Success for All?

My blog posts have had a dry run of late: my excuse is that I have been heavily involved for the past 6 months in preparing for the re-validation of our course (in Health and Social Care) whilst my teaching has also been halved, so less to talk about.

I think too that I am going through something of a reshuffle in terms of where I stand on technology enhanced teaching and learning. For the first time in a while I haven't submitted any conference abstracts or even booked myself a place on anything remotely techy.

Don't think for a moment that I have reached a point where I believe I know everything (as if!) or that I am bored with the whole shebang. No  - I think it is simply that my focus has necessarily been shifted to new challenges.

Another issue which I have to recognise is that when I arrived as Course Leader, hot from having delivered a distance learning programme at another institution, I was the Tech Queen in a world of paper addicted Luddites (and that was their description, not mine!).

In the past 7 years I have seen the course move to 100% e-submission of assignments; greatly improved use of the VLE; widespread use of Socrative, Poll Everywhere and Padlet to enhance lectures; lecture capture as standard; more colleagues opting for Scale Up type delivery and several modules now requiring students to submit blog posts, build websites and create video documentaries.

Of course, this wasn't all my doing: we have a digital skills strategy in the University and a project aimed at developing interactive teaching methods, which, together with considerable capital investment in the infrastructure has made a huge impact on what it is now possible to do and I am no longer needed as the pathfinder, or even, too often, as a mentor.

Students too are different now: 7 years ago my intro to digital skills sessions took place in a computer lab where I had to start by teaching students how to switch on the PC. Now they arrive on the first day with their Lenovo Yogas and iPads having already formed social bonds through our course Facebook group.

So what are my new challenges? I think primarily it is about narrowing attainment gaps: between BTEC and A level students, BME and white students, disabled students and not, the mature and the young, men and women.

I don't know if this is even possible but I know there is a huge drive to attempt it and I am really interested in the debates. Widening participation in education is a Good Thing in and of itself, but making a success of University education does require skill, dedication, focus - and I am talking here about teaching staff. It takes effort and imagination to prepare students to succeed.

On our course we have tried a number of new approaches in the past year.

One such was the Undergraduate Research Conference aimed both at developing research skills in our own students and at raising awareness in prospective students currently studying BTEC courses.

Another, was a Welcome Week activity focused on Diversity and Equality. This was based on research suggesting, amongst other things, that opening up discussions about identity and values at an early stage helped to increase students' sense of belonging. To kick start the activity, we used an Open Learn module as pre-reading then simply got students engaged in conversations about what "identity" meant to them. The discussions were fascinating, uncomfortable, moving and hugely valued by the students.

Another recent event was based on the Human Library idea, with students volunteering to be human books for others to explore different experiences.

Obviously, there isn't a silver bullet: increasing the number of BME staff, developing more of a global focus on the course, individual tutor support, more inclusive teaching practices and a review of assessment practices are all part of the recipe for success. I think you will agree we have our work cut out.

And will technology enhanced teaching and learning have a role in all of this?

On the one hand, it can be a great leveller in terms of inclusive teaching - especially simple things like posting lecture notes to the VLE, lecture capture (ok - that's not all that simple) and using Padlet and polling software in lectures. Working in Scale Up with lap tops available also can help bridge the digital divide as I can sit with students and demonstrate, hands on, how they can achieve certain tasks. But our "widening participation" students are often the least confident, the least well equipped with technology, the least proficient in English, and so trying to create a digital artefact outside of class, navigating their way around online platforms, is often the biggest challenge.

So this year I have given my final year students a number of options for the completion of their reflective digital stories that allow them to use simpler technology or familiar formats. Not the end of my love affair with technology, by any means, just a pause for reflection.

Blog wrangling.... a guide for beginners

Ok so this isn't actually going to teach you anything about blogging (or cattle wrangling come to that).... rather it's an account of how I have been getting on with constructing a class blog.

In the past couple of years I have set my final year students a task of conveying their reflections on leadership values through the medium of interpretive dance the photostory. This year I decided not to repeat that exercise (as this particular cohort had already done something similar in their first year) but instead asked them to write a blog post - working in small groups -  about what leadership means to them.

I was inspired to do this by a colleague who had dome something similar with his class the previous year: however, in his case, he had asked his students to develop their ideas in a Word Document which he had then uploaded to a blog he'd created. (Sensible chap it turns out).

Naturally that wasn't complicated enough for me; no, I decided to create a multi author blog which the students could edit themselves. I figured that learning to blog was a useful 21st century skill in itself, so, heck - why not?

I tried to smooth the process along by creating a couple of screen cast videos to show them how to post, step by step, and this has worked well in the majority of cases, but a few are still struggling to create and publish their first post. However, that is understandable. What is surprising (as always) are the unforeseen "challenges" of a multi author blog composed of almost complete blog novices.

So - first problem: I send out invites to the blog to the students' Uni emails and they then set up a Blogger account using a different ID (particularly if they have created a multi-access account/password), so it's quite tricky (but not impossible with a little lateral thinking) to work out who is who.....

Then because they are working in groups I have to set up a spreadsheet that records who is working with whom. Again, not too difficult as they email me with the details, but a bit of extra work.

The real doozy is how they then seem to get lost somewhere between setting up a Blogger ID and accepting my invitation and end up creating a completely separate blog !?!?! I have managed to guide most of them back to the correct site - and one student decided she liked hers so much she is going to carry on using it as her reflective space for the remainder of the year - but I really didn't see that coming.

I have had some positive feedback from students: some have really enjoyed learning a new skill, especially, the older students in the group who worried they weren't cut out to handle this "internet technology thingy". There are also some really creative, fun, engaging and reflective posts being published, so the exercise is achieving its main aim. But I am left wondering what if anything I could do to make things run a little more smoothly next year - short of asking them to send me a word document which I upload....

And maybe some of the learning that comes out of these missteps will actually prove valuable: one student told me that she had previously been asked to write blog posts for the charity she works for - but only in a Word Document and never actually posting and editing on line herself. She was really pleased that she had now had this experience of actually contributing to a "live" blog - and indeed of setting up her own (which, naturally, she did by accident!).

The next stage is to try and get the students to leave comments for one another (I admit, I am going to moderate these!) and I will give each group feedback in the form of comments too. Once everyone is happy with the finished product, I am going to ask their permission to publish the blog so that they can see their efforts out there in the public sphere.

*UPDATE* here's the link: https://leadingteams2016.blogspot.co.uk/

Office Mix is Awesome

Had a very frustrating day yesterday trying to edit and upload a short screencast video to show my students how to post to a blog. I used ScreenCastOMatic (works just fine!) but then really struggled to edit it in Movie Maker (admittedly an old version that really doesn't work well with Windows 10). Adding an audio track also proved impossible as the Windows 10-provided Voice Recorder kept crashing on me. So I tried downloading other recommended Windows movie maker apps but found them too irritating with in app purchases and ads etc.

Next I uploaded the video to old favourite WeVideo online platform: all went smoothly but couldn't for some reason manage to publish it with an audio track (it's never failed me before.... I'm beginning to dislike Windows 10......)

I ended up doing a second screencast of my screen cast (!!!!) this time with audio, editing the video also using ScreenCastOMatic and then finally publishing that to YouTube. I know I could have done a voiceover from the get-go but there were reasons why I couldn't that I won't bore you with.

Anyway, a relatively happy ending.

But then today I remembered someone mentioning Office Mix. So - I downloaded it, watched the introductory tutorial videos, created a screen recording within a slide, with audio, uploaded it to Office Mix online, copied the link into my learning room and "Voila!!"  I think it took about 20 minutes.

Oh - and it's free!

So happy am I that I am going to recommend this to my students as the number one tool for creating their digital stories next term :)

In the meantime, the students are about to embark on creating a class blog about leadership values. I decided to move away from the simple photostory we had done in the previous two years, partly because this cohort already did that in Year 1. And because I think writing for an audience is a useful skill which is a little more taxing at this level than a simple photo +caption artefact.

More on this in my next post :)

Building Students' Research Skills - Reflections

An unintended consequence of the Undergraduate Research Conference we ran in April is that it is being held up as an example (within my University at least) of how we can prepare and support BTEC students in their transition to University AND of widening participation.

I say unintended because the original plan was simply to try and get our existing students engaged in research. Inviting local colleges to participate - especially those in disadvantaged areas - and focusing on current BTEC students ticked the boxes around widening participation for our Schools Colleges and Community Outreach team, but the focus on research skills also provided extra study skills support for those current undergraduates with a BTEC background.

I was invited (along with my colleague Sarah Barkley from SCCO) to talk about the event at a recent BTEC Symposium - here is the Prezi:

#altc Tell it like it is!

oh dear! I have been quiet recently....

well, the new academic year looms and even before I get to experience that particular joy, I have a session to deliver at ALTC in Warwick next week - on the theme of Digital Storytelling (of course).

You can get a preview of my presentation via the Prezi below. It includes a short video with highlights from this year's crop of stories. For more posts on my journey, click on the digital storytelling label below.



What's next?

I am going to be using the same assessment with my final year students this year - I think both they and I have found it to be a very creative and engaging task, and as a way of reflecting on learning it is proving to be very effective: far more so than the traditional assessments I have used in the past.

This year's batch are going to be especially interesting as this is the only cohort that will have completed a digital story in both years 1 and 3. I hesitated for a while about whether to ask them to repeat the assignment but I think doing so will allow both them and me to compare the two artefacts and measure the distance travelled....

Building students' research skills

Winners of the best overall poster on Elder Abuse

And so - it's finally been and gone. The past few weeks have been a bit of a nightmare but in the end I think we can say it was a success and definitely worth doing again.

So here's the low down - what we did and why, the outcomes, and the do's and dont's of organising an Undergraduate Research Conference.

The problem: students at Level 6 approaching their capstone dissertation show limited understanding of the basics of research methods, poor referencing skills and even worse skills in searching for appropriate literature.

The Level 4 introduction to referencing and literature searching and the Level 5 Research Methods are dismissed time and time again in students' module evaluations as boring and irrelevant. So for the past 4 years as a team we have been rethinking our approach. The problem seems to lie in students applying their skills so having an authentic assessment task at the end of the first year seemed like a possible way forward, and an undergraduate research conference that involved an audience of fellow students, teaching and support staff, local employers and colleges, seemed like a way of achieving this.

The task: students were required to produce a research poster related to a contemporary Health and Social Care issue. Students chose their own topics, worked in small groups, carrying out independent research and presented their final work as either a PowerPoint slide (templates are available in Powerpoint), as a Prezi or a Padlet wall. Independent research had to include a literature review (for the final poster) and could incorporate a small scale piece of primary research (typically a survey of fellow students or teaching staff).

As a formative task, in preparation for the final poster, students had to prepare a short presentation (5 minutes - 5/6 slides only) in which they pitched their research proposal. This was fairly structured with specific questions to be answered, including an early indication of the literature used so far. I was able to give feedback on referencing and quality of sources (see results) and used this as an opportunity to also discuss the appropriateness of proposed research methods, including ethical considerations.


The teaching methods: the module is supported by a team of teachers including our Subject Librarian (Emma Hayes) and Learning Support Coordinator (Sian Trafford), as well as a Post Graduate Researcher (Louise Griffiths).  Emma and Sian took charge of literature searching and referencing, Louise supported the students to produce an academic research poster and I taught a basic introduction to research methodology. The module is taught in the Scale Up classroom which really lends itself to interactive, group based activities, so traditional lecturing was kept to a minimum. Emma really livened up a potentially rather dull area by employing Socrative for competitive team quizzes on referencing and Padlet was used regularly to capture groups' ideas. As the task was group based, Scale Up (with round tables for up to 9 students and laptops available) makes the ideal environment for students to get on with tasks in class, with tutor support on hand. Sessions are typically 40% teacher input (mini lectures, tutorial support and directed activities) and 60% independent project work.


The results: The great thing about having a formative task mid-way through the process is that it allowed us to see what was going well and what the students were not quite grasping. Looking at the group presentations, it was clear that the messages about using good quality resources was not going in and many references were to news media (the Daily Mail ranked high in the list of publications!) and digest websites such as Psychology Today. In a tragic case of mis-timing I gave students the feedback on the same day they were asked to complete their module evaluations, so you can imagine how that went.... Whilst the proposals were imaginative and dealt with relevant issues, the level of research skills was not particularly great. Here are the stats for this particular criterion:

Adjusting the remaining teaching sessions, we went over literature search techniques, evaluation of sources and referencing once again and insisted that a short literature review of at least 3 peer reviewed articles be included in the final poster.


This time, we saw a real improvement:

The week before the conference, I ran a drop in session in which students were given detailed feedback on their posters and the winning submissions for the conference were announced. This session saw a lot of smiling faces - even those who hadn't been selected were really pleased with their results, as in the majority if cases they had seen an improvement in their grades.

Poster themes were very varied including several on mental health - one looked at Bipolar Disorder  in Children, another at Men and Depression; one contrasted postnatal depression in British White and British Pakistani women and 2 dealt with students and mental health. Men as Victims of Domestic Abuse, Elder Abuse, Workplace Bullying, Child Protection and Fostering were other topics studied.

For the conference, we simply selected the posters with the highest grades. The idea was to have visitors voting on their favourites and to award prizes for the three best -  best poster by college students, best undergraduate and best overall.


The conference: We were fortunate in having the support of our excellent Schools Outreach and Marketing teams to help with the logistics. We also had a ready made venue (our normal Scale Up classroom was big enough for the modest numbers proposed providing sufficient display space for the posters, as well as suitable seating arrangements for the discussion groups and presentations).

The half day event included short talks on post graduate research and careers in health and social care (giving our students an idea of what they can aim for) and discussion groups on independent learning and research skills (this latter session hosted by a 2nd year student, Sarah Swanwick) to help first year students think about their progression on the course and to give Year 12 students from local colleges an idea of what study at University is all about.

These sessions all evaluated really well. Undergraduates tended to prefer the session on independent learning whilst the college students were most interested in the talk on careers. Other interesting feedback from the college students was that they came to the event not having considered this as a degree subject (even though they were all studying a Health and Social Care A level or BTEC award), tending rather to think in terms of a nursing or social work qualification, but they ended the day having far greater insight into available careers in the field and even considering applying for this course!

For the college students, the highlight of the event was meeting current undergraduates and teaching staff whilst our undergraduates enjoyed looking at one another's posters best of all. They were also interested to meet teaching staff they had not yet encountered (those who teach primarily on the 3rd year dissertation module came along to vote in the best poster competition) and at least one of our first year students has acquired a work placement with the local health and social care organisation that was represented on the day.


The final verdict and some notes to self: The hardest part of the whole conference was getting people there. Timing was tricky - we could not run the event any earlier because of the assignment deadlines (set for the last week of Term 2), but as it fell after Easter, it clashed with mock exams in colleges which reduced the participation from that quarter. Some of our third year students had originally asked if they could be involved running discussion groups in order to get feedback they needed for a project evaluation but pulled out at the last minute (one less than 8 hours before!) when they suddenly realised this was the week their final dissertation was due to be submitted.....

Most disappointing was that three groups who had had their posters selected for the final conference and competition did not send any representatives on the day. Interestingly these were also the only groups that had submitted Prezis, so with no one at their displays to press the buttons and talk visitors through their work, they were largely ignored and attracted only a handful of votes in each case.

I don't really know how to solve these problems. With a bigger venue and budget and more support from the rest of the course team, I think this could become a display of ALL posters (about 30 in total). With potentially 150 students involved, drop outs would be less of an issue. As for the college students - we had applications from 20 but only 8 made it on the day - starting recruitment earlier and providing more support to the colleges could help, but timing is probably still likely to be an issue.

For those who came, it was definitely worthwhile: staff were impressed at the quality of the work, our local authority visitors were really engaged talking to students and delighted to have been invited, those students who turned up gave us a big thumbs up in their satisfaction ratings (yes - much better than the module evaluation!!) and the poster competition and presentation of small prizes and certificates made for a great celebration of their efforts.

The next step is to try and bring this level of engagement into the second year module.  I would like to have both years involved in the same event, perhaps as part of a summative assessment task. And eventually all 3 years.  My hope is that this becomes part of our normal academic year, with conversations about research theory and practice between all students and staff seen as both a normal part of teaching and learning and also something to occasionally get excited about.

Celebrating student research

There are number of problems in getting students to engage with research: it can be quite difficult for first year students in particular (but not first years exclusively!) to "get" the point of research; it can be a challenge for them to design their own research projects and it is even more challenging for them to read academic research articles. Nonetheless, I think it is a nettle worth grasping for all sorts of reasons - and as early as possible in the undergraduate life-cycle.

This year I have been engaged in a year long project trying out a new way (for me) of encouraging first year students to engage with research - one that is to culminate in a few weeks' time (18 April 2016) with an undergraduate research conference.

The process began back in the first term with an open door conversation between first and second year students on the significance of research in their studies and the sharing of ideas about possible research themes. I then invited library and learning support staff and a couple of early career researchers to come in to my classes and teach basic skills. I also provided an introduction to research methodologies, methods and ethics, and devised various activities around constructing surveys and interview questions.

Since Christmas the students have been working in small groups to investigate a topic of their own choosing - firstly outlining this in a five minute presentation to the rest of the cohort, and secondly, designing a research poster which has to include a literature review and some primary research of their own (mainly based on surveys of their fellow students).

On the whole - judging from the results so far - the students seem to have enjoyed this activity and are certainly showing evidence of beginning to "get" research. Some of the primary research has been creative: one group surveyed a small group of social work lecturers to get a professional's eye-view of child protection; others sent out survey invitations via the course Facebook group. Similarly, the approach to poster design has allowed many to show their artistic and technical flair with a number using Prezi, and many incorporating really eye catching visuals.

The skills the students acquire during this process are multiple: information searching; evaluation of literature and research results; managing group work; presentation of information in graphical form; writing concisely; citation and referencing; finding, downloading, inserting and editing copyright free images; communicating ideas verbally and in public..... and probably lots more.

And yes - if you are thinking this all sounds like really hard work - it is. Students constantly complain to me that the whole business of working in groups is painful (and I empathise to some extent: it's damned painful for me sorting out squabbles and no-shows!); they extol the virtues of lecturers who simply give them handouts and essay questions to turn in at the year end; I get dispirited by the rubbish module evaluation results I get as a result ... and on top of all that I have a bloomin' conference to organise! I have to keep telling myself  - and them - that it will all be worth it in the end: and now the posters are being submitted for marking - you know what? I almost believe it is!

So the conference will be a chance for the students to show off all their hard work: students from local school and colleges will make up the audience. There will be short, themed discussions; presentations from post graduate researchers and final year students; and I am hoping the course budget will stretch to tea and cake .....

I promise there will be a full report here on my blog, with photos and examples of students' work, just as soon as I have recovered! In the meantime - here's a short video I created for the schools and colleges we have invited to participate, explaining how to create a research poster.

Engaging with Feedback

http://mindinbexley.org.uk/feedback/

It's a common complaint of teaching staff that they spend hours carefully crafting feedback only to have students ignore it - especially first and second years. I know in my own team we have discussed this endlessly, raised it in course committees, berated students in class, introduced the topic into tutor groups....

This year I think I may have accidentally hit on something. Students in year 1 have just finished a group presentation which is worth 30% of their final grade and is the precursor to a more in depth piece of work that results in an academic research poster (and undergraduate mini-conference: more of that later!)

Feedback on their presentation was virtually instantaneous: I typed it up as they presented and published the feedback on the VLE a couple of hours later. Naturally they all immediately looked to see what grade they had received.

Then in this week's class I gave them an exercise to do on using Gibbs' reflective cycle. Principally, my intention was to get them to think about how they had performed as a team. I know the process of working in a group was very difficult for some individuals and I wanted to get some feedback from the majority on how it had gone. However, in their reflections they also took the opportunity to READ THE FEEDBACK I had given them and to use that to think about how they could improve their presentation and communication skills going forward.

A key factor in this is that I had given them another two weeks after their presentation to work on and formally submit their PowerPoint or Prezi, thereby potentially improving their grade. This has also stimulated them to read and understand the feedback they have been given. I think another factor not to be ignored is that they performed their presentations in front of one another and they were able to learn from this how other groups had approached the task. One of the problems with tutor/student dialogue is that it is most often private: other students rarely see how their peers perform and don't know how to judge themselves against any benchmark other than the grading criteria. As well as socially constructed learning at the level of knowledge and understanding, these types of group based public assessments can help to construct a shared understanding of practical approaches and skills.

I have done an activity along these lines with the final year students for the past couple of years: following on from their student-led learning activities, each group reflects on a) the group process b) the feedback from me c) the evaluations provided by their peers and d) their own evaluation of how the session went, and they then present this evaluation as an assessed submission.

The reflective exercise I did with the first years was not assessed but it certainly yielded some interesting comments:

On "what I would do differently next time", they said:

"do more research"
"have note cards instead of reading from the screen"
"less text and more images on the slides"
"use our personal experience to give examples"
"add citations"
"speak slowly and loudly"
"use academic journals instead of websites"
"include statistics"
"be more organised and don't start at the last minute"
"arrange more team meetings"

Ah! music to my ears......now lets just hope they put it all into practice!

#melsigntu My takeaways

http://img.docstoccdn.com/thumb/orig/6584122.png 

Yesterday was my first ever MELSIG event and - apart from presenting my own work on digital storytelling - I got a great deal out of it, as always at these type of events, by chatting with lots of like minded souls and catching up with Twitter buddies.

My three takeaways are:

1) from Chris Thomson at JISC - that though it is true that stories are a part of our everyday lives, not everyone knows how to write/construct one.... so....
2) the Story Mountain (see above) could be a brilliant framework to share with students (I missed this session but picked up the idea on the Twitter stream)
and
3) that I should be brave and revisit DS106 as, after Viv Rolfe's fascinating talk, I found there much to get inspired by!

OK - one more: I really should go back to Storify and use it with my students on curation and research tasks, as Sue Beckingham advocated so eloquently.... making and telling a good story with storify 

I was also asked a very interesting question about the previous academic experience of my students and whether it made any difference to their approach to the digital story format. The hypothesis - which I plan to test - is that those from a BTEC background were more comfortable with a non-traditional assessment than the A level students. I have the data - just need to get rummaging through it.

#melsig #melsigntu Digital Narratives

It seems only fair that I finally put together my own digital story! So here are my slides for the #melsigntu event, complete with voice over.

 


And here are just the slides:

Tell me a story from Jane Challinor

 
Other useful links referred to in my video:

Jenny Moon's Map of Learning:conference hand out or to buy the book

Digital Storytelling in Education website

21C Skills video (animation - in Spanish): 

Go Joven Project - Health Education Digital Story (in Spanish with English subtitles)

Digital storytelling from the students' perspective

My previous blog posts outlining the process I went through with my students - and their examples/feedback: Digistory posts

And finally, an example of a digital story produced by one of my final year students (and a far better one than than my attempt!) :

Opening the doors on peer to peer learning

A couple of weeks ago my colleague and I ran our mash-up/open-door session for first and second years on "choosing your research topic"

I term it "open door" because we literally had partition doors opened between our respective classes that run at the same time on a Monday afternoon. My colleague takes the second years for a research skills module whilst I am next door teaching the first years a general introduction to studying in HE, which is presently focused on developing a group reseach project.

We planned the session as a "world cafe" event to give students from one year an opportunity to meet as many in the other as possible. Each table had a "host", a question to be discussed and flipchart paper and pens.

The questions were:

A= What are the big issues currently in the news concerning health and social care?

B = What issues in health and social care do you think are neglected? (could benefit from more research)

C = What are the best resources to help you with your research?

D = What makes a group project/presentation really successful?

E= How does work experience help with understanding subjects studied on the course (and vice versa)

F = What are your career plans and how could your research help you achieve them? 

The event went pretty much as planned and there was a fabulous level energy in the room - LOTS of chat and laughter and the table hosts fed back using a hand held mic, to general applause.

At the end of the session we used audience response "clickers" to get some instant feedback. In general, the reaction from the students was very positive - 66% of all responses indicated that meeting other students and learning from one another were much appreciated, just 10% felt it was NOT useful.

When asked if they wanted a repeat session, the first years were 65% against and the second years 66% against. However, there were slight variations in the two iterations of the session.
In group one (76 students), which was actually quite crowded (most students preferred the earlier start time and came along depsite what their timetable said...) the feeling was more pronounced - particularly amongst the 2nd years (76% said no). In the second session, a much smaller number overall (46 students), the second years were actually more positive and 60% voted in favour of a repeat session. This second group contained a number of mature second year students who reported that they had enjoyed taking on a mentoring role with the younger students.

52% of all students said that overall the session had helped them to understand the importance of research on the course but only 20% felt they were any clearer about their actual choice of research topic. In a sense this is not that surprising as it is still very early in the term and such decisions have yet to be finalised. And for the first year students, this was the first time they had been asked to think about this question.

There were however some tangible outputs in the form of flipcharts full of research topic ideas, (which we also photographed and later posted on the VLE).

Before embarking on this session I had crowdsourced a bit of advice. One comment that really stood out from Joan Mahoney at the HEA  was to really think about what you are trying to achieve.

With hindsight, I suspect we were trying to achieve too much, too soon; asking for some volunteer mentors to help the first years think about designing their research topics might work better, whilst this could also provide a more structured experience for the 2nd year mentors, especially with better advance briefing or training.

Having now set the first year students off on developing their group research projects, I do feel that they have a better grasp of current issues and are ready to engage with them, so the "topics brainstorm" element of the open doors session was definitely helpful. The other thing I have noticed is a major increase of late in traffic on the course Facebook groups (first and second years) where students have lately been posting relevant articles, book recommendations and even guidance on how to select a research topic - including references back to the joint session we ran. Second year students have also suggested that they would welcome some joint teaching with Year 3 around research.

So nothing conclusive from the experiment, but definitely food for thought for future research teaching across all three years.

Reflecting on the digital story

image: jane challinor

Over the summer I have been working with colleagues at UIB on a paper outlining our adventures with digital storytelling. We reached a conclusion that whilst as a learning activity it had value in promoting collaboration and an awareness of open educational practices as well as developing digital skills, there are caveats about its use for developing reflective skills, particularly with students at the beginning of their university studies.

What we found, in broad terms is that more mature students are better at reflecting (that is they reflect more deeply). This has led me to conclude that as an activity designed to promote reflectivity - and especially as a reflective assessment tool - it is perhaps best left until the final year.

For me this was also borne out by the large number of first year students who failed to submit the digital story at the first (and even 2nd) attempt. This could just be a consequence of having a large number of student last year (ie we were just more likely to have students who had unrelated problems that prevented them from submitting) but in reality the module had the highest number of referred and non-submitting students across the course (around 10%) whereas in the past it has had the lowest incidence of non-submission and referral.

Well - I may be jumping the gun in putting this all down to the mode of final assessment, and it is certainly the case that the final year students all submitted and all passed - most at a high level, but it has certainly given me pause for thought.

Indeed I have already decided to change the mode of assessment for the first year module this year, reverting to a group research project which has worked well in the past. I will though run the same assessment for the final years.

Ok - but what did the first year students think? I am going to be giving a guest session on the second year research module later in the year and I have decided to use the digital storytelling project as my theme. I have therefore asked the students themselves to provide me with feedback on their experience of the final assessment last academic year - and I will feedback to them the findings of that survey.

So here's a sneak preview. I have had 52 responses so far out of a cohort of 126 (41%). Of these 90% are female (this reflects the makeup of the cohort) and 70% are aged 18-24.
23% are over 35 years old.

In creating their digital story, 70% used Prezi, 24% Powerpoint (12 students) and 6% another online tool - Knovio.  As a result of their experience, 75% said they are likely to use the same or another online tool in future for presentations and collaborative tasks. Just 28% (14 students) said they would only use PowerPoint going forward (suggesting that 2 students have tried online platforms and decided to revert to PowerPoint).

What did they get out of the experience?
78% thought it fun
57% thought it was technically challenging
85% said it had helped them to improve their reflective skills
82% said it had helped them improve their digital skills
80% thought it had given them confidence to create content on line
86% thought it relevant to their studies
but just 47% thought it relevant to their future career - and only 44% would mention this as a skill on their CV

Comments from the students expand a little on these results:

Positive and constructive feedback:

a. I feel like the digital story assignment was not quite challenging enough. It seemed to be more of an easy and fun task to complete . 

b. On reflection I should of challenged myself more. Been more adventures

c. I really enjoyed this assignment and it boosted my self confidence. I was very proud at what I had achieved and how much I had progressed.

d. I found the digital story difficult and daunting to begin with, but eventually enjoyed creating my story and proud that I did so.

e. Digital story was something I had usually done in the medium of film. I'm really glad we had this assignment as it opened my eyes to more digital platforms. I also think this would be a fantastic tool to use with certain more tech minded service users

f. It was very enjoyable, relevant to my studies, and gave you chance to create a bit of fun into studies rather than essays, it gave you a breather from the heavy work. Before I came to your lesson I did not know about Prezi but I will certainly use it again,

g. Enjoyable task however, talking in the video was a little tasking, a lot of preparation is needed for someone who lacks in confidence
__________________________________________________________________________________________

Negative feedback:
h. I think that it was completely pointless and irrelevant to our course. I don't know why we needed to do it personally, and I think that it should be scraped for the new people starting the course.


i. I just thought the story telling was irrelevant to what we needed to do most people didn't want to do it I perfer the other tasks this one was just too much



On the whole, the student response is a lot more positive than I had anticipated. Interestingly the two final, highly negative comments came from students in the 18-24 year old group. These were the only two completely negative responses, and even one of these (i) felt that her digital and reflective skills had improved as a result of the task. The more positive comments (c-f) came from the over 35's.

I do now have some regret about abandoning the reflective digital story this year. However, the use of digital tools to present the outcomes of research will form a large part of the final group project that they are engaged in this year. Hopefully, this will preserve the "fun" and creative elements of the assessment task as well as continuing to develop confidence in creating online content.

Vertical Teaching

In response to suggestions from students, a colleague and I have volunteered to run an open class for first and second years together in Term 1.

We are both engaged in teaching research skills - albeit at different levels - and in this session we will be encouraging students to share and develop ideas about possible research projects they are going to do this year. A hoped for by product is a sharing of experiences and developing bonds between the two year groups.

We don't currently have a PAL, PASS or student mentoring system in place - we have tried this in the past with little success, but it is something I'd like to see resurrected - and this open class could be the beginning.

However, being uncertain how to go about such a venture, and wondering if anyone had tried this before, I used the LDHEN email list to solicit ideas, links, advice. Here's what I got back.

Sandra Abegglen (London Met): 
Abegglen, S., Burns, T. & Sinfield, S. (2015). Voices from the margins: Narratives of learning development in a digital age. The Journal of Educational Innovation, Partnership and Change, 1(1). Available online: https://journals.gre.ac.uk/index.php/studentchangeagents/article/view/148

I am also running a blog that gives insight into the work we are doing: http://peermentoringinpractice.com/

Sandra Sinfield (London Met): we run a second year module: Peer Mentoring in Practice (PMiP) which wraps around a core first year module: Becoming an Educationalist.

Part of the work of the second year module is to support the first years with their developing sense of belonging - and also to facilitate their various first year projects: blogging to learn; develop a digital me; study & academic skills research project.

We have the modules running concurrently - and specifically the third hour of the PMiP module requires the students to be with the first year students.

Ricardo Eversely (London Met): I teach within the Visual Communication cluster on the BA Graphic Design and Illustration courses. We currently employ this system within our Design School teaching at www.thecass.com

It's called the Studio System here at The Cass and works within a framework that sees 2nd and 3rd year students sharing the same workspace for three out of their four modules throughout the year. MY STUDIOS TO DATE

Liz Thomas (Edgehill): There are a range of examples of across year collaboration in the Compendium of Effective Practice in Directed Independent Learning (https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resource/compendium-effective-practice-directed-independent-learning) which might give you some ideas.

Joan Mahoney (HEA Academy):  Here are some slides I used for a workshop last year. https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/peer_learning_workshop_presentation.pdf

There’s a few research references in these. The key thing, I think, (its almost impossible!) is finding time to really plan and to think through each step. Be really clear what it is that you are doing. E.g are you providing mentoring? are you providing peer-led learning? (students need to be clear they are not teaching). There are a whole pile of nuts and bolts that need to be considered (noted in the slides).  If everyone is clear what it is they are involved in, and are using the same language, that helps

Nicholas Bowskill (Derby): We've done this for various applications including student induction & transition. The important point for us was to make sessions benefit both Year1 and Year2 students. We ran a student-generated transition session for 2nd year students so they could talk and listen to each other. We then ran a student-generated induction session for Year 1 students so they could do the same. We then had Year2 students respond to the issues raised by Year1 students.

The outcome was a chance to reflect for Year2 students (on previous year and their second year at university). It was a chance for Year 1 students to recognise they weren't alone in having particular concerns. It also provided a 'shape' or structure for the Year 2 students to mentor Year1 students in a socially-contingent manner.

We've done it between academics and students as two interacting cohorts as well. We thought it was valuable to understand the journey from student to academic and vice versa. In that instance, we had students collaborate about reflective practice (what does it mean, how can we work together etc). Then we had academics collaborate as a department on the same issues (what did reflective practice mean to them etc). We then shared and discussed the thinking of both groups and it was very illuminating for all concerned. We're extending that work at the moment (to both sides of the 'partnership' concept).

It was a way of extending the idea of Student As Partner/Producer to intergroup ways of thinking and working. There's also a workshop in London coming up if you want to experience it firsthand. We do bespoke workshops too. Details online at: http://bit.ly/sharedthinking 

Thanks to everyone who shared their ideas - hope it's been of benefit to others too: I'll be blogging about the set up and outcomes as we go along.

#ueef15 - "Conta’m un conte... digital, per favor"/ "Tell Me a Story - make it digital!"

On Wednesday 9th September I am going to present at the Summer School of the Unversity of the Balearic Isands (UIB) Ibiza - sadly, by Skype and not in person.

The theme is "trending topics in ITC" and my session is about the digital storytelling project I have been working on with Gemmar Tur and Victoria Marin from UIB over the past year.

Here is the Prezi in Spanish:


and the English version:

Tell me a story from Jane Challinor

So what is a digital story? For me, this means a mixed media presentation, living on the web, which probably incorporates music, images, written words and – possibly – the author’s voice.

When I Googled "cuentos digitales" on Google.es, in preparation for this event, I mainly found stories for children, but in the collaborative study, our use of digital storytelling focused on reflection on learning by students in HE who are engaged in professional education (teaching and health and social care professions).

Storytelling is a very ancient human activity and one that has been used for millennia in the realm of education. Stories contact deeper emotions and call for greater creativity than the usual essay, report or portfolio and they are almost innately reflective – indeed, reflection in a professional setting often starts with the recounting of a story. The story form allows us to make sense of events and our own thoughts, but also allows us to see things from a different perspective.

Why a DIGITAL story? 

Firstly, the platforms available to us on which to create digital stories lend themselves to a multimedia creation which engages the audience on many different levels: music and imagery combine to affect us emotionally and aesthetically. Also, for students preparing for employment these days, the development of 21^st century skills – including digital competence – is essential. Creating a digital story therefore provides an authentic task (reflection on learning/reflection for professional development) which at the same time develops digital skills. Furthermore, the use of OER (as embedded resources and as a finished artefact) teaches important lessons about collaboration, digital identity and copyright whilst providing a platform on which to share our ideas, our stories, with the wider world.

What are the benefits of digital storytelling?

Obviously – increasing digital confidence and competence. But also - allowing creative expression, giving a voice to those with little confidence in academic writing, giving students the opportunity to practise speaking in public. And most students (over 80% in my end of year survey) find it a fun assignment to do.

Are there any disadvantages?

It can be a real challenge for anyone not used to working on the web or using digital tools – students AND teachers.

For the teacher - it can take longer to plan classes, putting appropriate scaffolding in place to guide the less confident students. If you are going to grade the finished story, you need to think about marking schemes or rubrics – for both the digital and the reflective elements.

For the student – some guidance is needed on keeping safe on a public platform and thinking about the crafting of your digital identity

So – HOW do you make a digital story?

Fortunately there are lots of step by step guides available. My favourite website is: http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/  (which also gives guidance on platforms and tools you can use)  and this is the original digital storytelling site http://storycenter.org/

What did the students think?

It was:

Fun 82%

Technically challenging 62%

Improved my digital skills 90%

Helped me to become more reflective 83%

Relevant to my studies 85%

Relevant to my future career 44%

As a result I am more likely to:

reflect on my learning 90%

reflect on my professional practice 86%

use the same tool again 75%

try other online tools 75%

stick to PowerPoint 28%

be cautious about sharing personal information on line 75%

mention this as a skill on my CV 46%

Interestingly, the students I surveyed (in their first year) generally didn't see this as an "employability skill",  although this was an aspect mentioned by the final year students. (For more detail about themes explored in the stories -  and more student feedback -  see previous blog posts)

This is not really so surprising given the stage the students are at, but it does perhaps point to the fact that more work needs to be done to set the professional context for this activity in future.