Anne Tierney
Posts: 8
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| 29/05/2007 17:06 |
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| Mark - for speed networking, all you need is a whistle! I use it for Level One Biology students, Level 2 Employability students, and pg business & biology students. The students are in two lines, facing one another (or in L1 Biology labs, they sit at benches facing one another). When the whistle blows for the first time, the students have 1 minute to tell one another some interesting fact about themselves (depending on the context of the group or course). After a minute, the whistle blows again, and, in the case of the two lines, one line stands still, while the top student from the other line peels off to the bottom, and everyone shuffles up one. When the students sit at benches, the whole group moves round one like musical chairs. Do this five or six times - it takes five minutes, mixes up the groups and gets people talking to one another. For one of my classes (Level 2 Employability) I use this to mix up the groups then divide them up for their next group task, which is a networking role play. |
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Alec Wersun
Posts: 7
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| 29/05/2007 18:21 |
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| I like this idea, Anne, as it puts "fun" back in to what we are doing. I think that this is an important ingredient that the pressures of massification are increasingly putting on us. By the way, I think it would also be useful if students got to know more about academic staff / know them mopre personally. This may happen on the level of programme leaders and the like, but not necessarily at subject level. All part of helping students ot feel at ease.... |
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Mary Welsh
Posts: 12
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| 29/05/2007 19:09 |
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| This year a colleague and I gained notoriety by encouraging students, in a lecture early in the year, to paticipate in a Mexican Wave, accompanied by music to which we "oldies" danced. External end of year evaluations and internal course evaluations contained comments that the students appreciated the fact that we were willing to show the "more relaxed" side of our personalities. They said this made them feel at ease. I know what I describe would not suit everyone but surely it's not too difficult to show the fun side occassionally. I also like the whistle idea "Speed networking" idea. Next year we intend to run a course Blog to offer extra online support to students who need it. |
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Derek Rowntree
Posts: 35
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| 29/05/2007 19:16 |
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| Thanks for that elucidation, Mary and Mark. I see I've been "speaking prose" all my professional life without knowing it! |
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Derek Rowntree
Posts: 35
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| 29/05/2007 20:20 |
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I am amusing myself trying to imagine Jim Baxter with a whistle trying to do speed networking with his 550 psychology students!
Which brings me back to ask how common it might be in on-campus universities these days, for a lecturer to have sole responsibility for teaching and assessing 550 students? |
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Jim Baxter
Posts: 17
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| 29/05/2007 20:55 |
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| It aint gonna happen. My own 'style' is slightly different. Kind of a cross between Bill Hicks and Barry White, so the students tell me. |
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Janet Taylor
Posts: 10
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| 29/05/2007 22:59 |
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| I agree that socialisation is important and across Australia I think many insitutions are picking up on the need to do that in the initial days and weeks....but unless this is also picked up in the cirriculum and by academic staff and planners then work done in transition activities is not reinforced...I am very interested in the curriulum ideas that are now emerging, but my experience in attracting students to formative assessment without some weighting attached has not been positive, especially with distance education students who are often very time poor and strategic.... |
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Sue Purnell
Posts: 2
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| 30/05/2007 09:01 |
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Hi
Sorry, for some reason I was unable to log on yesterday so I have just read your discussion from yesterday with great interest! As an Education developer,of course I am one degree removed from the large classroom assessment debate, but am working with one of our faculties looking at how to improve pass rates in a big (300) first year class.A debate that we have been having is about the value /usefulness of peer feedback versus employing GTA's or similar to mark and feedback on additional early assessment, designed to enable remedial action to be taken if required. How can we encourage first years to a) take the task of giving feedback seriously and b) report concerns raised about their own work, and use the help that is available? I guess it ties into earlier discussions about understanding the discipline, moving into a different learning mode etc. However i am finding much scepticism from the lecturers about whether the effort of training students to give peer feedback is worth it! Any comments/ suggestions? |
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Derek Rowntree
Posts: 35
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| 30/05/2007 11:03 |
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Hi Sue: Welcome to the free-for-all!
You ask how can we encourage first-years to take seriously the task of giving one another feedback (and also convince colleagues that it is worth training them to do so). With the time-pressed and strategically-minded student of today I suspect that we first need to convince them that it is to their personal advantage. Will critiquing their colleagues' work help them to improve their own work and enhance their grades, get more satisfaction out of learning) or whatever is their personal drive)? We need to sell them (students and colleagues alike) the benefits -- so long as we have reason to believe in them ourselves! |
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Sue Purnell
Posts: 2
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| 30/05/2007 13:41 |
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Thanks Derek - Couldnt agree more with your final comment :-)
I must confess I am leaning towards GTA rather than peer review, its just that I have read a few articles about peer review that appealed. However, as you say, they are often pretty strategic learners! Which I guess raises the issue of whether first year is when we should be endeavouring to change/soften that stance? I do believe that if taken seriously, critiquing others work is actually very good learning, and helps them to realise that there is at least one (!) other point of view. Whether it increases satisfaction is another issue altogether. |
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Alec Wersun
Posts: 7
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| 30/05/2007 14:32 |
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| I would like to pick up on Janet's point on the value of "keeping things going" throughout the year. I feel that we assume that induction is an "event", yet perhaps we should be looking on it for first uyear students as a process - creating that community if you like. On Derek's question, my colleague and I joint lead on a module of about 700 students - but we have a teaching team of 10 and so that lightens the burden. I cannot imagine for the life of me doing it alone! You may wish to look at some of our reflections on our use of Electronic Feedback Software (EFS) in the REAP case study. We feel that there is a lot said about "managing" large groups of students, but very little research done on "managing" the teaching team (better to say coordinate?). |
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Alec Wersun
Posts: 7
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| 30/05/2007 14:43 |
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| I would also like to raise the question of working in large teaching teams. For example, Susan Ogden and I at GCU run a module with 700 students and a teaching team of 10-12 people. We have agonised (and still do) over whether we should adopt a "soft touch" or a "heavy touch" approach in terms of how and what we do in seminars, of which there are about 35 each week. THis raises the question on similar types of feedback being given. On the one hand, one wishes to provide students with a comp[arable experience; on the other, one does not necessarily wish to be too directive ......It would be a wonderful world if everyone had loads of time to discuss, debate, brainstorm and agree approaches, but one finds that the module leader is responsible for getting things done and for many it is a question of doing what is needed....Any views or other experiences? |
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Derek Rowntree
Posts: 35
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| 30/05/2007 16:53 |
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Alec raises the interesting issue of how to co-ordinate large teams of teachers teaching and assessing the same course. Clearly, one wants to encourage some freedom of interpretion for both students and teachers; but too much and the different groups could end up doing different courses! My only experience of large teaching teams is in the Open University (UK) where a "class" of 700 might have a team of 35-45 tutors each commenting and giving developmental feedback on the written work of their group of students every few weeks. This seems to work out quite satisfactorily (judging by the TQI national student surveys) not least perhaps because the tutors all know the aims and objectives of the course as a whole and of each individual assignment and each tutor's feedback is monitored from time to time by a senior tutor.
If we have any present or ex-OU tutors online, perhaps they can share their experience of how coordination worked in their large teaching team? |
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Derek Rowntree
Posts: 35
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| 30/05/2007 17:49 |
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For me, one of the essentials of the first-year experience is that each student needs individualised SUPPORT. (They need it in every year, of course; but if they don't get it in the first year they may not survive to see a second.)
By individualised support I mean support based on a knowledge of the particular student and this could include, for example, ensuring that they are on a course that will suit their needs, diagnosing any lack of prerequisite learning, arranging any necessary remedial teaching, giving guidance on study skills and time management, commenting on their work and giving guidance meant to both encourage them and help them deepen or widen their understanding, being available in times of stress (and potential drop-out), etc, etc, etc.
None of this would be possible without some form of assessment, even if it only takes the form of talking with the student and listening to what they say. My anxiety is that the student:teacher ratio is now getting so large as to make it difficult to impossible for a teacher to give support based on personal knowledge of each of their students' needs and concerns.
Please convince me my fears are unfounded! |
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Peter Hartley
Posts: 4
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| 30/05/2007 21:14 |
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| A number of places like ourselves (Bradford) are experimenting with 'extended induction' where the socialisation starts at point of acceptance to the course and this seems most successful where it is tied into preparatory work (dscipline relevant) that is then used in the first week on campus so you have the opportunity for some 'light-touch' assessment and formative feedback (as at Bournemouth). |
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Jim Baxter
Posts: 17
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| 30/05/2007 22:53 |
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| The issue of personal support is certainly a difficult one in my class. I know nothing about nearly all of my students except what they choose to post on their general online discussion board. That system itself offers some peer support but I have no doubt that the students who need academic and social support the most are not likely to post their concerns there, and may come to perceive it to be the territory of those posters who tend, over a little time, to come to dominate the system merely by the frequency of their messages. Students with serious personal problems are always invited to contact me personally but here again I'm sure that students who are merely drifting, rather than facing some definite crisis, are overlooked. |
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Janet Taylor
Posts: 10
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| 30/05/2007 23:40 |
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| Yes I know your concern. This is why in some of our first year course we have a very early assignment...this can allow students to assess their readiness, but is the first point of contact they will have with their lecturer or tutor (in some of our very large distance courses we partition the class, so that a smaller group works with a specific remote tutor). Like Jim we encourage students to make contact with us whether the problem is big or small...but I have a growing concern about help-seeking behaviour in students. It is a complex issue that it not clearly understood....although Glegg's work does bring some light on the matter, it is something that both staff and students need to know more about. In some of my work it is clear that students know what they should do, but do not do it. |
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Jim Baxter
Posts: 17
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| 31/05/2007 09:09 |
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We too will have much more specific and frequent tutor-student online contact next year - it wasn't possible this year - and so have a more efficient 'early-warning' system, from teaching week two.
I'm sure that we're all familiar with the students who shut themselves off early and ignore attempts to contact them, only to turn up later in the year, sometimes much later, apologising for not 'having had my head together' and asking if there is anything they can do to retrieve the situation. Others, of course, just don't care. Invisible in the absentee list are students who may be in some serious despair. |
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Derek Rowntree
Posts: 35
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| 31/05/2007 09:49 |
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From radio onwards, so much of modern technology excels at delivering information to mass audiences (and leaving them to discuss it amongst themselves). But I think we still have no way of getting to know people's individual needs, and offering individualised support, without being in personal and regular communication with them.
Jim reminds us that some at-risk students may well resist that communication, sometimes no doubt because they don't want to admit to us (and possibly to themselves) that they aren't coping. We want to save them but how many students' personal academic progress can any one tutor be seriously expected to nurture? |
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Jim Baxter
Posts: 17
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| 31/05/2007 10:54 |
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| I think the answer to Derek's last point is, 'not much', unfortunately. It's been said elsewhere in the discussions at this meeting that the best way to get students to behave like responsible adults is to treat them as though that's what they are. That has certainly always been my approach. To some extent some students must, once when we have done what we can, be allowed to fail. Some support must be provided but providing too many safety nets militates against personal growth and reinforces dependency. |
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