Category: Pedagogy (Page 2 of 4)

Through the mirror – learning through reflection

October 28, 2019 / Marie Kendall-Waters / 0 Comments

It’s easy to get swept along in the hustle and bustle and the hum-drum work-a-day life. The constant flow of work emails and phone calls, running from one meeting to the next, information going in one ear and out the other, you feel like you’ve run out of hours in the day before you’ve even begun! However, all the things you do at work, although might not feel like it at the time, have a purpose, and result in a solution that provides information that can help others!

So let’s take a step back and breath!

Let’s start with a little activity: go and make a cup of tea and ask yourself:

‘when was the last time I sat down and actually reflected on my work?’

It may sound like a silly question, but I bet most of you don’t actively reflect on your daily work life – things that you’ve achieved, things that didn’t go so well, new things you’ve learnt, ways you’ve helped people, provided new ways of doing things, seen or read something interesting that could help your team or section, events and conferences you’ve attended – there will always be something that you or your peers can learn from.

Can you think of any examples? If so, jot them down.

By sharing these experiences that we don’t always think are significant, we could aid others to learn and develop new skills and improve communication within a team/section and organisation.

The importance of reflection

Reflecting helps you to develop your skills and review their effectiveness, rather than just carry on doing things as you have always done them. It is about questioning, in a positive way, what you do and why you do it and then deciding whether there is a better, or more efficient, way of doing it in the future. By reflecting on a regular basis, it soon becomes habit and can be incorporated in your daily working life.

Reflection is an important part of learning and we encourage our students to actively self reflect – so why aren’t we?

The Open University explain the importance of reflection as:

‘You wouldn’t use a recipe a second time around if the dish didn’t work the first time would you? You would either adjust the recipe or find a new and, hopefully, better one. When we learn we can become stuck in a routine that may not be working effectively. Thinking about your own skills can help you identify changes you might need to make.’ [1]

This in turn helps you develop within your role and learn from your experiences. So how can we learn from our experiences and evolve by reflecting?

Putting reflective writing into practice

By regularly self reflecting and keeping a record of our experiences through writing we can put what we have learnt through reflection into practice. Reflective writing includes both analysis, description and helps clarify your thoughts, particularly important aspects and identifies areas where you need more support and can help work out strategies for problem solving. It can help you to personalise and contextualise your own learning experience.

The way you respond to situations, opinions, events or new information can aid in exploring your learning and achieve clarity and understanding of what you are learning. Blogging and online journals are a great way of keeping a record of your experiences and practicing reflective writing on a regular basis.

The benefits of reflective writing

It can be difficult when you’re busy to find time to reflect, but by doing so you’re learning an important skill. You’ll not only improve your writing skills, but you’ll increase you’ll self-awareness and develop a better understanding of others. Reflective writing can help you to develop creative thinking skills and encourages active engagement in work processes.

Did you know reflective learners share the following common characteristics:

Very motivated – know what they are trying to achieve and why.
Proactive in expanding their understanding of new ideas and topics.
Use their existing knowledge to develop their comprehension of new ideas.
Understand new concepts by aligning and comparing them to their life experiences.
Accept and understand that research and extensive reading will improve their comprehension and add value to their writing.
By evaluating of their previous learning experiences, they will develop their future learning and thinking.
Become self-aware and are clearly able to identify, explain, and leverage their strengths and work on their weaknesses

Learning by doing – Reflective learning cycle – the theory bit!

Graham Gibbs’ (1988) Reflective Learning Cycle was developed to give structure to learning from experiences. It offers a framework for examining experiences, and given its cyclic nature lends itself particularly well to repeated experiences, allowing you to learn and plan from things that either went well or didn’t go well. It covers 6 stages:

Description of the experience
Feelings and thoughts about the experience
Evaluation of the experience, both good and bad
Analysis to make sense of the situation
Conclusion about what you learned and what you could have done differently
Action plan for how you would deal with similar situations in the future, or general changes you might find appropriate.

Carol Dweck (2007) takes this a step further by looking at the growth mindset – which reinforces the idea that everyone can learn and learn most things well. Reflection can help you to fulfil your potential by believing you can improve.

‘In practice reflective learning allows students to step back from their regular learning methodology and develop critical thinking skills to enhance their future performance by analyzing and reviewing their learning experiences – both the content of what they have learnt and the emotions, if any, attached to the learning content.’ [2]

Carol Dweck – growth mindset https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve#t-353

How we are ‘Learning by doing’ – Tel Tales and the Tel Team

Tel Tales is an example of reflective writing in practice, it’s a community of practice, where we regularly share our experiences, ideas, failures and learning through blogging. It can often feel difficult and challenging as a form of self reflection and academic writing as it does involve writing about our errors and anxieties just as well as our successes. It’s often hard to find the time to stand back and reflect but it’s also crucial for us in developing and evolving as individuals and as a team within the current university climate.

Reflection is an important skill in learning and developing one’s self and helps us to personalise and conceptualise our own experiences. Collaboratively, it’s a great way to share our experiences whether bad or good, and develop as a team whilst raising our profile and improving our writing and critical thinking skills.

We are always looking for guest bloggers, so if you would like to contribute to our blog and did have time to have that cuppa and reflect, then please get in touch with me and share your ideas!

Audiovisual in Education – A general discussion about a topic that is more relevant than ever

August 27, 2019 / Shaun Searle / 0 Comments

My colleague Tom Langston recently visited a session hosted by Learning on Screen, The British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council (https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/) and it reminded me of a previous visit I undertook a few years ago (before Instagram!) which I thought I’d use to form the basis of this blog. One of the great things about escaping the university is the possibility to network and have discussions with professionals from other institutions and companies. Spanning business and education, it is amazing how views match or differ and hearing a different take on modern university life is insightful.

Technology is a “new” problem

A concept I encounter on a near daily basis is the trouble of meeting the modern demands of the student with technology as it has progressed at such a rate of knots, that we are struggling to keep up. Interestingly, the minutes from the council’s meeting in 1954 were shared with the attendees and the main themes and issues raised were assessing our own pedagogy, how to use new mediums in education and the advancement of technology. Issues that are very topical even in 2019.

A concept also levied at us is that the “modern student” has never been so technologically advanced. They were raised in the age of the internet and the school years were entwined with handheld device usage. They have not necessarily needed to phone up Uncle Ray or another assigned family expert to ask him about 17th century monarchs as they can “google” it. This Generation Z or iGen, as they may be referred to, use and naturally access technology in a very different way to their predecessors or their more ancient educators.

However with this is a common misconception about levels of understanding. Just because a student can use an iPhone and access film, does not mean they “know” or are experts in it.

Access does not automatically equal knowledge

Are these digital natives as savvy as we think they are? Or is it a gross assumption based on our observations of them accessing technology. HE Institutions (as well as our team) are looking closer at digital capabilities and providing support for those who need it, but do we as educators need to consider assessing the digital needs of the students rather than naturally assuming that they would want VR tours and interacting with embedded H5P content.

It draws me to the constructivist approach when teaching Primary Science in my previous life, where you would have your topic but it’s ultimately the students who govern how they are going to learn and find out things and it can result in an outcome at a far greater depth due to their immersion in the process.

A tension between form and context

Visual Literacy and the use of audiovisual also opens up an array of issues to consider. Take for example the BBC , which has an unbelievable bank of resources. The issue of copyright and ownership is a topic we have had blogs about in the past. There is a view that we need to have some buy in from the broadcasters and content owners to serve education. This would open up the concept of not just reusing sources but being creative beyond the content’s initial use. The idea of repurposing the material, taking an old thing a part and making something new with it. The BBC Archive, was created to be used by film-makers and was not necessarily intended for public consumption. It opens up a can of worms that perhaps material that looks fairly inconspicuous today, can have a massive impact in the future. This is evident due to the scandals raised by historical tweets being uncovered and the use of archived film footage in investigations into high profile court cases about abuse.

There has to be some education for students about not just the technology and media we use but the context around it.

Final Thoughts

The more we look to bring audiovisual into our teaching, the more we are going to have to look at ourselves and change how we teach. The idea that people sit in blacked out rooms watching films is an old school pedagogic view, just as the days of students being sat down talked at are no more.

There is an element of Audiovisual that gets their eyes off of their screens and onto the intended one at the front. We can use technology and platforms such as Twitter to allow students to engage on an individual basis. We must ensure that it is not a passive viewing experience but allows students to research, reference and back up their own point of view, offering the stimulus for a voice that otherwise may have stayed quiet.

The final thing to consider is the danger that if we spend too long of today worrying and focusing on “how to use technology and film” and it prevents trial, implementation and reflection, in ten years time those concerns will be obsolete and new issues will have replaced them.

Images from:

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Achieving Mastery – How Important is Practice in Learning?

August 19, 2019 / Marie Kendall-Waters / 0 Comments

Learning a new skill can often feel daunting, especially if it’s one that doesn’t particularly spark interest or enthusiasm – we’ve all been there right? You can feel bombarded by information and overwhelmed with the task of learning and feel like giving up before you’ve even begun!

So, how can we overcome this? How can we find the opportunity to put our learning into practice and how can practice lead to success?

Knowledge Vs Practice

When we think of learning we think of gaining knowledge:

Learning /ˈləːnɪŋ/ – the acquisition of knowledge through study, experience, or being taught.

However, as Anton Chekhov once said: ‘knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice’. This is true, we can study and gain years of knowledge, however if we don’t put the information we’ve acquired into practice then it’s meaningless and often forgotten over time. I’m sure we’ve all attended a workshop or studied a course that we later haven’t put into practice and our learning has been lost. I studied French and Spanish at GCSE and A-level, however without speaking the languages on a daily basis, I wouldn’t say I was particularly fluent in them now – I expect, if we all think back to our school subjects, how many of us can remember and are actually using those skills now? I doubt many of us are.

Gaining knowledge in learning is only half the battle won, the other half comes from practice and of course feedback – as otherwise how do you know if you are doing something right? And most importantly how can you improve if you don’t know where to begin? So how can we improve practice in our students’ learning?

Can deliberate practice aid learning?

Deliberate practice involves attention, interest and motivation, this is the important bit and how we, as educators, can help our students understand the benefit of practice in the long run by making our learning materials fun and interesting!

It’s important because practice can help improve skills. If you practice a new skill on a regular basis then you will get good at it, learning to ride a bike, drive a car, play a musical instrument, these are all skills that take time, commitment and practice and this is exactly the same for studying too. Practice helps you implement what you have learnt and get better at it.

Practice can also boost self-confidence. When you practice something and see results, it makes you feel happy and confident; when you’ve finally learnt to ride your bike, passed your driving test, play a music instrument – you’ve done it! You feel a sense of achievement as all that hard work has paid off!

As instructional design expert Barbara Seels (1997) says:

“Practice is the most important ingredient of effective instruction; it speeds up learning, aids long-term retention, and facilitates recall. Instruction is less effective when there is no opportunity to perform the task or when practice is delayed . . . . Unfortunately, much of the instruction in our classrooms provides little or no opportunity for practice.”

Learning will most likely occur with the opportunity for practice and feedback. Creating an environment or providing opportunity for our students to practice what they’ve learnt is paramount in the learning process. Whether this be on an online platform i.e taking part in a chatroom or taking a quiz. Giving feedback is also crucial. Providing students with feedback or vice versa, students giving their course leaders feedback on their learning experience, helps to confirm their knowledge and also provides ways in which future students’ experiences can be improved.

Retrieval Practice

One way we can help our students put their knowledge into practice is through retrieval practice. Retrieval practice focuses on bringing information to the mind, retrieving knowledge and then putting it into practice, by doing this students can strengthen their learning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO8abw3DHxs

Are there any ways you can use retrieval practice in your learning materials?

The Mastery Approach – how can we achieve this?

There are lots of ways deliberate practice can lead to mastering a skill, which is primarily what the mastery approach to learning is.

The next time you learn a new skill, whether it be learning a musical instrument or a work-related task, think about the following things:

Establish specific goals – Firstly, what do you want to achieve? How will you know when you’ve achieved it?
Practice plan – break your tasks down into parts – Break your task down into different areas, then make a specific plan of how long you will spend on a specific part and when you will do it.
Give your full attention to each part – You won’t become a master by multi-tasking. You need to be focusing on each part, practice slowly until you have mastered each section then put it all together. This is why breaking down our learning material into bite-size sections is so important, rather than text heavy documents!
Get feedback from a master – No one masters a skill by themselves. An expert outsider can help provide you with feedback and direction. Surely it’s better to have feedback to correct or improve and help aid perfecting the skill.
Move out of the comfort zone – No one becomes a master by doing what they already knew. Stretch your expertise by stepping away from your current ability.
Maintain your motivation – You’ll need to have three things for this, emotional, logical and logistical reasons to continue:
1. Logistical – finding the most convenient time and place to practice.
2. Emotion and logic – what drives you? Maybe you want to succeed due to a negative experience you’ve had or maybe it was something positive, someone’s praise and this drives you to work hard – only you will know this.

Here’s the science bit!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2O6mQkFiiw

To summarise, knowledge is important in learning. However, unless knowledge is put into practice then it will lack value and in time will be lost. Knowledge, deliberate practice and feedback lead to acquiring and mastering a skill. Practice does make perfect!

Thank you for taking the time to read my post, I hope you’ve found it interesting! I would love to hear your experiences on putting new skills into practice, have they been successful – if so how did they become successful and if not, why?

References:

Anton Chekhov: http://www.simplybetterenglish.com/knowledge-no-value-unless-put-practice-anton-chekhov/

Barbara Seels (1997): ps://ctl.byu.edu/tip/effective-learning-through-practice-skill-building-and-feedback)

Woman standing behind video camera smiling

Video in Higher Education

July 29, 2019 / Andy Taggart / 0 Comments

A recent visit to Oxford University for a conference on the use of video in Higher Education provided an excellent opportunity to pick up insights into how video is being used in universities across the country. In the words of conference organiser Dominik Lukes:

“Since the advent of YouTube, video has gained in significance as a medium of instruction. It has become an invaluable resource for informal learning and teaching, professional development, and formal instruction”

The morning session consisted of a series of ‘lightning’ presentations, each no more than around 7 minutes. This allowed for a good number of issues and ideas to be presented from a wide range of universities. In the afternoon we could choose from a variety of topics to discuss in small groups, such as student created videos as assessment, accessibility and inclusion, and how to tell a story.

Among the highlights from the day was a lightning talk covering lecture capture. The presenter (James Youdale, University of York) considered the difficult issue of whether lecture capture was changing how teaching takes place and how students engaged with the video lecture. The thorny issue of whether to have lecturers opt-in to have their lectures captured or an opt-out option with all lectures captured unless the lecturer chooses otherwise was also touched on. Among statistics James’ research had found was that 41% of students watch the whole of the captured lecture, 23% skip to what they regard as the important points and 96% watch on their own. This talk raised, without necessarily answering, a few interesting questions such as

Should lecture capture change pedagogical practice?
Do students need better guidance/help in note taking?
How can lectures be made less passive?

From the work done at York, it would seem students generally do value lecture capture and would like more of it.

Taking lecture capture one step further and actually replacing lectures with video was the theme of a presentation by Chris Evans from UCL. Two studies were carried out to gain insight into what students thought about such a bold move. In this case a 2 hour lecture was replaced with a 1 hour interactive video lecture (Xerte was used to provide the interactivity but H5P could also be used). Student feedback was very positive, and to help ensure engagement with the videos assessments were used every two weeks.

Certainly lecture capture and substituting videos for lectures allow students to learn at their own pace but not sure either are a real replacement for direct human interaction

In the late nineteenth century the Psychologist Ebbinghaus created his now well known forgetting curve illustrating how quickly information is forgotten. More modern studies tend to confirm that students quickly forget what they are told in lectures. However, they also show that going back over materials in short bursts can greatly help information retention, perhaps that is the context in which lecture capture can be viewed. In terms of replacing lectures with videos, personally I am not convinced entire courses over a sustained period of time could be delivered this way.

The afternoon discussions developed some of the themes from the morning, of particular interest were views on overcoming barriers to the greater use of video. These barriers seemed to fall into two broad areas – time and skills. Making a video can be time consuming when all production factors are taken into consideration, from writing the script, to editing the raw footage and, many lecturers may feel they have neither the time or the skills to devote to creating videos. In terms of time, what needs to be emphasised that once the video is made it’s there to be used over and over again and down the line can actually save time – students can revisit the videos which can leave time for discussions on critical analysis and evaluation without having to go back over content. For as long as a course module exists, then the video will continue to be a useful teaching and learning resource. In terms of editing, lecturers would not be expected to necessarily have the skills required, but that is where developers are key, and they can be called on the handle the technical side of things.

Overall, the key message I took away from the day is that the research presented indicated videos can be a very useful tool but it’s simply not being used enough – maybe the carrots need to be made more obvious and possibly a few sticks as well?

Image credits: Brett Sayles on Pixels.com

School chairs set into row as if people were going to take an exam

Assessment online – Are we past the “hand-in” date?

July 1, 2019 / Shaun Searle / 0 Comments

Introduction

In eLearn, we have just reached the end of the exam period with our faculties intact (excuse the pun) and with very little drama (which is not normally the case). The sight of nervous students queuing up outside of Spinnaker for an exam inside a gym hall bought all those memories of dread I had experienced nearly 20 years ago flooding back.

When I think about how much has changed in the teaching landscape in terms of the integration of technology into teaching, as well as the diverse ways in which people attend university, I can’t help but feel this method of summative assessment is rather antiquated.

This could very easily turn into a blog about the nature of summative assessment, which I wrote far too many assignments about in 2004 as part of my teaching degree. I don’t want this to turn into a virtual trip down memory lane for myself but a means to highlight what is different and future possibilities.

The wonder of Turnitin

With my teacher hat firmly still on my head, I can’t be more positive about this technology when it comes to marking, having lived the late nights devoted to marking never ending piles of papers. True, it has its faults and the late nights may have merely been transferred from pen and paper to in front of a screen but it has so many facets designed to make the experience easier for both marker and student. You can’t help but feel its implementation has been a large forward step in the progression of assessment. Being able to customise and apply quickmarks across assignments prevents the numerous occasions “RTQ” would have to be written. The possibility of copy and pasting comments or highlighting text to directly link to aspects of a rubric are all seemingly small things that actually take hours when going through the work of 90 students and that is before you give personalised feedback that moves learning on.

The student gets a rich visual experience that can be accessed on any device and feedback is so easily obtainable/downloadable that it could only promote reflective practise. The hand-in process has changed dramatically with the long line outside of the faculty admin office with bound assignment in hand is a thing of the past and it can now be submitted in bed with a cuppa. Don’t get me wrong, you will still get students who will leave it till the last minute and those who perhaps have been a little too influenced by other sources within their writing but nevertheless a snapshot of this process in 2019 vastly differs from 2009 and is a world away from 1999. The same of which can’t be said for the end of year exam.

Quizzes – More than just for daytime tv

Perhaps it is slightly unfair to portray examinations at university to be solely desk based due to the increase in exams being carried out online using Moodle Quiz. The Quiz tool is far more powerful and robust than perhaps people realise. Yes you can use it to create multiple choice “pop quizzes” for the end of topic or to elicit prior conceptions at the start of something new but it can also be used to make 100 questioned essay-based behemoths which include a variety of different question types. Safe Exam Browser allows for it to be taken under true exam restrictions and the ease in which times and restrictions can be customised makes them far more accessible than its paper-based counterpart. Claro Reader software can be used to overlay colours and intuitively applies text-to-speech (dependant on how the exam has been written of course!). The possibility of including image or video within an exam assessment not only opens up a wealth of ways to question but leads me on to my next point.

The Audiovisual Essay

I was very fortunate to have witnessed a presentation from the inspiring Dr Catherine Grant who spoke about the concept The Audiovisual Essay in Film & Moving Image Studies. I would certainly recommend visiting the website, which explores the concept in great detail. There are some amazing examples and relevant research that has been undertaken about the subject. For those who are unfamiliar with this form it is essentially the expression of critical, analytical and theoretical work using the resources of audiovisuality (images/sound/video in montage) I begrudge trying to pigeon hole the genre further but it truly flies in the wind against sitting in a hall for 3 hours writing an English Literature exam. While it lends itself to creative, historical, visually rich courses and cannot be applied across the board, the premise of it being a “different” way to demonstrate understanding is valid.

Final Thoughts

This brings us back to assessment types and again perhaps explains the shift towards the greater emphasis on coursework-based assessment models. That in my eyes is a different debate, this blog is exploring whether sitting in hall to carry out an end of year assessment still has a place in modern university life. You have to question over their time in Higher Education, how many opportunities students get to sit at a desk for a considerable time and demonstrate their understanding in that way. Are we providing students with a rather unnatural medium by which to demonstrate their understanding? Does that in turn affect their ability to reach their true potential? Particularly as the end of year summative assessment the culmination of the blood, sweat and tears of their learning journey, do we not owe it to the learner to reassess the way we make this final assessment. The flip side of this is to give students more exam practice and opportunities but is this a direction where we want to go? To me that seems to be a practice that would be looking in the rear view mirror where I would argue we should have our eyes on the road ahead.

Featured Image:

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Women holding a hand-held video recorder

Types of content capture

May 24, 2019 / Stephen Webb / 0 Comments

In September 2018 the University established a working group in order to better understand what the future of content capture should look like here at Portsmouth. The group wanted to know what sorts of content should be captured, what types of media were important, and how students and staff would feel about having their contributions to different types of session recorded. Once the responses from the online consultation exercises and “town hall” meetings have been fully analysed, the results will be made available through a variety of channels (including this blog). Until then, however, I wanted to advertise the recording of a webinar – one of the Future Teacher 3.0 series of webinars – which took place about the same time we were launching our working group.

In this webinar Graham Gibbs, a National Teaching Fellow and Reader in Social Research Methods at the University of Huddersfield, looks at the use of various different types of video in a higher education setting. He identifies “21 in 12” – twenty-one examples of educational video which you can see in just twelve minutes.

As the accompanying blurb states, these videos vary in approach, pedagogy, and production value – but all of them contain some educational value, and many of the techniques could be replicated at Portsmouth using existing technologies. Graham wrote a guide for the HEA’s Innovative Pedagogies series, entitled “Video creation and reuse for learning in higher education”. The guide is well worth reading, but if you don’t have time just check out the Future Teacher webinar – it lasts only 12 minutes!

Jed Villejo
Credit Image: Photo by Jed Villejo on Unsplash

Happy 2 years to us!

April 18, 2019 / Marie Kendall-Waters / 0 Comments

It’s Tel Tales birthday today and we’re celebrating 2 years of blogging. 2 years – that’s a big achievement for us, in the past blogging was never our forte as a team – but this time, with Tel Tales, we’ve stuck to it – so what have we learnt in the last 2 years as a group of novice bloggers and how has this time been different from our previous attempt?

Raising our profile

In early 2016, we were thinking of ways to raise our profile within the University. We are a long standing central service, but we offer much more than Moodle support, as a bunch of talented individuals with an array of experience and expertise, we felt this was often unknown and we also weren’t too good at voicing our achievements.

Building a blog site seemed like the perfect platform where as a team, we could all contribute and write posts journalling our adventures in technology and education.

Reservations

As a team we had reservations, we had quite a few failed blog attempts in the past and this had knocked our confidence, which I talked about in my first blog post Why Blog? For some members of the team, blogging came naturally and were able to write posts with ease. For others writing a post for all to read was quite a scary concept and putting pen to paper was difficult. As this was a team blog and we wanted everyone to feel comfortable and happy to post, we knew that the project would need planning, organisation, ongoing management and time to be a success.

Tips for setting up a team blog

Here are some of our tips for starting a team blog:

Communicate the goals and focus of the team blog – from the offset, as a team, we discussed what we would like to include in our blog site, things such as events we’d attended, projects that we were working on, useful information about the technologies people in the University were using, and topical news that had interested us.
Develop a team blog style guide and author guidelines – we put together some guidelines as to the style of the posts i.e. sizing of headers, images, copyright, referencing etc so that the posts were consistent although written by multiple people.
Choose an appropriate team blog tool – we choose WordPress as our blogging tool and created each member of the team their own user account so they had ownership of their own posts.
Have team editors/proofreaders – we delegated the proofreading and editing of the posts to 3 members of the team – so all posts after written in draft were checked by them before going live.
Create an editorial/blog post calendar – we created a calendar so that we could organise and schedule when posts were going live and keep an ongoing spreadsheet of all posts to keep track of what stage they were at.
Offer collaboration and communication tools to contributors – all members of the team have access to Slack where we can discuss the blog posts and Google Drive where we structure and manage all the posts. Everything is clearly structured in folders and everyone has access to everything.
Provide feedback to contributors – feedback regarding the blog site as a whole and feedback regarding posts are either discussed on Slack or directly to the contributor.
Recruit guest bloggers – we have had several members of staff from other departments contribute to the site which has been great in networking with other departments.
Repurpose content without losing quality – when times have been a little quiet we have been able to repurpose content that is topical – so we are never short of finding content for our site.
Remain flexible – I think flexibility is key to running a team blog site, nothing is set in stone, so we are able to accommodate for any obstacles that we’ve come up against over the last 2 years.

Build it and they will come

We did build it and they did come, but slowly. It’s easy to assume with blogging that once you’ve built the site then that’s it, ta-dah job done. We’ve learnt however that this isn’t the case and we’ve had to be patient and continue to be, building an audience doesn’t happen overnight.

What’s in store for the next 2 years

It’s uncertain where Tel Tales will reside in the future, we may become part of the University of Portsmouth website, however we still hope to have a presence in one shape or form. We continue to raise our profile in other forms of media, Tom L has created some Podcasts on Tel Tales, so if you haven’t listened to those yet then check them out. Tom is also looking at our YouTube channel and will be providing some new videos on there. Shaun is working on our Instagram account, so make sure to follow us if you’re a keen Instagrammer.

I’m immensely proud of the team and everyone that has contributed to the site, especially those that have found it difficult to write for an online environment but have still given it a go! Big thanks to Mandy who’s our team organiser and keeps us informed of who’s doing what and to Stephen, Alana and Tom C for being our team proofreaders, Tom L and Shaun our social media bods and for Will and Mike for all their help behind the scenes with the ‘techy stuff’ and thank you to everyone in the team that has contributed to Tel Tales. Thanks to all our followers too – we hope you enjoy reading our posts!! Cheers everyone!

Wishing you all a very ‘Happy Easter’ from the TEL team.

If you would like to feature as a guest blogger on Tel Tales then please get in touch and we can discuss ideas with you 🙂

Image credits:
https://pixabay.com/images/id-72160/
http://www.quotesvalley.com/quotes/failure/page/443/
https://pixabay.com/images/id-2406452/

industrial building work — Photo taken by Fancycrave from https://unsplash.com/photos/1R3UnJcBCa8

Scenario Based Learning

January 25, 2019 / Tom Langston / 0 Comments

What is scenario based learning?

Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, in their influential book Situated Learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991) argued that learning is most effective when it occurs within the context in which it is going to be used. Scenario based learning (SBL) is rooted in this idea. SBL, according to the definition provided by Massey University, “uses interactive scenarios to support active learning strategies such as problem-based and case-based learning”. The course developer creates a narrative – typically based on a complex, real-world problem – that the student works through and solves. SBL thus provides a safe yet realistic environment for the student to demonstrate their subject-specific knowledge and problem-solving skills. Furthermore, because SBL is often non-linear, it can provide numerous feedback opportunities to students, based on the decisions they make at each stage of the narrative.

I’m a course developer. When should I use scenario based learning?

Sometimes – in cases, for example, where students are required to make decisions and display critical thinking in complex situations – it can be difficult to provide realistic practice opportunities within the confines of a traditional course. In these cases, SBL comes into its own. Amongst countless other examples, SBL has been used successfully in engineering, nursing and business studies. It can be used to support both formative and summative assessment – but note that, for routine tasks that don’t require decision-making or critical thinking, there are more appropriate methods of assessment.

What tools can help me develop scenario based learning?

Moodle contains several tools that can be used to develop an SBL approach. The four tools I’d suggest can be used to build a learning narrative are: Database, Workshop, Forum and Lesson. (This is only a suggestion. The most important thing is to connect various activities and reinforce student learning.)

Below is one model that would permit the assessment process to become a wider, more holistic approach over the duration of a course. A range of short, targeted activities would give the students time to research their next task and help them develop their own learning profile.

Database -> Workshop -> Forum -> Lesson

The student writes a short essay, based on their own experiences relating to a given task, and submits to the Database tool. Then, from these submissions, the academic allocates each student a different piece of work to mark/analyse.
After assessing their assigned piece of work, each student submits their analysis to the Workshop tool (following criteria defined by the academic). The Workshop tool allows students to peer assess the submissions and get a final grade based on both their submission and their ability to assess others’ work.
Once all this is finished, the Forum is used to get the students to discuss their experiences of the subject and how they could each improve certain aspects of their work.
Lastly, the Lesson tool presents a high-risk situation to the student. The lesson can be developed to provide a realistic yet safe environment to explore the situation. The Lesson tool allows for either a branching or a linear format.

Each phase offers the student the chance to reflect on what they have learned and offers them ideas on what they should now do with the new information and theory they have researched as part of the unit.

These various elements could be done one straight after the other, or spaced out over the course of a unit. My recommendation would be to allow time between each assessment, which would give students the chance to develop and learn from what they have previously done.

If you are considering SBL as a means of assessment but would like to have a discussion about how you can implement within your teaching the TEL team runs a training session called “Facilitating Scenario Based Learning” or you can contact me tom.langston@port.ac.uk

Reference

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning. Cambridge: CUP.

Image credits: Photo by Fancycrave on Unsplash

Fancycrave

Design for Digital Learning

February 26, 2018 / Stephen Webb / 0 Comments

Back in 2005, Gráinne Conole and Karen Fill developed a learning design toolkit. Conole and Fill were concerned that, despite the increasing use in society of “Information and Communication Technologies” (as people used to refer to our connected world), educators weren’t embracing the opportunities of e-learning to enrich the student experience. Their learning design toolkit was intended to guide teachers through the process of creating “pedagogically informed learning activities which make effective use of appropriate tools and resources”.

In the 12 years since their learning design toolkit was developed, technology has continued to improve steadily – but I’d argue that learning design has failed to keep up. Perhaps a new JISC publication will go some way towards improving matters. Their new online guide to technology-enhanced curriculum design – Designing learning and assessment in a digital age – collates the most significant R&D outputs over the past decade in curriculum and learning design in a digital context. It also includes examples of good practice.

The guide is based on a model with four elements:

Discover – understanding of where you are now, and what you want to happen
Dream – your vision for what learning, teaching and assessment could be like
Design – understanding precisely who you are designing for and the pedagogic purposes that are appropriate to those students
Deliver – creating the right environment and culture for high-quality digital learning and assessment

If you are interested in learning design in a digital context then I can recommend reading the guide. Whatever your level of proficiency, you’ll be sure to find something to take away!

Feature image: JISC Learning Design Toolkit by Graninne Conole and Karen Fill is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

A wooden background with a flag with the word Explore on it

UoP does the TESTA test! An introduction to the TESTA project

February 19, 2018 / Melita Sidiropoulou / 0 Comments

From January 2018 to September 2018, The University of Portsmouth will run the Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment (TESTA) project. Initially involving 10 courses, the aim is to expand this pilot project to more courses and improve the quality of student learning through addressing programme-level assessment across the university.

What is TESTA?

TESTA, originally funded by the Higher Education Academy, is currently sustained by the University of Winchester and Southampton Solent University. TESTA aims to improve the quality of student learning through addressing programme-level assessment. Over 50 UK universities as well as universities in Australia, India and the USA have engaged with TESTA since its early project days (2009-2012). TESTA works with academics, students and managers – and for students, academics and managers – to identify study behaviour, generate assessment patterns to foster deeper learning across whole programmes, and promote assessment for learning.

Why TESTA?

Because:

There needs to be more consistency between modules, across programmes, and a greater emphasis on progressively developing students’ internalisation of programme-level standards, over time, rather than relying on documentation to specify criteria at the level of assignments or modules.
The programme view shifts perspectives from: figures/percentages and student experience surveys (e.g. NSS) to enhancement strategies;‘my’ unit to ‘our course’; teacher-focused on module delivery to student experience of the whole programme; from individualistic modular design to coherent team design.
It engenders a team approach. The process enables the researcher to get to know the team and programme;. It’s a listening process, and a valuing process. The team make decisions based on data, knowledge and guidance.
It enhances curriculum Design and Pedagogy; a.rebalancing formative and summative, b.making connections across modules, and c. ensuring sequencing and progression of assessment across the programme. Also, developing approaches to formative, including more authentic assessment, influencing curriculum design (content-load etc.) etc.

What does TESTA involve?

The process involves mixed research methods for the sake of a. exploring various dimensions of the programme and b. triangulating the data. The process for each course/programme includes: a TESTA audit; an Assessment Experience Questionnaire; and Student focus groups. The process results in a programme case study report with summary of findings, interpretations and recommendations and an interactive workshop presenting this report.

What people say:

‘The value was to look at what we do from a scientific perspective and look at things objectively, and that is really enabling us to re-think how we do things. Because it’s driven by the project the staff are very willing and accepting of the data. I don’t think anybody, after we had the meeting with you guys, sat there and said ‘They’re talking absolute rubbish. What do they know?’ (Programme Leader, Nursing).

‘I’ve found it useful to have a mirror held up, to give a real reflection. We talk about the ‘student voice’, but actually this has provided a mechanism, which isn’t part of the programme, which isn’t the evaluation’ (Programme Leader, Education).

‘TESTA has revealed some really interesting and, I believe, accurate information about our programme/ approaches/ student experience. The details of your report have enabled some really strong shifts. We would not have reached these conclusions otherwise and I feel that TESTA has had the desired effect of enabling us to think a little more progressively.’ (Programme Leader, Dance)

‘Our very productive TESTA meeting has stimulated much discussion about how we can develop our modules to include more formative feedback and more engagement in large lectures. Some developments will be incorporated in the interim validation and others will influence our departmental policy on assessment and feedback for next year’ (Programme Leader, Psychology.)

More information about TESTA and a variety of resources can be found at http://www.port.ac.uk/departments/services/dcqe and https://www.testa.ac.uk/

Any interested programme/course leaders can send an email to amy.barlow@port.ac.uk or melita.sidiropoulou@port.ac.uk

Image credits: Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

So let’s take a step back and breath!

The importance of reflection

Putting reflective writing into practice

The benefits of reflective writing

Learning by doing – Reflective learning cycle – the theory bit!

How we are ‘Learning by doing’ – Tel Tales and the Tel Team

Further reading:

Technology is a “new” problem

Access does not automatically equal knowledge

A tension between form and context

Final Thoughts

Images from:

Knowledge Vs Practice

Can deliberate practice aid learning?

Retrieval Practice

The Mastery Approach – how can we achieve this?

References:

Introduction

The wonder of Turnitin

Quizzes – More than just for daytime tv

The Audiovisual Essay

Final Thoughts

Raising our profile

Reservations

Tips for setting up a team blog

Build it and they will come

What’s in store for the next 2 years

What is TESTA?

Why TESTA?

What does TESTA involve?

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