Reflecting on reflection

Moon,(1999) Map of Learning

An interesting by-product of the international virtual collaboration project is that it is really making me focus much more closely on the subject of reflection in learning and professional development. Indeed that is the title of a really great book by Jenny Moon which has been the inspiration for my redesign of my study skills module .

The aim of the assessment in my module is to enhance students' reflective skills - and, along the way, their digital skills - by asking them to develop (part 1) digital artefacts which reflect their thoughts and feelings about their future careers and (part 2) tell the story of their learning journey through their first transitional year as "becoming" professionals.

I have been ruminating on the precise tools to be used in this first exercise - Gemma has used Photopeach  over the past couple of years (you can view some lovely examples - in Catalan - on Gemma's blog), I rather favoured Padlet, Thinglink or Pinterest (thinking about platforms for curating links), whilst Victoria was inclined to give her students free rein to choose.

This weekend I have been involved in analysing the levels of reflection in the Photopeach artefacts produced by Gemma's students (relying on Google Translate where my rudimentary Catalan failed me!!) and as a result have become rather more enamoured of it. The combination of images and music in a gently flowing slideshow give the artefacts a romantic and filmic quality that conveys, and invokes, powerful emotions. For an exercise that requires students to make a statement about values, ethics and aspirations, this seems highly appropriate.

There are lots of opportunites in higher education courses for students to present verbally and in writing but few where we ask them to engage at an emotional level. For students entering into the "people professions", developing their emotional intelligence is crucial. The use of imagination, creativity and imagery involves making manifest some aspects of knowing that are not fully conscious but which are felt at a bodily level (Collier, 2010). Hence the combination of music and images, together with inspirational quotations, powerful value statements and expressions of desire, has a powerful emotional impact on the viewer.

Another aspect of importance for me is that I have asked students on many occasions to write a reflective account of their learning as a short essay and often been disappointed to read rather impersonal, imitative (if not actually plagiarised) accounts, focussed on what has been taught rather than a personal learning experience. The best of the Photopeach video essays I viewed this weekend were each uniquely individual and referred to theory only where it had been inspiring and transformational for the student. 

On the other hand, these first artefacts were not deeply reflective, but that was not surprising.
According to Moon's Map of Learning there are five stages of learning:

Noticing – acquisition and organisation of data; filtered through previous learning/experience and motivated by the perceived purpose of the learning Making Sense – a process of growing awareness of the coherency of the material – organizing and ordering the material Making Meaning – the new material is assimilated and allows a deeper understanding of the discipline; material is well linked together and there is evidence of a holistic understanding of the subject Working With Meaning – linked to higher levels of reflection, summarising themes, critical analysis, marshalling an argument Transformative Learning – self motivated learning, learning that is reorganised and restructured by the learner in a creative way; evidence of change in the learner of which the learner themselves is cognizant. Learning about learning.

The last two stages need further reflection on the intitial stages/outcomes of learning in order to materialise - which provides the link between part 1 (the first, tentative exploration of values and aspirations) and part 2 of the assessment: the final digital story which pulls together the learning experience across the entire semester or academic year.

Finally, Moon suggests that students need a clear sense of the purpose of their reflections, require a degree of scaffolding (which the two part assessment provides) and a specific rubric to help them understand what is required of them. The work I have been doing in analysing the Catalan artefacts has really helped me to develop my module's structure and learning activities to ensure these factors are all included.



References:

Collier, K. 2010, 'Re-imagining reflection: creating a theatrical space for the imagination in productive reflection' in H.Bradbury, N.Frost, S.Kilminster, M.Zukas (eds), Beyond Reflective Practice, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 145-154.

Moon, JE (1999) Reflection in Learning and Professional Practice, Routledge, Oxford

Reflection and digital storytelling - an international collaboration

During a recent holiday to Ibiza I met up with a friend, Gemma Tur, for montaditos, beers and a bit of a brainstorm about a collaborative project.

We found common ground in an idea to have our respective students working on a digital storytelling project with the aim being to compare their experiences of, and learning from, the process.

Gemma's students are trainee primary school teachers whilst mine are budding health and social care workers. Our plan has two stages: at the start of the course to have the students produce a reflection on what it means to be a professional, what are their professional values and their hopes about their future career. Gemma has previously done a similar exercise with her current students. (See her blog) We hope to use something fairly simple like ThingLink to get them started. (An idea I picked up from Linda Casteñada when I visited her class in Murcia).

Stage Two will be at the end of the module where a more comprehensive multi media artefact will be created to reflect on learning from across their studies as part of a portfolio assessment.

To get us started I have been doing some reading around the subject of digital storytelling and the value of reflection - Jenny Moon's book has been particularly helpful: Jennifer A Moon  1999 (2004) Reflection in Learning and Professional Development -Theory and Practice;  as has Alterio and McDrury (2002) Learning Through Storytelling in Higher Education.

I've also been thinking about the whole issue of representation - why is is useful to use symbols to represent words/thoughts? How does this aid reflection and creativity?

Creative insights often occur by making unusual connections: seeing analogies between ideas that have not previously been related. All of our existing ideas have creative possibilities. Creative insights occur when they are combined in unexpected ways or applied to questions or issues with which they are not normally associated.....thinking on several planes at once.  

  Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds 2011


And are there useful ways in which we can talk about this as a way of learning?
An interesting video about researching this subject can be found on the Digiexplanations site (although this deals mainly with science subjects it still has a lot of relevant points to make.

I'll blog more on this topic as the project takes shape....

Fusion 2012 - a week on

The Fusion conference was probably one of the best organised and most enjoyable I have been to and the opportunity to get to know other "e-champions" across the university was incredibly valuable.

The key note speakers were inspirational, the delegates were good humoured, polite and interesting, some of the break out sessions I attended were genuinely educational and the product itself - the learner management system used by my university - looks shiny and engaging. But I have returned to reality and specifically the reality that OUR version of the shiny stuff is a couple of iterations behind and as such still has the clunky awkwardness and grey institutional unattractiveness that makes it difficult to get excited about.


I have spent some time this week trying to discover if and when some of the tools I have seen will be available to use (rubrics! please!) and today I am back to looking at tricky workarounds to be able to teach and assess in a way that is most appropriate for me and my students.


It isn't that I am against VLEs per se - indeed I think the new version of ours will deliver much of what I need - it is just that what I need is constantly moving and changing to keep up with innovations in teaching and learning and the VLE lags a fair distance behind.


So what do I want in an LMS?


1.  The basics: a classlist that links effortlessly to grading information and assessment drop box


2. A place to store or link to resources of various types


3. A "news headlines" feature that automatically notifies students of updates


4. A Discussion Board that does the same


5. An attractive, intuitive interface that makes it as easy as, say, Facebook to log on, find stuff, add stuff, create a personal page or profile (or "portfolio") and submit stuff for assessment


6. A simple way of assessing online OR if files must be downloaded & uploaded, that this can be done in zipped batches and not painstakingly one at a time


7. A way to group topics into folders or sub pages that keeps things tidy and navigable


8. A place where students can easily create and collaborate on content


9. A place where students can easily give feedback - to me, to one another


10. and finally - for added *sparkly*, *shiny* attractiveness - a way of changing the appearance or backgrounds to home pages and a navigation box that is a bit more blog/wiki/ (just - you know - web 2.0) -like. 


Some of this I have seen before in other systems; some I know is to come in the next release of our own. In the meantime, I face the next academic year with my usual battery of work arounds and off-VLE platforms.


And of course, any VLE has limitations - if only in terms of portability. So maybe, I try to convince myself, taking the students out on a virtual field trip is not such a bad idea as it does at least introduce them to tools that they will be able to use after University. Knowing about Google docs, blogs, wikis, survey monkey, twitter, diigo, google+, slideshare, facebook and all the other tools I regularly use is not in itself a BAD thing and judging by the number of my peers to whom these fairly mainstream web tools are a closed book (to use a non-digital metaphor!) it is probably a very good thing.


My students are very unlikely to ever again live their lives within the metaphorical confines of a VLE-like system (unless they continue in academia). It is highly likely that they will go on to work in jobs where an understanding of social media and web 2.0 tools will be essential, for marketing, planning, working on projects, reaching service users and for just keeping in touch with colleagues. 


So although I was very nearly convinced in San Diego that the promised land of "version 10" will provide me with everything I need in one place, maybe I'll also continue to steer my students on their own course through slightly more uncharted waters.....

E-Portfolios: an e-piphany

Amy Mangrich explaining the narrative arc of her students' reflections

I am really interested in using e-portfolios with students - for reflection, for employability, for collaboration, on line formative assessment - a whole host of stuff that could be really useful, fun and creative. Unfortunately the eportfolio that comes with our VLE is almost universally loathed for its clunky functionality and lack of intuitive interface.

There are about to be changes to the whole system - eportfolios included - which we are being promised will smooth out the wrinkles and make them both more engaging and more portable. I really hope so because I was part of some sessions today which really made a convincing case for wider use of this tool.

Amy Mangrich from University of Wisconsin Milwaukee showcased a module which had been completely restructured to integrate reflective activities which led the student through the development of the "story" of their own intellectual development. This they then translated into a series of found or created images and finally dropped the collection into Voicethread to narrate an audio commentary.

Amy's belief that the multi media immersion was both emotionally and intellectually engaging (as well as developing media skills) was very convincing and inspiring. My own personal action points are to think about the seamless alignment of module structure, formative tasks and summative assessment on the one hand, and greater creativity and courage in the use of the eportfolio as a platform.

Amy and the instructors in the next session on eportfolios (yes there was a theme to my day) stressed over and over the need for a) templates created for the students to follow b) examples for them to look at and c) training in the technicalities of eportfolio assemblage.

By scaffolding the tasks the students gain confidence and by limiting their choice of presentation platforms, it levels the playing field to some extent. My own preferred policy of giving students some freedom of choice can result in some of them spending too long agonising over the "right" tool.

Some students I suspect would find the eportfolio tool in the VLE a bit limiting but the fact that it is institutionally supported, requires the same log in as the VLE, and generally does not terrify students in quite the same way that the weird and wonderful world of wikis and facebook can do, means that is potentially easier to access.

In the second session I had a further epiphany about the value of the eportfolio for assessment - tutors can access students work at various stages of development to give feedback - and why not summative? This could mean feedback/comments and even grades given "live" in the work without the download/upload faffing about experienced when marking assignments via normal dropbox submission.

The Virtual School of Georgia presentation focussed on the use of eportfolios for staff development - and that's crucial too: you really can't insist on student using this tool until you feel confident to do so yourself. More food for thought...........

In a brief lunchtime conversation with an instructional designer from Nashville Tennessee, I heard again a message which many presenters echo: there needs to be more than just a minimum requirement for VLE learning rooms. Courses need to be designed around the VLE and modules within them need to follow consistent patterns - the naming of "units", the sequencing of tasks, the alignment of learning outcomes - these all need to be far more prescribed, monitored and enforced if the VLE is going to engage students. The current policy of "let a thousand flowers bloom" is great in terms of academic and professional freedom for STAFF, but disorientating, and a bit shabby in terms of the student experience.

Now, whether you really want or need such a tightly controlled learning environment is another question, but if you ARE going to have an institutional VLE, it really ought to give the same high quality experience no matter what module is being studied.

Ready Steady Go!

Image: nicecliparts.com

Getting ready for the new term this weekend. I have a number of fears and quite a lot of excitement.

It is exciting to be meeting new students but I am scared because this year our first year students number 110.... and I will be teaching a first year module single handed...

I am excited because this year I get to design and structure modules which last year I took over from someone else with no time to reorganise them.

I am very scared of the new institutionally imposed deadline of 15 days in which to turn around all my marking.....

But I am excited about some of the new tools I am going to be using with my students. In the study skills module I am going to be introducing Evernote as a convenient storage and organising platform, Diigo for bookmarking and sharing resources, Google Sites for creating an e-portfolio.

I have just been setting up some online polls for my introductory/welcome session with the first year students using Poll Everywhere..... get your smart phones out!! I saw a demo of this last week in a staff training session and I think it is brilliantly simple and a great way to get nervous new students to interact with each other (and with me) during their induction. The free plan only allows 30 users so I plan to get them to work in small huddles and post multiple responses.

I was really inspired last week by the Guardian's seminar on using social media to enhance the student experience. So many great ideas for engaging students and enhancing teaching and learning - I particularly liked Alan Cann's ideas about using Google+ and that is something else I might consider introducing at some point - as a platform for micro blogging and sharing learning.

I am beginning the year with a survey designed to find out my students' current confidence with internet based tools. I hope in this way to be able to have a point of comparison so I can show some enhancement in this area by the end of the year.

One of the positives of being forced into tighter marking timescales is that I am having to get creative about setting assignments and giving feedback. I find it much easier to grade very tightly structured work, so am using templates for major pieces of work like reflective portfolios and am going to be experimenting this year with a grading "matrix" like this example.

I will continue to review this and also students' reactions - do they want formulaic feedback in 15 days or something more detailed a week or two later? I am sure many just want their grade, but we are also trying to get them to "engage with feedback", apparently.....

Well, there are probably enough (maybe too many) objectives there for the coming year. I'll continue to post about how it all goes..... (this is why teachers should have blogs)

Skills for study

oh where to begin......?!?!??

I took over leadership of the study skills module this year and began by proposing a few tweaks. Now I am heading for revolution (shakes head in despair).

The modest proposal I first mooted was to change the first assignment for this module from a paper-based journal/photocopying and note-taking exercise into an online search terms/ database accessing exercise, with online submission via the VLE. So far so 21st C.

But still I wasn't happy. Yes I need to show first year students how to use library catalogues and e-searching techniques, but surely they need more? What about social bookmarking as a place to save their web searches?

And instead of a final portfolio in a Word document, how about an e-portfolio? a wiki? a blog?

And if I am going to start telling them about these tools and introduce them to Twitter along the way - well, am I not I really on the verge of describing a PLE???????

So my question is this: is it appropriate to introduce Year 1 students to these tools - will they get it? will they be bored already? will it be just too different given that 99% of the rest of their studies will be based on using libraries, text books, the VLE and handing in their work at 2pm on a Friday afternoon after a lengthy queue to get to the reception window.......

Or are these actually essential life skills?

Anyway I have now pretty much decided on a way forward and though I take this route with some misgivings, I will be blogging as a I go and reflecting on how it turns out.

Last year the task for the first assignment in Term 1 was to find, then contrast, two or three articles on a topic chosen at random from a current issue of a health and social care journal. I then discovered that they do a nearly identical assignment for a different module in Term 1 and another also pretty similar for yet another module at the start of Term 2. I don't feel the task on my module is really adding anything to their learning about techniques for study and writing at HE level.

So this year I have decided to give them as a topic the use of social networking tools for study/learning in higher education. This fits well with some of the key texts we look at in relation to study at HE - for example Study skills for social workers - Stogdon, Chris, Kiteley, Robin, 2010

I have already done some research and put some useful articles in a Diigo group they will be asked to follow/join/add to and I will spend some time talking about and demonstrating this site and a variety of other tools - blogs, Twitter, Google sites, wikis, slideshare, iGoogle etc, which they might want to use to start to build their Personal Learning Environment.

I feel like I am stepping into the unknown: but on my side is my passion and my practical experience of using these tools myself for my own learning and I also know I'll have my personal learning NETWORK to fall back on for advice and support :)

Wish me luck!

Little footsteps

...it has been a while - sorry, dear blog.

There is just such a lot going on and so many ideas to try and capture...

Firstly, I got my 3rd year leadership students talking about their online projects which focussed on either Avatar or The Apprentice for a discussion of models of leadership. I created a little video about it that I could show to next year's students. I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome - and their enthusiasm for Google Sites and the use of TV/Film sources.

Given how much the social work students are enjoying this aspect of their assessment it is something I will definitely continue with - and be a little bolder next time by giving them the freedom to choose their own platforms and resources.

Ipadio podcasts have been a big hit with the social work students - especially in giving them some tips on the assignment. Again this is something I plan to continue next year and as much of this stuff won't change I'll be able to reuse my podcasts too!

Today I will be starting work on marking the e-portfolios that my second year students are preparing. This has been an interesting process: I didn't make use of the e-portfolio compulsory and I didn't "officially" tell anyone I was using it. That caused some hiccups with school office as I thought I should get students to hand in some sort of declaration in hard copy - and school admin staff just turned up their noses at it! A bit of a chat soon straightened things out. Note to self - consult with the all powerful school admins before trying stunts like that again!

To make the process as painless as possible, I had prepared a template for the students to use (see left).

Responding to a request from the guinea pigs, I set up an extra seminar session in the IT suite to show them how to use the Google Sites tool.

In the end about eight have submitted electronically and the results range from OK (in terms of presentation) to pretty damned amazing.


Oh well - back to the marking now! See you on the other side....

e-portfolios

I have spent much of the last few weeks designing and developing e-portfolios for our new students, using Google Sites. (The template is entitled PLR2010 if you want to have a look: it is designed for a specific module, though, so not suitable as a generic portfolio).

There is a portfolio widget available within the VLE, but as with all such platforms, it is only valid for the length of the programme and what I hope is that students will enjoy the idea of regular blogging and creating personal online spaces where they can keep track of their personal and professional development.

Ongoing professional development and personal reflection is important for everyone but particularly so in the human services and I am hoping the eportfolio will be a useful aid for individual supervison as well as career management and recording further professional training.

So I hope the e-portfolios will prove popular and easy to use -and even better - that the students will go beyond the simple templates I have set up to develop really creative learning spaces of their own.