Resources to aid engagement #digilit

I created a Prezi with some suggestions for using web based resources in and outside of the classroom: http://prezi.com/5nqhwsfqw0qi/ten-resources-to-easily-engage-students/


 

A pedagogy for the millenials? #digilit

This week, in the course of some Twitter-based research for my next leadership workshop,  I came across this nice little video about leadership and motivation as it relates to the Millenial generation.

For me it had resonance with teaching and learning in this new age. True I have many students who are Gen X or even Baby Boomers. True, not all Millenial babies are genuinely digitally native in their behaviours, but it is important I think to recognise that we (Baby Boomer staff) are dealing with a new generation and need a pedagogy (or maybe more appropriately an androgogy) that suits the times.

Androgogy is perhaps the term we should apply to adult learners in HE - certainly we anticipate the sort of transitions indicated in Knowles' (1984) definition as students progress through a University education:

1. Self-concept: As a person matures his self concept moves from one of being a dependent personality toward one of being a self-directed human being

2. Experience: As a person matures he accumulates a growing reservoir of experience that becomes an increasing resource for learning.

3. Readiness to learn. As a person matures his readiness to learn becomes oriented increasingly to the developmental tasks of his social roles.

4. Orientation to learning. As a person matures his time perspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application, and accordingly his orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject-centeredness to one of problem centredness.

5. Motivation to learn: As a person matures the motivation to learn is internal(Knowles 1984:12). (from Infed)

but I wonder how much our attitudes towards teaching and learning get in the way of aiding this transition? The chart above (from: http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/05/awesome-chart-on-pedagogy-vs-andragogy.html) illustrates some of the key differences between androgogical and pedagogical approaches.

In a conversation with students earlier this week as part of the Changing the Learning Landscape project we heard of practices in classrooms that still assume a much more passive role on the part of learners, with the "lecturer" still expert and dominating the classroom activity as they did in the Victorian schoolroom.

Trying as I do to teach with technology, to support the development of digital skills and the responsible use of the Internet for research, I can't see how I can achieve my aims without harnessing the students' native abilities and attitudes - making space for them to learn collaboratively, allowing noise - allowing mobile devices - in the classroom, building on their well developed social networking skills to show how these can be used to support research and learning. I was trying to explain how my workshops go to colleagues this week and their response was "yes, but where's the academic rigour, where's the voice of the expert? This might work in something like study skills but would it work in, say, a history degree?"  I wonder why it wouldn't?

A problem based, technology enhanced, collaborative approach makes for a messy and complicated classroom verging on the chaotic at times. It's not always comfortable for me or the learners but I am starting to see some "green shoots" of independent learning and great engagement in the classroom and interestingly it is some of the older "non-traditional" students who seem to be enjoying and benefiting from this approach. Whilst the Millenials may be feeling more  "so what?" about my classes, the older students have been feeding back to me their excitement about their developing digital competence. One student wrote to me this week that my module was "possibly the most interesting and also the most complicated" of all those he was studying. In my book, that's not a bad thing :)

#digilit #fail Back to the Drawing Board

Artist: Lucy Gough

well, this week I am mostly teaching old school stylee. I am currently designing Powerpoint slides, having handouts printed and thanking whoever stocked the SCALE UP room with resources for the mini whiteboards, pens and board wipes they provided.

Oh and if anyone knows a good joiner.....

So here I am, an edtech aficionado, teaching a digital literacy skills module, in a state of the art classroom, completely stymied by tech failures. On Monday the first problem we encountered was the partition doors between two classrooms refusing to move, so we had to teach 2/3 of the class in the same room as the teaching podium and 1/3 behind a screen - complete with disembodied voice over the speakers (that was after we ran to the shop to buy batteries for the mic which was completely dead on arrival...). By the time I arrived later that same afternoon to teach my second class, the VLE had either gone on strike or been hit by the St Jude weather event as I could not open a single link and the students could not log on to the system via their fancy mac books.

Fortunately I was able to reach You Tube for the video clip I had lined up and we used the aforementioned whiteboards for the interactive group task. But the class dragged a bit as I was defeated by the perfect storm of tech failures.

I have been considering whether Scale Up is the right acronym for me to continue using. The term is virtually a copyrighted one which has fairly strict criteria about the way the process is managed and which I don't really feel I achieve. My students charmingly refer to it as SCUP as that is the abbreviation that shows up on their timetables, and this week I was trying to work out how I could accommodate SCUPPERED as a new name..... please submit your answers in the comments box below:)

I have though considered:

BAGEL - big active group environment for learning (this is particularly apt as the tables in the classroom are round, with a hole in the middle!)

BABEL - big activity based environment for learning (reflects the noise level of 108 students all talking at once!)

or even

LIBEL - Large inquiry based environment for learning (I am hoping some of my critical comments about the project aren't deemed to be libellous)

On a positive note, my third year class seem to be getting into their creative stride - one group posted an Instagram video rather than use the white board for their visualisation of a dysfunctional team: it was a very cool response to the task. This is the part of the module where I start to get excited - when the students take over and get into their projects. My job becomes less about teaching and more about guiding. On this note, here's a nice little piece about project based learning which serves as a useful checklist when teaching this way.

And finally, I recently found out that I won the Vice Chancellor's Award for Teaching this year (one of 5 such awards across the University). The criteria are around creativity, innovation, inspiration, employability and technology. The module I teach to the year 3 students ticks all those boxes I know (she says modestly!) but I feel a little bit as though I have cheated - the real inspiration, creativity and innovation comes from the students themselves. Still, its great to have my efforts and struggles recognised - it will certainly keep me going through the disasters and dark nights of the soul I seem to experience on a weekly basis.

Week Four - Groups

oh dear, oh dear, oh dear..... why is group work at university such a fraught subject?

Well, let's face it, working in teams in the workplace is no walk in the park either. And that's really the theme of the module I teach to my final year students.

The aim of this module and its associated assessment is to experience being part of a project team - and then to reflect on that experience using relevant theory. Normally we look at old favourites such as Tuckman and Belbin, but increasingly I feel that these don't really touch some of the real problems that teams and individuals within those teams seem to experience.

This week's session focussed on choosing the team. Most students had already begun the process and I had provided a Google Spreadsheet on which they could organise themselves. A good number of students hadn't managed this by the day before the deadline so I sent out a reminder and a warning that I would allocate anyone not already signed up. I also stressed that the purpose of the seminar was to meet with other members and work together on the project. This message had a big impact on attendance and in the end there was just a handful of students who hadn't formed a project team.

The seminar itself probably looked from the outside to be rather chaotic - and probably felt that way too for those students still involved in negotiations - and peregrinations around the room - to find a "home".

But by the end of the hour - to everyone's relief - the job was done. Everyone seemed to be fairly happy with their final groupings so I was shocked when the next day one student reported having been bullied by another because she had chosen not to work with her.

The second task I had set the students on Monday was to develop a group contract. All spoke about equal contributions, attendance and above all, treating one another with respect but intergroup groundrules have not been discussed.

What is happening when problems like this occur? What prompts such nasty behaviour? Is there any way that these difficulties can be avoided ? Some colleagues have commented to me that selecting the groups FOR the students is a better option, as it avoids just this sort of problem. See also this paper on Turning Student Groups into Effective Teams which advises a fairly presecriptive approach.

Students in the main though prefer to make their own choices because they know  - by their final year - who they can work with, who turns up and who makes a fair contribution. They have commented in their NSS and end of module evaluations that group work marks are unfair if the group is "landed with" an absent or non contributing member or someone whose work is of poor quality. They also hate it when that person gets a decent grade despite their poor performance because other group members take up the slack. I would also say that in 3 years of teaching this module to 6 different cohorts I have actually only ever experienced one problem group and I have always stuck with self selection.

As I was puzzling over these questions, I was directed to this interesting article about workplace relationships which I think has relevance here. Inter- and intra-group rivalries, bullying, exclusion, and withdrawal have their roots in anxieties about personal competence, competitiveness, envy and insecurities around belonging. These anxieties are as true of the student group as they are in the workplace or the family, but we rarely discuss them openly.

Groups that are forced by circumstances - or their tutors - to work together, need a way of developing a sense of belongingness fairly quickly so they can get on with the task before them. If they spend too long "storming" amongst themselves they may fail to accomplish their more strategic objectives. A quick way of a group starting to feel more cohesive is to set themselves up as separate from all the others.

Within the group, especially if the membership is not self selecting and students do not have existing bonds of friendship, another survival tactic is to develop cliques or to scapegoat one particular individual - again this allows the rest of the group to feel superior, to have a sense of being "on the inside", as they identify others who are on the outside.

The leaders role in these circumstances is to name the process and make it clear that bullying is unacceptable. Lencioni has an interesting take on group development which builds on Tuckman's original model and shows just how dysfunctional teams can become if the forming and storming is not negotiated appropriately - time has to be spent on building trust so that any subsequent conflict can be dealt with appropriately and healthily.

Hmmmm - as someone who hates conflict in all its manifestations, I confess I am not entirely clear what consitutes "healthy" conflict, but I think that what is meant is that dealing with differences of opinion, or deciding what to do when there is a range of opinions, don't have to feel threatening if a group of people have a basic sense that they are all on the same side.

So this will be my theme for Week 5 I suspect.

#digilit #digital identity Week 3 Digital Citizenship

image: http://youthadvisoryboard.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/social-networking-the-digital-identity/

This week with my final year "leadership" students we have been exploring ideas around digital citizenship and the way leaders use social media. The group exercise this week was to find the blog, Linked In page or Twitter feed of a well known leader and comment on their digital identity. This was a follow up to the work we did last week on our own digital identity.

There are some great resources out there on the whole subject of digital citizenship including this video and this infographic which provide nice jumping off points for discussion.

I fear I am getting to the point now where I feel the need to lecture. Over the next few weeks there is some heavy content that I want to ensure they are getting to grips with on the theory of team work, for example. I don't particularly want to stand in front of them regurgitating stuff they can go away and read for themselves, but I do at least want to give them some pointers on where to start and what the main themes are. I am thinking of perhaps doing some mini videocasts which they can review after the seminars - I really want to keep the class time for group interaction - and my more personal interactions with each team as they get to grips with the tasks.

Each week as we wait for the class to start I conduct some mini focus groups with students to see how they are getting on. They report that they are finding the Macs a challenge even though most are managing to use them effectively in the class. They also acknowledge that in Year 3 there is so much more work to be done outside the official "contact time" - in all modules, not just mine. This group of students are possibly having a harder time in the Scale Up environment as they have not used technology before in the classroom environment (well apart from checking Facebook updates on their phones...) and are more used to a traditional lecture format, but some it has to be said have worked in a workshop setting before and like the more interactive way of working.

This week I came across this lovely Edutopia blog post about student engagement. This was written about US 8th graders but I think it applies equally to undergraduates. In brief the principles are:

1. Interaction with peers
2. Using technology
3. Connection to the real world
4. Love what you do (teacher)
5. Get me out of my seat!
6. Bring in visuals
7. Student choice
8. Understand your students
9. Mix it Up (varied activities)
10. Be human (teacher - have fun yourself!)

I couldn't have put it better myself and I'm pleased and proud that I am incorporating much of this already into the module. Getting them out of their seats is perhaps one thing I might try to do better at... something to think about!