Staff learning set

Learning sets or teams are advocated far and wide as mechanisms for mutual support and learning. While the theory is good, examples are not always easy to locate especially when a programme of study requirement is not serving as the glue within a group.

Over the last four months a group of five colleagues have formed a learning set to support their individual development (four of these are lecturers studying for an MA in Teaching and Learning, while I was able to progress some aspects of my EdD). As one of the members of this group I have found some very tangible benefits

• Reflective space made within a busy week
• Playful advancement of ideas
• Insight in to new theory and practice
• Satisfaction in watching the spin-off benefits of projects evolve and come to reality
• Understanding of different ways of knowing (I have had to make a leap to engage with my hard science colleague)
• Triggering more out-of-group discussions about pedagogy and research

Reflecting on this activity it is clear to see how some distinct roles have formed in the group – perhaps unintentionally. These include: facilitator, organiser and trailblazer. Everyone has brought something different to the dynamic.  An important enabler of the group is having a motivated organiser who coordinates diaries to find workable slots for us to meet (a thankless but essential task). While in busy moments the group is easily bumped out of the diary to make way for more tangibly productive time I am clear that mutual commitment has grown over the weeks and this has formed a sense of priority in our meetings.  The group also benefitted from informality, meeting in the common room over a coffee has enabled us to find a happy medium between formal purpose and light-heartedness. Going forward I anticipate that we may form in to a group to support output creation beyond the life of the study – the post study purpose is under negotiation.

Thanks to Dr. Heidi Cunningham for the graphic.

Clean questions, facilitation, learning and life

Yesterday I was very pleased to be part of a development session facilitated by Caitlin Walker. Rather than paraphrase her very inspiring work I will share her Ted Talk.

The idea of clean questions has very many implications

• For promoting student and staff autonomy (and just plain personal autonomy)
• To promote self reflection
• To aid communication with clear meaning
• For enabling more co-operative self empowered learning (in the classroom or in life)
• For enabling learners to simply learn better
• To prepare our children for a future where they might cope amongst huge uncertainty and super complexity

What fascinates me about this work is how, by taking away value judgments in language, individuals can be empowered to facilitate their own life path and learning trajectory.

Ted Ed Fantastico!

Simply brilliant!

The Jing feedback experiment

Since the last post on Jing (screen capture) I have tried it out more intensively by making 45 videos for formative feedback on personal development. I received draft submissions from students, opened them on the screen, started the video capture and recorded as I went.

Lessons learnt …

• Read through once only and highlight in yellow any areas where a comment should be made (a higher level of scripting than that means you may as well write the feedback first )
• Live with imperfection. Unless you edit the feedback in an audio editor, Jing is one take only. Live with the odd, ‘errr…..’ … pause or stumble or else the videos will take a ridiculous amount of time.
• Manage expectations: Jing feedback was sought once word got around, this created a rush at the last minute. For the sake of workload give cut offs, and only feedback on a pre-determined amount of work.
• Opt out not in. Given the openness of feedback, being technically accessible by others and given the alternative nature of the approach brief students and tell them what you are doing and why, and offer an opt out. No-one chose this.
• Practice makes efficient. The first handful of videos took forever. Had I not made a public commitment to do this I would have ditched it out of sheer frustration. It did get better.
• Using other types of video in class meant that this was a familiar approach to students. It was in synch with classroom methods. For example, I used video feedback to playback a critique of a case study.
• It saved an awful amount of time by removing the need for proofing my own feedback.

While it may seem labour intensive to offer 45 verbal feedbacks I was secure in the knowledge that 45 written feedback attempts would take an awful lot longer. The depth of the feedback was also more than could have been realistically achieved on paper. You can say a lot in 5 minutes.

What did the students think …

• Students thought this was fantastic!
• ‘Like a conversation’
• Personalised
• ‘It was like having a one to one tutorial’
• Enabled them to work through changes one at a time with the video open and their work open at the same time
• Only one technical glitch was reported
• Lots of feedback is possible in this way

Other Jing ideas…

An alternative approach I saw recently was a tutor talking through the grade sheet. Giving a verbal commentary on why decisions were made as they were. A different take on Jing.

As a spin off from this work, experimentation shows Jing can work well with White Board technology too, so that in-class examples can be used and taken away. A blue tooth mic and you’re away …

(How to make a Jing feedback video is outlined here http://www.techsmith.com/education-tutorial-feedback-jing.html )

Strategy and mission

Having poured over some fairly hard going documentation and policy text books for a few days for assorted reasons I was pleased to stumble upon a refreshing approach to writing mission statements, which I’m sure would work equally well for policy and strategy documents!

OK, so not in a million years will HE documentation ever take this flavour, but wouldn’t it be better if it did!

Jing – Better late than never

Having used Captivate for screen capture I never really saw the need for any other software of this type. However I have been experimenting with Jing, after seeing it used by Russell Stannard, and I have been mightily impressed! Essentially this super simple software allows you to take a video of your screen with the ability to add real time audio, and then with a one click upload the video is placed in to a cloud space, thus generating an access URL for sharing. Super quick, super intuitive! As a cross platform user it is helpful to be able to use a single cloud account to upload from my different machines and without the need for Mac and PC licenses at a high cost.

So far I have used it to create a video of where to find information within our intranet and have created a ‘catch up TV’ screen cast for those unable to attend a face to face session last week.It is so easy to use; I have no hesitation now about using this to facility to offer formative feedback students submitting draft work.

Jing in action screenshot

C-Map

I am asked increasingly about concept mapping software. I have previously favoured iThoughtHD; however, while this is very intuitive it is not so good at enabling inter-label links (something only realised after a little time and intensive usage!). C-Map was recommended to me as an alternative. Though not native to the ipad, it has a greater focus on the links rather than the labels and in turn this helps the author to think about structure, more than the brain dump. It forces the user to clarify: Why is x connected to Y?

“A concept by itself does not provide meaning, but when two concepts are connected using linking words or phrases, they form a meaningful proposition”. (Villalon and Calvo 2011 p18)

C-map is downloadable for Windows and Mac and wonderfully, is free.

Below is my own mind map to demonstrate C-map (though I am confident that there are better examples!!). Click to view.

Villalon, J. and R. A. Calvo (2011). “Concept Maps as Cognitive Visualizations of Writing Assignments.” Journal of Educational Technology & Society 14(3): 16-27.

Making employer and university partnerships work – accredited employer-led learning

Tonight, at the University of Derby Work-based Futures V conference, we saw the launch of a new book titled “Making employer and university partnerships work – accredited employer-led learning” (published with Libri). Exemplifying excellent and innovative practice from across a range of HE-employer partnerships, this book is a portrait of higher education institutions who have opted to engage with industry and by reply it captures how industry has joined and led the party. It show what can be done and what has been done. It outlines how partnerships can be built and how HEIs can develop in to agile and listening partners for industry.

(Special recommendation for chapter 17 )

5 reasons why giving pass/fail marks, as opposed to percentage grades, might not be a bad idea

1. Grades may be an inhibitor of deeper self-reflection, which is in turn linked to self-regulated learning (White and Fantone 2010). Grade chasing distracts from meaningful learning review (see also Dweck 2010). For real examples of this, some student views visible in the comments here are useful http://tinyurl.com/66r3mdu

2. Research shows that performance is neither reduced nor enhanced by pass/fail grading systems (Robins, Fantone et al. 1995). For those worrying about a reduction in standards caused by the removal of grades, don’t!

3. Pass-Fail grades are more conducive to a culture of collaboration, which in turn links to higher levels of student satisfaction (Robins, Fantone et al. 1995; Rohe, Barrier et al. 2006; White and Fantone 2010). The increased collaboration may be especially beneficial as preparation for certain professions which require high levels of cooperative working (as noted in a medical context by Rohe, Barrier et al. 2006).

4. Pass-fail counteracts challenges brought about by grade inflation practices (Jackson 2011).

5. Pass-fail is associated with lower student anxiety and higher levels well being (Rohe, Barrier et al. 2006). That has to be good!

Dweck, C. S. (2010). “Even Geniuses Work Hard.” Educational Leadership 68(1): 16-20.
Jackson, L. J. (2011). “IS MY SCHOOL NEXT?” Student Lawyer 39(8): 30-32.
Robins, L. S., J. C. Fantone, et al. (1995). “The effect of pass/fail grading and weekly quizzes on first-year students’ performances and satisfaction.” Academic Medicine: Journal Of The Association Of American Medical Colleges 70(4): 327-329.
Rohe, D. E., P. A. Barrier, et al. (2006). “The Benefits of Pass-Fail Grading on Stress, Mood, and Group Cohesion in Medical Students.” Mayo Clinic Proceedings 81(11): 1443-1448.
White, C. B. and J. C. Fantone (2010). “Pass-Fail Grading: Laying the Foundation for Self-Regulated Learning.” Advances in Health Sciences Education 15(4): 469-477.

Connected – too much of this rings true!

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