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Learning Highlights / Autumn 2014

Autumn2014

We did not have fireworks, but I could have not dreamt of a better way to celebrate the conclusion of an intense year working on pedagogical research and practice within my HEA Teaching Develop-ment Grant. Earlier this Sep-tember I led a day-long dis-semination event here at UEA to raise awareness about the importance of aca-demic self-efficacy and to illustrate how I elicit my stu-dents’ self-efficacy beliefs through use of Student Re-sponse Systems (SRS) and our Virtual Learning Environ-ment. More than thirty delegates attended the event, with a good split of internal and ex-ternal participants and even a colleague coming from Australia just to be with us. After a short welcome from

our SSF Dean, Prof Jacquel-ine Collier, we were set off for an intense day of ex-change and discussions. I delivered two morning ses-sions, showing step by step how I built my teaching methodology and providing hints and tips on how to ex-tend it and apply to various fields and subjects. Our key-note speaker, Dr Laura Ritchie, gave a session on the importance of academic self-efficacy for students’ learning. (We liked her so much that we asked her to stay on for the day after to lead a workshop on ‘experiential learning’. Anne-Florence Dujardin will tell you all about it). Just before lunch we had three brief talks on Assessment, cover-ing the role of SRS in learn-ing assessment criteria, stu-dent peer-review and evalu-ation of teaching assistants.

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The early afternoon ses-sion was all about estab-lishing a dialogue with the students and closing the feedback loop. In the final part of the workshop, three external delegates brought their expertise on raising self-efficacy in specific fields, such as Mathemat-ics, English as foreign lan-guage and applied place-ment programmes. I must admit that leading the whole event as a ‘one-man-band’ was challeng-ing, but the energy in the room most certainly kept me going. We had enthusi-astic feedback from the participants in this event and this is the most im-portant thing. A lot of col-leagues expressed interest Continued on page 3

When Student Confidence Clicks: UEA-HEA Workshop on 3rd September 2014

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Read about how music and field courses can be used to enhance learning.

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ence. As participants, we were fur-ther challenged in our learn-ing by having to play in small groups and finally – and un-believably – as an orchestra! Playing together To get us to this point, Laura carefully segmented the small piece of music we were expected to play, inviting us to focus on our own playing in the first instance before re-minding us that we were members of the orchestra and needed to work with oth-ers. This is probably a stand-ard practice in music educa-tion, but this also created a fruitful ground to examine how, as educational practi-tioners, we might use social approaches to learning to better effect in our own disci-plines. By ‘better effect’, I mean thinking of answers to questions such as: how could we work to inject a sense of fun and of collective achieve-ment in students’ learning experiences? How could learning technologies play a

can involve or exclude stu-dents. Setting up

Laura’s carefully staged lesson was designed to promote a sense of self-efficacy among participants of mixed musical abilities. She recognised that han-dling a string instrument would be a first for many of us and would create chal-lenges in coordination, so she built story-telling into her instruc-tions, recalling her own learning journey and thus involving us in the practices of music teaching and learning. Since learn-ing something new can be unsettling, the workshop gave rise to mixed feelings of anticipation, apprehen-sion, frustration, relief and enjoyment. Such emotional aspects of learning can all

too easily be forgotten, so be-ing placed in a situation where we could experience them again was a valuable experi-

As lecturers we are mindful of the experience of learn-ers, particularly when facili-tating their transition into higher education, but how-ever hard we try not to, we

can also forget what it is like not to know. On 4th Septem-ber, Dr Laura Ritchie’s work-shop on ‘experiential learn-ing – speaking through sound’ provided a unique opportunity to re-inhabit the world of learners – at least for participants who, like me, had never played a string instrument. The workshop was like a be-ginner’s first music lesson – with a difference. It invited participants to function sim-ultaneously at two levels: as new learners and as reflec-tive practitioners. For in-stance, watching Laura tun-ing the instruments offered prompts to think about prep-aration activities and learn-ing spaces – and how these

Walking in Learners’ Shoes

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role in this? Reflecting The workshop offered a fasci-nating insight into music edu-cation. But more than that, it gave an opportunity to wear learners’ shoes. This was par-adoxically very affirming. On the one hand, the experience was destabilising, at least for non-music players (when did you last willingly put yourself in a situation of ‘not know-ing’?). On the other, it was transformative in that it creat-ed an opportunity to leave the ‘swampy lowland’ of everyday practice (Schön 1983) and to review how, in our own disci-

plines, we go about support-ing students in their journeys towards autonomy. Dr Laura Ritchie is a Teaching Fellow (Reader in Pedagogy) in Music at the University of Chichester. She was awarded an HEA National Teaching Fellowship in 2012. Further details of the workshop may be found here: http://www.lauraritchie.com/2014/07/05/hea-conference-2014-experiential-learning-speaking-through-sound/

Florence Dujardin (CSED) [email protected]

Continued from page 1, In attending this event and I’m truly sorry that I could not accommodate more of them. We will have further ses-sions on SRS and aca-demic self-efficacy run-ning at UEA in the near future and I will make sure to advertise them in ad-vance. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any que-ries about the project. You can find further infor-mation and resources from my website: https://sites.google.com/site/fabioarico/. It will soon be enriched with a link to workshop material, includ-ing video links. Projects for the future? Travelling all across the country to disseminate outputs and applications of this teaching methodol-ogy: Anglia Ruskin, Not-tingham Trent, UCL and Southampton University are already on the list. The Society for Higher Ed-ucation Research Annual Conference will follow. I will also be intensifying my research on learning ana-lytics and share more of this in my next contribu-tion to Learning High-lights. Fabio R. Aricò (ECO) [email protected]

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It sometimes feels as if all I ever do nowadays is ask questions. “Why did I agree to write an article for Learn-ing Highlights?”, being the inquest of the moment. So, let me ask you, “What do MOOCs, flipped lectures and small group tutorials have in common?” In each case, the questions that we as educa-tors pose are at the heart of the process. This is assess-ment for learning at its most elementary and immediate. When I first started flipping lectures I was enamoured with the technology and buoyed by the detached content. I would get our money’s worth out of the dis-tributed clickers by ensuring I asked lots of questions of the students. Since these questions depended upon students having watched the preparatory screencasts or read through the notes, they were typically answered very well. Indeed, I could afford the time to ask questions on all of the material I had asked them to prepare, cov-

erage had not suffered at all. I was engaging more with my students, reinforcing my technology-led credentials and on the crest of a wave of lecture flipping, sweeping through higher education. Then I shared a conference platform with Ross Galloway and everything changed. Ross made me reflect upon the point of posing a ques-tion for which you expect everyone to get the right an-swer. However, he also intro-duced me to peer instruction in which we positively pursue questions that not everyone will be able to answer cor-rectly. So what constitutes the “tougher question” of the title? It is definitively not the pursuit of increasingly ob-scure little fact-like nuggets hidden in the background. Peer instruction has featured previously in Learning High-lights. Its essence is re-sponding to a question that splits the student body by encouraging debate and ex-planation between peers. A process which has a dra-

matic and lasting influence upon student understanding and performance. What I have learnt to do, in composing questions to facil-itate peer instruction within the flipped lecture environ-ment, is to aim for essentially any cognitive domain on Bloom’s taxonomy apart from “Remember”. My per-sonal opinion is that some items of information are so fundamental that they do need to be committed to memory because they un-derpin our ability to under-stand, to apply, to analyse, to evaluate and to create. I also believe that there has always been far too much committing things to memory in our degree programmes and that it is increasingly un-justifiable in the Internet age. Do we want to spend our precious contact time on re-inforcing memory or in High-er Education skills? Once we have acquired the educator’s courage and learnt the power of the tougher question, we will start to examine all the ques-tions we ask. Are the ques-tions you pose on your online course patronising checklists that students have read the preceding paragraph or prompts for discussion? Do students fail to attend your tutorials or workshops because the questions are too easy and don’t equip them for later assessments? Tough ques-tions, but we shouldn’t be afraid to ask them. Simon Lancaster (CHE) [email protected]

Categories in the cognitive domain of the revised Bloom's taxonomy

Ask Tougher Questions

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ment, and other site aspects through on-site engagement, which could not be communi-cated within the introductory lecture given on Holkham. An imperative part of the Critical Thinking module’s learning objectives is to de-velop first-hand analytical, creative arguments using art objects and their contexts. Students were able to be-come part of the subject ma-terial by experiencing the vil-la as visitor, which fed into the overall success of the course objectives. The diver-sity of student submissions reflected the success of the field trip. Topics ranged from the arrangement of paint-ings, architectural space and social relations and the man-agement of cultural heritage.

Although logistically chal-lenging, field trips continue to have great value in peda-gogy for university students developing new analytical skills in the course of their academic studies. Matthew Helmer (AMA), Mary Redfern (AMA) and Bronwen Wilson (AMA)

that captured their interest. Many topics in art history have to be explored in the classroom, leading to a reli-ance on PowerPoint based learning which often times cannot communicate the en-tire breadth of art works, ar-chitectural spaces and per-sonal engagement with the material. Based on the feed-back and formative assess-ments produced, the field endeavor was highly suc-cessful.

Students specifically com-mented on relationships of scale, organisation of move-

Are field trips still viable edu-cational tools for university students? This past month, five groups of Art History classes visited Holkham Hall for different field trip learning objectives. The groups in-cluded undergraduates in their first and second years, as well as Masters’ level stu-dents - over 100 total visi-tors. Holkham Hall is a his-toric Palladian style country villa, built by William Coke in the 18th Century. The villa is situated in scenic north Nor-folk, adjacent to Wells-next-the-Sea. Holkham is a rare example of a country house still owned by the family and with much of its art collec-tion intact. Second year students were visiting as part of the module “Approaches to Art - Critical Thinking”, a course where we are Associate Tutors. The students’ first summa-tive assessment entailed on-site visual analysis of the house, the landscape and the collection. Questions were kept broad, allowing students to explore topics

Field Trips: Bane or Benefit?

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has changed dramatically and there are only a couple of schools of study at UEA which have mathematics or statistics as part of their teaching that do not benefit from a series of workshops run by us. Students also make their way to DOS for one-to-one tutorials and it is here where we address more complicated aspects. Tutori-als not only offer the chance for students to get help with more complex mathematical ideas, but also to try and un-derstand things on their own

terms. We also work with many students with specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia and autism spec-trum disorders.

Alongside the workshops and tutorials, we have devel-oped resources to help us in our work. Although I started this project over 8 years ago, many other tutors have also contributed. We began by writing numeracy resources, because good numeracy

reflected in the students I en-counter, their mathematical ability is sometimes little bet-ter. Ask a random student to add two fractions together and see what happens. Many students are restricted in their choices of degree programme, modules and future careers in order to avoid mathematics. This avoidance is down to many factors including fear, lack of confidence, poor teaching in the past and difficulty in re-membering what has been learned at school.

The service we deliver has developed over the 8 years I have been in post. When I start-ed, there were few or no re-sources and I ran a few workshops for ECO and DEV. This

The level of mathematical skills, as displayed by stu-dents, worries lecturers. I work as a Mathematics’ Tu-tor as part of the Learning Enhancement Team (LET) based in the Dean of Stu-dents’ Office (DOS), along-side my colleague Dr Gor-don Collins. When I meet academics who lecture on mathematics to non-mathematics students and I mention my job, this quickly becomes a topic of conver-sation. Gordon and I sup-port many modules across the university, which aim to equip students with the mathematics they need to fully engage with their course. This can range from basic numeracy in NBS and HSC, through GCSE-level topics in BIO, ECO and ENV, to higher-level topics in CHE. We also offer gen-eral advice on statistics. Recent research has sug-gested that 50% of the gen-eral population of the UK have the mathematical skills of a primary school child. Whilst this is not necessarily

University-Wide Mathematics Support from the Dean of Students’ Office

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skills are the basis of good mathematical skills, before moving on to algebra, graphs and functions, calcu-lus, statistics and a variety of other topics. The idea was to break mathematics apart into small pieces and see how they fitted together as part of a wider frame-work. A guiding principle behind our approach is to avoid be-ing too much like a textbook. Have you ever worked your way through a problem in a mathematics book, looked the answer up in the back and found it’s differ-ent to your an-swer? Stu-dents have and they find it frus-trating. So, we try to avoid this. We start by writing a study guide about a small topic, adding and subtracting fractions for example. Strictly, each guide is no longer than 6

sides of A4. The guide is then recorded as a webcast with in-built animations to illustrate any methods con-tained therein. Where nec-essary, we also write a set of questions, which are sup-plemented by an exhaustive set of worked, model an-swers. These resources are all linked together online, a bit like Wikipedia. They are put on the web (UEA web-site, YouTube) and the con-

nections between the small topic areas are highlighted in mind-maps hosted online by the platform Prezi. This resource is now huge: we have written over 100

study guides and factsheets. It helps us do our job. Hav-ing these resources online enables us to link to them through BlackBoard for the modules that we support as well as to embed QR-codes into paper resources (such as workshop sheets) so stu-dents can study independent of the service. Lecturers can use them too and they do. These resources are open access and so can be used by people not just at UEA but anywhere. Devel-oping these resources also keeps us sane: the virtual “tutor in your pocket” helps us cope with high demand and gives students 24 hour access to advice and sup-port. In terms of our own professional development, the aim is not to rewrite the book. Creating resources gives us the opportunity to re-connect with a subject that we think we know inside out, to look at things from a new angle, to do it differently from other people, not to re-write the book, to freshen up tired teaching, to become involved with technology and to give a different perspec-tive. Essentially, to do some-thing creative. If you think we can help you too, contact us. We’d be happy to talk.

Dr Robert Jenkins (Learning Enhancement Tutor, Mathe-matics and Statistics)

Link: http://www.uea.ac.uk/services/students/let/study_resources/maths_stats/mathematics/

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Date Room Title Convenor

Tues 13 Jan 2:30-4:30

tbc Stress management and self-care for university teachers

Stephanie Aspin and Eammon O'Mahoney

21 Jan tbc Time management for academics (a sinner re-pents)

Vic Morgan

MAHEP seminars Seminars offered to partici-pants enrolled on the Mas-ter’s in HE Practice are also open to all members of staff. They normally take place on a Wednesday and

start at 12:30, unless other-wise indicated. They last between 60 and 90 minutes. The following seminars are a taster of what is planned for the Spring Semester.

To book a place, and for in-formation on other courses, please contact either Tim Yorke ([email protected]) or Kate Hesketh ([email protected]).

A Merry Christmas to all our readers!!

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