Working collaboratively with students to design lectures the way they want them – By Dr Wing Man Lau

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

Have you ever had to deliver lecture materials so cognitively challenging and dull at the same time, that your students either become utterly befuddled or fall asleep before you finish delivering them? I have.

The conundrum

I am the Module Convenor for a pharmacy practice module that focuses on pharmacy laws and regulations relating to medical prescriptions. Materials covered to this module are absolutely fundamental to the students’ future career, since legal and ethical considerations underpin the day-to-day decisions that pharmacists make. It is therefore essential that our pharmacy students have a thorough understanding of the topic to safeguard public and patient safety. However, students have always perceived the topic to be dull and clinically irrelevant. Thus, the principal challenge in teaching pharmacy laws and regulations has always been making the learning environment interesting and engaging. Traditionally, pharmacy law education has relied heavily on lectures, yet lectures alone often fail to engage students effectively to facilitate deep learning. Teaching on the module currently runs as a 2-hour lecture followed by a 2-hour workshop where dispensing activities take place based on materials covered in the lecture. The dispensing activities provide students with opportunities to apply knowledge that they have gained in the lecture. However, since the students find it difficult to engage with the lecture materials in the first place, they are often unable to apply the knowledge in the dispensing activities.

How do you make a seemingly dull topic engaging and captivating to students, such that they are able to effectively absorb, retain and apply the knowledge?

Like most colleagues, I use module feedback, regular informal feedback, peer observation as well as self-reflection to improve my lectures accordingly. Year on year, I collate all feedback and devise creative strategies accordingly to present my lectures, e.g. by adding quizzes, practical examples, interactive exercises to make them more relevant and interactive. Even though I get better feedback each year, I still fail to capture all students’ attention throughout the entire 2-hour lecture.

What else can I do?

The collaborative approach

Our students learn in very different ways, and when it comes to teaching approach, one size clearly does not fit all. I knew from student feedback that the students were not fully engaged or were unable to grasp the content of a lecture, but I usually did not know why. In trying to improve the lectures, I presumed certain reasons based on my own interpretations and perspectives. I have come to realise recently that those presumptions may have been misguiding the ‘improvements’ that I was making to my lectures. Little surprise then that I did not find a solution to the problem. Perhaps, instead of presuming anything, could I ask the students to incorporate improvements into my lectures in a way that they would find engaging instead?

So, this year I have decided to collaborate with my students in re-designing my lecture. The project aims to bring student perspectives to designing a lecture that not only will be engaging to students, but also create an active learning environment that suits their various learning styles. This will hopefully enable the students to gain, retain and apply the knowledge. I have recruited three pharmacy students (Ohn You Kim, Jakub Zurek and Tanzeela Hussain) to re-design a 2-hour pharmacy law lecture that I gave in the autumn term. The students have led the project from the outset in planning and designing the lecture. My role has been to meet with them from time to time to support their discussions, and introducing them to the University Technology Enhanced Learning Team to see how they can incorporate technology effectively. The students have decided to use a range of different delivery platforms within the lecture. They have suggested the use of Prezi, Quizizz, scratch cards, Metimeter and prescription scenarios using the ‘think, pair, share’ approach. They are currently in the final stage of the re-design. I will be using their design to deliver the lecture again to the same cohort of students and gauge their feedback.

I am already excited about what has been happening thus far. I am eager to see and deliver the final design of the lecture. After collating the feedback on the new design, the students aim to write about their design and summarise their findings for this blog, so watch this space!

 

 

Engaging Everyone – reflections on Wednesday’s D&I-themed T&L Conference – By Simon Chandler-Wilde

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I was blown away by Wednesday’s teaching & learning conference “Engaging everyone: addressing the diversity and inclusion expectations of the Curriculum Framework“. This was lead-organised by my CQSD colleagues, especially Nina Brooke, but as a collaborative effort across the T&L patch, working with the T&L Dean Elizabeth McCrum  and others, and with the RUSU Education and Diversity Officers, Niall Hamilton and Sed Joshi. The venue – the large Meadow Suite in Park House – was excellent – and full to the brim with staff and students from across the University, including regular academics, many from the “Leadership Group”, and very many of the School Directors of Teaching and Learning who have to lead – and cajole –to make change on the ground.


 

 

 

 

 

My jobshare Ellie Highwood will blog separately with her take,

Including local data on attainment gaps, and gaps in BAME representation between the student body and the staff side, that she presented with Sed in their highly interactive presentation in the morning.

I’ll focus myself on the sessions run by the conference Keynote speaker, Professor Gurnam Singh, Principal Lecturer in Social Work at Coventry University and Visiting Professor of Social Work at Chester University.

In his afternoon workshop on “Transformative Pedagogy in Action” Gurnam revealed more of his background: this something he advocated, for connecting to the learner, humanising relationships, and sharing vulnerabilities. He described his (extraordinary) academic journey from UFD (his O-level grades) to PhD (Social Studies at Warwick) and beyond, starting with his early rebellious school career in Bradford, truanting in Bradford Central Library (where much of his education happened), the one bright (and memorable) spark at school the lunchtime lectures in Sophocles and classical architecture from “Mr Mitchell” whose passion for teaching and his subject has had a lasting impact.

Talking about research vision on his website Prof Singh describes himself “as an academic activist in that what inspires me both in my teaching and research is the desire to transform individuals and society”. This perspective and motivation came through strongly in his morning Keynote on “Understanding and Eliminating Disparities in Degree Awarding: Challenges and Perspectives“,

 

 

 

 

 

 

drawing on his extensive research (and research funding) in this area, including his substantial 2011 Higher Education Academy Report “Black and minority ethnic (BME) students’ participation in higher education: improving retention and success“.

This keynote was a wide-ranging and comprehensive account of the problem and possible solutions. In part it was a (welcome) call to arms and polemic, asking which side of history are we on, urging us to work for a different history, that we can be part of the change. He was scathing about a certain sort of (white upper class) elitism, a “particular kind of superiority, not excellence, something else”, the sort we associate with the Bullingdon Club, and about the impact of Trump in legitimising racism and misogyny (while noting that to many Trump had been the social change candidate), and (very much correctly) observed that “we need more in the academy of my sort”.

In this initial part of the presentation he urged work to diversify the academy – with a BME focus but also commenting more broadly – from a variety of perspectives, reminding us that  from an international legal perspective education is a fundamental human right, of our legal obligations under the equality act, of the moral imperative to act in response to inequality, and of the (neo-liberal?) commercial imperative, reminding us of the business benefits of diversity and the widely-cited McKinsey report, and memorably remarking that his own institution “would not exist as a White university, except as a senior management team”. (Of course, this applies equally at Reading.) These are all potential levers for change. Gurnam cited also the TEF (with its promise of  ‘incentives that reward institutions who do best at retention and progression of disadvantaged students through their college years’) as another key lever. (In this space Prof Singh was part of the Academic Reference Group feeding into the October 2016 report “Working in Partnership: enabling Social Mobility in Higher Education” from UUK.) In summary he noted that, through these various drivers disparity in attainment was moving to the top of the agenda – this was certainly true in Wednesday’s conference and in the associated work that has led to our new Curriculum Framework.

 

 

 

 

 

Prof Singh then talked quantitatively about the BME attainment gap, particularly % difference in attainment of a “good degree” (2.1 or 1st) between BME ethnicities and white students. He emphasised that significant attainment gaps remain once differences in prior qualifications are factored out, using graphs (see latest available figures above: 2013-14 graduates) published by HEFCE: see Annex G of the September 2015 report. In terms of causes and solutions, he was wide-ranging. I’ll edit this blog and add more once I have Gurnam’s slides in my hand (I have my eye on his “jigsaw” picture summarising all suggested possible actions from his research). But in terms of causes he touched on:

  • lack of role models and “people like me” for BME students across the academic staff, particularly the scandalous position at the most senior levels;
  • white-centric curriculum design and content;
  • drip-drip effects of micro-agressions;
  • issues with assessment, ranging from lack of clarity favouring those with larger social and cultural capital, with the resources and networks to find out what the assignment really means, to suggestions that we abandon degree classifications altogether (as we have at PhD level);
  • structural disadvantages: socio-economic, living a precarious existence, impacts of large commuting distance.

He finished his keynote with a call to arms that was really the theme of the whole day; that inclusion and social justice are not just desirable but an absolute moral and economic necessity, and this means we have to mainstream our efforts in attacking attainment gaps  – precisely the point and spirit of our new Curriculum Framework.

This was originally posted on the University’s Diversity and Inclusion blog created by the Deans for Diversity and Inclusion, Ellie Highwood and Simon Chandler-Wilde.

 

 

Reading Academy at NUIST: busy colleagues undertake staff development By Angela Buckingham (Academic Developer)

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On a chilly week mid-November, Clare McCullagh and Angela Buckingham headed out of Heathrow to fly fifteen hours east to reach the ancient city of Nanjing in China. Colleagues at Nanjing University of Information, Science and Technology (NUIST) were waiting for us to deliver the Teaching and Learning Development Course, contributing to the University of Reading Recognised Teacher Status for staff within the NUIST-Reading Academy. The cohort consisted of teaching staff from China, Russia, Egypt and Britain.

Globalisation, the internationalisation of the curriculum and cross-cultural development are key themes in the Higher Education sector currently and so, after three days of collaboration, sharing ideas around pedagogy and implementation of effective classroom practices, we thought it would be interesting here to share our underlying Five Principles (after Chickering and Gamson’s Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education1) for implementing effective training in an overseas context, with an illustration of what this looked like in practice.

Our hope is that some of these principles may be a helpful for you in your teaching and learning context.

Five principles for successful training

1 Develop rapport and know your learners (this may be even more important with a mixed nationality group)

We used a variety of ice breakers, warm up activities and numerous opportunities for personalisation to ease our teaching colleagues into a comfortable ‘stretch’ zone where they were happy to reflect upon current practice and discuss ways to implement change effectively.

Example: Icebreaker, Day 1 Suitcase Activity– what are you bringing to the course? What are your areas of expertise? What are you good at? What are you hoping to take away?:- otherwise known as a rough and ready Needs Analysis

day 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 Change the classroom layout (and focus on creating a Positive Learning environment)

This was essential, in order to model ways in which different interaction patterns could easily be encouraged, moving the focus away from a teacher-led transmission model to a facilitation one, (away from the ‘Sage on the Stage’ to a ‘Guide on the Side’), acknowledging that the participants’ own experiences and views were not only valid but welcome. This was an area that was much commented on in the initial evaluations following the course.

Example: Day 3 Team building: table group work to create physical models of a teaching theory – using whatever resources they could find in the room (this included paper cups, chairs, post-its and even an umbrella)

day 3

 

 

 

 

 

3 Model the method, encourage Active Learning

One of our guiding principles when working with educators is to provide training with a practical focus, which will save busy lecturers time when they come to prepare future sessions. In this way, there is a good deal of linking theoretical models to actual classroom practice.

Example: Reflective logs, daily: at the end of each day, we invited lecturers to spend 15 minutes in quiet reflective time, to identify what their key learning outcomes were for each session from the workshops and how they could be applied in their own teaching and learning context.

4 Use the Three Ts – topic, task and time

Following on from the previous principle – educating teachers and aiding their development is complex and involves discussion, examination and time in order for teachers to construct meaning for themselves. We provided a wide range of learning tasks and activities, with plenty of support given to enable the participants to make the links between methodology and practice for themselves.

Example: Peer learning: comparison of teaching policies at the University of Reading and NUIST.

5 Training is a two-way process (in other words, be prepared for two-way learning – be ready to learn from the participants)

We travelled to NUIST knowing that the starting point for all discussions around teaching and learning do not take place in a vacuum, but are highly personal and situated in a particular context and that the person who knows the most about what happens in your own classroom is you. Teacher development provides the opportunity and space for educators to step back and examine their own teaching stories and by sharing these, continue the cycle of reflection and development.

Example: Teacher Hat, Student Hat: lecturers shared ways that they could apply activities in their context by discussing in pairs questions such as – Could you use this in your classroom? What adaptations would you need to make?

Clare

 

 

 

 

 

After three days of intensive training, it was time to fly back home. We left behind the lecturers at the NUIST-Reading Academy motivated and energised, ready to face their classes on Monday with new perspectives and ideas developed from their collaboration with colleagues – and also with the beginnings of a new community of practitioners to draw upon for development and support. We brought back with us a deeper understanding of the challenges our counterparts at NUIST face, and new shared perspectives on ways to continue our own learning journeys.

Clare McCullagh and Angela Buckingham are Academic Developers in the Centre for Quality support and Development (CQSD). They visited the Reading Academy at NUIST from 15th-21st November 2016.

1 Arthur W. Chickering and Zelda F. Gamson (1987) “Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education” American Association of Higher Education Bulletin vol.39 no.7 pp.3-7

InFormal Reflections by Amanda Fava-Verde, Mark Peace, Aaron Woodcock and Mariama Sheriff (ISLI)

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

Introduction

In July this year, four members of teaching staff from the International Study and Language Institute (ISLI) headed up north to this year’s InForm Conference.  InForm is a journal published by ISLI and widely read by international foundation programme professionals across the UK.  Its annual conference this year was held at Durham University and its theme was Working with Words: Supporting understanding of discipline–specific vocabulary in IFPs (International Foundation Programmes).  Delegates were a mixture of subject-specialists (e.g. Chemistry), English for Academic Purposes (EAP) specialists and Applied Linguists, their common factor being that they are all involved in some way (directly or indirectly) with the teaching and learning of international students on foundation degree programmes.  Amanda, Mark, Aaron and Mariama each share their own reflections on the day’s events.

Does teaching discipline specific vocabulary work?

Two thought provoking presentations had me questioning whether teaching discipline specific vocabulary at Foundation level was something of an impossible ideal – both proposing that foundation level students should rather be guided to develop the skills and strategies needed to empower them to go out there and cultivate their own lexicons and mastery of their own subject specific styles. Both these presentations favoured teaching the broader concepts of academic discourse rather than the specific disciplinary nuances, taking the longer term view that our role is to open these students’ minds to global citizenship rather than close them in to specific academic communities.

Mike Groves of Birmingham University, playing devil’s advocate, questioned whether a focus on subject specific vocabulary teaching in the foundation EAP classroom might even be damaging, suggesting we run the risk of placing our students into ‘linguistic silos’  by doing so.  While not criticising subject specificity in general, he argued that it might be more helpful to exploit the fact that foundation year students spend half their academic lives being taught the very subjects that we are preparing them for, and that they already have access to rich, subject specific discourse through their content modules.   Far better therefore, to encourage them to explore the myriad of online tools available to them (such as Lextutor, word clouds etc.) and use them in informed and disciplined ways.

Elwyn Edwards and Dr Lucy Watson of the University of Southampton had also come to the conclusion that a subject-specific approach doesn’t work; foundation year students are studying too many different subjects to group them usefully in discipline-specific groups.

They have found a novel way around the problem through a new content-based ‘Global Society’ module which aims to teach students to become academically literate and critical thinkers by engaging them in discussions they find interesting and relevant to their lives as global citizens. The module focusses not on teaching specific lexis but rather on teaching key conceptual vocabularies – cross disciplinary concepts such as sustainability, globalisation, capitalism, human rights and development, drawing attention to the ideologies which underpin them.  The approach will allow students to function across a broad range of academic discourses (and undergraduate courses) and later in the global marketplace.

By Amanda Fava-Verde, Programme Director, International Foundation Programme, ISLI

Teaching discipline-specific vocabulary can work

What caught my attention most was how crucial discipline-specific vocabulary is to academic success and how expertise in both language teaching and the subject specialism are needed to teach this vocabulary effectively. Many of the talks were by subject-specialists involved in language teaching or language teachers involved in teaching subject-specific English (sometimes referred to as ESAP). One such talk was by Dr Simon Rees of Durham University. Rees is a chemist who has been collaborating with English language teachers to produce an online chemical language test that has produced very encouraging washback effects on chemistry-specific vocabulary acquisition and academic success in Chemistry.  Students take this test at the beginning and end of their Foundation course, and poor language test scores were found to be a predictor of poor academic achievement in Chemistry.  The test provided a framework for teaching and learning chemistry-specific vocabulary, and it was found that explicit teaching of this vocabulary could enhance both their language test scores and their academic achievement in Chemistry.

Our own experience here at Reading within ISLI and other departments supports these findings. On our English Language for Chemists and English for Science modules, we’ve found that the explicit teaching of discipline-specific lexis has had a positive impact on academic achievement in Chemistry and Food Science.  And undergraduate HBS students on our Academic Skills & Language for Finance course (part of the Academic English Programme embedded provision) have responded extremely positively to a strong focus on discipline-specific vocabulary development.  Perhaps these findings are not very surprising, but they confirm that teaching discipline-specific vocabulary has enormous potential in helping students access their subject and achieve their full academic potential.  They also demonstrate the importance of utilising joint expertise in both language and the target subject.  Let’s hope for more such cross-disciplinary collaborations in the future!

By Aaron Woodcock, Teaching Fellow in English for Science and EAP, ISLI

Let the data do the talking

The InForm conference has always been an active forum for sharing ideas and opinions, but I was particularly delighted this year with the number of talks that openly shared data, results and feedback. In some cases this showed clear trends, in others interpretation was open to discussion and in all cases sharing of data provided additional insight.

In his opening keynote, Associate Professor of Linguistics Michael McCarthy presented analysis of the high frequency keywords ‘point’, ‘terms’ and ‘sense’ in discipline-specific sub-corpora. This showed differences in academic language used by lecturers in different disciplines and clearly illustrated the potential for using spoken academic corpora analysis for tailoring English teaching material for specific disciplines.

Hannah Gurr from the University of Bristol shared student feedback on her foundation English Link class for Mathematics. After hearing of her innovative approach to teaching the course, which involves plenty of interaction including online quizzes and videos, we might expect a rave response from the students to all aspects of the course. Hannah presented the responses in their raw form, and while largely positive, some students still would rather more academic teaching and seem not to value the additional English teaching as much as we might expect. This is something many of us find when teaching our International English or Academic Skills modules despite trying to make it relevant to the student’s subjects, and Hannah’s open sharing of feedback was very welcome in enabling discussion on this.

Sandra Strigel from Newcastle University gave an interesting presentation on raising linguistic awareness of teachers through Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). The intended outcome is often to make sessions more interactive; moving away from extended periods of one-way presentation of information from tutors to students. The feedback that Sandra presented certainly showed that teachers adopting this approach became more aware of language issues and the student experience, as well as being more reflective. What was equally interesting was the information that was missing, and Sandra openly highlighted that the long term impact of this approach on student attainment has not yet been looked at in the studies she’s aware of. So, while it may be relatively straightforward to evaluate different teaching methods in terms of student experience, perhaps the real challenge is evaluating in terms of attainment.

It’s exciting to hear of the research that’s happening. The frank and open presentation and discussion of findings is of great value to the IFP community, particularly as it enables individuals to draw their own conclusions.

By Dr Mark Peace, Senior Academic Tutor IFP, ISLI, Chair of InForm Editorial Board

Using learning technologies can boost academic success

A number of presenters at the conference showed how using learning technologies effectively can enable students to learn discipline-specific vocabulary in order to overcome language barriers that can prevent them from understanding taught content. Moreover, learning technologies also prime students to employ study skills and criticality (transferable skills which facilitate learner autonomy and ultimately foster wider academic success).

Teaching discipline-specific vocabulary characteristically involves helping students notice the meaning, use and form of language then record and memorise it effectively; here, I felt the conference presenters provided a broadening outlook on how learning technologies can facilitate the learning of vocabulary and encourage proactive, reflective and motivated students. Hannah Gurr from the University of Bristol showed how the online tool Quizlet was notable for the way in which it helps her and, more importantly, how it can enable students themselves to tailor the learning of vocabulary to individual needs. Moreover, it gives students the scaffolding they need to prioritise what to learn and to break learning down into manageable chunks.

Corpus websites are not often designed with lower level language learners in mind, and so it was good to hear about more student-centred online platforms that can help students analyse language patterns specific to their chosen discipline. Dawn Knight (Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Cardiff) has co-created WordWanderer, which promises to be a user-friendly way for students to examine different aspects of discipline-specific vocabulary. Visual learners in particular are likely to find it helpful. Megan Bruce of Durham University demonstrated how centres that build a corpus based on academic texts written within their own institutions can then create tailored corpus–based teaching and learning activities, which can help students focus on the key features of subject-specific academic writing. This also lends well to giving students a sense of belonging to their academic community. Both sessions, like many others, helped to frame stimulating discussions on how to give students more meaningful practice as well as a sense of ownership over their learning both in and outside the classroom.

By Mariama Sheriff, EAP Pre-sessional Tutor (ISLI, summer 2016) and Foundation Tutor at the University of Oxford Brookes.

Conclusions

It may seem, on the surface at least, that there’s little consensus on how best to support the learning of discipline-specific vocabulary. However, lack of consensus tends to lead to diversity of opinion, experimentation and debate, as illustrated by this blog post. As long as this is open, evidence-based and T&L-driven (which it was at InForm 2016), IFP students here at Reading and around the UK can only benefit.

Group work: students’ solutions to the challenges by Sonia Hood

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

Group work is an integral part of assessment at university but students rarely arrive equipped with the skills, experience and knowledge to deal with the challenges they face when working in groups. This can be a cause of anxiety for students and also a time consuming intervention for lecturers.

Henley Business School approached Study Advice for help in supporting students with this form of assessment. It was felt that students needed help navigating the wide range of resources available to them. In addition, in order to offer effective support, we felt we first needed to understand the challenges students face, how they have/intend to overcome these and how best they would like to be supported in doing this. A project was set up and we received TLD funding to investigate this further.

The project had two main aims: the first to create a bank of resources that students working on assessed group work could be directed to. The second was to recommend some interventions to support students with the challenges they faced when working in groups.

The research

A student researcher was employed to evaluate the wealth of group work resources openly available. This resulted in a folder of group work resources being created and uploaded onto Blackboard.  In addition a pack containing key resources was compiled and handed out to part 1 REP students when commencing their first group work project. We were able to evaluate the effectiveness of this pack within this research.

A range of focus groups and in-depth interviews were conducted with Real Estate and Planning students, and HBS staff , over the past year. They explored both the perceived challenges to group work and the proposed solutions to these challenges. This qualitative data was then analysed and a number of key challenges, possible solutions and recommendations were presented to Real Estate and Planning teaching and learning staff.

What students want

The interviews and focus groups revealed the complex challenges associated with group work, supporting previous research into this area. Solutions varied between the PG and UG students, though both recognised that effective teams take time to get to know each other informally. Students suggested that informal events could be organised as part of their course to help them through this ‘forming’ stage. PG students also asked for careful consideration of how the mark for group work is allocated (with a higher proportion allocated to individual work) and for a penalty to be imposed, as a last resort.

More support was requested in dealing with conflict and difficult team members, and the need for more self-reflection from everyone within the group was identified. There are also some simple things we can do to help students with the practicalities of group work, like timetabling group work sessions and  booking rooms at set times for students to use. In terms of tutor support, it was recognised that their time was limited; when it comes to personal issues within a group, speaking to a mentor (like a part 2 student) who could offer confidential, impartial advice would be a preferable option for UGs.

Resources for your students

We now have a bank of resources to support students with group work, available on Blackboard, which can be copied into any course. The resources are clearly divided into folders and contain a mixture of: video tutorials; advice on dealing with challenging situations; self-reflection tools and group assessment questionnaires. The initial pack handed out to part 1 students proved to be useful for UGs, mainly as an aid to focus early group discussions. It contained some forms to record minutes, ground rules, contact details and roles, as well as offer advice to the common issues experienced within groups

Work continues on this project, as at present we are only just starting to disseminate the findings. Whilst the recommendations might not be relevant to all engaged in group work, a number of themes and challenges are shared across a variety of disciplines. We would welcome speaking to anyone who is interested in finding out more about this project and how they might benefit from this research.

Challenges of Web Residency by Dr Becky Thomas

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We are living in an increasingly digital world; many of our students grow up immersed in this way of life, having access to a wealth of information online, often accessible wherever they are. But how do they use this appropriately in their learning, and how do we help them harness all of this information? These are some of the questions that Alice Mauchline, Alastair Culham, Mark Fellowes and I had when we applied for the HEA funded ‘Challenges of Web Residency’ project. All of us are interested in the use of various digital technologies, especially in their use for fieldwork, but we want to know more about how we can improve our practice in this area.

To kick off the project we attended the first introductory HEA workshop in London where we were introduced to the basic idea; that the way people use the internet can be categorised into either a ‘visitor’ or ‘resident’, although in reality these categories are more of a spectrum. The visitor uses the internet as a tool, accessing it for information when it is needed and logging off without leaving any real trace, whereas the resident lives a proportion of their lives online, using the internet in most parts of their lives often socialising and leaving a digital trace. (Further information here: http://goo.gl/Wom15).A second, interesting dimension is to consider how the internet is used differently in our personal life compared to institutional contexts and how this can be important for professional development.

How is this relevant to us as academics? In our first workshop we were asked to make our own maps and the intricacies of the idea began to make sense. Although many of us and our students use Facebook on a regular basis, if our profiles are private then our digital trace is restricted to those who we allow access, or our ‘friends’. This means that for most people Facebook would appear in between visitor and resident, along the spectrum. The other consideration is whether our use is personal or institutional; I use Facebook for my work (to communicate with students) and as a way of keeping in touch with my friends, so it appears all along this horizontal axis. I use Twitter in the same way, but it’s much more public, so appears closer to the resident side of the spectrum.

‘Visitor and Resident’ map that I produced in the first HEA workshop
‘Visitor and Resident’ map that I produced in the first HEA workshop

In order to explore this within a teaching context, we ran a workshop in early March 2014 at the University of Reading with 35 Biological Science undergraduate and postgraduate students, asking them to complete their own maps and the results were really interesting. Many of them are ‘resident’ internet users, but the postgraduate students seemed to use this to their advantage by residing more in the institutional area (so they are increasing their online profile to benefit their future careers).
 

‘Visitor and Resident’ map produced by a postgraduate student in the workshop we ran at Reading
‘Visitor and Resident’ map produced by a postgraduate student in the workshop we ran at Reading

The mapping process was useful for the students and staff, forcing us to think more about our web presence (or absence!).  It was also evident that the majority of students use the web for personal purposes much more than for their learning (upper half of all diagrams was more densely filled than the lower half).  We did see a progression among students from year to year in their academic life towards more ‘resident-institutional’ web use, but how should we support this transition? We feel that we need to have a discussion with our students about their web identity and build this into the routine of student education with emphasis on employability. This is something that we have begun to explore on a recent residential microbiology field trip to Iceland (another post to follow soon).

Another interesting element was discussed at our final HEA workshop – with ever increasing class sizes, applications like Twitter and Facebook, could be used as a way for our students to ‘get to know us’ on a more personal level, which also opens up a discussion about whether staff have considered the implications of students ‘following’ them on Twitter or becoming ‘friends’ on Facebook.

We are discussing the idea of running a workshop early next year, to facilitate discussion across the University about digital literacies of our students and how we communicate with them following our participation in the project. If this would interest you then get in touch: rebecca.thomas@reading.ac.uk.

 

Multiple identities – student or teacher? by Catherine Foley

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

Background
Students on the BA (QTS) in Primary Education juggle conflicting roles right from the beginning of their programme. On the one hand they are undergraduate students with all that entails – getting to grips with being away from home, managing their social lives and budgets, learning how to become academically independent. On the other, they are expected to be professional at all times – becoming a trusted member of a primary school’s staff whilst on placement, being a role model and working towards professional standards. Whilst they study their specialist subject (art, English, music or mathematics) at honours level, they also have to develop subject and pedagogical knowledge across the entire primary curriculum as well as psychology, child development and difficult issues such as safeguarding. Tutors on the BA Ed have long been aware of these tensions and the challenges they present for students, and the students themselves echoed these difficulties through their programme feedback and the Staff Student Liaison Committee. One of the challenges for staff is that, like any University programme, the tutors don’t ‘live’ the whole programme – it is only the students who really experience the programme and in particular the transitions from one phase of the programme (University-based sessions, school placements) to the next.

 PLanT Project
With this background, we leapt at the opportunity presented by the CQSD/RUSU Partnerships in Learning and Teaching Projects Funding Scheme. These are small-scale initiatives addressing the enhancement of teaching and learning priorities as identified by students and staff. After discussions at SSLC meetings and via email, a volunteer group of students currently in Years 2, 3 and 4 of their degree met and put together an application. As well as the tensions outlined above, they were particularly interested in the profile of their degree across the University and of teacher training more widely, and how to communicate the high level of academic rigour and professionalism involved.

The students have led the project from the outset, planning and carrying out the data collection and analysis. My role has been to meet with them from time to time to support their discussions, book rooms for focus groups, and provide a sounding board for their approaches and evolving findings. They have carried out focus group meetings with all four year groups and kept photo-journals to illustrate the varied demands of the programme. The funding has been used mainly for their time, and partly to fund refreshments for the focus groups.

Although funding for this academic year’s projects is now closed, with claims being made by the end of May 2014, further details of this year’s application process can be found at http://www.reading.ac.uk/cqsd/FundingOpportunities/TLDF/cqsd-PLanTProjectsScheme.aspx and our experience would suggest it is well worth looking out for such opportunities in the future!

Partnership in teaching and learning conference
Being involved in the RUSU conference on Tuesday 18th June allowed the students to present the initial stages of their project to academic staff nominated under the Excellence Awards, other students from across the University and Student Union Officers. My role in the conference was minimal, allowing the students to share their passion and enthusiasm for their degree as well as the project itself. Particularly impressive was the fact that two of the students came straight from their school placements where they had been teaching all morning, perfectly illustrating the tensions explored within their project. Further information about the conference, joint funded by a project involving the HEA and NUS, can be found at http://www.rusu.co.uk/news/article/6001/Partnership-in-Teaching-and-Learning-Conference-a-Success/.

 Next steps
Having gathered their data, the students are currently analysing results to draw out themes and put together a report for the programme management team and the Institute of Education’s DTL. They will be providing materials to be shared with prospective students at Open Days to ensure they get a full picture of the nature of the programme, and presenting their results at SSLC. We hope that their findings will impact not only their own programme and other programmes at the IoE, but more widely across the University – in particular on those departments running vocational programmes which might share some of the tensions.

One of the real pluses of the project for me as a lecturer has been the opportunity to work closely with a group of students across different year groups on a common theme, an approach we aim to build upon in the future. We are looking forward to getting their final recommendations as they pull the project together.

As they complete this stage of their project the students aim to summarise their findings for this blog, so watch this space! They will also be presenting at the T&L Showcase on the 17th June, 1pm-1.50pm.

Engaging large student lecture groups using Facebook by Dr Alastair Culham

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

Facebook can be a distraction to learning but it can also be an aid. I believe strongly that lecturers should do their best to make their subject interesting to students.  It can be an uphill battle.  However, this year’s experiment in using Facebook as a student engagement technology with a first year Photosynthesis class of 300 was a great success (measured by student response) and this is how I did it.

1) Set up a closed and secret Facebook group

For this you need a Facebook account and a Facebook friend who is willing to be signed up to the group.  Log in to Facebook, select ‘Groups’ and then click the +Create Group button.  Choose a sensible name for the group.  You will need to add one friend to allow the group to be created.

2) Add some content

To help the students understand what is needed add a short welcome message – “This closed Facebook group is to allow me to run quick quizzes during the photosynthesis teaching. Sign up now but there is nothing you need to do in this group until the lectures are due.”

3) Invite the class the join

The initial Facebook group setup is simple to complete and people can easily join following a request.
The initial Facebook group setup is simple to complete and people can easily join following a request.

You can invite students by inputting their email addresses: click on the ‘Invite by email’ link then paste in the comma separated list of addresses.  You can also email the link to the group via Blackboard and ask them to request to join.  It is important in the covering email to explain the purpose of the request and that you are not asking, or needing, them to become a Facebook ‘friend’.  Many students use Facebook for their private lives and it’s not appropriate for staff to have access to that in most circumstances.  Also ask that they bring an internet enabled device to the lecture – phone, tablet or portable – it doesn’t matter which.

4) Monitor the joining requests

Make sure you add people quickly once they have requested to join.  You should check at least once per day.  If the proportion of the class joining is small to start with you will need to send a reminder round, however once some people are signed up it’s likely their classmates will get on with it.  Don’t expect to get 100% sign up – some students don’t have a Facebook account.

 5) Prepare your question and answer set

Think carefully about which points are important in your lecture, which are amenable to simple question and answer, and which issues can be chosen to give a spread of questions over the whole 50 minutes.  Facebook surveys allow a question and then any number of answers but it’s best to keep the choice simple – anything from 2-6 works well.  Don’t put the questions in Facebook yet – once they are there they are visible to the students and they can start answering them.  Prepare a simple text document (I use Notepad but any text editor will do) and save the question and the answer set.

6) One day before the lecture

Remind students to bring internet devices.  Explain to those without them that you will use a show of hands for them when voting is happening.  Remind them that there is still time to join the group if they haven’t yet got round to it.

7) The lecture begins

A simple question to allow the students to adjust to this approach and check they are technically able to interact with Facebook.
A simple question to allow the students to adjust to this approach and check they are technically able to interact with Facebook.

Welcome the students, put Facebook on the screen and post a simple question related to the lecture topic.  This gives those signed up a chance to vote and also encourages those that haven’t joined to join.  This also gets the students used to the idea they are going to be interacting with you and the information you provide.

8) Question breaks

Over a double lecture period I posted 5 series of questions, roughly one set every 15-20 minutes.  Interspersing the standard lecture delivery with these short changes of style and a request to think about what has been taught helps all the students to keep up and gives chance for peer learning via the Q&A exercises.  In a class of almost 300 students it took 2-5 minutes to deal with each Facebook question and the accompanying discussion.  While those with IT chose their answers I did a show of hands for the rest of the class.  If you have only a maximum of 50 hands to cope with out of a class of 300 it’s quicker and easier to count.

9) After the lecture

The Facebook group is set up so students can use it for post lecture Q&A.  Do let them know how long you will monitor it on a regular basis.  If you are a regular Facebook user you will see if there have been any new posts.  If you are using Facebook just for this, do make sure you log in periodically in case any questions crop up.  Any questions that come up can be dealt with and the record is there for all students to see again at revision time.

Is it a good idea to encourage students to log on to Facebook during a lecture?

Student feedback on the experiment was favourable both during and after the lecture.
Student feedback on the experiment was favourable both during and after the lecture.

There is an obvious risk that encouraging students to log in to Facebook will simply distract them into checking their timeline.  However, if the student has bothered to turn up for the lecture there is the opportunity to keep them engaged with the content through the mini lectures followed by highly interactive Q&A sessions.  Experience this year suggests to me that the students find the approach engaging and highly educational.  Certainly the module feedback from several students picked out this lecture from the rest of term as a successful approach to teaching.

Students can ask questions about the quiz as well as simply selecting from the given answers.
Students can ask questions about the quiz as well as simply selecting from the given answers.

Large first year classes can be difficult to engage during lectures.  Students are new to University, often unwilling to stand out from the crowd and feel hidden amongst a large group.  This is challenging for the lecturer who is trying to judge whether their lecture message is hitting home, whether they have paced their lecture at the right speed and whether the content of the lecture complements the background knowledge of the students.  It is also challenging for the students who will become bored if the teaching material is pitched at the wrong level, delivered at the wrong pace or just find the content irrelevant.  Interaction with the Facebook quizzes allowed the students to see the answers their peers were giving, allowed me to identify and discuss areas of misunderstanding and even to challenge the depth and confidence of understanding by setting the occasional question with no correct, or multiple correct, answers.  In the case of no correct answers the students could query the options and offer a correct one.  In the case of multiple correct answers the class could soon see that it was split over more than one option.

At approximately 6 million tonnes The Great Pyramid is often cited as the heaviest man-made object. [By Nina (Nina) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons]
At approximately 6 million tonnes The Great Pyramid is often cited as the heaviest man-made object. [By Nina (Nina) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons]
There are plenty of amazing facts to throw at students about photosynthesis – plants produce 42000 times the weight of the great pyramid in sugar every year, half our drugs are based on products of plant chemistry and the oxygen we breathe is a waste product of photosynthesis.  However, this does not necessarily impress 200 first year students – available oxygen, food and medicines don’t seem to engage the imagination – they are just things that are there.  The challenge was to find something interactive, that would work at this scale, that was not stupidly expensive to run, that didn’t need lots of equipment to be carted around campus and that the maximum proportion of students could relate to.  That ruled out PRS systems (heavy to carry around and unfamiliar to students), twitter needed commercial software to gather data in a useful way live and the dominant demographic of those on Twitter is a rather older age range than our first year students.  The obvious choice was to engage with Facebook.  Student responses suggest this was a worthwhile experiment but I will only be sure when I have this year’s exam results to compare with last year’s.

It’s quick, easy and free to set up.  I realise it’s not for everyone and will not suit all styles of lecture however there’s little lost by trying this approach once, it may suit your teaching and deepen student engagement.

When our efforts of internationalisation in T&L and Global Employability go Faculty-wide by Dr Kimberly Watson and Dr Teeroumanee Nadan

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

Significant effort at the University of Reading has been focused on all aspects of Internationalisation. In the School of Biological Sciences, we are working toward enhancing Global Employability of our students (both home and overseas) to produce high quality, highly competitive Global Graduates. Our vision of a Global Graduate will be someone who is highly competitive in the international market and who will be able to successfully practice their chosen science globally.

In the Spring of this year, we initiated a pilot project funded by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) to develop and promote best practice in teaching and learning, that would directly contribute to students’ skill development and work experience. Our pilot project was recently highlighted in the ‘University of Reading Internationalisation Newsletter’, which is distributed widely across campus and alumni.

Over the Summer, we led focus group workshops with students to better understand their concerns with regards to 6 defined areas: Teaching Methods, Learning Styles, Assessment Methods, Academic Support (including tutorial teaching), Technical Support and Career Management. These workshops were well attended with both international and home students, and included students from other Schools within the Faculty of Life Sciences. Continue reading →

A summary of my experiences on the PGCAP Course by Dr Samuel Laryea

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

When I got appointed as a Lecturer in 2010 I found that I had to do the PGCAP course as part of requirements for my probation. Initially I did not feel happy about this. I had quite a heavy teaching workload and also the pressure to develop research papers and grant proposals. I certainly felt the PGCAP course was a distraction to the ‘core’ aspects of my work in the university and unfortunately, I had no choice but to do it. Today, my view of the PGCAP course is completely different.

By the time I completed the programme successfully in July 2012, I found that participation in the course had helped me to develop greatly in all aspects of my career and academic aspirations. First, participation in the PGCAP course helped me to learn new ideas about teaching and learning and my role as a lecturer – including personal tutoring, supporting student learning, classroom teaching, assessment and feedback. One word I quickly became familiar with was ‘Pedagogy’. I began to develop a better understanding of the purpose of teaching which is to facilitate learning. I found the workshops extremely useful and by the time I was through a few of them, I felt that the course was right and very beneficial in terms of my own personal development as a lecturer and my understanding of the higher education environment and engagement with students. In short, the whole PGCAP experience was very developmental and I could feel its positive impact on my teaching, research, administrative duties and relationships with people across the university.

Participation in the course helped me to meet other new lecturers across the university so I made friends and this enabled me to share ideas and experiences. The course was clearly time-consuming but certainly worth every bit of the time invested. It is professionally useful to have the PGCAP qualification and Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Perhaps the two most useful aspects of the course for me were the project and portfolio. I learned much from my T&L project on feedback provision and use and fortunately the work was of significant benefit to my School. I enjoyed both project and portfolio equally – but I found the process of writing my reflective teaching portfolio very developmental, in that, the process enabled me to give more serious thought to my routine activities as a lecturer, reviewing my personal development over time, and identifying new ways to improve. The portfolio and project have helped me so much to develop in my understanding of pedagogical issues – and generated in me a permanent interest to engage in teaching and learning issues.

Today I am based in the School of Construction Economics and Management at University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. I serve as Director of our undergraduate programme and the ideas and experiences gained on the PGCAP course are serving me extremely well. I fully understand pedagogic issues in a higher education environment and this plays a central role in the development of an effective approach for teaching and supporting student learning. The PGCAP experience has been hugely useful, making a difference, and providing an advantage not only for myself but also for the 400+ students I teach in my new university.