Professional Values: the video(s)

Photo: Sarah Metherell http://photopeach.com/album/d59yl3

I have taken a new approach to my final year module (Leading Teams) this year. For the past 4 years that I have taught it, I have used a project based approach which has multiple facets.

First the students must work in teams of 6-8 students to develop a digital artefact (a website or wiki most often) which has as it's theme the leadership characteristics of the protagonists in a popular film. Over the years the students have analysed Avatar, The Lion King (twice), Toy Story (so many times I had to ban it last year), Twelve Angry Men, and even Matilda.

Theoretical underpinnings for the artefacts are generally drawn from lecture material I produce, seminar discussions and of course text books and articles highlighted in the module reading list. However, a great deal is based on the independent research that the students carry out themselves.

The artefacts produced have ranged in levels of sophistication but generally there has been enough complexity in the task to ensure that all group members get to use their individual talents: some taking on the "techy" roles, others researching or writing, and some surprising themselves as they have emerged as leaders through the process. The students' own reflections on these projects (part 2 of the task) have been an eye opener for them as much as for me.

Student feedback over the years indicates that, increasingly, the students find this less and less challenging technically - and intellectually - so this year the assessment will be based on student-led learning activities. Groups of 5 or 6 have been formed and each has selected a topic which they are going to teach to their fellow students. Apart from two mini lectures introducing the module themes, my input has been minimal. My lecture material and the references are available, but the emphasis is on student-directed research. When students do the teaching  is a short and helpful post about peer to peer teaching (with a great student-produced maths video!).

A more academic discussion of the approach can be found here: David Boud , Ruth Cohen & Jane Sampson (1999) Peer Learning and Assessment, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 24:4, 413-426,

_________________________________________

As a warm up exercise this year, I gave the students the task of creating short slide show videos - using Photopeach - on the values of a health and social care professional (as I have for the first year students see: Reflection on Professional Identity). The purpose of this was to prepare them to a) learn how to source copyright free images b) create impactful presentations using few words and strong images c) articulate their own values in relation to potential career options on graduating. (This final point relates to the part of the module that looks at career planning and job applications).

All groups approached the task with commitment and there have been some outstanding results.

Here are some of my favourites:

Health and Social Care Values (created with students' own photos)

Social Work

Childcare 

The difference we wish to make 

Why we chose this course..

(with thanks to Gemma Tur Ferrer for the original idea!)

Digital by design

The first two weeks of term have flown by already and the digital story telling project is underway. Using Photopeach to create a simple video with music and captions, the students are busy creating a digital essay on "professional values".

Last year I spent a lot of time explaining the importance of digital skills to my students and pointedly taking them step by step through a number of tools and processes. This year I am adopting a more immersive approach.

In the process of creating this digital essay, students are indirectly learning a number of other skills  - from searching for, downloading, saving and uploading images, to understanding Creative Commons licenses and avoiding copyright restrictions. They also learn how to: access and edit Google Docs to enrol themselves in project groups, share ideas on Discussion Boards, familiarise themselves with the Mac keyboard layout and touch pad gestures, create and save office documents and send them as attachments to emails, take a photo of their whiteboards and upload these to the Facebook group page etc.

We sometimes blithely assume that most students can easily tackle all of these processes, but I have spent a lot of time in the workshops sitting alongside some as they struggle with these tasks, often for the first time.

And let's not forget the really fundamental skill of learning to work together in groups - something that is fraught with anxiety for most students. Even if, as in the case of this project, groups are self selecting and based on early friendship alliances, there are still some students who find it hard to easily fit in a group and, once there, understand how they could or should contribute.

The positive thing for me about the Scale Up workshop is the space it gives me to move around the groups, checking on progress as needed - especially now that I have a two hour workshop with fewer students (well, there are still scheduled to be 60-70 in each workshop, so "smaller" is relative!)

For the first three weeks I also have the luxury of a co-tutor which really helps when students are asking for support on technical issues. 

Well.... so far, so good. I can't wait to see the outputs from this first assignment and to follow up with students on how they see their progress in developing their digital skills.

Refection on professional identity

The first assignment I am planning for the new intake of students is going to be a digital reflection on professional identity. This is based on work that Gemma Tur Ferrar has been doing in Ibiza with first year primary school teachers which we have been discussing over the summer. As well as analysing the work of her students over the last couple of years, we are planning - together with Victoria Marin - to run the same activities with our respective cohorts and compare outcomes. Victoria and Gemma's students are all trainee primary school teachers and are Catalan speakers, mine are health and social care students and English speakers. Victoria and I have very large seminar groups (70 -80 in each) whilst Gemma's is much smaller. We hope to consider differences in class size and technical (digital) skills; the influence of language and culture and the different emphasis that health and social care and educational values might place on different aspects of professional identity.

To kick start the process with my students I have decided to give them as an example the work of one group from Gemma's class (in Catalan with translation - courtesy of Google translate -  below):

http://photopeach.com/album/15407v6

“The teachers we want to be…..

Because the text book is already outdated

… and rows of desks also,

a new day dawns in education.

There are many ways of learning

and many situations in which to learn

incorporating new technology,

valuing diversity,

promoting respect for the environment.

Continually developing ourselves,

we are committed to developing people for the 21^st century”.

I like the idea of sharing the work of students from different cultures - internationalising the curriculum is big on all our agendas at the moment but language can create barriers. It would be great if we could find more ways of using technology to overcome them..... now there's a challenge!

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

21st century skills: virtual collaboration

I recently started - but regretfully did not manage to finish - an interesting MOOC on the teaching and assessment of 21st century skills. The main focus was the teaching and evaluation of collaborative problem solving skills and case studies were drawn from an online, transglobal exercise in which the participants could chat with, but not see, one another whilst completing tasks of varying complexity. (Well, that's as much as I recall - apologies if I am misrepresenting the MOOC).

Anyway, yesterday I embarked on stage 2 of my international research collaboration project with Gemma and a third colleague, Victoria, which reminded me of the MOOC and caused me to reflect on the skills of collaboration once more. We were Skyping (without benefit of video) between the UK, Finland and Spain with frequent drops in the signal, occasional problems of translation between Catalan and English, and using Google Docs to capture ideas and action points. Clarifying meaning and intention was a key part of the discussion as we were each of us bringing a degree of knowledge about some, but not all, aspects of the project and experiences that varied in terms of our teaching and research backgrounds.

The MOOC I briefly sampled is now closed, but the assessment framework can be found here as a PDF and it provides a useful guide to the functioning of online collaborative partnerships. What I found interesting in our discussions yesterday was the need - and our willingness - to clarify misunderstandings and arrive at shared definitions of our "problem" and how we plan to tackle it. At times it was a case of groping in the dark - which reminded me of a great book about virtual teams I read many years ago and a training exercise it described where a team is sent blindfolded into a room to erect a tent!

I feel quite excited about the collaborative project. The subject matter interests me and fits perfectly with my teaching - indeed, starting on this project has already caused me to redesign the teaching and assessment for my module (and hopefully thereby improving it too). On a personal and professional level I am motivated to do the work in a way I never have been when contemplating starting on a research project of my own, which leads me to think that support and mentoring through the process is what has always been missing for me. Furthermore, collaborating with people who work in different institutions, different countries even, and in different disciplines from my own, is both liberating (I feel more free to make mistakes and admit my shortcomings than I might do with a close colleague) and challenging - the difference of perspective forces me to look at the subject matter in a new light.

Well, one of the principal focii of our project is reflection so here I am reflecting on the way we are working together - telling the story as it unfolds, recording my feelings about the process, making links with my previous experience and setting out my hopes for the future. I have already discovered a surprising new thing about myself from this exercise - I like being part of a team! and I feel a genuine synergy emerging from our combined efforts. This is perhaps a rather shameful realisation for someone who teaches team dynamics and indeed has mainly, over a 30 year career, been employed in the position of team leader. But maybe it simply reflects the perennial difficulty of finding exactly the right combination of people, with exactly the right collaborative skills, to make team work really work.