digital champions hea pilot: supporting year 1 students with academic transition
DESCRIPTION
A pilot project entitled “Supporting transition with peer-assisted learning and digital stories” funded by the HEA, has been running this year at the University of Liverpool’s Management School. Two digital stories from the third-year Digital Champions are now available on writing assignments, which can be used as useful resources for first-year students. See more detail at: http://digilearnblog.liv.ac.uk tag: 'Digital Champions'TRANSCRIPT
HEA Digital ChampionspilotSupporting transition with peer-learning and digital stories
University of Liverpool2013/14
Project context
Undergraduate students may be enthusiastic, competent users of digital tools but need guidance to use them in an academic context.
Simon Snowden, Lecturer, Academic lead, University of Liverpool
Clickable image: https://stream.liv.ac.uk/tjcb69jn
Project context
ULMS211 student journal entry
Project aims
The project aims to support the transition of first-year students in their academic study and employ them with skills that would benefit them beyond graduation.
Objectives
• Engage 5 digital champions (3rd year students) to offer peer-learning for first-year students on making their academic study easier.
• Engage the Digital champions in creating videos in the form of digital stories.
• Create edit and share the videos for wider use. • Investigate students’ perspectives on micro-
certification as a way of recognising their skill development.
• Evaluate the pilot and whether this peer-learning model is successful for wider adoption institutionally and beyond.
Recruited champions from an enquiry-based learning module (ULMS211)
The Digital Champions 2013/14
Bradley Griffin Adam Byrne
Emily Evans Laura Cash
Who makes good Digital Champions?
Intended outcomes
• First-year students– To foster the development of digital
learning skills in students in a disciplinary context.
• Digital champions– To gain further confidence in their digital
skills through peer-learning.– To be able to articulate the progress they
have made in the area of digital literacies development.
What happened?
• Training and support (e.g. RefWorks by Library)
• Peer-learning drop-in sessions– In library – Friday afternoons!–With laptop
• Digital story creation (video)• Later: Facebook group & handout created
by students
Sample videos created by Digital Champions
https://stream.liv.ac.uk/ha6uuv8h
4
https://stream.liv.ac.uk/brgjpubr
5
Pilot evaluation
• Focus group (Champions) & Survey (Year 1)
Outcomes
Benefits for the Digital Champions
“When you have the responsibility to teach others, you change your ways of doing
things. You review your bad [study]
habits and develop good habits.”
“Good for the CV”“Good feeling of being able to help
students”
Skills acquired:Digital study skillsProblem-solving
Teamworking and leadership skills
Benefits for first-years
”I could really relate to Digital Champions as they were my age
and experienced the same thing as me.”
Advice gained on digital skills - essay writing, using referencing software and general advice on being a Management School
student:
“[Digital Champions] made the research for my assignment easier”
“approachable” “helpful”
“reassuring”
Digital Literacies
http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/digital-literacies/
developed
Self-perception of need
vs
“It was extremely helpful even though I didn’t realise this at first. I visited them twice for general advice.”
“Students are more familiar with the technology and don’t feel they need the support.”
What support would be useful?
What aspects of general advice would be most useful to you? (n=37)
0
10
20
13 915
21
3
What DL support would be useful? (n=37)
048
121620 19 19 19
17 17 17 16 15 1412 11 10
8 7 64
Areas in most needed: those relevant to their assignment
writing
All 7 areas of digital literacies in need
Student suggestions (Y1+Y3)
• Keep doing the Digital Champions project!
• Practicalities: –Timing: Not last thing on Fridays!–Venue: Outside lecture theatre.
• Better introduction as to what Champions can offer.
• Champion-led Y1 workshop - chance to get to know them
• Online extension to reach Champions.
Considerations / Recommendations
• Online access : – considerations e.g. Champions’ workload,
response time, availability? – VLE vs Facebook?
• Training– Extend training for Champions : e.g.
media literacy (see gap/needs list).– ?Identify DL practices in
Co/Extra/Curriculum?
Next year plans
• Continuing with this approach in the Management School and
• Looking for wider institutional adoption – Linking to existing peer-learning initiatives
• Certification and links with HEAR
University of Liverpool Project team
Tünde Varga-Atkins (co-lead), eLearning UnitEmma Thompson (co-lead) & Beryl Stanley, LibrarySimon Snowden (academic lead), Management SchoolDave Hocker (multimedia)
Digital Champions 2013/14Adam Byrne, Laura Cash, Bradley Griffin and Emily Evans
Poster creditLynne Crook (drawing) Amy Jackson (typography and digitisation)
Blog: http://digilearnblog.liv.ac.uk/ Contact : [email protected]