knowledge and learning that they choose to join for their personal benefit.
Expectations, Aims, and Attitudes
If one puts the ‘student experience’ at the heart of one’s advertising campaigns, as Reading does, one should not be surprised if those who choose to take up one’s offer are passive and consumerist in their attitude. Furthermore, the connotation of an experience, with its rootedness in New Age thinking, is also reminiscent of the Human Potential Movement: the ubiquity of references to a ‘supportive, nurturing environment’, to ‘feedback’ and ‘feed-forward’, and to ‘sharing of good practice’ are the most obvious indications of this.
This attitude, however one may feel about this, does come at a significant cost. There is an increasing political and economic necessity to demonstrate that our alumni are highly skilled, independent, and capable of making a positive contribution to our society, appropriate to their level of training. One may be even more aspirational and say: our alumni should not only be able to contribute to the well-being of our world today, but they should be capable of leading and designing the world of tomorrow. Which begs an obvious question: considering that those who join us are attracted by an ideology that encourages feel-good complacency, passive consumerism, and the expectation of entertainment, how does one then manage to turn them into alumni that fit the model description of an ideal Readingite? Can this be achieved without missing out on talented, yet potentially rather less confident applicants?
Ad Fontes! (‘To the sources!’)
The answer to this question may, interestingly enough, already exist at Reading, if perhaps largely unbeknownst to most of us. As part of my professional interest in both the history of the Latin language and in inscribed text, I have recently started to collect the Latin inscriptions of Reading. One of the most remarkable examples of a Latin inscription at Reading can be found on the premises of our very own University, in the quadrangle of Wantage Hall. The North wall of the large quad, facing the dining hall, holds a large inscription, commemorating the dedication of Wantage Hall by Baroness Wantage in honour of her husband, as a gift to University College Reading in 1908:
Dedicatory inscription, Wantage Hall, Reading (7 August 2012)
The inscription reads as follows –
Aulam hanc
coniugis sui dignissimi
Collegii Universitatis apud Radingam olim praesidis
nomini semper servando
d(onum) d(edit)
Baronissa de Wantage
MCMVIII
in usum iuventutis
studiis ibi liberalibus operaturae
ut communi ardore alacri sermone
in beatam litterarum ac scientiae sodalitatem
feliciter congregentur.
‘This hall, to preserve the name of her most worthy husband, former president of University College, Reading, was given as gift by Baroness Wantage in 1908, for the use of the youth, to engage in liberal study there, so they, in common ardour and eager speech, may fruitfully assemble for the blessed community of letters and science.’
The inscription is a powerful reminder of a time when reading for a degree at University, at least in romanticising, abstract thought, primarily was about education, not about an experience prior to one’s joining the workforce. The very term education implies liberation, aiming at freedom from authorities that assume the right to determine one’s behaviour in word and deed – this ambiguous potential is precisely what makes education so powerful and threatening at the same time.
The idea of an education at Reading as something that liberates the hopefuls of our society (the inscription explicitly talks about the studia liberalia, the studies worthy of a free spirit) is eminently appealing to me. The inscription urges us to achieve this through the provision of a sheltered space for our studentship in conjunction with an environment that encourages intellectual ardour and heated debate between them, in the presence of the academics of our University.
Embracing this legacy of the earliest days of our University, adapting it to the needs of a globalised world with a pace that is radically different from what it was more than one hundred years ago, is indeed something that must appeal to a studentship that is active, engaged, and willing to be bold and to make a difference after their time at University. We can decide: do we want to offer our students a feel-good experience, a quick trip on the conveyor belt of the skills supply industry, or a space for contemplation, fundamental and thorough learning, and an education worthy of its name?
Postscriptum (Instead of a Conclusion)
There is a well-known rivalry between Wantage Hall and St. Patrick’s Hall at Reading. St. Patrick’s, too, has a Latin inscription on display in its quadrangle, and it would be a shame to omit it from the present context:
Motto of St. Patrick’s Hall, Reading (7 August 2012)
The inscription, underneath a basket of flames surrounded by a circle formed of two snakes biting their tails, reads thus:
Facta non forma. ‘Deeds, not image.’
After the previous considerations, it is tempting to offer an alternative interpretation to this text: how about ‘(excellent) education, not (just a mere feel-good) experience’?
Late in September 2012 we received our National Student Survey (NSS) results: 98% overall satisfaction across the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, including a perfect 100% for our BSc Mathematics programme, putting us (obviously) first place for all G100 courses, and second place in the Mathematics and Statistics (JACS code 3) table. A number of factors will clearly influence student satisfaction, but one thing we have always prided ourselves on is providing a friendly and supportive environment, and on fostering a strong learning community. In the last couple of years we have enhanced this further, to start to embrace all that is good about the principle of student engagement. We feel this is likely to have had a positive effect on the NSS results, though that was never a reason for our actions.
For example, with a large School we were finding that the Staff Student Liaison Committee (SSLC) was developing a more formalised reporting structure, and being dominated by some particularly vocal groups of students, focusing on modular issues that had little or no overlap with the majority of our students who were there. So to amplify the student voice in our Department, we took the decision in 2010 to create smaller, informal, Part-specific Staff Student Forums (SSFs) alongside the SSLC, which effectively act as focus groups. They are deliberately kept small to give everyone the chance to have an equal say, and include us both in our senior Teaching & Learning roles. Students feel relaxed enough to say what they like, and we discuss the issues, annotating the minutes with any actions taken after the meeting, and the minutes then feed into the wider SSLC.
Going further with student engagement, in April/May 2011 we conducted two surveys, one of our Part 1 students [1], and one of our Part 2 students, specifically to seek their views on the structure of their programme, so that those views might inform changes that we were considering. As a result of their responses we have successfully restructured our Part 1 tutorial format this year along the lines of the most popular choice. We have also set up a Teaching & Learning seminar series within the Department this year, which we feel is a unique selling point for us, since it is open equally to staff and students to attend and to present on T&L issues (the format being a short talk followed by discussion amongst the audience). About half of the presenters are students, who have identified their own issues to talk about.
In summary, we feel that high student satisfaction scores will most naturally arise out of an environment where both staff and students feel satisfied with the curriculum and the structure of programmes, and where a friendly dialogue is maintained. We’re ultimately all in this together, and a partnership approach can only help take us forward.
The University Strategy for Teaching and Learning identified “communities of practice” as key vehicles for informal dialogue with the ‘academic voice’ and for mutual support, for the exchange of ideas and the sharing of good practice between different role groups involved in the whole University teaching and learning agenda.
The Internationalising Student Support COP has been established with the remit to offer opportunities for staff involved with and interested in the development and enhancement of student support and experience in relation to internationalisation; to share best practice and discuss current challenges and opportunities for providing a high quality international student experience for all students. This COP is led by the University’s International Student Adviser in partnership with RUSU’s elected International Students’ Officer and supported by the Associate Dean (Science).
Each meeting focuses on a particular theme and good practice and ideas for improvement on that theme are presented and shared, with the intention of exploring how to disseminate good practice effectively.
The first meeting took place on Wednesday 5 December with the theme ‘Employability’ and attracted 20 members of staff from across the University.
Some of the highlights were:
Em Sowden, Placement and Development Manager, talked about the demand for international placements from all students particularly in China, Malaysia and India. Em also talked about the new online resource ‘My Jobs Online’.
Jane Batchelor, Career Development Advisor for the School of Real Estate & Planning and Lilly Mae Liddicott, Head of Industrial Training/Industry Liaison for the Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences both highlighted the value of Alumni involvement. Alumni could be used in a number of ways including mentoring current students and offering evening lectures.
Organising student-led events, where previous placement students can talk to current students about their own placement experience and how it has benefited them.
Future meetings and their themes are below and bookings can be made via CSTD:
Tailoring Support for International Students (staff supporting international/EU students)
– Thursday 07/02/2013 – 13.00-14.00
Integration and Languages (staff supporting all students)
The University of Reading is part of a three-year HEA-funded project considering the use of technology in fieldwork. The project is now in its final year and has led to the production of a wide range of resources and publications which can be viewed on the project website at http://www.enhancingfieldwork.org.uk.
Alice Mauchline and Julian Park from the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development here at Reading have recently contributed an article to the Guardian Higher Education Network on ‘Academic fieldwork: six ways to make it work on a budget’. Their briefing report on ‘The future of fieldwork in GEES’ outlines current undergraduate GEES fieldwork provision across a selection of HE institutions in the UK and explores how location, duration and cost of fieldwork to the student may change as a result of the introduction of increased tuition fees.
