Learning styles refer to differences in how people learn based on their preferences, strengths and weaknesses. The differences may pertain to various elements of the learning process such as taking in, comprehending, memorizing and recollecting information.
Many observations suggest that the learning process is most effective when it is in line with our learning style preferences. Therefore, from a practical standpoint, it is useful to know which learning methods are likely to be most effective for us, to help us acquire knowledge quickly and effectively. And if you are an educator, being aware of your students’ learning styles can help you implement a teaching approach most suitable for your particular group.
There are many ways of classifying learning styles that draw from different theories: theories of intelligence, experiential theories (Kolb, 1984), sensory modalities (the VARK model – Fleming & Mills, 1992), cognitive styles, or psychological types. A prominent psychological type theory is Jung’s theory of psychological types, popularized by Briggs Myers, a Jungian theorist; let’s take a look how a person’s preferences in terms of Jung’s and Briggs Myers’ approach to personality type may influence learning styles:
The preference of general attitude – extraverted (E) vs. introverted (I) – reflects the direction of an individual’s general interest and, as such, indicates where their interests and motivation lie. An introvert’s motivation and interests primarily stem from and are driven by their inner world, whereas an extravert is primarily motivated by the world outside of themselves, and most of their interests are externally focused.
People with the intuition (N) preference perceive the world and think in broader categories, whereas sensing (S) individuals perceive the world and think about things in a more concrete, direct way.
People with the feeling (F) preference tend to judge and respond to events based on their feelings, whereas people with the thinking (T) preference tend to do it based on reason and logic.
People with the judging (J) preference comprehend information in a more structured way and are likely to prefer a more systematic and structured learning process, whereas people with the perceiving (P) preference might favor a less rigid, more heuristic approach to learning and might prefer a trial-and-error method of comprehending information.
Consequently, personality type preferences may affect an individual’s motivation and interest when it comes to learning and studying, and the ease (or difficulty) with which they take in, process and recollect information. As a result, whether or not the learning format, process, environment, and the presentation of the material are in line with an individual’s personality type preferences may help or hinder their learning.
The following are learning style descriptions for the 16 personality types based on Jung’s E-I, S-N, and T-F dichotomies, as well as the J-P relationship (Briggs Myers emphasized the importance of seeing it as a fourth dichotomy influencing personality type).
Yes, it appears it is… so I am an ENTP and have been consistently coming out as such on both paid for and free tests for some years.
That means I am 3% of the population and female versions are even rarer.
Humanmetrics has this to say about ENTP’s learning style;
How ENTPs acquire, memorize and recollect information
An ENTP’s interest in learning a subject is motivated by their desire to answer the question, “In what ways can the given problem be solved?” The more solutions they learn of, the greater their interest in the given topic and the greater their desire to understand it.
They are motivated to study something when it allows them to find solutions to complex, intellectually challenging tasks.
ENTPs easily take in material when it is presented in a conceptual form and new information logically flows from that previously given. People of this type understand new material from multiple angles – beyond what they are explicitly taught – and immediately pick up on how it can be applied. They are capable of independently learning expansive and complex material; the complexity of the material only intensifies their drive to master it. Material laid out in an intriguing way and/or presented as new and unexplored sharply increases the interest of an ENTP. They are capable of learning from sources not unified by a single formal learning process (e.g., individual courses or readings).
ENTPs are able to accurately reproduce theoretical information and information that lacks logical flow. Group work with the material being studied does not give an ENTP any advantage over individual work. ((this is interesting and accurate. I prefer learning with others in lectures, but group work per se really doesn’t bother me one way or the other.))
ENTPs are capable of actively applying material they have learned well and internalized. They are good at using it in obvious, straightforward applications as well as taking an innovative approach to the material.
ENTPs have a significant degree of tolerance to high levels of learning related stress. They don’t always evenly distribute their efforts when learning new material.
I’d agree with the above, especially the last past – that explains why I churned out essays with hours to spare cheerfully for my BA (and got firsts) and lack of organisation / discipline!!
Last week we looked again at Designing Online Learning Environments (Part II).
You did the following learning activities:
Applied the different Laurillard (2012) learning types to analyse and discuss your current teaching practice;
Considered and used an online curriculum design framework, the CEG Pedagogic Framework, to design a fully online learning episode within your current teaching practice and context;
Critically evaluated and discussed your designs with your peers, identifying strengths and areas for future development;
Reflected on your learning for your CRJ;
Explored Digital Resources and where possible, attended the weekly webinar.
This week we will be looking at facilitating online learning environments and managing participants online.
First you will reflect on and discuss your experiences as online participants in this course. Then you will engage with information about some of the typical characteristics of online students and how they compare to ‘non-traditional’ students (i.e.not standard face-to-face 18-24 year old learners straight from school or college). You will consider the constraints of non-traditional learners, and some of the challenges and opportunities that can arise from managing and facilitating online participants. You will also consider different types of online behaviours, such as lurking and flaming, and formulate, discuss and evaluate potential strategies you could use to address these types of challenges. Finally, there are the usual weekly opportunities to reflect on your learning, explore further reading and attend the webinar.
By the end of the learning activities for Week 11, you should be able to:
Build and consolidate your knowledge of some typical characteristics of online students;
Formulate and critically evaluate potential strategies for dealing with challenging online behaviours, situations and motivating online learners;
Critically reflect on what and how you have learned this week, identifying potential implications for you and your colleagues’ current and future practice of developing flexible learning environments, in your local teaching contexts.
Week 11: Forum – Reflect on Your Experience of Being Online Learners
21 21 unread replies. 48 48 replies. Introduction
Consider the type of student you are on this course.
You, as adults and established professionals (and unlike younger students), are likely to be more practical and results-oriented, have higher expectations, and have a lot of things on your minds, with multi-level responsibilities. Today, as professionals, we also feel increasingly obliged to continue learning and take new courses (most likely online, given its convenient format), in order to enhance our skills, keep our jobs (or get a new one) and further our career plans.
With these in mind, it is hardly surprising that it can be a challenge to motivate learners like us, and make us active participants.
It is therefore important for course designers to create useful and relevant learning experiences based on the age group and interests of the learners, and capitalise on the use of their personal experience as a resource. This PGCHE course, for example, has tried very hard to facilitate exploration by giving you the opportunity to construct knowledge in a way that is meaningful to you. This is done through a wide range of activities, materials, references, infographics, short videos, lectures, podcasts and much more.
By constructing this learning environment, we hope to inspire you, and for you to find something that makes you want to learn more. We also worked on building an online learning community, which can be a powerful tool for collaboration, commenting and sharing – notice how quickly you started exchanging knowledge and perspectives, experimenting with new and sometimes radical things, and at times having some fun.
Now is a good opportunity to reflect again on your own experience as online learners. Reflect / Produce / Discuss
Consider the following questions:
How did you feel becoming a student again?
How did you interact with your peers?
How are you juggling your professional commitments with the demands of an online HE course?
What are the challenges and opportunities of the online environment, in your experience?
Provide a brief outline of how you have been experiencing this course so far, as a busy professional and as an online student (150 words). Post this to the discussion forum.
How are you juggling your professional commitments with the demands of an online HE course?
What are the challenges and opportunities of the online environment, in your experience?
Becoming an online student again brought me to the forefront of a complex mixture of new knowledge, which was a bit daunting. I was excited, though, and when I had to measure my current knowledge against the U.K. Framework, it gave me a clear view of how far I still needed to go. Be that as it may, I felt confident that my previous teaching experience would bridge the gap.
The tasks we needed to complete every day were mostly dependent on having a positive relationship with my peers. I would like to have done this better if it weren’t for me being extremely shy even though my peers were always ready to help, which encouraged me to keep on going, enabling me to finish my tasks sometimes a little late but hanging in there none the less. Communicating with my peers helped keep me on track, with much-needed insight, especially with daily comments on the canvas.
My course tutor was fantastic when giving me feedback he gave me just the right amount of constructive criticism that would help me achieve but not knock me down and sweep me out. With his valuable feedback, I was able to apply the necessary changes to align my tasks with the course objectives, and I’m thankful for that.
Juggling my daily online course commitments with my family was by no means an easy task. Having a husband who is my best friend and partner in everything had suddenly felt that he was all alone in this world. Luckily, after discussing my clear sense of purpose with him, and since we are both teachers, he became part of my support system. Keeping the bigger picture in focus does not mean you won’t have rough times, and I had lots of those. If I had a second chance to go back and do it again, yes, I would do things differently, but life happens, and so did Covid19. Of course, it added a lot of stress that would otherwise not have been there. Being suddenly unemployed in a country that is not your home country is a scary thing. Being forbade to leave your home for any reason whatsoever is something I’ve never experienced before. Being present in the state of the outbreak is frightening. Not knowing what will happen next, dying, war, poverty, starvation, homelessness, destitution, and devastation were some of the harrowing concerns I had to face daily. Giving up on the course seemed natural since the world was literally at an all-time low, but, thankfully, my husband kept me going. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Wow! Angela, this sounds rough. What tremendous dedication and tenacity you have shown. Truly amazing. Well done and good luck for the future; I hope it all works out. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
I second Nick’s comments – that sounds very rough and difficult.
I have had very different problems from you, but in a way it is nice to see others, like yourself, have also found taking this course difficult – it is one of the things that has helped keep me going (misery loves company and all). I have never had a good home/work-life balance, and often when I took courses, it was with a “bite the bullet, this week will be hard but next week it will be over” mentality. I found it quite difficult when, week after week, it wasn’t over. There were two periods of time I needed to completely disengage with the course, and take a much needed mental break. Reply Reply to comment
Hi Michael, I really feel for you. The balance of home life etc isn’t easy. Some people are lucky like that and have everything balanced but not me either. It’s great we all hung in there. Reply Reply to comment
You’ve had a bad time. I hope that’s passing and things are looking better. I admire your fortitude in sticking with this course – really puts my problems into perspective!
Well done to your husband for being there for you. I hope he’s had the opportunity to learn along with you so he gets some benefit too 🙂 Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hi Angela, Thanks for sharing this insightful reflection. Just a few prompts to follow this up, for your own CRJ: Have you thought about how this experience is impacting on your own teaching practice? e.g. will you be dealing with learners differently? if so, how? Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hi Dario, I hadn’t thought of it like that till you mentioned it. I know that when I worked in primary school there were students who had problems with poverty and how that impacted on their performance. I’m glad you highlighted this for me. thank you Dario! This is definitely a light bulb moment for me! Reply Reply to comment
Personally, I never stopped being a student. Being engaged actively full time as a photographer requires constant education, reflection and reinvention in order to stay competitive, this manifests itself in a never ending round of research into creative techniques and the adoption of new technology. What is different is adhering to a structured teaching environment and computing the requirements, both physically and mentally a course such as this PGCHE makes on an individual.
The main platform for interaction with my peers has been on the course forums, in the weekly webinars, when we have been asked to carry out module assignments with each other and I have had a little direct contact by email, so collectively quite a lot.
I started the course with Juggling work commitments and the course, but since the Pandemic I have been off work as my industry closed down. Therefore I have had more time to dedicate to this PGCHE course.
I have found few if any challenges with on line learning, for me it is an extremely time efficient way of participating on a course, although I can completely understand how home learning requires the active cooperation of family members to support windows of dedication during busy family / home life schedules. That is probably the biggest challenge for most people? Reply Reply to comment (2 likes)
Hi Alex, True, we never stop being students. If we teach with passion, then the students will be more willing to learn from us. Being actively involved throughout the course shows that online learning is an excellent fit for you. Successful online students are self-motivated, enthusiastic, and inquisitive, which I noticed that you are. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Thanks and I am very sorry to hear about your challenges.
There are may times over the last few months when I have been glad of this course not least because in a sea of uncertainly (particularly as a free lancer working in the media industry that has been particularly hard hit – currently 350k + freelancers – not including furloughed staff – in film and tv have got no work due to the cover pandemic as most productions have been, and still are, shut down or not starting up that includes theatre and live shows) this PGCHE course has been an island of normality.
Tuesday 11 Aug at 9:50 Hey Alex, I can definitely empathise with the need for managing family expectations! Working from a home environment during lockdown was the most challenging aspect. I had to adapt to being interrupted by my children every 5 mins!! Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hi Nick Yes indeed totally agree – the home working syndrome and concentrated / uninterrupted time – very very very challenging indeed. Alex Reply Reply to comment
very good insights here, thanks for sharing these.
For your CRJ, it might to further explore how your attitude towards learning and teaching has been shaped by this experience. Also, acknowledging the challenge of being an online learner, how will you now relate to your learners? Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Stanley Mbelu
Hello Alex, Indeed, the main challenge lies on the time that the online material needs, mostly, when there are a lots of family affairs that needs personal attention. Reply Reply to comment
I was very excited to become a student again, however, having never engaged with an online course I was initially overwhelmed. The Canvas platform environment wasn’t intuitive to me. I was working on an iPad and the app was so foreign. And on top of that I had never really engaged in an online community: openly commenting in an asynchronous manner and waiting to see if anyone will respond or comment feels a bit like being a satellite orbiting around some unknown planet that I never get to see the whole of, and only have my own tiny fragment of a perception of what it is and who inhabits it. I definitely need to feel safe and secure, and confident with my peers, to be able to openly converse – something I still struggle with!
Juggling demands and time has been an major issue. Not necessarily the ‘contact’ time, in reading and writing posts etc., but the time it takes (me) to interpret, reflect and synthesise the learning. And how to fit this reflective time into my day has been very difficult. It’s also been particularly difficult in this study block in a period for me without students and where putting things into practice wasn’t as easy.
Online technologies have great potential for supporting the design of learning and teaching. The opportunity for student autonomy, self direction and empowerment are great, but matched to this are the challenges of supporting different types of students to become autonomous and self directed. At post graduate level we could suppose and generalise that the type of learners are more willing and able, but in my local context for the 18–24 year old cohort I must be mindful of their relative experiences and abilities, especially in terms of social and emotional intelligence and how they are able to apply themselves to learning. Reply Reply to comment (2 likes)
i like your satellite metaphor and can relate! I was luck enough to take my first online course when I was still in high school (in 2005-6), when my school was trialing an online platform. The idea was to provide final year students with the opportunity to take courses not available at the school to better prepare them for university (in the US). I took an online macro-economics course which, from what I remember, was set up quite similarly to this, with readings, forums, and podcasts. I didn’t like it much, but that may have been mostly because I had to report to the library from 1.5 hours every day, where there was only one other student (in another course) whom I was not friends with. We would both often finish all our work on Monday, and have nothing else to do the rest of the week! The librarians were strict, and would make sure we never left the course website, and we were not allowed to do anything else but talk, so it was quite a boring time…
I remember in that course thinking thoughts like what you had here. I think one of the biggest reasons I did not have those thoughts this time around is because I entered this course with targeted goals, whereas the other one was intellectual curiosity. In the other course, I was more interested by the subject, but in this course, I am more interested in doing what I have to to get the certificate, fix my courses, and further my career. As such, I have not cared as much about the forums, as those represent other people’s thoughts to me, and I am much more interested in my own now. Reply Reply to comment (2 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Harriet Beesley
Empathising with our own students is really important and definitely a benefit of this experience. Also helping making us slightly prepared for online learning environments (both the positives and negatives), so that we can guide our students and reassure them. The end of this course also marks the end of my first module as an online tutor, and it has been enlightening to see how much pastoral time is needed, even with small groups. When you don’t see the students in the studio on a regular basis, it’s hard to read them and how they are feeling, so it’s important to keep touching base with them. Reply Reply to comment (3 likes)
Agree Harriet on the pastoral / reassurance front. recently 50% of my time when doing 1 to 1 critiques has been taken up with talking about expectations, career prospects and where do I go from here, what I do next with students – many are very worried about the future in these very uncertain economical times – understandably. In some respects engaging on line does help to keep it focussed and constructive and progressive by providing an ideate short and medium term plan for action with their work opposed to mental health support which I feel the student needs I can direct to some one better qualified to support. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Nice font Nick! I also like your satellite metaphor and after reading the texts around percentages of people who would engage with forum posts or join a webinar, I found myself last night trying to figure out how many people might be registered on the module. I am guessing there may be around 30 of us but who knows!
I’m interested in your last paragraph as I feel like I have spent a lot of time on this course telling myself things that I would also tell my students or later reflecting on things and thinking that I should have taken my own advice. I also took from one of the videos this week the need to design environments that our students will enjoy and engage with, not necessarily the ones that we are used to. Reply Reply to comment (2 likes)
I completely agree with you on taking one’s own advice! I think I managed to ignore that one during the first module. Got better during this one… Reply Reply to comment
i can empathise with your first paragraph, I too found the new world of totally online course very daunting to start with and navigating canvas was a struggle luckily the student support team were very sympathetic and helped me get going
I can relate to the ‘satellite’ analogy too – I found it frustrating.
I’ve struggled with focusing on the reading, so you’re not alone there, and likewise no students… I think we’ve all done increadibly well to stick to it given the crazy year it’s been! Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Alex Bailey
Yes agree overwhelming in many ways and the relative detachment / asynchronous engagement was certainly one, although now having done so much on line from this course / my own sons teaching and teaching and work meetings myself, it is becoming second nature and I do feel by working / teaching / learning from home in a virtual context I am very efficient if not a little lacking in ‘real’ social interaction. In small groups 1 to 1 and upto 4 on screen at once I can mange reading the body language on screen now – more than four and it becomes a mass of faces and to much body info to absorb or compute to read reactions accurately. In larger groups 4 + in virtual meetings I feel one becomes pretty anonymous sometimes I feel you have more personality and impact in the comments section – just my thoughts.
Very good points here and it’s great you have mentioned some of the challenges of implementing the approaches encountered here in your own context. For your CRJ, have you thought about exactly what could work with your learners and why? Are there ways to overcome the challenges you have mentioned? Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Thanks Dario, I think Gilly Salmon’s 5-stage model is really helpful in considering steps to support learning, and for not overlooking the social and emotional aspects of learning. And reading Laurillard (2012), how teaching can shape motivation and ‘acculturation’, supporting students so they are able to learn as part of a community, will be aspects to trial and test in my local context of supporting learning. Reply Reply to comment
After finishing my PhD, I continued to take courses in some form of another nearly every year. Most of the courses that I took were only an hour or two long, often put on by the university or institute I was working for. This is the first time I’ve done a course that has lasted more than a few days since 2013, and it has been intimidating. On the one side, I have seen the benefits of this course time and time again both in terms of my own teaching practises and in terms of helping other colleagues who are less familiar with pedagogy and or took this course years and years ago, and therefore have forgotten most of it. But on the other side, it has been a huge time commitment both in terms of completing the work (such as finding time to do all the readings every week) and in terms of needing to dedicate nearly seven or eight months of my life to this course with little break.
I am at very different point in my life from when I was in school before. Then, I did not know what I wanted to do with my life and was studying to figure it out. I did not really have any ultimate goals, and just wanted to continue to read and study what was interesting in the hope that it will get me a job. Now I have a job, and I am doing this to become better at that job. So, before I was quite undirected in my career goals, but now I am targeted.
This has affected how I interact with my peers. Before, I was looking to make friends. Now, I am looking to make professional connections, as it is nearly impossible (for me, at least) to have long-term digital friendships. These friendships also require lots of time – time I do not really have. So, I view my peers now more as people who will help me achieve my goals, whereas before I viewed them more as potential friends.
I find the juggling of my professional commitments and the demands of this course to be quite challenging. It has helped to have set days where I do nothing but this course, but as a result my career suffers. This is time I cannot spend planning my courses, writing Journal papers, writing grants, establishing my lab, and advising students. I understand that this course will help me become better at some of those things, which is why I am doing it, but as I have the same level of responsibilities and there is no more time in the day, it means other aspects of my career are suffering.
I chose to take this course online so that I did not have to worry about walking to and from other universities within London. The closest of the University was a 30-minute walk away, and so by doing this course online I was saving one to two hours of walking per week minimum. What I did not think about, who’s that it would mean I was doing more of the work on the nights and weekends and less during the week. the biggest challenge with taking this course online has been maintaining a balance of work and personal life. The biggest benefit has been that my career has suffered less than if I were to take this course in person. Reply Reply to comment (3 likes)
You’re right Michael, being able to really target your time and energies into the areas that most interest you now as a mature student make the learning experience a lot more rewarding. And that’s a really good point – if we had enrolled on similar courses at campuses, we would have had to adapt or postpone! Such a positive that we have been up-skilling in a really relevant area of education. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Toby Carr
I’m glad you mentioned the personal life balance as well as the professional life balance. I’ve found this hard at times and have driven myself into the ground a bit trying to fit study around what became a really busy summer for us with extended deadlines and several different rounds of marking and assessment etc. I’ve had to give myself a break at some points and have really appreciated the weekly structure so that I can catch up. I agree with Harriet’s comments below too and am glad to have been studying now as I feel equipped and kind of excited about implementing and testing my learning with our returning students. Reply Reply to comment
I have to admit to being a bit of a nerd and having enjoyed the learning process during my ‘enforced’ period of education. Over a decade later, I’ve enjoyed it once again, but with a completely different set of circumstances and distractions. As a new mum, I want to be able to balance a career and parenting responsibilities, setting a good example to my daughter while also getting to spend quality time with her. Studying and working part-time with a baby under 1yo might not sound like balance, but hey – parents with babies are already knackered so it’s not too much of a difference!
I have really enjoyed interacting with my peers on the course, the group is a good size and we are from some interesting subject backgrounds. The first assessment of module 1 threw us together with different peers which was quite stressful at the time, but worked well. The weekly webinars are well attended and especially during lockdown it has been a positive to see other people on a regular basis.
It has been easier to juggle study and tutoring during some periods more than others – honestly I am looking forward to not having to juggle the two, but I will miss the challenges of the PGCHE. I look forward to having my weekends back! It does help me empathise with the students I am tutoring, as they are doing part-time online learning too, so I have been able to help advise them with time management, stress and tackling their work volumes. Efficiency, good headphones and long playlists are key!
The challenges of the online environment is the distractions of the internet! Plus the fact that as we’re not on zoom calls all the time, it’s easier to be interrupted. As my husband has been working throughout this course, I have been the main baby wrangler, so my study and tutoring time is wedged into her sleeping hours. One of my students on the MA has a child of a similar age and has deferred a term as the workload was too much, I can totally empathise! The opportunities are basically the glass half full perspective of the same points – you can work flexibly around nap-times and the internet is your classroom!
Overall, I’m glad I have done the course and am very appreciative of the new skills I have gained, but I’m excited to get a few hours back each week – my brain has been exercised, now the rest of my body needs that time and exercise! We should all give ourselves a little clap for getting through this during the weirdest period of time in many years. Well done guys! Reply Reply to comment (3 likes)
Well done you! Lots of challenges. I can’t imagine how it must be with a young baby but did decide that the lockdown was a great time to buy a new house which has increased my stress levels a bit over the past few months! I have enjoyed being in the position of a student studying online and like your point on empathising with your students. I will be teaching on our Masters course from September which is designed to be flexible and fit alongside work or other commitments that students will have. Being an online learner through this course has made me much more understanding of the related challenges, the need for clarity a familiar structure and the support of peers. Thanks everyone! Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Why did I decide to move during a pandemic, with a baby and the hottest August in ages?!? Crazy! My workspace is currently the floor of our new study, with my laptop on a box. Crazy. Reply Reply to comment (2 likes)
Completely agree with you about the distractions of the internet! I’m able to empathise far more with students now having done this course. Fellow nerd here but as Michael says, I’ve done this course to improve my career, not out of a fascination with pedagogy (althought I find the psychological aspects of it quite intriguing). It’s a shame in a way; if I’d been able to focus this on teaching Ancient History from the beginning, I might have enjoyed it more. Which has given me a thought for assignment 2…. Reply Reply to comment
I was excited to become a student again. Having taught part time alongside my professional role for many years, I have wanted to further my skills in teaching practice for a while. My current role is my first full time academic role and I wanted to learn more about different teaching practices and approaches. My motivation was also about making myself more employable if my current position didn’t work out. I have never studied an online course before and wasn’t sure what to expect. I imagined that it would largely be recorded content, self directed study and assignments. I initially found engagement with the pre recorded content strange, watching a talking head of someone I’d never met and couldn’t be completely sure if they were real! As the weeks progressed I became more familiar with the tools and settled into the rhythm of the course. I’ve found the webinars a great way to connect with the weekly pace and my peers. My enrolment was confirmed just a week before starting and if I am completely honest, I hadn’t read the course documents. I had Canvas downloaded on my phone and thought it was just a phone app so couldn’t work out how the whole thing was going to work. I decided to wing it. On reflection, I can see a change in my motivations possibly moving from the ‘need to know’ to ‘want to know’ approach and becoming part of the group.
It took me a little while to get into a pattern of working that could fit alongside my teaching. I have tried as much as possible to integrate my learning with my teaching practice and not see the two things as separate. I really enjoyed the micro teach and flipped classroom sessions for this reason. To begin with, I didn’t have a desk set up at home or an area where I would study, I had unreliable internet signal and couldn’t access the online resources. I spent time in the campus library at the weekends working through the reading and weekly tasks and put time aside three evenings a week. The COVID changes to my practice meant that, like most of us, I was suddenly spending a lot more time online and I found this difficult to balance with the course. It did mean that I had to sort out a fixed workplace at home with good enough internet connection to work with my students and colleagues. I also found out that I could work outside and still get a connection. I have done much of the reading and parts of the assignments sitting in the garden.
At the start of the second module, I decided I needed to be more organised and have files set up on google drive that I can access from anywhere, organised into different folders. I’ve found this immensely useful and wish I had done it sooner. I also try to make sure that my notes are typed directly into the computer to avoid scraps of paper and having to rewrite them later. I will sometimes have a blank document open during the webinar which I can write notes into directly. I found the forum much easier to engage with once I had got to know my peers through the webinar sessions. Following discussion with peers and tutors, I also decided to buy a few key recommended text along with some others that I thought would be interesting. I have found this helpful for quick reference and to be able to mark sections to go back to and highlight key points.
As you can see, I am still struggling with keeping to word limits Reply Reply to comment (3 likes)
It sounds like you had a real struggle with the internet connection etc. initially – I don’t envy that. Luckily my OH has worked from home for over 15 years so broadband wasn’t an issue.
Hi Toby, I hope to say the same thing (re the first full time academic job) in the next few years, it is something I plan on achieving in the next few years once I get enough experience. Inspiring. I started to teach part time beginning of this year (what a year!) and setting up my design studio in two countries slowly (more like thinking how to adapt in this pandemic when we just started) along with another design-produce-export&import business as a completely noob. I found that the skills I need to hone is to be able to switch from one task which is completely different in nature, in the most effective way. Mia Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Before starting this course I had recently started a new job as a nurse educator, this job runs alongside my existing full time post and i am “released” when needed to teach at uni. That in itself is quite a juggle, however this is the first totally online course that I have done and whilst I initially struggled with the IT/canvas, work life balance and way of learning, I soon found that actually the flexibility of the course has really helped. I have been frustrated about not being able to attend many of the webinars due to work, but am really glad they are able to be accessed later as they tend to reveal invaluable nuggets of info re the assignments, and its lovely to hear others peoples experiences and about what they teach, I have learnt a lot about golf which is great.
I too have found the whole covid-19 situation very stressful, as i have had to work full time+ as a NHS worker, and this in itself has brought lots of challenges/sadness/stress, however, hopefully we are coming through the worst of this now. I understand how hard it has been for people to work from home with the support/distraction of their children, I have found the opposite as my children had to go to school as they were key-worker children, initially this made me feel guilty and sick, however on reflection they were safe and their were not many other options, although doing geography/history/maths etc after a 10 hour shift was not much fun. Despite this, I have found the course has been sometimes a useful distraction, i have learnt loads and really enjoyed the interactive components of the weekly tasks, the micro teach and the flipped session. the tutor support has been great and the more I have learnt, the more i realise how much work goes into creating a totally online course like this one. Reply Reply to comment
I’ve been thinking of you during this time and wondering how you were doing, working for the NHS. I’m glad to hear you were able to keep this up – I don’t know how you did it with their homework after a 10 hour shift! Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
How are you juggling your professional commitments with the demands of an online HE course?
What are the challenges and opportunities of the online environment, in your experience?
A. It’s stupidly hot. Do not expect much sense from my melting brain. Note: this sort of thing will also impact our students.
B. Random note – interesting article on BBC the other day about some Indian schools taking to the great outdoors rather than online, because a lot of their students were not online (could not afford hardware or connection). Affordability of access is still an issue in the UK too. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-53590847 (Links to an external site.)
I felt happy about becoming a student again; I enjoy academic learning. However this course was not as academic (I was soo looking forward to essay writing. Yes, I’m weird!) as I’d expected. However I recognise that the practical elements are likely to support my ongoing practice better than essays.
I didn’t interact with my peers as much as I would have liked with hingsight. I really, really miss the F2F interaction. This was compensated to some extent by the webinars, but pure online learning is not my preferred way of learning (no reflection on this course, it’s just personal preference). However they have been incredibly supportive and helful anyway, volunteering to be my students for the flipped classroom assignment – thank you! 🙂
Juggling professional commitments – they vanished quite rapidly thanks to Covid-19! To be quite frank, I’m not sure I’d have managed to get this far if that hadn’t happened. However Covid presented another major distraction, as did being made redundant and the consequent job-hunting.
To be honest I know I am a classic procrastinator, and I’ve always been better at exams than coursework. Give me a nice essay or exam with philosophical and academic discussion and I’m happy (as Dario spotted!); give me a long piece of coursework and I lose interest. I’m also not a natural multi-tasker, so I’m not ideally suited to online learning.
Doing this online has given me greater empathy for students – sat at a laptop with notifications for FB and other media going off is lethal for a procrastinator, and I’d not studied this way before (I have FB shut down now when I’m working on this course). I’m well aware of the irony of me teaching students study skills and not putting them into practice myself! I have huge empathy and admiration for those I’ve supported in the past doing distance course whilst working full-time as Police Officers and for those on this course who have been teaching the whole way through or, like Harriet, have demanding little ones. I’ve realised taking on a course of this nature whilst working requires self-discipline and firm organisation, which I’ve started to get to grips with better during this second module.
I wonder if a short section at the start of this course on how to study online, discussing organisation, handling distractions etc. might be of use for those of us who haven’t studied this way before?
I’ve been wondering if MBTI types (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) has a bearing on learning preferences/ styles in general and therefore impacts on online learning? (free version of the test here: http://www.humanmetrics.com/personality (Links to an external site.). I’ve done both the paid and free version and they came out the same, which would suggest the free version is pretty accurate).
Challenges and opportunities (as students, I take it?) –
Challenges:
Requires self-discipline and organisation.
Difficult if you’re a procrastinator!
Lack of F2F contact with others can impact.
I need LECTURES damn it. I miss lectures. I like listening to another human being. Podcasts don’t cut it for me and somehow videos aren’t the same either. It’s probably a combination of the F2F contact and social learning I enjoy. I know, that’s not what you get with an online course, but that’s the challenge.
COVID-19
Being made redundant 😀
Opportunities:
I do see the benefit of being able to go over the forums and read back asynchronously.
Flexibility = increased accessibility. I simply could not have done this course otherwise.
Probably being able to see more inputs from other students than might have been the case on a F2F course. The forums do perhaps create a safer space for some to contribute than in a F2F class. I suspect for your standard HE student, it forces some of them to contribute in a more considered, polite manner than they might as it’s in writing and saved…
I like the webinars. They’ve been the high point of some of my weeks over the last few months.
All very good points here and an insightful reflection.
For your CRJ/summary reflection, I am suggesting here a few prompts to explore: Have you thought about further exploring the concept of a course being “not as academic as you thought”? What does this mean? What is “academic” and what is not?
This course is founded on the broad principles of outcome-based education, where aims and outcomes are stated explicitly and clarified. Is this what you have “issues” with? How would you have done this differently? Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Stanley Mbelu
Hahahaha, The warmness is indeed extreme. Moment like this makes me to be grateful that I am not currently teaching as we are currently on vacation. Reply Reply to comment
I feel I can relate with my students’ experience better, although I started my first part time gig a week before PGCHE course started. I thought it was not a good idea to do it on my first semester of teaching, but I took the chance and loving it. It grounds me and forces me to put myself on the students’ shoes, “What would I (as a student) want to get out of this session?”
How did you interact with your peers?
The forums mostly and the webinar. I think I am not interacting as well as I should be, which I miss in relation to F2F.
How are you juggling your professional commitments with the demands of an online HE course?
I found the strategy that works for me is to plan the week beforehand in accordance with the load, and have dedicated days just for this course. I know it sounds like a luxury, but it is the most effective way for me to get through the week. Another thing is I tend to leave one or both days of the weekends to just not turning my computer on, squeezing everything on weekdays. Micro adventures or just a bike ride usually sort me out. This first full teaching semester had an impact on my triathlon training (just as a hobby) but I expected and accepted that, and not trying to beat myself. Working on the after math right now 🙂
2020 is filled with new learning curves from me which I am still really excited about; from running a new business in this tough time, setting up my design practice, research, teaching part time (in two universities) and doing this course. I am sure down the line I will look back and appreciate the hectic 2020 and will recognise being this in PGCHE course is one my best life opportunities.
What are the challenges and opportunities of the online environment, in your experience?
Challenges: Lack of motivation without the face to face interaction with peers and technological limitations
Opportunities: Flexibility, opportunity for greater to learners’ autonomy and the opportunity to explore different technology Reply Reply to comment
Good point around the renewed relationship with your learners. This might be a point to further explore in your reflection, e.g. what has actually changed, and how? What will you do “more” of? Any challenges? Reply Reply to comment
Interestingly enough, I have always been a student as I constantly learn and research for new and relevant materials. Being a tutor in Business and in Law constantly means that I need to be in-tune with relevant regulatory policies and business challenges. The main difference with my learning here is that I have to write a summative assessment, which have to be assessed with mark awarded. That takes me back to the days when I had to stay awake to study and ensure that I comes out at the end a success. Unfortunately, due to other personal commitments, there wasn’t enough time to properly and actively and properly submerge myself with the study process, and Covid-19 makes my whole time structure and management almost impossible to manage.
How did you interact with your peers?
The interaction with my peers, especially during the term 1 was absolutely amazing. I was able to learn from my peers, especially those that are in a totally different field from my area of specialty. Their approach to learning and teaching, together with their view towards student engagement, gave me an added overview on how I can work to improve my already existing approach as an academic.
How are you juggling your professional commitments with the demands of an online HE course?
I must be honest, it wasn’t as easy as I expected, mostly due to the constant weekly activities that is expected from us. Nevertheless, I knew what I was getting into(though not as intense), as I was determined to work hard and ensure that I have my PGCHE qualification by the end of this module. As an academic as well as a Business Consultant, I now realise the challenges that are out there when one needs to acquire an additional knowledge and certification.
What are the challenges and opportunities of the online environment, in your experience?
Without Covid-19 pandemic, I would like to assume that the challenges might have been slight different than what I experienced. As a proud father of two lovely kids at the age of 4 and 2, constant attention are given to the kids to ensure that they do not fell lonely, while juggling with daily class activity, and work activity. Nevertheless, the opportunity of an online learning is endless as the flexibility meant that I can keep my full time work, while managing my business and supporting my family. It also meant that I have the time for my amazing partner.
Provide a brief outline of how you have been experiencing this course so far, as a busy professional and as an online student (150 words). Post this to the discussion forum.
– This course have given me a more detailed insight to different pedagogical approach to student learning and support.
– The Tutors understand that majority, if not all here are professionals, which means they have other responsibilities apart from this program.
– The webinar is fixed in a time that falls totally out of my schedule, which I believe if not for this Covid-19, I might not be able to have attended to as much webinars than I did.
Sorry, this is late Everyone, I’m a bit behind but finally here! Like Alex, I don’t really think I will ever stop being a student, I love learning and teaching! (I am already looking at what to do next)! I have been encouraged to complete a PhD (which my sister completed a couple of years ago) so I may give that a go. This course has put a lot of theory, into a practical sense. That was definitely something I was missing. After completing my master’s in psychology in coaching, I had all the theories but none of the practice. The interaction with everyone has been fantastic, you are all extremely thoughtful, inspiring, articulate and giving. I have learned so much from you all and will miss our weekly interactions so much. I am very late to academia, (if you hadn’t realized already)! I just turned 55 (completing my MSc. at 53) so I feel a bit behind in starting a career in higher ed. but it feels so right. The challenge of online delivery is the interaction and learners experiences, staying engaged. We are lucky, this group has been fantastic, the core group who have stayed engaged each week have kept us all going. Dario and Andy are a big part of that too, engaging, realistic and encouraging. The MSc. I completed fully online also but I did not have the same experience with the cohorts. That degree was a long slog, really hard, this course has been a pleasure. Reply Reply to comment
Characteristics of the Successful Online Student
Online courses offer students opportunities to learn in new ways and make learning available to many who cannot attend a traditional class. However, online courses are not for everybody, just as not every student is successful in traditional college classes. In general, the successful online student should possess the following qualities:
1. Be open minded about sharing life, work, and educational experiences as part of the learning process. Introverts as well as extroverts find that the online process requires them to utilise their experiences. This forum for communication eliminates the visual barriers that hinder some individuals in expressing themselves.
2. Be able to communicate through writing. In the virtual classroom, nearly all communication is written, so it is critical that you feel comfortable in expressing yourself in writing. Some students may find they need to undertake remedial work before their written communication is up to the required standard, or they may need to allocate more time than a fellow student on the same course to complete the same task. This may particularly be an issue for students studying in a language other than their first language.
3. Be self-motivated and self-disciplined. With the freedom and flexibility of the online environment comes responsibility. The online process takes a real commitment and discipline to keep up with the flow of the process.
4. Be willing to ‘speak up’ if problems arise. When students experience difficulty on any level (either with the technology or with the course content), they must communicate this immediately. Many of the non-verbal clues that tutors use to determine if students are having difficulties (e.g. confusion, frustration, boredom, absence etc.) are not present and if they don’t let their tutor know there is a problem, he or she may never know something is wrong.
5. Be willing and able to commit 4 to 15 hours per week per course. Online is not easier than the traditional educational process. In fact, many students will say it requires more time and commitment.
6. Be able to meet the minimum requirements for the course. The requirements for online are no less than that of any other college course. An online course is often a more convenient way to receive your education, not an easier way.
7. Accept critical thinking and decision-making as part of the learning process. The learning process requires you to make decisions based on facts as well as experience. Assimilating information and executing the right decisions requires critical thought.
8. Have access to a computer and the Internet. The communication medium is a computer, phone line and modem or broadband connection; the student must have access to the necessary equipment. Many students prefer to work from home; however, some students may use computers in libraries, open access centres run by their local authorities, or even from within the institutions they are studying with. Although online learning implies the learning takes place ‘at a distance’, the distance may only be one of time and not miles (or kilometres).
9. Be able to think ideas through before responding. Meaningful and quality input into the virtual classroom is an essential part of the learning process. Time is given in the process to allow for the careful consideration of responses. The testing and challenging of ideas is encouraged; you will not always be right and you should be prepared to accept a challenge.
10. Feel that high quality learning can take place without going to a traditional classroom. If a student feels that a traditional classroom environment is necessary for effective learning then they may be better off in a traditional classroom environment. Also, a student who wants to be on a traditional campus attending traditional lectures and seminars will probably not be very happy online. Potential online learners have to feel comfortable that the education experience they are going to receive is what they are looking for and that the teaching will be equivalent to that given to face-to-face students. As much as expectations about the quality of an online course can be communicated to online participants before they sign up, it is in some ways down to the online student to trust that this will be the case, particularly if they have never taken an online course before.
Ooops. 3 and 5 …not so much….I’d love to know if learning style / preference is linked to MBTI type. If the marks on this counted in the same way as a degree etc. I suspect I might have been more organised earlier and devoted more time to it. You definitely need to have a set schedule to manage distance / online learning well – that’s something I’ve learnt from this experience at least!
Now, was does this mean for that part time PhD? I’ve always known I’d prefer to do it full time – to immerse myself in a subject I love, and I know I procrastinate and struggle to focus on longer term goals I don’t enjoy.
Week 11: Challenges in Facilitating Learning of Online Students
The six stories below are real accounts of disarray or distress encountered in different online courses, reported by either a course tutor or by another learner (they were collected as part of research conducted by Sian BayneLinks to an external site., Professor of Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh).
All raise some important questions about the design and tutoring of online courses. As you read the stories, bear in mind that we will return to this section as part of your Challenge Activity for this week. Case Studies of Challenging Behaviours
Please click on the titles below to read the stories. The Idler
George was a mature student on a part-time, wholly distance-learning, professional development course. The other people on the course were all adult learners, and the course involved a lot of online discussion and group work assignments. George described his experience as follows:
“The discussion groups we were in it tended to be 2 or 3 people out of six doing most of the work. There was one woman in my group who never did anything. I knew she was there because I could check the messages, she was reading them and didn’t respond at all which I found very odd, rude actually. We did sort of challenge her, we used kind of proxy measures like, ‘Are you having trouble with the technology’; kind of thing. Though I knew she wasn’t! But that really created a certain kind of unease, I mean what d’you do with people like that?
“The course director, well he was emailing me individually saying could I possibly get the people in my group who weren’t talking maybe to do something, which I thought was an odd thing to do. There again I’m not quite sure what else he could have done, he was trying to use the more participative people to try and chivvy along the others. I suppose he didn’t want to be too interventionist and heavy handed and maybe thought he could get the group to chivvy along each other, but it only worked to a certain extent, I wasn’t quite sure if that was my role to do that. I mean I could understand why he wanted to do it but on the other hand, I’m not sure that that was a legitimate thing for other participants to do. It’s a bit like in a face to face tutorial, the tutor saying, ‘Can you make those other people in your group talk a bit more’, I mean a tutor probably wouldn’t do that.”
The Flamer
This account comes from Susie, a first year undergraduate enrolled on a course of about 200 students. This course was run using face-to-face lectures, but with all tutorial activity taking place in online groups of six to eight. The online element included assessed group work.
“I don’t know why it happened but basically we were talking about the Museum of Scotland and how it doesn’t have that much about the future, and my friend was talking about it, and the way she worded it didn’t make that much sense but I think generally everyone sort of got what she was meaning; that it didn’t have that much about the future and what they thought the future would hold and stuff.
“And then this other student, he came in, copied the email and had it like typed out the bottom and sort of said, “Of course it doesn’t have anything for the future because we’re not in the future yet”. And he was just being really sort of bitchy and niggly if you know what I mean and it was just when we were putting stuff forward for an assignment so it was totally uncalled for and unnecessary.”
The Saboteur
This story comes from the tutor on the same course discussed in ‘The Flamer’. Rita was asked what had been her worst experience as an online tutor and she came up with the following:
“Actually it was this year, one very vocal and rather disaffected student who had taken against the university as a whole but then took against this module in particular, claiming that in doing the module online we were trying to do education on the cheap, and that it was an attempt to monitor – sort of big brother style – students and their learning processes, and that what we were trying to teach was banal and beneath his notice.
“And his arrogance coloured the way the students reacted to the whole module. I had to point out to him that in fact the system was not trying to do education on the cheap and that it was costing the university rather more than it would do with traditional methods, and that in no way were we trying to use it as a way of monitoring students because that would be illegal. And that shut him up on that, but what he subsequently went on to do was to start attacking students online for their views.
“He’s a student who has difficulties at home I suppose and he’s very opinionated, particularly about music and politics and the like. He caused quite a lot of disruption and had to be seen by his head of department twice. He tried to encourage students to post loads and loads of messages to flood the system and crash it, and that was clearly not in the spirit of the thing!
“He then posted a message that talked about how to use drugs safely which I immediately withdrew from the system, hoping no-one else had seen it. So I took it off because it was in a sense promoting drugs, and again I felt that that was not what the system was there for. He upset a lot of students with his arrogant approaches to their comments.”
The Black Hole
This tale comes from Patience – a mature student on a UK-wide distance learning course. This particular course was run through a blended mode, with independent study alongside occasional face-to-face seminar sessions. An online discussion board was provided for students to communicate with each other in between these face-to-face sessions.
“Yeah this particular course was awful because basically they just gave us the discussion board and said, ‘Use this if you want to’, and so when I logged in it was just a few other students, you know scattered around the UK. It could’ve fulfilled its purpose, which was to get us to talk to each other and support each other because we were all distance students and this would have been really helpful, but it wasn’t taken seriously as a learning environment. It was mainly people moaning about work and how close the deadline for their essay was. But what was really bad about it was it very, very quickly got cliquey. Within a couple of weeks, there was this clique of awful people on it who just talked about their cats. The whole time. Honestly, I’m not kidding you.
“There were only about 10 students using it, and they were mostly older, I was about 26 at the time but I got the sense that they were all quite a bit older, maybe 40s. And they would just talk about their cats, all the very amusing things their cats had been doing, and I remember sending a message in about learning, about a problem I was having with the module, and it was actually my first ever experience of sending a message up to a message board, and it disappeared into a black hole.
“There was no response to it at all. And I felt really crap, and I felt a bit embarrassed like, ‘Have I said something really naff?’ and then I felt a bit angry about it, and then I thought, ‘Well, actually what’s going on here is it’s just a clique, it’s this group of four or five people, older people, who are using it to talk about something that I’m not interested in’. And from that time on I never really used it.”
This is Noam, another tutor on a first-year course. In this account she is describing an experience not on a discussion board, but on live, ‘real-time’ chat.
“I think probably it is harder to teach online because you don’t get the respect. I mean I’ve had quite cheeky chat requests from students that I don’t think they’d have said face to face. I had one girl, she was sitting in the library and it was 10 o’clock in the morning, her essay deadline was 12.30 and she got me on chat and she said, ‘Oh, can you give me some hints for my essay, I’m doing this topic’.
“And I wrote back and I gave a very bland, ‘Structure it like this, read this book’, and she wrote back and said, ‘Well, could you give me 4 or 5 points about Adorno that I should definitely include in my essay’! She basically was asking me to write it for her. She’s quite a cheeky student anyway face to face, but face to face you sort of deal with it by laughing and saying, ‘Get to the library’ sort of thing, whereas online it’s just like, ‘Hang on, that’s kind of out of order!’.”
The Invisible Student
The final story comes from Jamahl, another mature student on a distance learning course. This one presents not so much a dark side scenario as an example of one of the potentially positive aspects of online course delivery. It would be useful to consider how a tutor might nurture these positive aspects of ‘freedom from the body’. And what do we lose in the online environment by not being able to use our actual physical presence as learners and teachers?
“Quite a kind of pleasing, liberating moment almost, was towards the end of the programme. We had little clips, kind of resumes that you could send to each other, where you presented the kind of identity you wanted to present to the world, and it didn’t have a picture facility in those days, but people just wrote a little cameo of themselves.
“And there was a woman in Australia who’d given hers, and towards the end I said something about – there was something happening in Australia where she lived – and I said, ‘Are you going to kind of go along and take part in that?’, and she said ‘Well no I can’t because I’m a wheelchair user’.
“And that was right towards the end of the course and she had chosen to disclose that at that point. And that was interesting ‘cos there was no way in that environment that that had appeared at all before. And I’m sure had we known that from the outset, if it was in a face to face environment, it’d have been the usual thing, you would have probably treated her quite differently in that sense.
“And I realised that that was quite a valuable aspect of this kind of environment, that it gives the users of it a certain control over what they disclose about their identities. By that point we’d all worked together and it was irrelevant really at that point. And the identity had already been constructed I think for her as a member of the group, and I looked at her as a learner and a group member, rather than as a person with a disability. So that was quite nice.”
The Idler – that may not have been fair. As was mentioned somewhere earlier in this course and by Angela, some may be very shy or have some other issue going on. For the tutor to ask the other students to ‘chivvy’ was out of order – I would have approached the student myself, perhaps by phone, to find out what the issue was.
The flamer / saboteur – sounds like the same student on that course. Yes, one fellow student on the sociology course; kept asking vaguely relevant questions and then leading the lecturer down rabbit holes which disrupted the learning for the rest of us. I was relived when he disappeared after a while…
Black holes – yes, from my time as an MA student. None of the others wanted to discuss Ancient History outside the lectures 😦
The Cheeky one – ooooh, yes, a couple of times at ACM, Students in the Library asking questions about the written work they were working on; one in particular asking me what terms she should search for etc. I told her I couldn’t write it for her. Had a few with dissertations too…
The invisible student – not what it sounds; more of a positive – online, no-one can see your differences, e.g. disability- you are just one of the cohort of students…
Which makes me think; as a student with a hearing impairment, I prefer F2F BUT lecture capture would really have helped back in my BA days when I sometimes mis-heard something – rather than bothering whoever was sitting next to me, I could have played back the video…
Week 11: Practitioners in Action – Federica Oradini and Dario Faniglione
So; flexibility = greater diversity (allows people from different parts of the globe, therefore different cultures, teaching different subjects, with different challenges, experiences etc.) to participate.
Flexibility also allows me to procrastinate!! 😀
Resonate – what Frederica says about her MA resonates strongly; the fear of isolation and missing out on that F2F contact and connection. However what Dario says makes sense intellectually – I’ve certainly learnt a lot from Suzanne, and if I had not been on an online course that allowed her to participate I would have not had that opportunity.
And there’s that; what I *feel* (emotions) and what I *think* (the intellect). Western education – indeed culture – has historically tended to view emotions as ‘weak’, ‘feminine’ and generally to be disowned / controlled. Note that even today we medicate or treat as aberrations normal human emotions that are viewed as ‘negative’ (sadness, distress, anger), whereas they may often be the result of long suppresses emotions due to that very Western attitude of ‘stiff upper lip’.
Yet education – and a whole lot else besides- will be unsuccessful if we don’t take a holistic approach and treat both students and staff as whole human beings. The increasing focus on the mental well-being of our students and staff is one step towards an improved approach (but still tends to consider some emotions as an ‘illness’) – and note it’s typically referred to as ‘mental’ well-being, not ’emotional’ well-being. Our emotions, mental and physical health are inextricably linked, and intrinsically linked to our social health (humans *need* social interaction / connection. It’s not a ‘nice to have’; it’s been proven over and over that we suffer mentally, emotionally and physically without it).
Which is why I like Race & Salmon’s comments that emotions are important in education, HOWEVER they tend to focus on those of the students; how do activities etc. make student’s feel. I think it’s equally important to look at teaching staff ‘s emotions too – a happy teacher = happ/ier students? We all know how much more enjoyable a lecture etc. is from someone who is positive and passionate about their topic – add stress from poor line management, job insecurity, a divorce, or political machinations (see the latest furore over grades as a prime example – every teacher I’ve heard interviewed has expressed anger over how little they have been trusted) etc. and that *will* impact student’s experiences.
On those lines – stress has a nasty habit of effecting intellectual thought processes right when you need it the most. If I understand correctly, this is due to the body reacting by sending resources to muscles etc. getting ready to fight, flight etc. and potentially diverting resources from the brain; also your primitive hindbrain take over the driving wheel to prime those primeval responses enabling people to carry out increadible feats of strength and speed in dire situations.
However in the majority of modern day stress-inducing scenarios that does’t work; what we end up with is trying to navigate complex situations and problem solve – retain job, maintain professional performance whilst going though a break-up, moving 5 times with cat etc. (yes, personal experience!) with a brain that’s gone AWOL. This is NOT helpful and the learning / teaching and achievement of both teachers and students experiencing this will suffer.
In these scenarios online may make it harder – on the one hand flexibility may support students in stressful situations to continue; on the other hand there is nothing like a big hug to reassure and help de-stress the average human (that *need* for connection) and I’ve witnessed students receive that support from their fellows. Not possible online.
Now; I am arguing for my own preferred preference. So, I’m biased. Perhaps it’s as simple as; this is THE ONLY WAY I could have done this course. Even finding a local institution to do it at = travelling time, being bound to their timetable etc. So yes, it’s not perfect but it’s as perfect as the existing technology can make it; Dario etc. puts in a lot of work to make it happen (I don’t envy him reading all our forums!).
Week 11: Dealing with Challenging Situations with Online Learners
When considering how to deal with different challenges, and when managing and facilitating online learners, one thing to ask yourself is: how can I most effectively deal with this – through facilitation or through design? Or both? In the short term, sometimes you will have to try to deal with a particular situation by interacting online with the students in some way, but in the long term, many of the kinds of issues you might experience could perhaps be dealt with more effectively through your online curriculum design.
Some curriculum design frameworks strongly recognise this, for example Gilly Salmon’s Five-Stage Model. Here, the consideration of facilitating online participants through effective online curriculum design is embedded in the heart of the framework, across all five stages.
We have already referenced this model in Week 8’s Digital Resources (Chapter 2 of Salmon (2013): E-tivities: the key to active online learning), which you may have read as part of your further reading. Below is a reminder of the model.
Developed in 2000 by Gilly Salmon, the Five-Stage Model is a model for describing the online learning process, from first steps to self-directed learning. The model is now used by educators all over the world. It provides a way of ‘scaffolding’ students’ participation in online courses: starting with induction (Stage 1); then fostering a cooperative learning environment where participants engage in mutual exchange of information (Stages 2 and 3); then course participants look towards collaborating to achieve both course-related and personal goals (Stage 4); and finally a return to more individual pursuits (Stage 5).
Being an online tutor is more than simply being a subject matter expert. Tutors must also take some responsibility for technical, administrative, managerial and pastoral areas of their courses – in the online-only context, they are often the only human contact online students have with the institution they are studying with. The Five-Stage Model shows the kinds of technical support you might provide, as well as the pedagogic aspects of the role. Salmon sums up the model by saying “given technical support, good human intervention from an e-moderator (or, in our case, online tutor/lecturer), and appropriate e-tivities to promote action and interaction, nearly all participants will progress“.
The essential role of the online tutor is to promote human interaction and communication through the modelling, conveying and building of knowledge and skills. They undertake this through using the mediation of online environments designed for interaction and collaboration. They also have an invaluable role to play in the successful implementation of the Five-Stage Model:
Stage 1 Access and Motivation: The e-moderator’s role is to welcome and encourage participants to interact.
Stage 2 Online Socialisation: Familiarising and providing bridges between cultural, social and learning environments.
Stage 3 Information Exchange: Facilitating tasks and supporting the use of learning materials.
((for some reason this reminds me of Maslow’s pyramid of needs…))
Reflect / Produce
Refer back to the six student stories you read about earlier this week:
The Idler
The Flamer
The Saboteur
The Black Hole
The Cheeky Student
The Invisible Student
Choose TWO of these and consider the following questions:
If you were the online tutor working on and facilitating that course, what would you do to resolve this problem?
How could the problem have been avoided, if a different approach had been taken to the design of the course?
To help you formulate your answers to these questions, consider all that you have learned over this week and in the previous weeks, and your previous experience, that could be relevant to this.
For example: the characteristics of successful online students; anything said in the podcasts; frameworks and models of online curriculum design (such as Gilly Salmon’s Five-Stage Model); any other sources of pedagogical scholarship or practitioner accounts, and so on.
You will be sharing your ideas and thoughts in the discussion forum on the next page.
Reflect / Discuss
When you have completed the activity on the previous page, please share your findings and perspectives as a discussion post in the forum.
Read and give peer feedback on the strategies of at least two of your colleagues.
Consider the following questions when making your comments:
To what extent do you think your colleague’s strategy would be effective in tackling the challenges discussed? How would it be effective (or not), and why?
How might you approach this differently? How would your alternative approach be effective (or not), and why?
What have you learned from this that could be useful for you in the future, when trying to tackle these kinds of challenging situations with online learners in your own practice and teaching contexts?
Are there any particular sources of scholarship or practitioner guidance that might support your perspective on this?
The Saboteur – this person is having difficulty getting onto stages 1 and 2 on Salmon’s five-stage model. From the sounds of it, they have set up the system and are accessing it, and they are sending and receiving messages, it is just not being done in a positive manner. Rather than send and receive messages to improve learning, they are doing so to disenfranchise other students, and disengage them from the module. When a toxic personality is present, some students will follow them into a pit, some will stop engaging to avoid them, and some will engage with them to tell them they are wrong: all these groups will have an inferior learning environment and learn less as a result of this student’s presence.
To resolve the problem, I would censure sensitive comments, attempt to get him the help he needs (when a person is acting like this, it is often because there is something wrong), and all the while document the incidents and/or report them to higher-ups as needed. In my experience, when students have outside issues that are leading them to become disengaged with learning and/or cause trouble, there is little you can do to help them if they do not want help. So, I would focus on providing them with the professional resources they need through the university. To protect other students, I would not allow students to freely post but make it necessary for me to OK posts before they become publicly available.
The Cheeky Student – I had one of these last year (in in-person teaching). On Salmon’s steps, they seem to be stuck on 3 or 4. They could be having problems with information exchange, which is why they have waited until the last minute to do the essay and are ill-prepared, or they could be having trouble with knowledge construction. By the time the student is contacting the instructor with cheeky comments, there is little that can be done to help the student in that situation. But steps can be taken to prevent this from happening in the future.
The role of the e-moderator here is too support and facilitate the process of learning. When future assignments come up, the e-moderator can provide more detailed guidance on what is needed (to help support learning), have the students work in groups (so they can aid each other in facilitating learning), or have small assignments that are completed in forums that must be done throughout the week related to the essay so the student is working on it throughout the week. Additionally, better guidance on communication can be provided to the students. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Toby Carr
I have some experience of this in my face to face teaching where one student started to become disruptive in group sessions, questioning their purpose and my use of workshops in my teaching practice, this went on to develop into rants about the motives of the course and the objectives of the university. We were collaborating with a client partner, a key element of our practice which required working in a different way but gaining new skills. It resulted in repeated jibes and snide comments which I found annoying as I had put a lot of time and effort into the course design and materials. It was also disruptive to other students who didn’t share the same view but were less outspoken. I intervened and responded clearly to some of the jibes explaining the reasoning and offered a private meeting to discuss any concerns. At the root of this seemed to be a level of insecurity working in a new way and a lack of trust in me as a new member of staff. Over the course of the year I built a good relationship with this student who has also come to reflect on his own approaches as a learner and is now more confident at taking on new challenges.
In an online environment I think perhaps a similar intervention could work in terms of addressing concerns clearly to the whole group in a light tone and then seperate contact by phone or video chat with the individual to discuss their concerns and explain how their actions were affecting the group. Perhaps the problem could be avoided by explaining why the course was designed in the way it was and how the new skills would be of benefit to the students. In my case, this was done in part through the project brief and weekly structure but perhaps not explicitly stating it or backing it up with evidence.
The Black Hole
This was like my first experience on Twitter. Like shouting into an empty cave and feeling abit stupid and lonely! I think this particular issue could be avoided by curating the forum a bit, using the weaving techniques. Prompting discussion and setting some ground rules on what it was there for. I read in the reading for this week that this should happen in the first few weeks, setting the tone and the intentions. This also fits with Gilly Salmon’s five stage model moving from setting up the system to familiarisation, supporting use of learning materials (information exchange) and moving into knowledge construction. It might mean a more active engagement from a moderator to begin with (but not overbearing) short quick encouraging messages for useful things and no response to the cat threads! Having said that, as an icebreaker sharing common interests could be useful but it sounds like things never moved on from there.
In terms of the design of the course, if the forum had been more integrated as a tool for discussion related to learning activities and linking to the assessment, it may have been more widely recognised as a learning space not just a social hang out for cat ladies. Reply Reply to comment
I like you approach to The Flamer and it seemed to work well in your situation. It requires a lot of one-on-one time and personal attention, so I worry about this situation in larger groups. And I agree with Twitter and The Black Hole situation – when I started it certainly felt like shouting into a void. I think the methods used in this module would certainly help (as you have discussed), with prompts and such. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
The invisible student: I choose this scenario as i thought it was an amazing example of how online courses can help someone create a new identity free from potential prejudice or stereotypical responses. The students who worked with this particular student had no idea she was a wheelchair user as this had no bearing on the course and therefore was in-fact irrelevant. The student was able to be free from her disability for the whole course, which should be common practice but often is not the case in traditional face to face teaching environments. Online, all aspects of Salmon’s five stage model could be achieved, due to the flexibility that an online course facilitates and thus the student was able to do the course in her own environment without potential restrictions. whereas in a class room environment health and safety measures may be needed to be put in place to support her and thus she may have felt she was treated differently to peers and this in turn can lead to other students not being as supportive (this is a generalisation, but i have witnessed this in practice).
The Idler I think this was an interesting scenario, I would like to think that the advantage to an online course (as previously noted) is that there is nowhere to hide, as the tutor can always see if the student is an active participant and thus address this if it becomes an issue. I am unsure why the tutor feels the need to get the student to “chivvy” along the idle student as I don’t think this is fair. In the first module we had on PGCHE course we relied on each other to critique and post our learning conversation tool for each other’s micro-teach. Initially I didn’t understand why there was an “additional student brief” if students did not complete in a timely way, but now I recognise how useful this is. The need to build in a “just in case” back up plan for students in group work who are relying on each other to complete their peers piece of work so that they can pass is extremely stressful, if you have an idle student within the group. As adult learners we could leave this to the group to sort, however is this fair? I believe the tutor in this scenario should have stepped in and had a private conversation with the idler to establish what the issues were and if any help/support could be offered and not rely on the student group to do this
I hadn’t thought about how the Idler situation related to this course, but it is evident now! I always disliked group work when in school because of relying on others, but as an adult, we all want to succeed and are taking the course as a choice (vs. we have to) and it has been much better for me. Reply Reply to comment
There is a mild Flamer in my current cohort, they rush into the group discussions asking questions (that have all been addressed clearly in the brief) and start to seed doubt in the other students. This is quite simple to spot when it is happening in the public forums, but when it happens on the students’ WhatsApp group, that’s when it can spiral. The issue with a flamer will typically occur in the first three steps of Salmon’s model, mostly the second (Online Socialisation: Familiarising and providing bridges between cultural, social and learning environments). My strategy would be to flag these potential Flamers and make sure that they know to come to me before freaking out with the other students. I would give advice to the group as a whole (so as not to single the Flamer out and knock their confidence) by email and in the live sessions on how to read the briefs and to come to the tutors if they have any issues. Higher education should be about developing independent study and enquiry, so I would encourage them to think thoroughly before acting. If it carries on, I would bring it subtly up with the student during tutorial sessions. I would also identify some student spies, who are more level headed, who I think would feel comfortable letting me know when a flame has been lit in the WhatsApp group chat so that I am aware of the issue before it turns into a wildfire.
The Idler
Within the course I am involved in there are no collaborative challenges that would mean that an Idler could derail the work of other students to an extreme level. They can however miss out on the benefits of the group chat forums, where students and tutors share ideas and comment on those of other people. It is hard to read the Idlers and place them on Salmon’s steps, as they don’t give much away. But with groups that are larger than 10/15, it can be tricky to spot when students are less engaged – this could be a negative of online learning, but I don’t have experience in a campus based course for comparison. I try and keep a tick-list of the students, so that I can keep an eye on how many times I see them engage with others during each week. If they are less forthcoming, I would send them a nudge via email, and make sure to get them to interact during the live webinars (if they attend) by asking their opinion. If they are still slow to join in, I would make sure to communicate this with fellow tutors and student advisors to help. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Nick Raven
At its heart this example highlights the challenge to maintain from the students appropriate and meaningful engagement in the learning. It’s all too easy to let slip and allow the kind of ‘chit-chat’ that this example describes. In some respect the students were using the forum for their chatter and although it was an inappropriate mode for the discussion I would reflect that the students needed an outlet for this level of communication. It’s common knowledge that we enjoy being different, but what brings us together is shared interests. The cat talk might not have been valuable for Patience, but it could be argued that it is a really strong way with which those so inclined could connect and form friendship groups within the learning community. Fostering a supportive framework for confident happy students can support and encourage happy learners. Perhaps a way to handle this would be to provide a function to facilitate the chat – an alternative chat function for the messaging. This would direct the ‘chit-chat’ away from the forum. The facilitating tutor could then direct away any inappropriate chat from the forum and encourage more meaningful posts for the learners.
Gilly Salmon’s Five-Stage Model would be effective here in supporting student motivation and socialisation. Clear and succinct instruction for tasks and student motivation, in terms of ‘expectancy theory’ (Biggs and Tang, 2011), would also enhance the engagement. Constructive alignment would further enhance this so that the learning be student-centred, appropriate and meaningful for greater engagement. E-titivies with a ‘strong task and action focus’ (Salmon, 2013) can help deepen learning and support student co-operation. This will help foster and support a ‘community of practice’ (Salmon, 2013) whereby students feel part of the community of learners and more willing to engage with the materials and social interactions of the forum, thereby avoiding ‘black hole’ syndrome.
The Invisible Student
The example highlights the kind of prejudices and preconceptions that can be made about people that can lead to discrimination by students and tutors alike. The experience the student describes is, on the whole, a positive reflection of the perception of a disabled person in the context of online learning, or lack of perception due it being undisclosed. But, why should it even matter if the peer was a wheelchair user – whether it was revealed late on or disclosed earlier?
As a tutor I would encourage diversity and the acceptance of diverse learners through appropriately managed guidance and interventions. In terms of widening participation and inclusion we must make the culture of learning welcoming for any type of learner whether they’re physically disabled, mentally disabled, or any other possible context of discrimination in terms of race, culture, sex, etc.
As an example this would be actioned by course design and direction that remained focussed on the objectives and the purpose of the learning. This would be reiterated if there was anything disclosed that was sensitive or personal that wasn’t relevant to the learning context. In this instance whether the student was a wheelchair user or not bears no relevance on their abilities to engage in the aspects of learning. This should be supported and protected by the facilitating tutor.
In respect of the positive implication for student controlled identities this is potentially a large subject; and indeed for us all. We all construct, whether online or off, our own identities through association, perception and implication. And there are positive and negative implications for this, again both online or off. For me, what is most apparent, is that we must be mindful of difference and diversity, but also respectful of people’s identities. As teaching and learning practitioners, I believe we should focus on drawing out, where possible, the positive attributes of a culture of practice that is inclusive, supportive, positive and productive.
Gilly Salmon’s Five-Stage Model (2013) would be really effective here in terms of supporting and focussing on the access to learning, student motivation and socialisation before information exchange and knowledge construction. The establishing of trust and kinship are as important as the ‘learning’ — or perhaps more meaningfully ‘trust’ and ‘kinship’ are the important foundations for learning to take place. If the students are supported in focussing on this through scaffolding then any preconceptions and prejudices should fall away. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Mia Tedjosaputro
The idler. The issue of the student who “never did anything” is actually not unique to online learning, it’s a long-standing problem with group work in any context. It’s one of the reasons why in the classes I’ve taught, it’s loved by the weaker students and loathed by the stronger ones, as the grade for the work is a group grade so some students are artificially buoyed while others are dragged down. The student in the case study was perhaps not meeting the requirements outlined in the characteristics of successful online learners in terms of the first, fifth and sixth characteristics; though from the description it’s unclear if she was introverted or not (first characteristic). Introversion in my experience can also be a barrier in online communication, despite the inference in the character description of successful online students. In terms of the Salmon model, it seems that the student is stumbling at the starting gate- she presumably has access to the system, so in stage 1, motivation may be an issue. Information exchange (stage 3) cannot happen without socialization (stage 2) so she is unlikely ever to progress beyond this point without intervention. The course design could have mitigated some of these issues. In the first instance, establishing a group leader who is responsible for reporting problems to the tutor might have provided an incentive to participate. Next, online learning provides an electronic trail which can me used to track participation. It is possible to stipulate a minimum number of interactions per activity within the group work, and assign a portion of the final grade to participation (e.g. 20-30%, as the process is arguably as important as the end product). Finally, had the issue been reported to the tutor in a timely manner, then an early line of dialogue may have “nipped the issue in the bud” before it became a serious problem resulting in the ill will of the other group members and a lack of cohesion within the group. Imperfect information is often the root of problems such as this one.
In the case of the black hole, many of the strategies employed to mitigate the issue are actually similar to the above, though the underlying problems are different. The issue here is a lack of direction in the forums, which moderation or “weaving” would address. There is also a problem in that with a general discussion forum, it is difficult to sort where students should be asking or answering questions related to specific topics. Any good online public forum in the past 20 years has child boards, with specific focused topics, and an FAQ section at the head. This model could certainly be adopted by module conveners. Again, if a participation element were introduced to the assessment, it might ensure that questions were answered more readily. An example is this very forum here, where the task calls for participants to reply to at least two posts. Relating this case study to Salmon, it seems that most students on the course in question were failing at the second stage- only the cat owners were actually socializing, and perhaps without the desired focus. Information exchange- the third stage- was thus not effectively achieved. In terms of the characteristics of successful learners, it seems that discipline (#3), meeting the minimum requirements (#6- though it’s unclear if these requirements were stipulated), and by extension #9 and 10 were lacking in the bulk of the learners on the course. As suggested above, better control and guidance from the module conveners would have mitigated this. There is always a fine balance between scaffolding and learner autonomy and it doesn’t seem as though this balance was achieved in this particular case. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Dario Faniglione
Thanks for your contributions to this discussion, which might be particularly useful for you in this iteration of the module, as most of you have been “catapulted” into a fully-online delivery, without some of the necessary adjustments to curriculum design that we would normally expect in such environments. I tried to capture the main themes and items of discussion related to strategies of dealing with challenging behaviour. You will soon notice that most of the ideas suggested here are equally applicable to a variety of learning environments, from traditional face-to-face, to fully online learning experiences.
High-level principles
In explaining and justifying your proposed strategies, you have all agreed (explicitly or implicitly) to some high-level aims. These are broadly:
Maximising learner inclusion: limiting the feeling of challenging learners being excluded from the interaction, but also preventing other learners being excluded as a result of the challenging behaviour of others;
Empathy: being empathic as a tutor towards challenging learners, and also promote an emphatic attitude amongst learners to boost the sense of community and working towards common goals;
Value social interaction: as tutors, create an environment where there is a common understanding of how valuable individual contributions are in promoting everyone’s learning.
The high-level principles summarised above have then been applied to a series of suggestions, which are of course dependent on and specific to the learning and teaching context.
Curriculum design
It was good to see that curriculum design strategies have been identified as a way to prevent or minimise challenging behaviour. This is definitely in line with the reflective approach we would like to promote as a corner store of your teaching practice. In other words, if a particular incident has happened, it’s probably a good idea to review the current design and highlight areas of improvement. You have suggested a few:
Reviewing the correct “blend”: broadly speaking this can refer to the weight, length, timing, and sequencing of learning activities;
Setting mandatory contributions (possibly as part of the assessment)
Alignment of learning activities to assessment tasks (yes, our get of jail card!)
Time and space to allow for tutor-learner and peer interaction to happen
Back-up plans for complex and involved activities
Rule setting
Closely related to curriculum design, you have also mentioned the importance of setting some rules of engagement. These should happen at an appropriate time and should aim to:
Clarifying expectations, which clear instructions
Explaining the purpose of resources and activities
Provide guidelines and guidance
Reinforce the appreciation and value of others’ contribution
Tutor interventions
Last but not least, you have rightly suggested a vast array of possible tutor interventions, These could be:
Personalised interventions: where we have a one-to-one conversation, through tutorials or different mean of communication, aiming to expose the root cause of the manifested behaviour;
Group interventions: where we pull in the learners together (through webinars or discussion prompts) and mobilise the learning community in dealing with incidents/challenging behaviours. In an adult learning environment, these are great ways to share with learners the responsibility of the intervention. It has been suggested by some of you that breaking the routine could help. Examples of this could be heavy-handed moderation or switching to different communication platforms.
Tutor interventions are possible if implement strategies of continuous monitoring of (online) engagement, and this can be in itself challenging and time-consuming.
I hope that the outcome of this week’s discussion can foster some final thoughts for your CRJ, and perhaps some of the topics/themes listed above might be used as prompts for further reflection and learning.
I don’t know what it is about Simon McIntyre, but I really don’t like him! Which is an interesting point I may have already made somewhere; the Ladder of Inference and students just taking against a lecturer. Have I taken against a student? Yes, usually when a clash of wills transpires (‘Please do not eat in the Library’ – response: attitude).
…and musing on why I seem to have finally got organised in time for this last module I’ve realised, no, I was organised at the beginning but with Covid-19 kicking off in March, being furloughed end of March etc. meant my head just wasn’t in a good place for being organised. Since I’ve had the paperwork for this new job I’ve been in a much better place. Which shows just how much stress can impact one without you realising the extent.
Learning Conversation form:
For teaching observation, peer feedback, self-evaluation and reflection on practice in supporting student learning
Note: Due to Covid-19 and being made redundant, I had no access to any lectures or students being operated by an institution other than those at Falmouth. We were advised that using a TED talk etc. was fine.
I am aware that this is a recording of a traditional ‘sage on the stage’ lecture, with minimal interaction with the audience until the Q&A session at the end and no standard LO’s as such
The main reason I wanted to look at Mary Beard was because I’d heard she had a reputation of using down-to-earth, accessible language (even swearing in Uni lectures), which is unusual for a respected Professor and even more unusual for a Classics Professor, and I wanted to see how this worked in practice and what was good about her delivery.
Learning Conversation Form
Observer: Anna Dovey
Observee: Prof. Mary Beard
Date: 6/08/20
Course: Gifford Lectures – one of a series of 6; ‘”The Ancient World and us: from fear and loathing to enlightenment and ethics”.
Actual number in attendance: Unknown – at least 100 judging by theatre
Observation time (mins): 1:05 hr
Activity(ies): e.g. lecture, seminar, tutorial, supervised studio or location work, one to one tuition, micro-teach session, etc Public lecture as part of a series of 6.
“Professor Dame Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, delivers the Gifford Lecture “Tyranny and democracy”. It is the fifth lecture in the series “The Ancient World and us: from fear and loathing to enlightenment and ethics”. This lecture is about politics ancient and modern. What political inheritance do we imagine we can trace back to the ancient world? On what does our admiration for Athenian democracy rest, or our hatred of Roman autocrats?”
Strengths and effective practice – observer to identify in bullet points: (E.g. strengths could be: e.g. clarity of aims/outcomes, planning and rganization, methods/approach, delivery and pace, content (currency, accuracy, relevance, use of examples, level, match to students needs), student participation/achievement, facilitation of student active and/or deeper learning, use of environment and learning resources, scaffolding on prior learning, diversification of approaches to take account of different learner needs, management of timing and weighting of different parts of session, use of formative assessment to test learning, promotion of positive class climate, encouragement of students to evaluate the session and their own learning, etc. NB sources of pedagogical scholarship discussing aspects of good teaching practice can help suggest ideas for strengths and aspects of effective practice and help support your observations)
– Clear indication of how to access the recording and the option to leave Q&A before you leave, if have to leave early and also allows for accessibility. – Assumes a degree of knowledge but not too advanced. – Apologies for change of topic. – Uses humour – Uses very accessible language – Uses relevant images and examples e.g. Horrible Histories – Excellent pace and delivery, with good NVC’s – change of tone in voice for emphasis, expressive, uses hands – Uses down to earth imagery and analogies. Comes across as authentic – yes, an expert in her field BUT not arrogant unlike some. – Nice asides and little stories – Poses questions – Reads out relevant passages to make points – Highlights lessons to be learnt in terms of argument and debate – Mentions and weaves in previous lecture subjects to link to overarching topic – Some absolutely brilliant bits I wholeheartedly agree with and pleased to see she put forward, e.g. Alexander the no-so-great and the fact the Roman Empire was largely formed during the Republic, not by the Emperors – nice clarification of that point. – Liked her emphasis on seeking the truth r.e. the Latin primer ghost-written by the man’s two daughters…
Questions, observations and potential suggestions for improvement: ways in which the session could be further developed in the future:(NB sources of pedagogical scholarship discussing aspects of good teaching practice can suggest ideas for further development for the session and help support your observations)
– Short notice change of topic. For a public lecture by a renowned subject specialist this is acceptable, but ideally to be avoided in an academic module unless it was forced by circumstances, e.g. a necessary space such as a lab was out of bounds. Under such circumstances swapping two lectures around might be acceptable . Recent events are a prime example of courses having to be changed at very short notice! – More use of relevant images / videos – felt a little 2D. – Very static – speaker could move around more (potentially limited by the need for notes at a lecturn?) – Missed an opportunity with ‘Alexander the not so great’ to look at the definition of ‘great’ (possibly due to timing, but could have posed the question).
The observer to summarise the sessions overall quality in relation to the stated learning outcomes: (i.e. to what extent did the learners seem to achieve and demonstrate the stated learning outcomes of the session and what seemed to help or hinder them to do that?)
Gifford Lectures purpose: “The purpose of Lord Gifford’s bequest to the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews and Aberdeen was to sponsor lectures to “promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term—in other words, the knowledge of God”
I’m very thankful that as an atheist, in this instance this series of lectures did not meet the stated purpose!
Mary Bread stated that the intention of this lecture was to explore some questions about politics. The subject was changed at short notice, for which she apologized.
“This lecture is about politics ancient and modern. What political inheritance do we imagine we can trace back to the ancient world? On what does our admiration for Athenian democracy rest, or our hatred of Roman autocrats?”
The subsequent lecture looked more closely at Empire, with a particular focus on the links between the Roman Empire and the British Empire. This was a very topical choice of subject which is perhaps why the change was made. The subject was covered well, with some astute points keenly made.
Quality of session, in relation to students achieving the stated learning outcomes by the end of the session:
I’m a big fan of plain English and an absolute believer that if you are genuinely passionate about your subject (and not your own career – see Bethany Hughes as an example of this…) you surely want to share it, and in order to do that you use language your audience / students can understand. It’s not rocket science. Mary Beard gave a comprehensive overview of the subject area in the time allotted. She certainly delivered on using accessible, plain English and relevant every-day analogies her audience could relate to, were humerous but made her point clearly. I believe the audience would have taken away several point if not the whole lecture; Alexander the not-so-great (I’ve been saying that since my BA), the use of the Roman Empire as a learning example during the British Empire and for me, the main takeaway was that Rome won simply because she had more manpower (That does not explain how she grew in the first place though, before she had conquered areas to draw auxillary troops from. Hmm). Ways through which (all) the learners could be supported even more effectively to achieve the stated learning outcomes for the session:
A FC beforehand could have provided students with a bit more background information before the sessions– a timeline of the Roman Empire v.s. Roman Emperors for example.
Answer questions more clearly and concisely?
Self-Reflection on Learning Conversation:
For the Observer and Observee (the one whose practice is being observed)
FOR OBSERVER: What have you found helpful about the peer-observation process, for your own learning and practice in supporting student learning?
1. Use of every day language and plain English is absolutely fine.
2. Authentic passion and enthusiasm for your subject is more important than using ‘academic’ language and big words.
3. Images / other media are absolutely essential for providing ‘breaks’ for the audience and tutor in delivery.
4. Tutor moving around holds the attention better than standing in the one place.
5. Be bold!
6. Keep answers tight to the Q and concise.
FOR OBSERVEE:
Strengths:
– What strengths in your practice in supporting student learning can you identify from this process and experience?
– What supports what you are saying about these strengths, in terms of your own observations and reflections, peer (and any student feedback) and observations you have received, and what you have learnt from sources of pedagogical theory & scholarship?
– What might be the potential implications of these strengths for your ongoing practice in supporting student learning? How could you take this further?
Areas and potential actions for future development:
– What areas and specific potential actions, for future development of your practice in supporting student learning, can you identify from this process and experience?
– What supports what you are saying about these areas and potential actions for future development, in terms of your own observations and reflections, peer (and any student) feedback you have received, and what you have learnt from sources of pedagogical theory & scholarship?
– How specifically will you develop your practice in supporting student learning in the future, from what you have identified above? E.g. what specific actions will you take and when?
For the last two weeks we have been focusing on supporting student learning in fully online learning environments.
Last week you did the following learning activities:
Shared and discussed your knowledge of a range of different technologies that can be used to support online learning;
Engaged with information and guidance to help you evaluate and choose appropriate technologies to support online learning;
Investigated, evaluated, shared and discussed the potential of different online tools for supporting online learning, for your own teaching contexts;
Reflected on your learning for your CRJ;
Explored Digital Resources and where possible, attended the weekly webinar.
In Week 8, we started to focus on developing your capabilities for designing fully online learning environments, applying your previous knowledge and experience about curriculum design with new knowledge about online curriculum (e.g. that shared by Salmon (2013)). As you may already know, there is a range of Learning Design frameworks that learning designers / educators use, to design and develop highly effective online courses (JISC, 2017; Britain, 2004). As an example of one potential framework you could use, this week we will explore in detail one based on Laurillard (2012), developed by the Cambridge Education Group (CEG). This is the CEG Pedagogic Framework, which is the framework we have mainly used to design and develop this online course.
To begin with, you will be introduced to the different learning types used in the framework (Laurillard, 2012) and asked to reflect on and discuss how you are currently embedding those in your current teaching practice. Then you will be presented and asked to engage with the different phases of the CEG Pedagogic Framework, as a way of developing your practice in designing an online curriculum.
As part of your Challenge Activity this week, you will be asked to apply the CEG Pedagogic Framework to design a fully online learning episode (one week in length) within your current teaching practice, and critically appraise it. You will also have the opportunity to reflect on your learning, explore further readings and attend the webinar.
By the end of this week’s learning activities for Week 10, you should be able to:
Explain the pedagogic composition of the CEG Pedagogic Framework and discuss how it relates to your current conceptualisation of curriculum design;
Produce a fully online learning episode (one week in length) applying the CEG Pedagogic Framework to your current teaching practice;
Critically appraise the use of the CEG Pedagogic Framework;
Demonstrate awareness of the different learning theories and frameworks used within the CEG Pedagogic Framework;
Critically reflect on what and how you have learned this week, identifying potential implications for you and your colleagues’ current and future practice of developing flexible learning environments, in your local teaching contexts.
Enquire / Reflect
One of the key pedagogic components of the CEG Pedagogic Framework focuses on the learning types described by Laurillard (2012). The table below provides an overview of the different learning types:
Learning Types
Description
ORANGE
Learners use existing learning resources for their own intellectual enquiry.
Enquiry
RED
Learning through listening, reading and watching.
Acquisition
YELLOW
Learning through discussion and collaboration: with or without the tutor present, small groups or large groups, structured or unstructured.
Discussion/ Collaboration
BLUE
Learners apply their understanding of the concepts to achieving a task goal.
Practice
GREEN
Learners apply their understanding of the concepts producing a tangible asset, e.g. a digital artifact.
Production
Think about your current practice (face-to-face, blended or online):
Focus on a current teaching week.
Identify what proportions of your teaching delivery encourages your students to concentrate on:
Acquisition;
Discussion and Collaboration; and
Enquiry, Practice and Production.
Calculate the time proportions allocated to those areas in percentages (%).
Example
Your answer might look like this: Currently my teaching on the the module of Professionalism (Week 1), seems to be encouraging my students to spend their learning time in the following way:
Acquisition (40%)
Discussion and Collaboration (30%)
Enquiry, Practice and Production (30%)
Discuss
Share those percentages associated with the example of your current practice, and provide a brief outline and explanation of why the split of the learning activities for that week looks like that (150 words). Consider the following:
What are you trying to achieve (learning outcomes)?
What kind of activities – either online or face-to-face – are the students engaging with when acquiring, discussing, enquiring, practising and producing?
What do you think and feel about the current split of the students’ learning activities in that week? How well does that match your intentions? How well does it match the intended learning outcomes for the students for that week?
Post this to the discussion forum. Comment on the posts of two fellow students, sharing any reflections prompted by their outlines and explanations. Search entries or author Filtre replies by unread Write a reply… Reply to Week 10: Forum – Learning Types
In my teaching on the last module, which was delivered 100% online, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, students were encouraged to spend their time in the following way:
Acquisition (30%) Discussion and Collaboration (20%) Enquiry, Practice and Production (50%)
In the first week of this module, students were introduced to the module and the expectations of their engagement and for their learning. There was an asynchronous lecture provided by a visiting lecturer on photography, followed up with a live synchronous Q&A for the students to listen to and ask questions and answers, and to get a really in-depth understanding of the photographer’s practice. The students were then tasked with three, relatively simple, photographic challenges where they could put into practice some of the key themes and learning from the lecture and Q&A. The outcomes were then assessed by the teaching staff and feedback was provided in one-to-one sessions on the Monday of the following week.
The lecture was 15 minutes long; the Q&A was 1 hour 15 minutes; the independent enquiry was expected to be in the range 20–25 hours; and the the one-to-one tutorial was 20 minutes. This is based on a full time, 20 credit module.
This was a really successful way to engage and support the learning and supported the three learning outcomes for the module: Process (demonstrate a creative process that employs speculative enquiry); Innovate (appraise and identify creative opportunities that take risk and challenge conventions); Collaborate (embrace roles and responsibilities as part of a creative community). Reply Reply to comment
I found it hard to split the time between categories as well, as there seems to be much overlap between them. Practice and production seem inextricably linked, and it can be difficult (in my work as well) to split enquiry apart from practice. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
I agree, Michael! There’s a lot of overlap here which makes the individual quantification somewhat sketchy! For example, ‘practice’ and ‘production’ are pretty much the same thing most of the time in my teaching context. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Pre-Covid 19 era, it would have been difficult to convince all stakeholders that one can be able to switch all learning activities online and still achieve all learning objectives, though it has its challenges. My focus will be on activities within this period. Total teaching hours in a week is 6hrs.
Acquisition (25%) Discussion and Collaboration (50%) Enquiry, Practice and Production (25%)
I mostly followed 3 steps of my own…
– Overview of the lesson material
– A review of the materials
– Group discussions, activities and questions.
Looking back at the 1st week I had an online class with my students, it was a big shift from the norm of the day. We used some time to discuss the very basics of the new teaching technology and how the students can be able to access information that is provided. During this early stage, sample class activities were prepared for the students as a try out, which they were able to work on. I was then able to look at their work, provide necessary feedback and recommendations, including advise on how to make sure that they utilise the full potentials of the technology that we are using, as all formative and most importantly summative would be done online including all academic activities.
Furthermore, during the rest of the week, we had a normal class activities within the remaining 4 hrs that was spread in two days. To ensure that the students were fully and actively engaged, I prepared a teaching material and send to them through email and also uploading it on Teams. During the first minutes of the session, I did an overview of the materials that are already online, then I present them with an activity for them to do within few minutes. A general feedback on this activity will then be provided to them on spot through the notebook, where they are allowed to comment, as questions and get on the spot feedback.
I am taking the most recent workshop I hosted and facilitated a couple of weeks ago, 6 days hands-on bamboo building exercise (Links to an external site.) in the mountains with architecture students, in 37-38 deg C summer heat days. Specifically on Day 1 when a team of 11 students arrived and they were not familiar with everyone as it is a joint exercise between two universities from two different cities: Ningbo (Uni of Nottingham) and Hangzhou (Zhejiang Uni).
Acquisition 20%
Discussion and collaboration 30%
Enquiry, practice and production 50%
The learning outcomes of Day 1 was to build a common understanding what students would be building and kick started a good collaborative practice. We started with project with project briefing, tools induction as there were a couple of power tools students had no prior experience and the day-to-day tentative schedule; which made the 20%. There were three main components of this sitting pod structure: arches, pedestal and the skin.
The 30% was student-led focusing on the arches which are the main structure. Student started to make the first arch (out of 14) from bamboo battens which we have purchased and delivered beforehand. Five students were involved during the computationally generated design and prototyping stages (through some iterations) so they took charge to explain why the final arch’s joints and demonstrated how to build the first one.
The rest of the day was spent on the work stations and distribution and getting familiar with the production line of the arches, which made the 50%. And it was student-led and two project managers were appointed. They worked in pairs or a group of three in stations: measuring and labelling based on the drawings, cutting bamboo battens, making the profiles and drilling and lastly attachment station.
The split was 20:30:50 on the first day. However, as the days go by, morning briefing got shorter as just am and pm work distribution in three main stations (arches, pedestal and skin). The split changed to somewhere in the order of 5:40:55 for the rest of days. Discussion and production happened at the same time during the rest of construction stage, especially when students were faced with technical on-site problems. I also noticed the importance of dining table discussion. Dinner was interesting as it was the time for reflections as a team and adjusted next day’s strategy.
On separate note, I did a 4 days trial run on building the first bamboo structure 3 weeks before this exercise to test out the logistics as the site is in the mountains and quite remote: sourcing bamboo locally, accommodations, transport, etc . And I am glad I did it, made the actual exercise smoother and we could focus on the building activities instead. Reply Reply to comment (3 likes)
Hi Mia, I really love your course. It’s an amazing project that you’ve designed. I see that you spent a lot of time preparing so that it would all run smoothly. The weather is really hot right now and so I can only imagine how that must have been. I noticed you said that reflections was over dinner, what a nice touch! Reply Reply to comment
For this forum I possibly sit slightly outside the box as I am not involved in full time education and teaching photography rather I guest lecture and mentor as an expert or specialist practitioner. Therefore my profile for this exercise is probably not typical?
When I am engaged with students my time is almost exclusively taken up as follows:
10% skill acquisition. I do very little technical or practical teaching of photography or related techniques other than supporting on the occasional field trip or studio session. I am mainly about application and context.
0% Discussion / collaboration. I have no direct involvement with cohort forums or discussions.
90%+ Of my time is taken up with the application and understanding of key concepts and the students producing tangible assets, e.g. portfolio’s, websites and mission statements to further progress their careers or work out what direction they are heading with their creative ambitions and support them to for fill those ambitions (or at least help them to help themselves with their ambitions).
The way that I work in my teaching context means that I never do a full week at one institution or with one cohort of students. Most of my teaching engagements are with individuals or very small groups, either individuals that have moved on from full time education or are in their 3rd years. Hence why I tend to look on what I do as mentoring rather than teaching passé. Reply Reply to comment
Sounds like a very hands-on module! must be very time consuming on your end, especially with all the one-to-one work. Very different from the lecturing to large audiences and doing examples on the board I do! Reply Reply to comment
Hi Michael Yes, it is very hands on. A lot of dealing one-to-one with students in many ways I am more like a career advisor than a teacher as such, a mentor best describes my intervention. I support students from a variety of institutions and at different stages in their career development. But unfortunately no one pays, only occasionally for the odd guest lecture. It’s all for the love of it and in fairness gaining an over view of the HE sector from my perspective. At some point I will have to monetise what I do as it’s not sustainable. Hopefully this PGCHE is a partial route to that? Alex Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hi Alex, I think your course is super exciting and beneficial. Whilst you are teaching technical skills are you also engaging with your one-on-one students in discussion in relation to those hands-on skills? Reply Reply to comment
Looking back to the module I was teaching this past spring, students were expected to spend 48 hours in class listening to lectures and 152 hours studying outside of class. Assuming students would spend 60 hours between studying for the final and doing their term project, this would be 92 hours of learning outside the class during the semester. Or, about 4 hours of lecture and 7.66 hours of learning outside the classroom per week. Assuming we are looking at a week after the group project is due, broken down by category, this would be
Enquiry – This would overlap with practice outside of the classroom: 60%
Acquisition – 25%
Discussion/collaboration – unknown. Students often do group work outside of the class for problem solving, but not always. This would often occur at the same time as practice and enquiry.
Practice – This would be the same 60% as enquiry, plus time in the classroom – 75%
Production – 0%
The learning outcomes would be to have the students gain an understanding of formulations related to solid mechanics and failure, so they would need to learn the theory and apply it through practice. In that respect, I believe the LOs are being met by reading and doing practice problems, both in class and on their own outside of class. Reply Reply to comment
It’s nice to see how you have linked enquiry and practice! Looking at this framework the first thing I thought was how some areas overlap or how some students will acquire via trial and error better than any lecture. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
My current course design is approximately 90% face 2 face and 10% online with videos and some reading (history and rules).
Acquisition = 40%
Discussion and collaboration = 15%
Practice and Production = 45%
The LO’s for the course are:
1. Learn the full swing basics to a standard that you can apply differences to your own prior knowledge of understanding or as a beginner learning for the first time.
2. Have a working knowledge of the rules of golf and the different games that can be played.
3. Understand the game’s history and how the game can influence your own life in society.
I have realized the course differentiation has a lot of inadequacies and requires a new design. In developing a new course, a lot of the skill acquisition will be learned via visual delivery online and some f2f for student feedback and enquiry. This is because I have come to understand some of the beginners i teach have fears and suffer from anxiety because of the peceived pressure of performance in front of everyone in the group learning sessions.
I’m currently teaching the introductory module on MA Writing for Script and Screen. I’m using week 10 (this week) as the example for the exercise, but most of our weeks have an almost identical balance I think:
Enquiry & Acquisition (I’ve grouped them as there’s a lot of overlap I feel) – 30%
Each week contains lecture content delivered as a mix of text, video and audio, all based off the weekly topic (e.g. 3-act story structure)
Discussion/Collaboration – 30%
Each week students have 3 discussions forums
– A brief icebreaker discussion as part of the topic intro
– A more substantial discussion which follows the key lecture content (usually based off a prompt that draws on the week’s reading/watching resources and encourages them to demonstrate their learning from it)
– A peer review forum where students feedback on each others work-in-progress writing for the week
(In some weeks there is also a live webinar which offers additional discussion and interaction opportunities)
Practice & Production (also grouped as I don’t perceive significant distinctions between the two categories) – 40%
Discussion and Collaboration (60%) Inquiry, Practice and Production (30%)
The acquisition is set at 10% because it is like a mini-lesson with a narrow focus that provides instruction in a skill or concept that students will then relate to a more important lesson that will follow. I use it to teach particular skills, extend previous learning, create interest in a topic, generate questions, or introduce strategies.
Giving more time to in-class discussion and collaboration will benefit the students with Enhanced Problem-solving Skills and will also inspire Critical-Thinking. Collaborative and discussion lessons help shy students in social interactions and support diversity. It is an excellent way for all students to benefit from the module. The students also learn self-management skills, as this will help them with life-long learning.
Since the inquiry, production, and practice need not be long-winded as these parts of the lesson are through questions, research, and curiosity. The task is not meant to be complicated and should be completed in the shortest amount of time, which are in line with this module’s outcomes.
Collaborative learning creates an opportunity for students to hold discussions and have opinions. Accountability is a framework where students can learn about discourse to enrich peer interactions – Resnick (2000). These include staying on topic, using accurate and appropriate information for the topic, and thinking deeply about what the partner has to say. Students are taught accountability using the content and discussing the content in various ways to gain a better and deeper meaning of the learning material. Peer collaboration keeps the conversation going and keeps the students engaged and excited to be learning something new. The students are encouraged towards a richer understanding of one in which they are the center.
As usual, many thanks to all of you who have contributed such interesting views and relevant discussion points this week.
It’s been good to see how you have analysed one of your (module’s) teaching in relation to the components of the CEG framework. It is very clear to me that everyone’s learning design choices are generally aimed at providing as much opportunity as possible for the more student centred active learning activities (practice, production, collaboration, discussion).
As you have highlighted, it can be a little difficult to decide where to ‘position’ certain learning activities or approaches across the various categories within the CEG framework. This I would say can always be a little subjective but nonetheless the exercise might provide a perspective around the balance between the various types of activities, and most importantly how your learners are involved. There was for example a discussion around the extent to which practice and production might actually be overlapping.
One thing that comes through really strongly to me from reading the posts is the very engaging nature of some of the ‘session’ descriptions – it made me realise how collectively you are all so committed to getting your students involved and undertaking work that is really relevant to their future. The emphasis on authentic experiences in many of the details that you collectively provided is to be applauded. It must be potentially so exciting and indeed fun for students to have the opportunity to practice skills that are key in their future professional life in simulated exercises or if even luckier, in surroundings and practices that reflect places of work which they aspire to. Some of these exercises might have an explicit output, such as an artifact, a project, etc.
For your CRJ, it might be worth reflecting on how this exercise has made you re-think some of your current session/week design. What would you need to change in future iterations? Why? Would this apply to a fully-online delivery? Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Joel Ferguson
The current weekly structure for my teaching is: 1h lecture, 1h seminar, 3h workshop.
Which this in mind I would place the percentages as follows.
Acquisition (20%)
Discussion and Collaboration (30%)
Enquiry, Practice and Production (50%)
The teaching in this module is trying to make students experiment with technologies relevant to advertising. Most of this is done in pairs or small groups (4 or 3 people). So althought the seminars maybe only represent 1h a week (20%) students work collaboratively in the worshops as well where they discuss and practice. Although I am writing this from a reflective perspective as this is based on my teaching from the previous year as my new teaching only begins in September.
I think this split is relevant to teaching advertising. Advertising requires a lot of lateral thinking and iteration to reach a point where students are understanding the learning outcomes and coming up with interesting ideas. Moving foward I think this will suit the module I have planned for the upcoming semester. The planned learning outcomes in super-short are: Collaborate, Experiment and Research. I think the experimentation and research fall into the ‘enquiry, practice, production’ category here and so it will need the most time. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Anna Dovey
What are you trying to achieve (learning outcomes)?
What kind of activities – either online or face-to-face – are the students engaging with when acquiring, discussing, enquiring, practising and producing?
What do you think and feel about the current split of the students’ learning activities in that week? How well does that match your intentions? How well does it match the intended learning outcomes for the students for that week?
Like Alex I sit outside the box on this one too. I’ll use my pre-Covid weekly Study Skills course hour.
This is tricky as ‘practice’ was frequently in class, and involved some group tasks so that included ‘discussion’ and ‘collaboration’ simultaneously.
I was seeking to improve student’s understanding and application of a variety of study skills. In the week I’ve chosen it was Information Literacy what it is, why it’s important and how information an be analysed and arranged in hierarchies.
Activities:
Acquiring – watching / listening to me, slides and relevant multi-media resources about the topic.
Discussion – if I posed questions during content delivery.
Enquiring – Listening / watching me and the multi-media resources I’ve used, reading the slides.
Practicing – two activities; 1. in small groups, arrange cut-outs images of front covers of subject relevant journals, prof. magazines, newspapers etc. into the correct info. hierarchy tree provided. Lots of discussion. 2. in small groups, assess given articles using the CRAAP test. Lots of dicsussion. For each activity I showed and went through the correct responses and ther was some discussion as to why they were correct.
I think / feel it was about right. These are L0 students who have had not much exposure to study skills before or not for some time, so it was necessary to provide the information needed to help them succeed at the tasks (otherwise you’re setting them up to fail and they *will* disengage). The activites were relevant, simple but challenging enough and the small groups resulted in some quite obvious competitiveness!
I’m now thinking about how those could be translated into online activites. The article could be fairly simple – in breakout groups on Zoom, sharing the CRAAP test and article. Aaaaand this reveals one of the drawbacks of online ed – it will be tricky using a desktop to simulatneously write onthe CRAAP test, skim read an article and engage with an online discussion simultaneously, let alone if using a phone. ..
The info. hierarchy game could be easily gamified, but that then misses the social learning element of working in groups and the competitiveness. Hmmm.
I think overall it worked well; the only issue was I asked the students to evaluate 3 articles using the CRAAP tst and we only had time to go through 1. With hindsight I think 3 was overkill anyway.
Reflecting on my pre COVID teaching practice using the final major project module as an example, I had sessions with the students all day on Monday and then 1:1, sometimes group tutorials on a Thursday. We also had formative and summative project reviews with industry partners and peer to peer feedback.
I think there are slightly different perspectives looking at my time spent on these activities and the student experience, For example, if Enquiry practice and production is delivered through 1:1 tutorials of 20-30 mins once a week, then the majority of the student’s time is spent in activities and sessions which relate to acquisition and collaboration.
(my time)
25% Acquisition (talks on key aspects, visiting practitioners, sharing different viewpoints)
25% Discussion and collaboration (group workshops, role play, challenge activities)
50% Enquiry, practice and production (tutorials, group discussions, project reviews)
Analysing the GDE710 week 9 (Type and Layout) structure, I would dissect it into the following percentages:
Acquisition (watching lectures and reading supplied material): 30%
Discussion and Collaboration (through padlet/Ideas Wall discussions, sharing thoughts and further resources): 20%
Enquiry, Practice and Production (typesetting a found piece of poetry or prose): 50%
The students have a week to cover this, but it is a part-time course so we don’t expect them to focus all of their time on their study. This week the course content is covering new but quite technical ground for most of the students, so the acquisition phase is more in depth than in other weeks. The main lecture is just over 1hr in duration, and other materials are provided for further research. These are new concepts so cannot be rushed. The discussion and collaboration segments overlap with the enquiry, practice and production as the students will be sharing their enquiry/practice/production WIP through the discussion/collaboration Ideas Wall. Overall, I expect the students to spend about 3/4hrs looking at different concepts and avenues, sharing their thoughts on the Ideas Wall and interacting with their peers and tutors, then about 2/3hrs crafting and refining their final concept. These numbers can vary wildly depending on what other commitments the students have in their week. But I guess it’s about 8-10hrs per week of study. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Rachel Butt
The course is physical assessment and clinical reasoning and therefore requires a “hands on approach”. Prior to covid restrictions the module often ran
Acquisition 30%
Discussion and Collaboration 30%
Enquiry, Practice and Production 40%
however I feel that this has now significantly changed and the enquiry, practice and production element has reduced to 20% via zoom or ms teams , Acquisition has increased to 60% and discussion and collaboration is now 20%
most of the module is delivered via on line resources and the practice element is often recorded or done live stream via zoom as long as the patient/participant has consented to this form of assessment online
follow up via 1-1 online session is used to check understanding and rationale for examination technique to ensure the pt/participant has not been coached and to ensure safety
Very different way of working but so far seems to be successful.
The CEG Pedagogic Framework
The CEG Pedagogic Framework is a method for designing and developing online and blended learning activities through design, prototyping and testing ideas with academics and learning designers in an experimental way (Toro-Troconis & Aleksiev, 2018; Toro-Troconis & Alexander, 2018).
You may have noticed already that the activities in your PGCHE modules in Canvas have been colour-coded to match the learning type colours we presented in Phase 4.
Please note: The colour-coding for Laurillard’s learning types (on Canvas) is different to the Blue and Green colour-coding for the active verb areas discussed in Phase 2, in the previous page.
For example, the learning activity below is driving Reflection (blue) and Discussion (yellow).
Forum activity panel – Reflection, Discussion
The learning activity below is driving Production (green) and Discussion (yellow).
Webinar activity panel – Production, Discussion
The colours provide visual cues for the students to associate different types of activities with different colours. (However due to accessibility issues, the Acquisition activities are represented in grey in Canvas, even though on the CEG cards, it shows the colour red.)
Week 10: Activity – Apply the CEG Pedagogic Framework
Practice / Produce
By now, you should have a good understanding of this CEG Pedagogic Framework and the background and theories that are embedded within it.
Now we would like you to put into practice what you have learned this week. We would like you to:
Select a week of your current teaching practice (face-to-face or online);
Do a draft design of that week as an online curriculum, by applying the CEG Pedagogic Framework;
You will have the opportunity to share your form in the discussion forum on the next page.
Week 10: Forum – Share Your CEG Pedagogic Framework Form
5 5 unread replies. 19 19 replies. Discuss
Once you have completed the activity on the previous page, upload your form onto the forum. Read and comment on the posts of at least two other colleagues (100 words minimum for each comment). Consider:
How do the learning designs presented by your peers compare to yours?
Are there any significant differences in the 70:20:10 split presented by your peers, compared to your own? How and why?
What do you think is good about what they have suggested in their learning designs?
How do you think they could further develop their draft design ideas?
What can you learn from this, to help you with your own attempts to design an online learning week?
Here is my first attempt on the framework, I used Week 5 (out of 17) of my Digital Architecture module, the same week for EDU720 Assignment 1 as I spent a bit of time re-thinking about that particular week’s material for the flipped classroom and hybrid (F2F and online) session. The topic is Parametric Design.
Hi Mia – I had also had a higher acquisition of 20%. I felt it was important in my challenge, as this week was the only one students were learning about this topic. I had gotten closer to the 70% for the first section, but was more surprised about this than anything else, as I had not planned it in that manner, but instead planned the week how I would have wanted it to go, and just happened to hit 70%. I thought your set up was easy to read and enjoyable, and it looks like your format is excellent for the blended learning approach. Reply Reply to comment
Hi Michael, I also feel my typical sessions have a high percentage of acquisition, this exercise gave me an opportunity to think back on my regular practice. Well done on getting close to 70% enquiry, practice and production. Mia Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
This is my draft design for the first week of the upcoming Graphic Design Typography module I teach on which will delivered online. It has highlighted some clear areas to address, especially how much to orientate the learning based on its previous in-person incarnation, or how much to translate and adopt this for online delivery…Nick Raven – EDU720 Week 10 Challenge Activity.docx Reply Reply to comment
It seems like a nice week of lessons you have planned! I was surprised by the 20 minutes of acquisition time , particularly as they are expected to do 20 hours worth of work. Do you not think acquisition would be also occuring during the challenges ? This could be me interpreting the challenges wrong , but I assume they would be receiving some sort of feedback Which may count as acquisition? Perhaps you can use one of the challenges as an instructive tool, providing a video tutorial at the end of the first challenge, only after it has been submitted, explaining what you expected the results to be, or an example of a good result? Reply Reply to comment
Looks good to me Michael. I had the same issue around the split – where it’s necessary to convey information so students understand what it is they have to do and why, I think a higher acquisition / enquiry total is fine. This is a concern I have with this – I know Dario has said it is just a guideline and not to apply it rigidly, but it does feel like one has got it ‘wrong’ if the split isn’t what is suggested! Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Here is my draft design challenge activity. As such I do not teach as my main activity, rather I mentor leaners in their practice so there is no typical weeks teaching for me. In view of this I have used a web portfolio activity that I have been developing for my practice, that can be done over the course of a week for a learner to support them in defining and developing their creative practice, this manifests itself eventually in a web site. AB-EDU720 Week 10 Challenge Activity.pdf Reply Reply to comment
Like yourself I’m not involved in day-to-day teaching, which clearly affects the split. It’s also intriguing how much caries depending upon the subject being taught – the more practical and skills based it is, the greater the emphaisis / scope for practice and production…? Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Suzanne Strudwick
Hi Alex, One aspect that I noticed immediately is the stated LO’s seem more to me as Aim’s. I’m not sure the learners would understand what their expectations are for the class based on the LO. I am also not sure which color code you would utilize based on the challange sheet activities. I would have thought the Green, lower cognitive activites, more production, watching, listening learning activities would be the framework. Very similar to my content. I do however understand the importance of this class in the overall learned knowledge and skill for the students and as you state, you are acting more of a mentor in this class. Reply Reply to comment
My class design used the Green Cards as this best reflects the course content with lower-order cognitive skills and more procedural production knowledge requirements. The class is part of the module for learning the full golf swing, this particular class is week 4 – Chipping.
Learners are required to learn how to chip the ball correctly using fundamental movement skill in the correct sequence to apply these skill and build knowledge and understanding to learn the full golf swing movement patterns.
Hi all, attached is the framework for the first week of the first module on the Graphic Design MA. I’ve kept it pretty simple, as the first week of any course can be quite daunting and there is a lot of new information to assimilate. EDU720 Week 10 Challenge Activity – Harriet Beesley.pdf Reply Reply to comment
this looks good, i’m glad you have done a days activities as opposed to a week, as I only do 1 day a week modules and cover a different topic each week. The split is different as the expectation is for the student to do alot of online/self dorected study on top of the weekly taught session.
Hi Harriet I had to look up what a quadtritych was! But now I know! I like your idea of giving the learners time to investigate the content, course during the first weeks sessions. This is sometimes overlooked in course design and I think this is important. You have given time for this investigation and inquiry. I also like giving a platform for the participants to share initial research, ideas and general discussion points on the Wall / Padlet showing WHO you are, WHAT you do, WHERE you are and WHY design. Reply Reply to comment
Here is my first attempt at the framework. It was a struggle as the only sessions I have produced have been on Study Skills, which sits somewhat outside the teaching norm and I chose the session on Information Literacy (IL) as I used a couple of exercises from that that worked really well. However it’s more about conveying information and putting that information into practice (assessing info) rather than producing a document per se.
In my opinion, the split does not always work as a general rule for each teaching session for everyone. I think there are sessions which need more acquisition proportion, so did mine.
Hi Mia, Agreed, and this is a concern I have with the system – whilst I can see it’s helpful to have a best practice guideline, I worry a little it can be seen as a ‘rule’ – certainly I worried tht I hadn’t ‘met’ it! Reply Reply to comment
Here is my first application of the CEG framework! I’m not quite sure I applied it very well. I feel like some items will overlap, for example: some students may find they acquire via practice. Also most of my tasks are designed to be done as creative pairs in keeping with UK advertising industry standards.
If I stretch some definitions ( I feel like I may have done some interpretation) then I land up rather close to the 70:20:10 split. I think this process is a really nice way to structure each week and I’m definitely considering applying this to the other weeks I have drafted so far to see where they can be improved to match!
The framework reminds me of the lesson planning form – the first section at least asks many similar questions.
This framework seems like a good way to help tutors (who may not be pedagogic experts) design good online courses, but I’d be concerned that some would apply to rigidly (especially if new to teaching) and not bear in mind it is *one* model that can flex depending on the context.
PROFESSIONAL DIARY – so I was reflecting on the CRJ last week (only just remembered this) and it reminds me in some respects of the professional diary I had to keep for my CILIP chartership. Just the diary was more formal, organised and concise. I wonder if that format might suit some students better than this? It’s very easy to be sidetracked by Herodotean style digressions…
So this week was around the Cambridge Education Group pedagogic framework, to assist with the design of online learning based on research and best practice. This has resulted in the view that a 70:20:10 split between various learning activities achieves the best learning. My concern with this is that it seems to vary between subjects, skills sets and contexts in which the learning is occurring (see week 10 forum). Somehow, when you introduce numbers into the mix, psychologically they become ‘fixed’ and ending up with a different set of numbers feels ‘wrong’, no matter how often one is told it’s a guideline. If one is told that this equates to ‘best practice’ then failing to meet that feels just that – a failure in some way, no matter whether it’s actually a better split for that topic…
Reading Salmon ET’s chapter 2; she makes an interesting point that links with the ‘invisible student’ in Week 11; ” the lack of face-to-face and visual clues in online participation is a key ingredient of equity and success rather than a barrier. If the remoteness and virtuality are handled appropriately, they can increase the comfort level of e-moderators and participants alike.” This runs counter to my initial perspective. I wonder if there are those out there that prefer online to F2F?
Last week, we began to focus on the design of fully online learning environments.
You did the following learning activities:
Shared and discussed your practitioner perspectives on key things to consider when designing online curriculum;
Engaged with information about designing and creating online learning activities;
Created, shared and discussed your initial draft ideas for a fully online course;
Reflected on your learning for your CRJ;
Explored Week 9: Digital Resources and, if possible, attended the weekly webinar.
This week, we will focus on choosing technology to support learning activities in fully online learning environments.
First, you will share and bring together your knowledge as individuals of a range of different technologies that can be used to support online learning. You will engage with information and guidance to help you evaluate and choose different appropriate technologies to support online learning. Then you will investigate and evaluate the potential of an online tool, that is currently unfamiliar to you, for supporting online learning; and share and discuss your findings with your colleagues. Finally, there are the usual weekly opportunities to reflect on your learning, explore further reading and attend the webinar.
By the end of the learning activities for Week 9, you should be able to:
Build and consolidate your knowledge of a range of possible tools that could be available to you to support student learning activities, for a fully online course;
Critically evaluate the potential value of different tools for supporting students to do different online learning activities, to achieve a range of different learning outcomes;
Make critically informed choices about what and how technology should be used in online curriculum, especially in relation to your own teaching contexts;
Critically reflect on what and how you have learned this week, identifying potential implications for you and your colleagues’ current and future practice of developing flexible learning environments, in your local teaching contexts.
Please share a list of five tools you can think of – or find out about – that could be useful to help students do online learning activities.
Before you do this, quickly check through the discussion forum, so you can try to come up with tools that haven’t already been shared by others. (Top tip: So perhaps try to get in quick and engage with the discussion forum early this week, rather than later 😉 )
With each of the five tools in your list, briefly state:
Name of the tool / technology;
What type of online learning activity it could be used for;
How you found out about this tool;
Whether you have previously used this tool yourself or not, to support student learning or for some another function;
A URL link to any further information about this tool.
Provide a brief outline and explanation of your answers to the above question (150 words). Post this to the discussion forum.
Miro – that describes itself as an on-line white board for visual communication looks like a beneficial tool for my photography lecture applications – I don’t know this app very well yet at the moment, it was introduced to me by Harriett on our PGCHE during a webinar some weeks ago, I have spent some time exploring and it looks very functional and user friendly. I am interested to hear if any of my peers have much knowledge / experience of this app and how they got on, any tips?
Menti – this application allows interactive participation by a 3rd during a lecture or talk. I came across it when attending a presentation by Falmouth employability network. It allowed for inspiration words to be generated on a slide within the presentation. I thought it was a brilliant way to keep the audience engaged and involved whilst listening to the talk or lecture.
Wix.com – Offers very intuitive interactive web site interfaces that can be used for educational applications. I have only recently started looking at the potential of Wix’s classroom platforms so don’t have a particular opinion, other than they are very intuitive and a bug free environment, but it does take a while to get your head around the design features. Good support available on line and free entry basic package allows you to evaluate if it might work for you.
Google Classroom – Very new to me, Plymouth College of Art use as their on-line classroom, I haven’t done much with it yet, other than a few group video critiques’. Seemed very stable and worked well. I know David Paton on this PGCHE course used it as a guest lecturer and he was pretty impressed I think? Said it performed well when incorporating examples films on his lecture.
Interesting choice. I have tried mentimeter before, but I noticed that majority of its function are to be paid for, unlike kahoot, hence why I stopped using it.
Hi Stanley The entry point package is free, they say their ethos is to support education, hence why a free package to kick off. No doubt one soon will get caught in having to pay for functionality, which is the normal scenario with most apps. To be honest the fact that Falmouth uses was a very good endorsement for me. I will check out Kahoot. Thanks. Alex Reply Reply to comment
My husband uses Miro all the time with his clients…he loves it and finds it really flexible. I’ve not used it myself, but I’ve watched him present with it and it does seem intuitive. Clients don’t seem to struggle with it either. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Anna Dovey
That’s an intersting and useful list Alex, thank you! I’d heard of Menti but not used it; am curious about Google classrooms as I’m hearing more about it. Reply Reply to comment
When talking about tool that would be useful to students for online learning activities, there are quite a few of them.
Name of the tool / technology;
When it comes to a session that would have the necessary resources where a student can stay and conduct all learning activity, without leaving the space, I’d recommend Microsoft Team. Students can use the Notebook, poly, excel, word, ppt or forms for quizzes, and they can be able to access any work that the teacher might have uploaded, and can also submit an assessment through the same platform.
We use Teams on campus but I do not find it user friendly. There are too many steps to learn for a quick response and use. I have found that all my students and teachers have migrated to Zoom and I believe it because its the easiest to use and free. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
V1 Sport Golf (Links to an external site.) Swing Analyser – This app is specifically for golf, baseball, softball or any sport where the physical movement is analysed. I use this in my teaching. Students can upload and send me raw swings filmed from their iPhones, I can then upload to the app, analyse the movement and swing then send back my analysis with either text or voice over. The cost is $59 per month so its not cheap but worthwhile for this type of instruction.
I use visual media a lot, YouTube has a huge collection of resources for learners which is very easy to access. When I create a video, this platform is easy to upload (15-Minutes is max if you don’t verify account). Your learners can access the link from any web browser so an excellent format to post lessons.
EdPuzzle.com (Links to an external site.) – This is a tool for tracking online lessons posted to your LMS – After creating a lesson, the app tracks who opens the lesson, helps you to assess the students, creates voice-overs etc. This is a free app but with different levels of subscription for more add ons. What is great about this app is the ability to add a LIVE classroom, students can access your lesson live, either f2f or distance learning and a mixture of both in this new environment.
Evernote (Links to an external site.) – I use this application a lot with my students, we can share documents, add files and communicate. The application has a free or subscription fee depending on the level of engagement. Easily accessible from any environment. Evernote has been around for a long time but is still one of my favourites.
Thanks Suzanne – Some very useful apps there in particular for me EdPuzzle looks interesting for my context of teaching so does Evernote and Wabisabi – thats helpful ‘go-to’ for info. Thanks Alex Reply Reply to comment
Touted as productivity software, to help you organize. Our team are looking at using it more for what would have been our studio sessions, as a means for students to share their processes and executions, akin to our usual ‘sticking it up on the wall’. A virtual wall, then. I’m really in the early stages of finding my way around this, but my colleagues started using it earlier this year and the students responded well to it. The pro package is paid for, but our school has a subscription, so that’s worth asking the powers-that-be about.
A workflow management platform. Very useful for group projects where delivery is split up. Set up a group, and add tasks to it, when they’re done, move them along. Very easy to see what needs to still be done. Good commenting functions etc. Anyone can edit. Notifications could be better. Integrates nicely with…
A communications platform that integrates with Trello. We use this for the PTA where conversations can get a bit tangenty. Create channels and keep conversations separate. Useful for enormous projects. I think we’ll probably be pushing students towards Teams for this kind of experience, but I don’t find Teams very intuitive, so it’s good to have another option.
For recording video presentations. This is what we were using last year, but, again, I think we’re pushing onto Streams on Teams, to try and keep it in one place.
Our students only seem to get on board with this in their 3rd year. It’s so much better than it used to be, though, and the social aspect is really creatively buoyant, so I think it’s worth getting involved as early as possible. Building a network has never been so easy, as long as they’re doing it considerately. Reply Reply to comment
We used Slack at ACM, but with Asana for managing projects. I didn’t find it the most intuitive to get to grips with personally. I’d heard of Padlet but not used it; likewise Screencast. Ones to have a look at. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Suzanne Strudwick
Hi Katie, Thanks for your list, I am most interested in Screencast-0-matic.com looking through the info on the site, I would use it best with my learners adapting video, sharing videos and creating video presentations with swing adjustments. The learners would benefit from not having to download any extra apps to view swing videos that I may share in the V1 Golf app I am using at the moment. The versatility of sending a link and web-based video is very attractive to me. Thanks for sharing Suzanne Reply Reply to comment
Hi all, my experience is fairly limited in terms of online tools but summed up as follows:
Learning Space – This is the main platform we use with our undergrad students. Our use currently is fairly limited to providing course content, briefing, module structure and digital hand in’s. It is linked to Turn-it-in and so will scan written text for % original context etc, helpful as a first check. It also has forum, quiz, peer to peer feedback and MCQ functionality which we plan to use more in the next Study Block. I have also used Blackboard and Moodle in previous roles.
MS Teams – I am sick of the sight of this, mainly because I seem to spend all my time on in at the moment. I do find it useful for quick messages and chats between groups when working remotely but the limited functionality (in the version we are using) in terms of breakout spaces makes it hard to run a seminar of more than a few people. We use it for 1:1 and group tutorials as well as the feedback and discussion elements of a project review session (work reviewed offline by peers and guests in advance) I used it for the previous assignment to set up a series of activities. Students have commented (as I find too) that it can be difficult to find things in conversation threads etc. I like the way it will link directly to MS Stream so recording content and sessions is really easy and no issues with creating content then uploading large files.
OneNote – We have started to use this alongside Teams for collaborative project working. It’s like an endless blank sheet of paper (works best in the desktop app rather than directly through Teams) It can be good for asynchronous collaborative design exercises and peer<>peer or student<>tutor feedback. Colleagues on the sustainable product design course use it extensively and have had positive feedback from students. It’s a bit like Evernote.
Zoom – Everyone knows it now. The breakout rooms work well, has speaker and gallery view and isn’t limited to a 3×3 grid as our version of teams currently is. I like to be able to see people in the smaller group sessions if they are comfortable sharing the camera. It makes it a bit more like a normal conversation.
WordPress – I am using this currently for my CRJ. I find it OK and useful to have lots of templates but some of the set up was a little clunky. Lots of our students use it for their own learning journals. I recently had to ask a few to resubmit as they had set it up incorrectly with no access. I also keep a blog on squarespace which I find easier to use although I pay a subscription for that.
Hi i feel the same as you, I have limited experience, which has obviously this year been enormously enhanced due to current covid-19 restrictions in class and thus need for online resources. Zoom – useful but limitations in time of signing up/time for session MS teams- useful for meetings but engagement can be varied WordPress – used for CRJ, I too have had difficulties sorting the access, but hope to sort this soon e-learning for health – https://e-lfh.org.uk, (Links to an external site.) really useful teaching resource but no interaction with students skills for health – https://skillsforhealth.org.uk (Links to an external site.) as above, no interaction facility with students but really useful for setting pre course activities/learning and useful for flipped class approach Reply Reply to comment
What type of online learning activity it could be used for;
How you found out about this tool;
Whether you have previously used this tool yourself or not, to support student learning or for some another function;
A URL link to any further information about this tool.
1. I’m not sure if this counts, but… Canvas – Virtual Learning Environment. At ACM we used Canvas (as clearly Falmouth does) as our VLE. This allows the creation of online / flipped classrooms and hosts most supporting material with options for quizzes, forums etc. as we’ve all experienced. I created both a Library module and my Study Skills course on Canvas; I used it to lay out the course and share slides after sessions. I’ve heard from other tutors that Canvas is more user friendly than Moodle – I’d be curious to know what your experiences have been?
2. Kahoot! – create your own online quizzes. I found out about this via a First Aid course I did – the tutor used it at the end to test knowledge. I’ve used it in Harvard Referencing to test knowledge and the students loved it.
3. Zoom; Like Teams – an online communication and info sharing video thingy. My fantastic ex-manager (Head of Digital Education) chose it over Teams and Canvas’s Big Blue Button as she’d determined it offered most flexibility and was easiest to use. However Teams does beat it for security, so it depends what you want to use it for. I’ve used it to deliver Library training sessions to staff and students (including the last assessment), take part in group meetings and family catch-ups during lockdown. NOTE: if you record a video in Zoom it automatically records a separate audio file for you – which could save signficant time in making both a video and podcast if so desired. You can also download and select your own virtual background, so you can shoose something stimulating / appropriate to the subject you are presenting on.
4. Youtube. I’ve embeded videos from Youtube into slides to vary media and improve student engagement and through this course I’ve discovered how ridiculously easy it is to load up videos yourself. This could be used for studnets to load up and share videos, but again I’d research how secure it is first. I believe there’s a separate section specifically for educational videos?
5. Google Scholar / Google Books? Great research resources. Best used in combination with Kopernio / UnPayWall (free Chrome add-ons) to help identify free resources. Can be used to encourage students to research around their subject areas?
I think I’ve duplicated some others, so I’ll chuck some more in;
6. Text to speech / speech to text tools. MS & G-Suite have their own built-in versions now; there are also free Chrome add-ons. These are particuarly useful for students with SpLD’s, e.g. dyslexia. I’ve shown a number of students how to use these and had one student crying on my shoulder with relief. These can help students read online information and e-books, e-articles etc.
7. TED-Ed – educational videos along the TED talk lines. I’ve not used them myself… (oops – I’ ve just discovered their ‘Mysteries of the Vernacluar’ series. That’s a research rabbit hole I’ll disappear down later…)
Hi Michael Check out Sir Ken Robison on Ted – 65m views – he talks about how education needs to change for the 21st century and how we are stuck in a failure regime based on education principles established during the industrial revolution – totally fascinating and very entertaining. Alex Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
I enjoyed compiling a list of these resources and have a look at their reviews, I am always keen to try new software- thank you guys.
Here are software I have explored, although some of them are pretty generic like a video editing tool. The local university I work part time at does not have a dedicated VLE so in February I had to create my own environment using my personal website, link to the module I created and developed is here (Links to an external site.). And in China, most of online resources are blocked, which has been my frustrations for years. Although my international students have a workaround it, I needed to be conscious at least the website is accessible. Not the best but it made me try different ways.
1. Wechat.
It is the Chinese version of WhatsApp, with a whole load of functionality (including online payment) and mini programs connected to other apps. But I mainly used the group chat to disseminate information (weekly links of materials and discussions), sending reminders, sending feedbacks etc. I was sceptical at first using a social media instead of emails, but it was a great tool. Fast response for sure, and works well using the desktop version.
2. Adobe Acrobat DC
This had came about when I tried to avoid making video lecture, due to the size limit I can upload in my website. Occasionally, this works an alternative for embedding audio to the pdf- hence very lightweight.
I installed this widget on my website and this was how students discuss using prompted questions/ input reading or other materials. Attendance was taken from this weekly engagement.
I am exploring HoloLens 2 for my research in mixed reality (and computational bamboo architecture), and this will be a great tool in the future for online learning. We can work with 3D in distant location, virtual meetings will be improved with the quick access of the hologram. In future micro architecture building workshop hopefully I will be able to utilise them, am still getting the hang of it.
Apart from that, I used Zoom, YouTube and Instagram (for case studies). Reply Reply to comment
I suddenly had a thought of Flipgrid.com, my husband seemed to be spending a lot of time on reviewing students’ uploaded videos. They did summaries based on input texts usually, and got to do peer observation too. Reply Reply to comment
The ones I can think of that have already been mentioned:
1) Zoom
2) Microsoft Teams
3) Youtube
Tools that have not been mentioned so far:
4) Vimeo. It’s great for uploading lectures for students to access and listen to. I currently use this tool for supporting student learning. There is a live event feature too although I have yet to use it. URL: https://vimeo.com (Links to an external site.)
Well I’m very late to this! But I enjoyed reading through these and listening to people’s thoughts in the webinar.
The course I tutor on uses Padlet to create Ideas Walls, where students and tutors can share links, videos, images and comment on each other’s ideas. It is a bit ugly, but I am yet to find an online resource that isn’t! Plus it isn’t as ugly as Trello, which is my worst nightmare. I have inherited the use of this, so I’m not sure if this is what I would have picked.
I liked Dario’s recommendation of Miro as an alternative, but I feel that has the potential to become messy when used by larger (or overly enthusiastic) cohorts, especially when they are all working on different projects.
No one has mentioned Canvas! Does that count?? It is quite cumbersome but I think that anything that needs to facilitate so many different needs and users is going to have to be that way.
As an alternative to Zoom, we use Whereby as a video conferencing platform. The benefit is that you can set a personalised room that you simply use each time, rather than having a different random generated url each time like Zoom. It is aesthetically a little nicer on the eye, but it doesn’t seem as easily integrated with other platforms (such as Slack). Reply Reply to comment
I had not heard of Whereby before! I found coming late to this useful, as we are trying to use standardized technologies across all modules this semester coming up (to make it easier for the students) and this has all helped! Reply Reply to comment
Many thanks for sharing the technology tools which can be somewhat used un a fully online learning environment.
As you know, the list of possibilities is huge and, given the recent events and the sudden necessity to implement online learning and teaching in a multitude of teaching contexts, the offer is growing.
As mentioned, from March 2020 the attention to quickly find ways to deliver existing courses in an online learning environment has created a sudden interest in tools and resources to help with these challenging tasks.
SEDALinks to an external site. (Staff and Educational Development Association), an established organisation which is active in supporting the professional development of staff in education, has been at the forefront in supporting institutions throughout these challenging times and has promoted a nation-wide effort to compile a list of resources and tool for the emergency move to online learning. I am sharing this here, as it might be useful to some of you. Just bear in mind that this document has developed over a few months, though the contribution of a large number of FE and HE practitioners, so it’s quite overwhelming. There is no need to engage with this document at this stage as part of the PGCHE, but it might be a good idea to keep it handy if you are planning on designing/reviewing your online learning and teaching implementation in the coming weeks.
I’ve come to this a bit late, so most of the things I would have thought of have already been brought up explanation point but I’ve had a nice time reading through other peoples descriptions and making a list of all the apps and programmes people out there use 🙂
Moodle – this is one that we use a lot at my University that no one has mentioned. It is more or less like Canvas and a paid subscription, so it depends on what your university has! https://moodle.org/ (Links to an external site.)
PowerPoint – I am surprised I didn’t see this on anyone’s list … I use PowerPoint to make presentations, and sometimes use the record function to speak over them as I flip through the slides so that way I create video podcasts for the students. these can then be uploaded onto YouTube or a similar web-based tube channel
Word – Again, a simple one call but I use my software it all the time to create summary documents for my students for them to study off of. As an engineer, we have to provide them with many mathematical problems as well, and so I used the equation functions to create mathematical problems for them, and then provide them with solution manuals as word or PDF documents afterwards.
Panopto – I have not used this programme yet, but I know it is installed in our classrooms for us to record lectures as we’re giving them. We can then upload those lectures onto sites like Moodle or canvas. From what I understand, the quality of videos is not as high as if you were to make a video podcast, but if you were giving a live lecture and wanted to record it for students to view in the future, it’s a way of doing this for them and not doubling your work. https://www.panopto.com/ (Links to an external site.)
Very late to this as I’m just catching up after a couple of weeks away from the course! Here are a few tools we use a lot on MA Writing for Script and Screen:
Whereby (Links to an external site.) – As mentioned already, this is great for videoconferencing with students. We use it for 1:1s (but it can handle up to 4 participants). Main advantage is that there’s no need for students to register/have accounts etc. They just click the link and the meeting happens in a browser window. Very easy and ensures smooth-running tutorials most of the time.
Celtx (Links to an external site.) – This is specific to our subject, but Celtx is great as an online creative suite which offers students a free trial period. They often use the script drafting tool for their first assignments before eventually committing to a purchase (usually Final Draft) for subsequent projects. Celtx is great though for anyone doing any sort of film/video/games production related course.
Youtube (Links to an external site.) – Already mentioned, but thought I’d highlight our use for it – mainly to handle uploads of student presentations (e.g. short 3-minute project pitch videos). We then encourage them to post links/embed these videos in Canvas but – since they’re hosted on YouTube – we don’t encounter the storage limit issues that come from uploading vids directly into Canvas. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Joel Ferguson
If you can’t/don’t want to pay for screen recording software but still would like something that is able to make prefessional looking videos take a look at:
https://www.uberconference.com/ (Links to an external site.) Here’s a nice app which I found on the Bing search engine. It’s free up to 10 participants for now. You can use it in the same way you use Zoom which means you can teach through it but it does not have break away groups like the Big Blue Button which is unfortunate. You can record but I haven’t tried it yet. It has a nice song when you go into the room, a nice touch if you’re a bit stressed. Below is a list of their features. Oh, and sign up is super simple, just add your name, email and password and you go straight in. If you’ve previously used Zoom it’s very easy to use.
Up to 10 Participants
PINs Required
Phone and VoIP audio
Number of Participants
Maximum Conference Duration
Unlimited conferences
Screen Sharing
Call Recording
HD Quality Audio
Mobile Apps
HD Video
Custom Call-In-Number (US and CAN)
Analytics
International Access (Over 50 Countries)
Dial Out to Add Guests to a Call
Upload Custom Hold Music
Toll-Free Number ($30/mo for yearly or $35/mo for monthly)
Team Management Portal
Voice Intelligence
It seems to have all of the same features that Zoom has and has a nice welcoming song while you wait for others to join.
You don’t have to access this app via google or chrome.
Selecting tools for online learning can be quite an art. The most important thing to keep in mind, is that the tools must be appropriate for the learning activity and learning outcome you have in mind – often, it is not a good idea to choose one for the sake of using it (unless, of course, your learning outcome was, for example, to investigate to what extent this tool has a useful application for X, Y or Z).
When asked by a teaching and learning practitioner to show how to use a particular tool, most learning technologists would first explore why they wanted to use it by asking questions like: What learning outcome do you want your students to achieve, and through what learning activity? How will this tool add to achieving this learning outcome? Who are the learners? etc.
Knowing and choosing which technology to use for your online teaching, can be difficult and sometimes overwhelming. The following sections will help guide you to make better decisions.
Well, there’s a learning point right there; I don’t like Simon’s slouched pose in the video above. The body language doesn’t come across well to me (and then we’re touching on the ladder of inference which segues nicely into psychology – do we learn better from those we like? Does liking your teacher inspire greater motivation? That’s something we really can’t alter too much due to student’s past experiences – you may look like a bully in their primary school, you may have the same name as a relative they hate…).
Video – I like ‘pedagogy before technology’. Yes. The importance of providing technical support – yes BUT – we must not waste time teaching them how to use software that will only be used at that institution, for that course. Software that is used in their chosen field – absolutely, and arguably more important. So where possible save our and their valuable time and use software that they are either likely to be already familiar with or that is very user friendly (provided obvs. it provides the functionality required). Which the video pretty much goes on to say… 😀 FIT FOR PURPOSE. Ideally this would require that departments communicate to ensure that where possible, they use the same software (this could also offer a cost saving in licenses). How likely that is to happen in a large Uni is another matter…
‘Students value technology when it adds to their learning’.
Note; how many of the guys in the videos have books behind them!! (clearly filmed in the Library in some cases). This has been observed with many online video calls on the TV at the mo’ – experts, politicians etc. – books. Sooo, that implies they think (at least) that books may suggest something positive about them.
That reminds me – a plea to all academics to keep reading lists SHORT. That IT one from Falmouth that was x4 A4 pages long… for one module…??!
Different mindsets when using online for learning vs. entertainment – yes, Yet we are frequently told to keep them ‘engaged’ which often verges on entertainment, and using the same tools e.g. Youtube. Are we ‘blending’ entertainment and teaching? Then that book on gaming suggests that gaming can teach people a lot (look at that chap recently on BBC who won the chance to race an F1 car – his dream since 4 – via simulated racing as he couldn’t afford to take the karting any further).
Why using that tool
How it will benefit them
What the outcome will be.
Essentially, sell it to them. Encourage students to showcase the tools they are thinking of using and how.
Internet for online works because ((well, I’d say because it’s the only tech that can support the *best* version of distance learning. OU was doing it decades ago via tapes, videos, TV programmes, posted notes etc. My Mum did an OU degree back in the 80’s – they even sent her an early BBC computer for her research…)). They say because it’s*not* a special educational tool – it’s already a part of our daily lives. ((more’s the pity)). Now, define what I mean by the ‘best’ – most accessible, cheapest and fastest method that supports a variety of media.
Success Factors and Barriers in Choosing Technology for Online Learning
Once you have considered the questions about the tool’s appropriateness for a particular learning activity, please review the following table by Littlejohn (2004), which lists success factors and barriers for effective tool selection:
Success factors for effective use of tools
Barriers
Easy to use Cheap Recommended or used by peers Support provided in the form of a workshop or one-to-one mentoring Closely linked to user needs and requirements Obvious benefits Provides a solution to a problem Integrates with existing tools and resources Interesting or fun Support by a vendor Open source
Expensive Difficult to obtain Complicated to use Doesn’t link with existing systems Too many functions or too much information Risk of systems breaking down Increased risk where the tools become mission critical Functionality which does not obviously map to existing practice
Littlejohn, A. 2004. Success factors and barriers to effective use of tools in e-learning courses. In The Effectiveness of Resources, Tools and Support Services used by Practitioners in Designing and Delivering E-Learning Activities: Final Report. UK: JISC.
So, pretty much everything I’d already said!! ((I wonder if having 2 generations of teachers before me helps; I suspect it’s more to do with the 2 generations of engineers…))
To help you shape and prioritise your choices about which technology to use, keep firmly in mind both:
the practical constraints within which you have to work;
your awareness of where some of the greatest potential value and benefits can come from online learning.
“Online learning has the potential to integrate independence (asynchronous online communication) with interaction (connectivity). The potential of this type of learning is to merge verbal and written discourse, unconstrained by time and space. It is not the issue of access to information but the connection to others that can really distinguish online learning from both conventional face-to-face and distance education. When choosing technologies to use for a fully online course and for online learning design in general, it is worth remembering that it can be a mistake to try to integrate new communication technologies into passive educational approaches.
Early providers of online education, such as the Open University, offered online courses whose core element was the use of computer-mediated conferencing to support and facilitate structured, moderated, asynchronous, text-based discussion between participants, including learners, teachers and subject matter experts. One of the main driving forces that underlay these early developments was the conviction that computer-mediated conferencing, when appropriately structured, can be a powerful support for peer exchange and collaborative learning. The asynchronous and retrievable nature of contributions, combined with the fact that the tutor – even though playing a key role as a discussion moderator – cannot control turn-taking in the same way as in a face-to-face situation, are features conducive to this:
“Collaborative knowledge construction environments enable all members of a class or learning group… to contribute their interpretation. It is important for advance knowledge acquisition that learners realise that there exist multiple interpretations for every event or object. Those interpretations may be dissonant or consonant, but they reflect the natural complexity that defines most advanced knowledge domains. Collaborative environments enable learners to identify and reconcile those multiple perspectives in order to solve problems” (Jonassen et al, 1993, p. 240).
The ability to bring together different people’s perspectives on a particular topic – without time or place constraints, and in a context conducive to reflection and discussion – was seen by early online learning designers as perhaps the most important aspect of online education. Structured and purposeful online discussion, feedback and negotiation, leading to deep-level understanding and advanced knowledge construction in a collaborative environment, is a crucial aspect of online courses. The design and support of tasks, activities and environment for collaborative learning and peer exchange, requires fundamental re-thinking of pedagogical models, and of teaching and assessment strategies. It certainly requires the tutor to play a major role in initiating, shaping, weaving and concluding the online group activities built into the course (something we are going to focus more heavily on in Week 11).
As you will be aware from your learning from the last module, for some years there has been a trend towards models of learning where the learners are more actively engaged in constructing meaning from experience. This PGCHE course is based on the social constructivist perspective, which seeks to integrate the individual’s cognitive and social environments, while attaching critical importance to the social negotiation of meaning supported by collaborative construction of knowledge. Learning is seen a situated social practice. I think most of you will already have experience of what is being claimed here, and its value, from your experience as PGCHE students (eg from discussion forums, micro-teach activity, etc).
A key value of online learning can be its capacity to support public communication and personal thinking, in the quest to construct meaning and confirm knowledge.
Of course it always depends on the context of the course design, but given these claims about what can be the greatest value of online learning: if when designing a course you need to sensibly limit the number of tools you are going to use and need to choose between two technologies – for example, 1) a technology which seems to encourage more passive individual learning, versus 2) a technology that encourages more connectivity, interaction and collaborative co-construction of knowledge – then to get the best learning potential out of the tool and of online learning, perhaps in that kind of situation, it could be best to go for option 2?
Have a think about this, and whether it is changing your perspective on online learning design.”
“It is important for advance knowledge acquisition that learners realise that there exist multiple interpretations for every event or object.” People have to be TOLD this? Ok, 2 degrees in Ancient History gives me an advantage here but really, the inability to understand, tolerate and even at times accept different viewpoints is a major issue in the modern world (and typically a strongly masculine trait, I note). Mutter…
‘Weaving’ keeps coming up as a term. I still don’t know what they mean by this (I’ve an idea but not sure). Ok, researched it; “Weaving names the moments in classroom lessons when explicit connections are made—by teacher or students—across one or another dimension of knowledge. Usually, weavings connect something that is already familiar with new curriculum content. Virtually all theories of school learning stress the importance of such connections …” https://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-8/cazden-on-pedagogical-weaving
Which is what I do when I link stuff to Ancient History…
Based on what I said earlier, no, it doesn’t change my views on online learning at all as I already held that belief. Do NOT put technological barriers up for student; technology is there to facilitate learning, having to learn technology first is a barrier.
Activity intro
So far, you have considered the different types of technology and tools out there that can be potentially used to support online learning activities in HE (and appreciated the vast selection). You have also looked at the range of different things to consider when evaluating whether a particular tool is appropriate and useful – or not.
For this week’s Challenge Activity, we want you to take the opportunity to find, explore and evaluate a specific online tool and its potential to support online learning activities in your own teaching context in HE.
This should be a tool that you are not currently very familiar with, in terms of using it to support student learning (although of course you may already have some familiarity with using it for other personal and professional purposes. Alternatively, you can revisit your PGCHE colleagues’ lists in the earlier discussion forum, to find a tool that sounds interesting enough to explore further).
For example, it might be a tool that you have little experience with, but have heard others talk about it as potentially useful. You can explore and experience it more fully by (for example) researching about it, downloading and playing around with it, exploring its different functions and possibilities, etc.
This is all with a view to exploring a previously unfamiliar tool in a practical hands-on way, then to evaluating how it could be potentially useful to support learning activities and learning outcomes for your own students, in your own teaching context.
Enquire / Reflect / Produce
We would like you to:
Find and choose a specific tool that could be used to facilitate an online learning activity, as part of a fully online course. This should be a tool that you are not already familiar with for the purpose of supporting student learning.
Find out more information about the tool eg Internet research.
Gain access to / download the tool. (If you are not able to do so, then choose another tool to explore.)
Explore using the tool and what it can do and could be used for. In other words, play around with it. If you need more help, there are always useful resources, for example under the tool’s ‘Help’ section, official website, YouTube, fellow colleagues etc.
Evaluate the tool and its potential usefulness and appropriateness for different online learning activities that you might want students in your teaching context to do (especially for a fully online course / programme of study).
Make notes of your thoughts from this exploration and evaluation of the tool.
Evaluating the Tool
In your evaluation of the tool, apply your learning from this week and the previous weeks (the most immediate example being the range of factors to consider from the previous page). However, make sure you also consider and make notes on the following:
At least one specific learning activity that this tool could be used to support, in your teaching context.
At least one specific learning outcome that the tool and learning activity could help your students to achieve.
How the tool helps students to achieve those learning outcome and activities.
The context in which this tool will be used e.g. course, subject area, institution.
The characteristics of the learners who would be using the tool.
The appropriateness, advantages and disadvantages of this tool, for using it for your purpose(s) in your teaching context.
How you could address the potential disadvantages of this tool (eg through the way you use it or help students to use it), so you can maximise its value.
How appropriate and useful this tool could potentially be (or not) and why, for your draft online course design ideas that you created, shared and discussed last week, Week 8.
You will be sharing your ideas and thoughts in the discussion forum on the next page.
Evaluating Sway
I chose MS SWAY because a Librarian at Falmouth had commented that they were using it to create packages for students that were distinct from academic’s work, and it allowed academics to load up the packages easily to VLE if Library staff did not have edit access. I was going to have a look at it anyway so I thought this could be the ideal opportunity. Being MS based it’s clearly easily available, part of a suite that many institutions should have access to. It facilitates creation of “Create visually striking newsletters, presentations and documentation in minutes”, you can easily add other media to it from anywhere, quickly change the style and it’s responsive (adapts to different device screens).
Evaluating the Tool
In your evaluation of the tool, apply your learning from this week and the previous weeks (the most immediate example being the range of factors to consider from the previous page). However, make sure you also consider and make notes on the following:
At least one specific learning activity that this tool could be used to support, in your teaching context. ((creating course materials using a range of media for students. Students could also use it to create professional documentation for authentic assignments, e.g. business cases or sales pitches)) It’s in use by businesses: “M&S – To date, we use Sway to develop employee training resources for Office 365, but we can see so many other ways of using it across our business groups”.Steven Collier
At least one specific learning outcome that the tool and learning activity could help your students to achieve. ((how to access Library resources specific to their subject))
How the tool helps students to achieve those learning outcome and activities. ((by offering a professional, clear and easy to use guide))
The context in which this tool will be used e.g. course, subject area, institution. ((any institution, any course, any subject))
The characteristics of the learners who would be using the tool. ((by including a variety of media, students from a wide range of abilities could use it, BUT videos would have to be clearly signposted for dyslexic students as there’s a strong temptation to make it text heavy. There’s an ‘accessibility view’ which is handy))
The appropriateness, advantages and disadvantages of this tool, for using it for your purpose(s) in your teaching context. ((without using it ‘in anger’ and no student feedback it’s hard to say. However yes, I can see the temptation would be to use it to deliver text-heavy information))
How you could address the potential disadvantages of this tool (eg through the way you use it or help students to use it), so you can maximise its value. ((integrate as much multi-media as possible AND be aware of possible situations when you might end up duplicating work e.g. slides. Could this be used instead of slides? NO))
How appropriate and useful this tool could potentially be (or not) and why, for your draft online course design ideas that you created, shared and discussed last week, Week 8. ((this could be really useful for presenting information that is also shared online via the VLE where you have NOT already made slides?))
Interactivity – you can add interactivity to Sway;
A Form allows you to add Quiz or Questioner to your Sway, directly engage with your audience and track their responses.
A Stack group lets your viewers click through a set of images one at a time.
A Comparison group puts two images side by side joined by a splitter control that viewers can drag left or right to see more/less of an image.
A Slideshow group arranges a set of images so that viewers can click through the set one at a time by using arrows at the left and right margin of each image. It also displays a gallery of thumbnail-sized images below the featured image.
You will be sharing your ideas and thoughts in the discussion forum on the next page.
Thanks for your review, Alex. This is so cool. I love that you can get comments float across the screen as they’re coming in. It gets me thinking about a quiet cohort I had in recent years, who seemed so self conscious about offering critique of their peers. This could help nudge them out of that mind-set – once they see that all comments are useful in different ways, that they’ll not be taken in the wrong way, and even for them to just see their thought out there, it should build confidence. I’d probably start to phase that kind of activity out over the course of the module, once they’ve built the skill up, if I felt they could cope without it.
Does it integrate with Keynote/Evernote or anything, do you know? Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hi Katie Yes, exactly ideal for generating interaction from a quiet cohort. I don’t know if integrates with Keynote / Evernote as early daze for me with this one. To be honest with all these apps, same as technology over the years, I am generally led by others, for example if Falmouth are using then it is almost certainly well tried and tested as they seem to pretty much at the cutting edge with education interaction and technology. Alex Reply Reply to comment
Hey Alex, I really enjoyed your evaluation. How did you embed it into your post?! Is the file hosted elsewhere or is it hosted in Canvas?
I’ve likewise experienced this kind of thing done in the past but in a much less integrated way – the presenter used a live Twitter feed to interact with the 100+ participants in terms of asking questions, getting answers and getting audience questions and responding to them live. It was incredibly performative and the level of multitasking was incredible. This approach with Mentimeter seems more achievable (for the less performative presenter) and relevant! It would definitely impact the engagement of an activity. Reply Reply to comment
Hi Nick and thanks I recorded the audio as an MP3 file at a relatively small format so the file size was about 1.3mb – and then I found the right tab in this Canvas HTML editor which is the audio arrow 4th from the left above. As usual you then find the file on your computer and upload. Hope that helps Alex Reply Reply to comment
HI Alex, This is a really good description and presentation of Mentimeter. This App is totally new to me so I was very interested to see how I might integrate into my own practice. Like you, I definitely can see some usefulness in the flexibility, adaptability of the App in how it engages with the participants. The ability to save the data produced from the interactions is very intriguing for research and hypothesis based on interactions and engagement of the content with learners. This could be extremely valuable when looking for ways to improve the course content and delivery. Reply Reply to comment
My chosen media platform is voicethread.com (Links to an external site.) this link will send you to the website. I have also attached my podcast using Anchor.com as the platform to create a podcast which is above.
Hey Suzanne, this is very well presented – your podcast is really engaging; I think you’ve got a podcast voice! Voice Thread sounds great and would be a really beneficial tool for online teaching and learning. I think the aspects you highlight would be really valuable for creating engaging content and especially moderating that engagement with assessment tools. It will definitely be worth considering for the presentations I will be creating. Nice! Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Alex Bailey
that was a really great description Suzanne, and I really enjoyed listening to your podcast! I had just assumed it was a software for creating podcasts and nothing more, but will check it out now 🙂 Reply Reply to comment
Here is a link to my thoughts on a test of Trello. It seems like it could be a good tool for us to create a platform for collaborative design exercises in small groups.
Hey Toby, I think this is really insightful and I really like the informal and very tactile approach with the use of video recording. I think this sort of democratisation of media, with personal touches, can really support engagement from different types of learners. I, on the other hand, went really formal!! Nevermind! I think personally, having done Trello as well, it could play a supportive role but will perhaps may never compete with the behemoth that is MS Teams… Reply Reply to comment (2 likes)
I have used Trello before during my PhD as a tool to capture my work-in-progress but my supervisors did not seem to follow up on it so after a couple of years I stopped. The interface seemed to have changed, however the tools look identical.
I absolutely agree on the collaborative points. I looked for collaboration tool when I looked for Trello, and was torn between Trello or Asana. You are also on point with regards to letting students to structure their learning journey.
HI Toby Thank you for sharing your thoughts on Trello. I have been meaning to look into this App for a while but just haven’t had the time. Your description was excellent, well described with clear information and delivery. I can learn from your ease of delivery, i tend to get a bit slow and deliberate which can be more of a strain to listen too. I need to learn to talk more freely and natural. I can definitely see how useful this app will be for the collaboration in discussions with sharing options with files etc. The look does seem a bit childish and does not have the professional design you would expect. But as you say and demonstrate, once you enter into the guts of the software, it does become more refined. I’m not sure I would use this in my own practice, I need the video imbedded options to share and have meaningful discussions with my learners, I can see how this App would be useful to some practices. thanks for the excellent review. Reply Reply to comment
Here’s another (audio podcast) evaluation of Trello! And a transcript.
Although, typically, I’m struggling with the technology! Can you embed audio into Canvas? Do you need to host it somewhere else? I’ve uploaded it to Dropbox and provided the link:
Play media comment. –> My thoughts on Padlet. Apology if the review was sounded very unstructured. Just wanted to keep it quick and dirty. Below is the notes of what I talked about.
The way I explored Padlet was through: 1) watching online reviews in YouTube and 2) giving it a go, utilising the free 3 boards option. I tried to mimic my Week 4 of my own module just to give a bit of context.
Hi Mia thank you for your very thorough investigation into the App Padlet. You have shared a very well prepared description of how you have used this App and also how it can support your learners with LO’s and collaboration. After listening to your description of Padlet, and reading the description, I am inquisitive to try this App with my learners. I like the fact that I can imbed video, files, discussions, podcasts into one area and have several boards on the interface. The sharing looks very user friendly with a sharing link. My learners benefit from small pieces of information at a time, the chunking and breaking up larger learning blocks appeals to me in how learners access the information. Thanks Mia for a very good investigation and description. Reply Reply to comment
Thanks for contributing your evaluations to this discussion.
Given the vast choice (see Forum 1 of week 9), the process of vetting through a considered evaluation of what’s best suited in our context is a critical process.
As discussed in our webinar on Friday, some of the key points and consideration to help with this, and that you might want o keep in mind when making these choices relate to:
1. Is the tool/technology supported by your institution? If it is, you know that you and your learners have someone to help with this implementation and with any issues that might arise. If not, you will have to factor in extra time for supporting your learners and/or you might need to seek help within the institution (learning technology teams generally), to try and embed you choice more widely across the programme or department.
2. Similarly, if the tool needs user/learner login, can an existing institutional login can be used? If the tool is integrated within the VLE or uses the institutional email for access, you won’t need to worry about learners’ access
3. If an institutionally-supported tool has limitations that you have identified, have you thought about overcoming these limitations before adopting a third-party tool? While this process might take some trial and error, it might save precious time and effort in future.
It’s good to see that everyone that has contributed is onboard with the general principle of keeping in mind that technology is “just a tool and not an end”, and ultimately what really matters is designing constructively aligned learning activities and sessions, which support your learners to gain confidence and competence in working towards the assessment tasks, therefore meeting the module learning outcomes. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Michael Berthaume
It seems to be a tool for facilitating interactive synchronous and asynchronous discussion around multi-media resources. Users can highlight frames of a video, add comments (text, audio, video etc).
This seems a really useful one for our subject area (scriptwriting for screen media). In online group webinars we often use short films as resources to facilitate discussion around best practice – and the ability to interact with that resource in more direct and visual ways would be a massive help.
So for example, if a student wants to refer to a particular scene in making a point about visual storytelling, they can directly highlight the parts of the image/video they are referring to. This would greatly boost immersion and engagement in these webinar discussions. As a tutor, I could also interact with the image in more diverse ways, hopefully giving me more tools to explain concepts being discussed and how they’re evident in the examples we’re studying.
The tool also raises the possibility of an asynchronous webinar, in which students add their voice comments to the multimedia resource in question at a time that suits them. This would certainly help with the time-zones issue we tend to face whereby not all students can attend webinars live – and the catch up option is a non-interactive one. Here, all students could have an interactive discussion around the week’s viewing.
I do have some reservations around implementation which I’d need to do more research on before considering using it on a live course:
– Does Falmouth University support it/have licenses?
– How does integration work with webinar tools? Would all students need to log in to voicethread separately? How simple/complex is this process?
– Can we upload any video content to it? How easy is it to ‘plug in’ videos hosted on Youtube or Vimeo?
In terms of our cohorts on WSS (MA Writing for Script and Screen), some are quite tech-phobic and have rather low IT ability, so I’d also want to check out the user interface in more detail before deploying it, just to make sure it won’t terrify some of the students off! Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Harriet Beesley
https://aggie.io (Links to an external site.) which is a collaborative drawing tool. It’s browser based and appears to somewhat similar to the other digital drawing offerings (adobe suite) and it is free.
Here’s my online evaluation of MS Sway, a bit late!
I struggled with this one as I couldn’t decide which one to review – I didn’t want to review an obvious one like Zoom, so I ended up going with MS Sway which I know Falmouth University Library staff use and had intended to have a look at.
I chose this as i have never used it before. I think it could be adapted for most industries/subjects, however I would still need to have an element of f2f in some modules when assessing a students physical nursing skills. For the purpose of my online learning module as discussed in week 8, I believe this would definitely work well. I like the interactive features and the ability to get an idea of the students input, comments and be able to support the as a result f these. Moodle.m4a Reply Reply to comment
((BBC article of Indian school taking learning outside BECAUSE not all their students were online. Limits.))
In the first half of this module, we mainly focused on blended learning approaches, especially in relation to your work on designing, piloting and evaluating flipped classroom approaches, and doing this for your Assessment 1.
In the second half of this module, starting this week, we will shift the focus to developing your capabilities for designing and facilitating fully online learning environments.
This week, you will first share your personal perspectives on key things to think about when designing and creating online curriculum. Then you will engage with information about designing and creating online learning activities. You will create, share and discuss your initial draft design ideas for a fully online course that could be used to support student learning in your own HE contexts. Finally, there are the usual weekly opportunities to reflect on your learning, explore further reading and attend the webinar.
By the end of this week’s learning activities for Week 8, you should be able to:
Apply your previous learning about curriculum design to identify and discuss key things to consider when designing fully online courses;
Apply information about online course design to produce, evaluate and discuss your initial design ideas for an online distance-learning course;
Critically reflect on what and how you have learned this week, identifying potential implications for you and your colleagues’ current and future practice of developing flexible learning environments, in your local teaching contexts.
Reflect / Discuss
This week, we are focusing on the design of online curriculum. If you think back over the last few weeks and in the previous PGCHE module, you have been learning and practising a range of different aspects of curriculum design. Much of what you have learned already is also relevant and can be applied to the design of a fully online curriculum. However, there are ways in which the conditions of a completely online learning environment can be very different from face-to-face and blended learning environments. Such differences can impact on how you may need to approach the design and facilitation of online learning.
To get us started with thinking about this, reflect on what you have learned already about the different aspects of curriculum design. Reflect also on your experience of online learning in the previous module and over the last few weeks. It would also be useful to reflect back on some of the good points you raised about online learning in the very first discussion forum in Week 1 of this module. Consider the following questions:
What key three things do you think are most important to consider when designing any curriculum and learning environments in HE (face-to-face, blended and online)?
If you think about this question again, but only in relation to fully online curriculum and learning environments – does your list of three things change? How and why?
Provide a brief outline and explanation of your answers to the above question (150 words). Post this to the discussion forum.
Comment on the posts of two fellow students, sharing any reflections prompted by their outlines and explanations.
3 important things for any curriculum & learning environment design (f2f, blended, online)
– Constructive alignment between course LOs, learning content & activities, and assessment (curriculum)
– Consideration of employability and transferable skills (curriculum)
– Ensure a safe, welcoming, accessible, and supportive environment in which students can learn/develop (learning environment)
For online courses specifically, my list remains the same, but the particulars of how each point is implemented shift – especially with regard to the third point. This is the only one where I feel a radically different set of considerations manifest when compared with f2f courses for example. Reply Reply to comment
Hi Dejan, I agree with your notion of creating a supportive learning environment. And I think considerations of making this ‘safe, welcoming, accessible and supportive’ are often overlooked. In my experience this empathic sensibility can make a positive impact on a group of learners. I also like Alex’s proposal for a learning ‘community’. Taking this online in remote environments, across different modes with asynchronous activity is going to be a real challenge… Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Katie Welch
Agree with all of these. The last point is increasingly important now, I think. Maybe I’d add into this about making any approach ’emotionally rich’, if possible/appropriate. Read an interesting article yesterday on the BBC, which I’ve just tried to find but have failed, about how how employers attitudes have shifted towards viewing employees as people first, and resource second, and how they acknowledge that wellbeing is conducive to productivity…which, I think, in our case, means it’s conducive to meaningful learning. Reply Reply to comment
Dear Dejan, All looks good. As you said, your third point of ensuring a safe learning environment etc is important for online learning. It can be more challenging to keep online learners engaged. Reply Reply to comment
Value to the learner – either objectively to improve employment prospects for example or subjectively to enhance the learners collective knowledge and perspective on their key practice for example an MA in photography that is often geared to developing one’s artistic pedagogy and application range.
Engagement – whether it’s an on-line or F2F course to achieve the LO’s leaner engagement is crucial.
Community.
1 & 2 remained the same but in an on-line context 3 changed for me because on reflection a sense of community became the preference over motivation because I feel that community supports motivation with on-line learning… Being part of something, like on this course. Peer interaction is important as a reference point and as a support to ones learning and the learning of others. Also, how that on-line ‘community’ is managed will effect and ultimately support motivation. In other words how we are encouraged to interact and support each other. Reply Reply to comment (2 likes)
I agree Alex, community and engagement are so important to a fully online course. The commitment and motivation stem from self motives of wishing to complete the course but the social aspects of connected community are just as important. As we all have experienced here, not wanting to let our teachers down in being late for an assignment, not engaging with eachother after making the connections are very important to the success of the course and evaluation. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Nick Raven
Hi Alex, I really like the idea of community and the ambition for this to support the learning activities. Along with Dejan’s idea for creating the best learning environment, the idea of community could profoundly affect the value of the learning. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Katie Welch
Community. Lovely. We had some great feedback from our students this week, and community came up again and again. They really value it, and consciously appreciate efforts to create and sustain it. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Safia Shahid
The three most import design features should include considerations for Aims; LO’s and Assessment convergence. How do these aspects fit together with the content, pedagogical theories, schools overview of scholarship, accreditation of course and methods, environment and location of the course delivery?
How does the content fit with the delivery of the knowledge and how best to engage, motivate and teach the learners? Is prior knowledge expected for this course or are the learner’s novices? (This aspect matters in how the design of the delivery of content is undertaken).
What resources are going to be required? What methods of delivery and media will be used?
Teaching art, sports, media or any form of performance, production etc will be difficult in a fully online enviroment. Teacher feedback, visually watching learners produce actions or learn new skills asynchroniously will be difficult to fully evaluate how the learner is adapting, adjusting and gaining the correct understanding. Real-time video feedback would be difficult due to time difference, location, technical issues etc.
I would welcome my peer’s feedback on how they have possibly overcome some of these issues. Reply Reply to comment
I have often though of the specific conundrum in your practice of how to evaluate and support learners golf motions when practising – virtually. I can totally appreciate how challenging it is not to be ‘hands on’ adjacent to see how they are holding themselves balance and posture wise, something that is bordering on impossible to convey via a video link no matter how well it is filmed. David Paton one of our peers on this course muted a similar issue with sculpting: How there was limit to what could be done when you are detached from the learner via a video link. Some times you just have to be hands on right there with them to really convey the emotion of an action or a creative raw material. The only way I could potentially see this changing is with the advancement of a virtual environment. The type of technology that is used in gaming, relatively complex and pretty expensive for this type of application. Perhaps the reality is that there are limits to all possibilities and this might be one?
Hi Suzanne, I agree with Alex (and David) that perhaps there are limitations to this. I have found it useful to start to think through which bits of my teaching practice might lend themselves to a fully online version and which bits of them don’t. In this respect, perhaps there may be opportunities for a new course. One which might appeal to remote and distance learners and is fully online but misses the face to face sessions and another which is more blended and supports students that want the practical experience. In my own experience as a learner being coached on improving skills using a video coaching tool (coaches eye) I found it really cemented the need to improve when I could see the mistakes I was making in the recording as I felt I was doing what I should have been but clearly wasn’t! This reflection on my own practice was important and has made me more critical in subsequent training. It also acts as a record and reminder when coaching others. In practical terms we did it in groups with someone recording but I could imagine it could work with a tripod if recording alone. In terms of the limitations, again I agree, what substitute it there for actually positioning someone’s hands correctly, subtly tweaking their technique or resetting their posture. It could be argued that there is a deeper learning outcome if the student discovers this by themselves but in reality this can be a very slow learning process not fitting to a fixed course structure! Reply Reply to comment
1. Constructive alignment To consider the construction of the learning and its alignment to ensure the design of the activities is most appropriate for the intended learning outcomes.
2. Integration and convergence To ensure that the range of activities, content, communications, interactions, environments for the learning are holistically considered, integrated and convergent with the intended learning of the design.
3. Flexibility and Motivation To facilitate flexibility and engagement with student motivation through a student-led, student-focussed and empathic approach to the particular set of learners.
And I think these translate across both physical and remote environments.
These have developed over the weeks and similar to the others here I’ve had to wrestle with the balances of ambition to try and create, as Dejan puts it, an environment for learning, or, as Alex notes, a community of learning. I think the idea of a learning dialogue is brilliant (Bloxham and Boyd) and reading about F-L-I-P has made me consider the idea of a ‘culture’ of learning which I really like. Reply Reply to comment
To your last point, yes, I can only see positive outcomes from creating such a culture. And so it should be, in higher education, where people have elected to be. Having been a student at Falmouth previously, it always felt like it already practiced it. There was a huge amount of respect for the direction of other students. Now teaching, I have noticed, as is to be expected, a motivation-to-learn gap between the BA and the MAs, but for the most part they seem to take it seriously. Anything we can do to further encourage it will have far-reaching benefits, I’m sure. Reply Reply to comment
Hi Nick and Katie, Reading this I just thought I would add to the last point the importance of skills for lifelong learning, taking this approach beyond the course and university context. In this respect the ‘culture’ continues. Reply Reply to comment
1. Constructive alignment across the board – of course. Making sure it’s doing what it needs to do. Making sure the assessment is both effective, and useful as a further learning tool.
2. Cohesion with a wider context – impact on present and future learning, ‘future-proofing’ too; provision of lifelong skills; scope for flexibility on different vocational application
3. Creating a supportive learning environment. I think Alex has put it most succinctly: community. A sense of community enables the most meaningful activities, it drives retention, and increases motivation. It also increases intimacy which, as we are also now tasked with having an increasingly pastoral role, and looking out for signs of diminishing mental wellbeing, can hopefully go some way to breaking down barriers that students feel are preventing them from getting the help (academically or personally) that they might need. Reply Reply to comment (2 likes)
Hi Katie, Totally agree with 3 and this is very much the case in my role too. I am a relatively new employees and have undergone a lot of training on student wellbeing, prevent, neglect, safe guarding etc. It is interesting on reflection how much of this was based on face to face encounters, conversation, informal support or check in’s when you actually see the students. I would be interested in how this changes in an online environment where it could potentially be much easier for students to get lost in the system. Reply Reply to comment
The most important thing is always the learning outcomes: everything centres around it, from content to assessment to use and implementation of blended learning. Without a consistent, reliable set of learning outcomes, the entire module falls apart. Therefore, it is the most important part, and backbone of the curriculum.
I am unsure what the next two most important ones are, as I feel this might be a bit subjective. For me, it would be an understanding of your class. From the learning outcomes, you have an end goal, but it is important to have a starting point. What prior knowledge do you expect students to have? What gaps do they have in that knowledge, and how will you address those? Do you have mature students with jobs and families, who have little free time, or young, eager students who would readily read a textbook in a week if asked? Do you have well off students who all have laptops, or do they share laptops with their partners and families, and cannot reliably access online materials? Having this base provides you with the necessary information for planning out how you will accomplish your learning outcomes and what type of differentiation would be required.
Finally, the third (and this is largely driven by covid), is what platforms will be used to teach the students. Will it be in person, in the lab, online, etc.? This will guide the types of activities you can partake in. Reply Reply to comment
Good points, especially the second one. As I am emerging from the second round of marking, assessment and feedback from external examiners following the switch to online, these points are really true for our students and can’t be ignored. In more than one case, students had to run to campus in thunderstorms with their laptops to use the wifi outside closed uni buildings to upload their work due to unreliable connections at home, family using bandwidth or poor coverage. It’s areal problem. we are trying to counter this by setting up COVID safe bookable workspaces on campus, but this still may disadvantage these students if they have to get there and doesn’t support remote working. Not meaning to dismiss online learning but for me it has meant trying to rethink the e-tasks into things that are more accessible, broken into smaller bits and do not require large file uploads.
First point, yes totally agree too. We have standard learning outcomes across the course for all 3 years, sometimes tricky to get to fit with a topic. I really see the benefit of breaking this down into module specific and week specific aims. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Angela Coskey
Hi Michael, I completely agree with how you prioritize your different areas of importance. I too believe that the outcomes are the most important and everything else is secondary. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Regards a fully online curriculum, I don’t think my list changes. However, the plan and design of the curriculum and the assessment and feedback strategy would just be different to overcome some of the challenges of fully online learning such as potentially lower student engagement and other challenges. For example, in terms of the plan and design of the lessons/ curriculum, e-tivities suggested by Gilly Salmon (2013) would be helpful. Likewise, an adapted assessment and feedback strategy that is suited to online learners guided by scholarship would be better.
I’m looking back through this thread having worked through the draft learning design exercise and totally agree with you on the importance of the assessment and feedback strategy. I found thinking through the steps of weekly e-tivities that build to form the assessment was a useful way to think about this and in line with scholarship on constructive alignment and scaffolded learning.
My main driver for this was to keep the students engaged on a weekly basis and to make a clear structure that supports learning, then makes the output useful in their future work. I need to revisit the reading for the week. On reflection I might add ‘pace’ into my first point and ‘outcomes’ as a third, rolling in ‘community’ with learning environment which is probably cheating! Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Dear Toby, Sounds great. I think one of the key points that you have identified to support student learning is student engagement and a clear structure. Best of luck. Reply Reply to comment
Loosely summarised as how, where and who. Considering the purely online scenario, I think this would be similar although I would emphasise the first one and the importance for learners to become familiar with online learning tools. the environment can be flexible and the challenge of creating a ‘community of practice’ still remains I think and may be more significant in an online scenario. Reply Reply to comment
Coming at this nearly two weeks late (busy week followed by holiday week!) but I like how you summarised the concepts into question words, it helps make it more broadly applicable. I guess if I were to do that with mine it would be what, who, how, so similar! Reply Reply to comment
What key three things do you think are most important to consider when designing any curriculum and learning environments in HE (face-to-face, blended and online)?
Having read some of the below replies got me reflecting on this. Which is most important – what we think is important OR what the students think is important? Do these considerations coincide at all?
Do they change? Given the current situation (for example), I suspect employability and earning potential might be uppermost in most student’s minds. The recent Gov discussions around dropping degrees that typically lead to low paid jobs (archaeology is one example) is interesting.
That having been said; from a teacher’s perspective the three most important things I think are:
Constructive alignment with LO’s / logical flow. In a curriculum this is not just in regards to your module but how that fits with the overall programme and possibly other LO’s such as lifelong learning skills. Does the way the curriculum has been designed flow? Is it a logical progression of knowledge / skills that are scaffolded?
Engagement / enjoyability / accessbility. Does the content engage a variety students in a variety of ways? Does it offer options for accessibility? This includes the assignments. Does it inspire the students? Does it speak their language? Does it include elements that are fun / humerous?
Employablity / earning potential. How is the curriculum going to support students into employability? What skills will it give them that will perhaps allow them to stand out above the competition?
If you think about this question again, but only in relation to fully online curriculum and learning environments – does your list of three things change? How and why?
I don’t think anything does change that much. One is still creating and delivering content to encourage the development of skills and knowledge, just using a different medium to encourage that. Perhaps no. 2 is ‘dialled up’ more due to the need to engage students more and increase accessibility?
The need to ensure elements of social learning – such as our weekley webinars – becomes more important. That appears to be the major concern for most students looking to start degrees in Sept this year.
Thanks for sharing your ideas here. As we have mentioned a few times, this activity is meant to trigger thoughts and reflection around designing fully-online learning environments. Therefore, it might be useful to capture key learning points from this discussion in your CRJ.
A common theme across the contributions is that most of the things that are important to consider when designing face to face or blended teaching/learning are key in an online course too. What tends naturally to be different in a fully-online environment is how the teaching is delivered and how/when students take part. Collectively, you came up with the following as key things to consider when designing a course for online delivery:
Clearly define the purpose of the session/course (what are the goals/learning outcomes)
Constructive Alignment
Take account of the likely needs of the students
Inclusivity
Utilise group feedback and peer learning approaches again so as to facilitate crucial thinking and reflective practice as well as to support inclusivity
Employability
Authentic assessment methods that encourage ‘deep’ learning
Identify the instructional and assessment methods to be used
Utilise assessment approaches that facilitate student learning, are authentic and incorporate good, actionable feedback strategies
Connect the content of the course tightly to the learning outcomes
Assess the depth and breadth of the content to be used and focus on depth rather than breadth so as to help ensure critical thinking can come strongly into play as a learning outcome
Use curriculum delivery methods that support and are appropriate for both theoretical and practical outcomes
Design in activities that are practical, authentic group based tasks
With respect to online learning, pretty much the conclusion was that all of the things important in design for face to face were just as important in online course design.
However, due to the fundamentally different nature of wholly online experiences there were differences to take into account. There was a thread that focussed more on the benefits and constraints of online learning as well. For the former, flexibility and content availability were highlighted and for the latter remoteness, quality and access to content as constraints.
There are some different views around the significance of instructional methods and how their choice was key. On the one hand assessment, considered as an instructional method, was seen as key and indeed delivery online meant that a course curriculum could benefit from a much wider range of ‘vehicles’ through which assessment could happen. Another view of instructional methods focused more on content and held the view that as content could be delivered in so many different ways perhaps instructional method (in that context) was less significant. In a sense, the large variety of instructional methods for content delivery would be such that any student would be less likely to not be able to find one to suit them.
Group feedback and peer assessment could potentially be more effective in a fully online course, but that it is difficult to envisage how practical components in many subject areas could be effectively delivered in an online course. It is certainly true that a number of subject areas have such key ‘hands-on’ elements to their curriculum that reproducing these at a distance looks impossible, and currently generally is. I wonder though, when one hears of the advances in virtual and augmented reality, with surgeons operating on patients from thousands of miles away, whether that need to be in a physical space will be there for all subjects that currently rely on this in 20, 10 or even 5 years from now? Reply Reply to comment (2 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Stanley Mbelu
The 3 key things that I think are most important to consider when designing any curriculum and learning environment in HE.
– Planing, planing and planing. I believe that it is very essential to properly plan your session, especially if you are going to give the students materials they are to study or practise on their own and at their chosen time within the stated time frame you provided.
– As a Business Tutor, I will consider the applicability of what I am teaching to them towards employment when they are in the labour market.
I had a read through W1 forum again and it is nice to be reminded what we discussed in previous week based on our experience as an online learner and our observations. The key three things I have in mind in relation to fully online curriculum and learning environments are:
– Technical consideration
– Retaining student’s engagement, and
– Addressing learners’ needs through differentiation.
If it is a 100% online, a reliable infrastructure is important. Not just the VLE, but also how materials are delivered. It is also related to my second consideration on retaining student’s engagement, which is ideally being monitored with timely feedback from facilitators. Another consideration is the broad methods on differentiation strategy. I imagine learners’ need can be identified and facilitated in weekly basis with the use of online tools. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Angela Coskey
What key three things do you think are most important to consider when designing any curriculum and learning environments in HE (face-to-face, blended and online)?
Learning Outcomes is a way to quality assure a framework of study in which you are working in. These are they key elements used by a curriculum developer or designer which will indorse and make clear to the external bodies, students, colleagues which aluminates the rational of a successful graduate on a particular course of study.
Skills developed Skills development is the first step in the journey of further education and training. This is why skills development matters. It is how we can ensure that the South Africa of the future, the South Africa we leave behind for our children, is built upon a solid foundation that will stand the test of time.
Assessments (summative and formative) Though students don’t always like them, assessments are important to ensure students learn everything they should in a manner that is appropriate. The importance of assessments in schools emerges primarily from the assessment’s role in helping teachers and administrators determine the type and manner in which material is covered in classes.
If you think about this question again, but only in relation to fully online curriculum and learning environments – does your list of three things change? How and why?
No, I don’t think these three things would change because they will be a standard in any course regardless of the learning environment.
i agree with the majority that constructive alignment is key to ensure learning outcomes/activities/assessment make sense and flow so they are aligned with each other
differentiation is also very important as meeting the needs of a class within the f2f environment can be very different to when trying to do the same via virtual means as we have discovered throughout this module
I also empathise with Suzanne, in that teaching subjects that are traditional “hands on” for want of a better term, can be difficult via virtual means as you never quite get the true ability to thoroughly assess technique and accuracy. In Nursing whilst I can see many modules that could be taught differently via flipped or virtual means, I also feel the value of face to face sessions in physical assessment skills and also in peer support and development Reply Reply to comment
Differentiation is a concept first brought to my attention in this course, and one I like a lot. Up there with (a)synchronous learning for me! Reply Reply to comment
For me, reflecting on my personal experiences in online teaching and what I have learned through this course, th three key things to consider when designing content/environments for HE are:
really focus on a couple of key outcomes for the students. Don’t overwhelm them with information. Just tackle a few really well, making sure they are relevant to the learning outcomes and industry relevant.
Experiment with different activities and approaches, so that the students don’t get bored by repetition. This will also help both students and educators discover which methods resonate with them the most, as it can be very personal.
Leave a buffer of time for the unexpected, or in fact expected questions. Not all students will pick up the tasks at the intended speed, plus there will inevitably be questions that push the boundaries of the designed content. This is higher education, so we should be encouraging this questioning! We also need to factor in IT issues and language skills here too, especially in online courses where we are not always working synchronously.
I hadn’t thought about the “leave a buffer” component, but that’s a really good idea. The module I taught this past spring was for final years, who basically never asked questions because they were waiting until the end to cram, but it would have been nice if they asked questions along the way 🙂 Maybe my first years next month will be better at this! Reply Reply to comment
Introduction
As you have hopefully already seen from the previous forum, there are many different things to think about when designing online curriculum.
As you know, one key aspect of any curriculum design is to think through what kind of learning activities you want the learners to engage in. Let’s have a look at what a prominent expert in this area, Gilly Salmon, has to say about designing online learning activities for e-learning. She uses the term ‘e-tivities’ for this.
Reading Salmon:
She talks straight off about establishing ENJOYABLE & successful e-tivities (I hereby name these ‘ETs’ 🙂 ), & talks of emotional aspects of learning which echoes Race.
pg. 81 “…create short term goals with satisfying progress & flow of actions…” – this echoes book ‘What video games have to teach us about learning & literacy’. Gamification of learning.
Timing & pacing – I note in this course, when an assignment is due the week’s learning is frequently less onerous.
pg. 83 Salmon talks about getting students to deisgn their own assessments in groups – I have issues around this; how are you going to compare and mark different group’s assessments if the assessments themselves are very different? This does not fit with good practice around assessment (quality etc.).
Ah. I’m learning a lot about the roles of designers, moderators and appreciating more now the amount of work that goes into this course. Thank you!
Very good point about tech and emotions pg. 86 – 87. Whilst working on this course at one point this laptop (older) was snail-like and kept dropping the Wifi. I felt like drop-kicking it out of the window. That frustration is not conducive to study and the impact of the tech issues was to slow me right down.
I like Salmon’s point about expect the unexpected – students may not do what you expect them to, or in the manner / order you expected them too (Anc. Hist. field trip- 1 group completely misunderstood the task which rendered their overall contribution to the project unviable).
Relevant to Assignment 2 , on reflection; “… make clear looking for views, feelings, experience and ideas. Use ‘I’.”
Relevant point about not providing too many resources – I recall a (Falmouth!) games reading list – for ONE module, note – that was 4x A4 pages long, each resource listing about 3 – 4 lines long. I rang up to check it was right. The comment was; ‘Yes, we’re surprised when someone reads them all’. Then why the bl**dy hell have you listed them all? You’ve just presented your students with a daunting list that most will run a mile from, with no annotation r.e. prioritisation. What, exactly, do you think will happen? That demonstrates a total lack of empathy with their students and requires dragging that lecturer off for a strong word or two. And possibly sent for a test on autism.
Do some lecturers provide a reading list based on what *they* want to have access to – if it’s on a student reading list, the Uni has to get it it?
Also like her point on a similar topic – considering that students, esp. online, are not in a bubble but have many demands on their time and distractions (I can relate to that).
Also EQUITY. Because online access requires ££ – for broadband access and the devices to use it. She mostly means around use of language, how easy it is to mis-interpret something and be offended. ((this could be addressed by some introductory ET’s, also on how to debate etc.! MH issues might well come out online too)).
Clear instruction
Based on what Gilly Salmon said and proposed in the reading above, consider the following questions:
What have you learned about designing online curriculum?
How has your thinking changed about this?
What key things will you want to keep in mind for designing an online distance-learning course in the future?
Reflect / Produce
For this Challenge Activity, we would like you to:
Produce and describe your initial draft design ideas for a fully online course, that could work in your subject discipline and teaching context in HE.
Consider and describe different key elements of the draft design of that course / programme eg aims, learning outcomes, learning activities, resources needed, how it would link with the wider programme of study, characteristics and background of the learners, differentiation for different learners, etc.
Consider in your draft design ideas what you have learned so far from different practitioners in online learning (indicate who – it could also include your PGCHE colleagues).
Consider what you have learned about the different learning concepts and theories, and their associated practices and assumptions (eg from Week 3 in the last module, EDU710), and how this might shape your design ideas.
You will be sharing your ideas and thoughts in the discussion forum on the next page.
This activity is timed well for me since I’m currently working on a pitch for a new online-only MA at Falmouth anyway.
I’ve attached the pitch document which I was drafting for this last week. Looking at it now, I can see there’s probably not enough emphasis on the online aspects of it from a pedagogic perspective (the doc mentions the online aspects more in the context of a broader recruitment pool for the course).MA Storytelling for Video Games.pdf Reply Reply to comment
This is really interesting to me as I am developing a concept for photography courses with a similar emphasis: ‘An industry facing portfolio‘ (as you so eloquently put it) as the outcome, this is exactly the same as what I have in mind. The whole course structure being ‘hung around’ the production of a tangible end product: An online, practice specialisation portfolio driven web site . Therefore as you say mimicking typical industry benchmarks seems very appropriate and relevant for the course you are pitching as does flexibility to adapt into different industry disciplines. All that came across very clearly when I read your pitch.
I’d like to contribute some constructive criticism to support your pitch, but I need a bit more time to think or more to the point develop my own in order consider what aspects I will be including that might X over to you, my only comment at this point is: Do you have a particular very strong area of specialisation yourself that you could promote in the pitch? That might appeal to a leaner audience as perceived by Falmouth. And I get what you say about the online pedagogic perspective emphasis. I guess your lead by Falmouth’s own view on that as to how much you need to promote in the pitch document. They certainly seem pretty hot in that area. But isn’t that what they would bring to the party? Support with the online pedagogy methods. Surely it is the core idea that is the sell? Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Suzanne Strudwick
Hi Dejan I learned a lot reading your proposal, the format read like a mini research paper with relevant information. I do agree with your own assessment and also with Alex, that within the paper a proposed method of pedagogical delivery should be inserted. What would be the underlying course structure be based on? a scaffolding approach which supports learners maybe more in line with the undergraduate learners and a more research self-learning approach for the graduate course. Reply Reply to comment
Please find attached my first draft for a module for a blended learning photography course. To start with I drafted an outline for the complete course with a colleague and and I am now focussing in on key modules. Which is a very interesting exercise as I can quickly see other modules that will need to be prepared and delivered to support (feeding backwards) this module and make up the course curriculum as a whole. Film & TV M&P 1-1.pdf Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Nick Raven
Hi Nick, Snap! Looks like we have similar inspiration sources, the double diamond is a great place to start and I think the Salmon’s 5 point model is broadly in action already. We use padlet as a forum for student peer feedback, but I also want to explore group projects in this distance asynchronous environment. I have found that the students in my module do really engage with the weekly challenges, but I do worry about burnout – is it possible to introduce some longer projects into the schedule too? Reply Reply to comment
((these are:
Delivery
The ambition is to follow Falmouth University’s new week-by-week structure of a 5-point model:
1. Introduction (spark)
2. Lecture
3. Task Activity
4. Reflect
5. Consolidate Activity
Framework
Double Diamond
The Design Council’s Double Diamond is already embedded into the course design with modules orientated around the four stages: Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. Students are briefed on what the expectation is for each stage of the model, for example, Discover = ‘divergent’ research and exploration of the project; Define = ‘convergent’ evaluation and definition of the needs of the project; Develop = divergent exploration of possible opportunities to respond to the brief; Deliver = convergent design and consolidation into a proposal or outcome.))
Initial design idea for a fully online learning module for beginner golfers. This is going to be quite a challenge as traditionally all these types of PE courses are delivered face-2-face. The most significant challenge is the loss of teacher to student feedback, visual observations, body language, movement patterns during the foundational learning stages. The progress and flow of this particular learning challenge have to be both intrinsically and extrinsically motivating for the learners to stay engaged and empowered to continue the course.
Draft:
Aims: To deliver an online instructional and knowledgable module of content that inspires, engages learners and who will gain understanding in both the fundamentals of the golf swing and the movement patterns associated with successful execution.
LO’s:
Learners will have an understanding (conceptual) and procedural knowledge in performing and executing required tasks.
Learners will demonstrate declarative knowledge of the content and understanding and context of how and when to apply new skills.
The quality of critical and creative thinking of the learners will be demonstrated in the discussions forums, assessments and assignments of tasks.
Different forms of media will be utilized during the module and each learner will demonstrate the correct application of using and applying these forms.
Assessment:
Visual observation of assigned tasks
Peer feedback and evaluation of cohorts work
Reflective Journal
Demonstration of application of video, podcasts and photographs
Q&A quizzes both formative and summative
Feedback:
The student-centred learning environment and activities will provide feedback opportunities on a weekly basis both Synchronously and Asynchronously during the delivery of the module. This is an important challenge for the success of the module for learners as frustration could easily result if they continue to practice incorrect movement patterns without corrective feedback from the instructor.
A scaffolding design strategy will be used to provide the learner with support on how to improve through the learning process. Support will be given in a variety of ways, including; visual aids, helping to prioritize information, procedural strategies, metacognitive reminders to reflect on prior knowledge and understanding.
It looks well planned, you obviously know best with your extensive experience. What struck me from the first of was you saying: This is going to be quite a challenge as traditionally all these types of PE courses are delivered face-2-face. Which in itself is very intriguing, actually fascinating really – ‘A Blank Canvass. What a wonderful opportunity. Sure there will be improvements and adjustments over time but what a wonderful experience to be at the cutting edge of a new concept.
Hi Stan and Alex Thank you for evaluating my initial thoughts. You are right Alex, this is a blank canvass which is such an opportunity for developing something new. (And I love challenges)! As we discussed in an earlier post, one of the aspects that intrigues me is the student’s ability to learn a movement pattern without the anxiety and perceived feeling of embarrassment or feeling judged about how they look while trying to perform. They are not in a drama where actors need that feedback, and most learners are beginners so learning the beginner / foundational stages may actually be better in isolation. I do believe at the end of the course, most learners would need interaction because golf is inherently a social sport. Stan, I’m glad you saw something in my approach and design for yourself. I need the structure of a weekly plan to keep me on track, i would easily get off track and down the ‘rabit hole’ if i didn’t! Reply Reply to comment
this looks quite impressive, seems like you have quite an experience with such design. I like that you also structured your weekly approach, which if I am designing mine, I will incorporate most of your approach as well. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Michael Berthaume
I’ve decided to focus on a 4 week module I teach in the second year of our BA Architecture course. It has the all encompassing title of ‘Environment’ and is slightly more technical and theory based than some of our studio design courses although still applied to student design projects. In the past an element of it has entailed making a large scale 1:10 sectional model of a part of the building. Students often find this time consuming and it is questionable what the learning experience is aside from understanding the layers of the construction. This year because of COVID restrictions there will be limited access to the workshops so this scale of output is not possible. I also noticed last year when quizzing the students on their knowledge of environmental design and building physics, there were some fairly big gaps. I intend to shift the focus a bit and use a series of e-activities that build to form thinking from a broad scale to detail and form the basis of an ‘environmental design’ report on their projects. This will then form the basis for this section of their reports in future projects and provide a framework for approaching it. Current thoughts as follows, has been in my head for a while, good to get it down in writing, sorry for the long post!
Week 1
Large scale, environmental issues in context, history of the environmental movement, current actions. challenges with the construction industry.
E-tivity: Write, draw or record a 10 point environmental manifesto stating how you, as a designer will act to slow the effects of climate change. Share with peers and comment.
Week 2
Strategy, energy sources, utilities, off grid living, use of resources, pollutants, waste and the circular economy
Speaker: Gareth Jones, Head of Design, Eden
E-tivity: Using diagrams, draw and represent the way your project will use, generate and share resources, including energy, productive land, water, nutrients and social benefits
Week 3
Modelling, energy use predictions, calculations, building physics, tools and processes, u-values and legislation
Speaker: Chris Warboys, Etude environmental engineers
E-tivity: Using a pre made model of a familiar building (Kathmor, Fal campus) test environmental modelling software. Using a simple model of your building, simulate the energy useage, overheating, solar gain and thermal performance
Week 4
Materials and construction, details, fabric energy efficiency, thermal bridging, insulation, natural, recycled and bio materials.
Speaker: Prof Ruth Morrow, Hub for bio technology in the built environment, Newcastle Uni.
E-tivity: Draw in 3D a corner of your building proposal showing the layers of construction and materials proposed
Submission: Environmental design section of project report containing the e-tivities from each week and a summary of how your proposal addresses the challenges set in your own manifesto Reply Reply to comment
I love how the online nature of the design enables access to such great speakers. Personally, I’m definitely going to weave this kind of invaluable resource into my modules going forward.
Your E-tivities get meatier as you go along: how do you imagine the timings working out on those? Are they as much work as they sound, to me, the uninitiated? Reply Reply to comment
Thanks Katie, Yes I think this is a great opportunity with online content, to invite speakers who wouldn’t normally travel to Falmouth. I’m considering a pre recorded talk by the guest and me to introduce them as an asynchronous activity then a synchronous online Q+A or discussion on the points raised. Not sure about all the activities /e-tivities as usual it is probably over complicated and needs simplifying! They are intended to be more work as it progresses and the students become familiar with the pace and tools. Reply Reply to comment
Draft Online Module: BA Creative Advertising, Work Placement
LOs:
Preparing students for the realities of working in the advertising industry
equipping students with the skills to conduct themselves professionally, with awareness of the wider social/cultural issues that effect the workplace
Emphasise the importance of proactivity and enable them to progress their own careers through networking effectively
Assessment:
Securing a relevant work placement
Research, approach and invite a relevant guest speaker to participate in a short, online webinar/Q&A session with your peers, to be conducted as part of the module itself
Reflection on the whole process, and peer feedback
Weekly topics:
Week 1
How the workplace works. Practicalities of living and working in (probably) London/another large city/for mainstream agencies. A day in the life of an ad creative.
Introduce assessments
E-activity thoughts: Research the ‘culture’ of an agency you’ve heard of/think you want to work at. Discuss with peers why it appeals to you. Share any experience you might have already had working in an agency. Reflect on what three things you are most looking forward to about working in the ad industry/most apprehensive about.
Week 2
How to get a job. Who to speak to. How to speak to them. Networking. Resources. Keeping your contacts fresh.
E-activity thoughts: Ask yourself what are the most important things to consider when looking for a job. Plan an approach – who, how, what channels, what prep? Watch interview with Shannie Mears on building your professional network and getting the most out of platforms like Linkedin. Set up a Linkedin profile, if you don’t already have one.
Week 3
Freelancing and The Gig Economy. Diversifying your offering. Working outside of London. Working remotely (very important now)
E-activity thoughts: Write your website bio. Put together an invoice template.
Week 4
Social and cultural issues: sexism; racism and diversity; ageism
E-activity thoughts: Watch ‘Extracurricular’ interview with Kate Moross about navigating the modern workplace. Discuss.
Week 5
Mental wellbeing. Work/life balance. Handling rejection/disappointment. Separating work from your personal life.
E-activity thoughts: Read Who Moved My Cheese? Join webinar with Hollie Newton, bi-polar ex-ECD and ad industry defector. Think about your future, and formulate some guardrails. (Note for me: look into life coaching to see if there’s anything that could be useful resource here)
Week 6
WORK PLACEMENT WEEK
Week 7
The ‘wash-up’: reflection and learnings. Securing employer feedback.
E-activity thoughts: Reflect on your hopes/fears from Week 1. Share your experiences with your peers: did they meet expectations? What surprised you? What challenged you? What have you learned going forward? What will you change?
Week 8
Q&A/webinars with guest speakers (perhaps by contacts they’ve met via their work placement)
E-activity thoughts:
Week 9
Q&A/webinars with guest speakers (perhaps by contacts they’ve met via their work placement)
E-activity thoughts:
Week 10
Reflections and peer feedback.
Hand in of written reflection.
Feedback:
Given throughout.
From employer, via me
From peers
Written feedback given upon marking and evaluation
I enjoyed reading your draft of the plan. It is so much in depth compare to what I have considered so far at this stage. From the plan I can see how learners can positively, constructively and interactively contribute, which are the ideal aims of e-tivities really. The topics are so engaging too!
Hi Anna, I did not think to use the session plan but from reading yours it also works well! I generally produce mine without looking at others’, then going through peers’ posts so this is quite refreshing to me. The use of the form also means that differentiation strategies is well captured, which I am missing at the moment. Mia Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
I have re-structured the fall semester module (17 weeks long) I developed to be fully deliver as online module. Although it was delivered online at the end (an abrupt shift due to the pandemic), when I started designing it was not meant to be online. The draft version focuses on encapsulating the five-stage framework and e-tivities by Gilly Salmon. The more prominent change was at the beginning of the module, expanding on stage 1 (access and motivation) and 2 (online socialisation) more than when it meant to be delivered F2F. Building the micro community and the community in practice idea. Although at this point I have not gone in depth related to each week’s activities (stage 3-5) from W3 onwards, but I hope it will evolve in the next few weeks.20200729_draft_online module.pdf Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Rachel Butt
I’ve chosen a subject that traditionally is done face to face, but I think this is just because it is a health and social care module and thus deemed as required to be face to face. However due to its content, I feel i could deliver it with some adjustments online, which would as we know create more benefits to the students hopefully.
Research methods and methodology in Health and social care
Aim: To gain an overview of the main research methodologies and strategies in health and social care, and to develop a research based quality improvement proposal
Learning outcome:
critically appraise the rationale for the use of qualitative and quantitative research methods and methodologies in health and social care
critically appraise published research and systematic reviews, identifying implications for practice and policy development
demonstrate the ability to integrate the stages of the research process in qualitative/quantitative and literatiure based research within a quality improvement proposal
awareness of the need for ethical review and research governance
awareness of barriers to health and social care research and quality improvement dissemination
Module content
week 1: how to access, use and develop information systems, databases, libraries and reflective journals online and assessment criteria
online activity: familiarise self with online IT systems, set up reflective journal, complete week one of journal and post to group for peer discussion
week 2: an overview of the main research methodologies and strategies
online activity: complete week 2 online reflective journal and post to group for peer discussion. write 3 main points learnt from this weeks learning and include in reflective journal
week 3: quality improvement methodologies and health service evaluation
online activity: complete week 3 online reflective journal, include initial ideas for quality improvement proposal
week 4: ethical issues, barriers and research governance
online activity: complete week 4 online reflective journal and include what ethical issues, barriers and governance concerns may be pertinent to your quality improvement proposal
week 5: evaluation criteria, reliability, validity, issues of corroboration and triangulation
online activity: complete week 5 online reflective journal and consider 3 aspects of weeks learning that may impact or develop your quality improvement proposal
week 6: developing a research quality improvement proposal
online activity: complete week 6 online reflective journal and submit a draft quality improvement proposal using the proforma provided to your reflective blog for group discussion
Feedback
feedback will be provided by peers weekly via access to group blog and from tutor both via blog and individually weekly
feedback will also be given re draft proposal via personal email from tutor to student
feedback will be given in written format after assessment marked
Assessment:
300 word quality improvement proposal, outlining the design and methodology of a quality improvement project
weekly reflective journal blog
Employability skills
this module can contribute towards the following programmes: MSc Specialist Practice, MSc Advanced Practice, and Professional Development awards
The attached proposal is a first draft for the 4th module of the part time online graphic design MA. This is the penultimate module, before students tackle their final major project. My aim with this proposal is to help point students towards industry, making them more aware of the arena they will be entering after graduation. Employability or at least a good knowledge of where they see themselves in the industry is key! GDE740 content proposal.pdf Reply Reply to comment
Hi Harriet – glad to see im not the only one two weeks behind! I liked how you divided up the segments of the module based on the segments of the double-diamond approach, making the module more tangible to the students, and allowing them to better draw parallels between what they are learning in the module and a model they will use for the rest of their careers. Reply Reply to comment
I am currently designing a blended module called for an MA Creative Advertising at Falmouth. Essentially 40% of the module is currently situated online. So it will require putting some thought into how I move the workshop activities I have planned online.
Module Level: 7
Module Duration: 11 weeks
Assessment Breakdown: 60% Portfolio, 40% Essay.
Module Aim:
To introduce and explore the role of promotional messaging and experiences in a world transformed by digital technology.
Learning Outcomes:
Students will learn about and explore the impact of digital culture on brands’ communication strategies and tactics, and vice versa.
Students will learn to develop messaging that will work across a symphony of media, assume novel forms, and those that experiment with different ways of interacting with audiences, and create new experiences.
Students will be able to evaluate information from a range of credible and relevant sources, providing visual, contextual and/or business research as appropriate.
Students will learn to apply iterative approaches and processes to problem-solving, exploring unfamiliar territory and ideas, embracing uncertainty and risk as the drivers for change and innovation.
Spark and manage collaborative partnerships whilst embedding principles of inclusivity and empathy.
Employability Skills:
Critical analysis
Technical literacy
Written communication & oral presentations
Computer literacy
Ethical sensitivity & acting morally
Coping with complexity & problem solving
Weekly Breakdown
Each week is currently planned to consist of 4h30m of content including: 30 minutes of video/podcast lecture, a 60 minute seminar, and 3 hour face to face workshop. The week starts with online content which students should complete in order to prepare for the workshop on a Tuesday. The week ends with a webinar on Thursday.
Week 1: Introduction to major themes
Week 2 – 5: Online videos/podcast/lectures, case studies, online activities
Week 6: Formative Feedback Week – This is the first major formative feeedback session students will have. Typically I would have students present to me, and I have had students successfully present online via Microsoft teams so I am considering continueing with that format.
Week 10: Formative Feedback Week – This week is the last time students can get feedback. It’s here to help students finalise their summative submission.
Week 11: Final Hand In week – I like to dedicate this week to making sure students feel confident about their hand-ins and have everything formated properly for online submission.
Submission Assignments:
Portfolio Assignment: Working in teams of 2, collaborate complete creative briefs from weeks 2,3,4,5,7,8,9 and submit a portfolio of work. Best 3 marks will count towards summative mark.
Essay Assignment: 1500 word individual reflection on collaboration students have done through the module.
Thanks for sharing your ideas here. As we have mentioned a few times, this activity is meant to trigger thoughts and reflection around designing fully-online learning environments. Therefore, it might be useful to capture key learning points from this discussion in your CRJ.
A common theme across the contributions is that most of the things that are important to consider when designing face to face or blended teaching/learning are key in an online course too. What tends naturally to be different in a fully-online environment is how the teaching is delivered and how/when students take part. Collectively, you came up with the following as key things to consider when designing a course for online delivery:
Clearly define the purpose of the session/course (what are the goals/learning outcomes)
Constructive Alignment
Take account of the likely needs of the students
Inclusivity
Utilise group feedback and peer learning approaches again so as to facilitate crucial thinking and reflective practice as well as to support inclusivity
Employability
Authentic assessment methods that encourage ‘deep’ learning
Identify the instructional and assessment methods to be used
Utilise assessment approaches that facilitate student learning, are authentic and incorporate good, actionable feedback strategies
Connect the content of the course tightly to the learning outcomes
Assess the depth and breadth of the content to be used and focus on depth rather than breadth so as to help ensure critical thinking can come strongly into play as a learning outcome
Use curriculum delivery methods that support and are appropriate for both theoretical and practical outcomes
Design in activities that are practical, authentic group based tasks
With respect to online learning, pretty much the conclusion was that all of the things important in design for face to face were just as important in online course design.
However, due to the fundamentally different nature of wholly online experiences there were differences to take into account. There was a thread that focussed more on the benefits and constraints of online learning as well. For the former, flexibility and content availability were highlighted and for the latter remoteness, quality and access to content as constraints.
There are some different views around the significance of instructional methods and how their choice was key. On the one hand assessment, considered as an instructional method, was seen as key and indeed delivery online meant that a course curriculum could benefit from a much wider range of ‘vehicles’ through which assessment could happen. Another view of instructional methods focused more on content and held the view that as content could be delivered in so many different ways perhaps instructional method (in that context) was less significant. In a sense, the large variety of instructional methods for content delivery would be such that any student would be less likely to not be able to find one to suit them.
Group feedback and peer assessment could potentially be more effective in a fully online course, but that it is difficult to envisage how practical components in many subject areas could be effectively delivered in an online course. It is certainly true that a number of subject areas have such key ‘hands-on’ elements to their curriculum that reproducing these at a distance looks impossible, and currently generally is. I wonder though, when one hears of the advances in virtual and augmented reality, with surgeons operating on patients from thousands of miles away, whether that need to be in a physical space will be there for all subjects that currently rely on this in 20, 10 or even 5 years from now?”
What have you learned this week regarding the design of online learning activities to support student learning?
Where and how did you learn this, during your work for this course this week? What particular activities or prompts helped you?
From what you have learned this week, how has your understanding of designing online learning activities changed? How has it stayed the same, or your existing understanding and perspectives about this been reinforced and confirmed?
What has this suggested regarding your current strengths in your practice, that could help you design online curriculum?
What has this suggested regarding what you might do to further develop this in the future? How might you do that (specifically)?
What has challenged or surprised you, during your learning this week?
To what extent do you think you have achieved each of the learning outcomes for this Week 8? If you think there is room for you to achieve these more fully, what could you do to help yourself achieve that?
So this week was largely about designing PURELY online learning environmentS.
What have I learned? I didn’t know much about the roles of e-moderators or designers, and I’d never heard of e-tivities before, so that was a large learning curve. This was from Salmon’s book.
I learnt quite a bit from the dicsussion on the forum r.e. the importance of a community of learning. This I recall from my student days, when we had opportunitys to discuss our subject, and it was disappointing at MA level to find fellow students weren’t really interested in holding conversations outside the classroom about the subject. There were several mentions of ‘welfare’ by Katie and how supporting good welfare is conducive to good learning, which makes sense. I didn’t envy today’s students *before* Covid – debt, competition for jobs, too many graduates etc. – I really feel for them now; so yes, this makes a valid point. Toby makes a very strong point about students access to decent internet connections and how this could impact equitable access when delivering online. This is something I touched on in my last assignment (BIM for some not having the latest hardware etc. may be an ecological choice).
Alex B makes an interesitng point in his response to Susie’s post r.e. teaching creative subjects- that sometimes you have to be hands on with students to convey the emotion of an action etc. He mentioned VR as used in gaming which is a very interesting point – I wonder if VR envronments like Second Life are still around and if they’ve offer some sort of solution?
I like Salmon’s focus on emotions – how students may be feeling frustrated at technology whilst they’re trying to study online (oh yes, I can relate to that one!). This chimes with Race’s approach to learning – not to leave out emotions when considering how people learn.
She particuarly emphasises ensuring e-tivities are active, add value, are clearly aligned to the LO’s etc. She also highlights the social element as essential to online learning and how it can motivate students (also possibly reduced urge to plagiarise from otehr studens as there’s more of a ‘collab.’ feel to the course then). This is an interesting point – I wonder how efficacious that approach actually is, especially in economic climates such as that we are entering?
The section on students essentially designing an approach to online study for themselves – rhythym etc. – would have been useful for me at the start of the course! I am *not* a creature of habit (unless it’s procrastination!); the Friday webinars are the one thing I make a real effort to attend.
Her sections on moderators and e-designers are interesting. I didn’t know much about what they did tbh – my apprecation for their work has increased as a result of reading that chapter. I wonder if it would help with student’s motivation / engagement if they were introduced a little to the role of moderator, e-designer a little at the start of the course, so they understood a bit more the amount of work that does go into setting up and running these courses?
I learnt from the forums, the reading and the activity (drafting an online course). I don’t think I learnt more from one than another; they imparted learning in different ways, therefore re-inforcing learning in some respects.
3. My existing knowledge of designing online activities has increased dramatically, since I knew very little to start with! It looks like some of my initial insticts were right – keep content and activites relevant to what students are studying (Librarians are frequently asked to deliver inputs on academic skills to students on a variety of courses).
4. My current strengths are minimal – I’ve had no prior experience in this field and have not studied it before. This means there are plenty of areas for improvement! My understanding has improve considerably, which will help me improve any future designs.
5. To further develop; learn from this course as an example of an online course. As I ‘ve learnt, I’ve identified more and more elements we have studied (e.g. social learning), that have been incorporated into this course (Friday webinars, forums), so I have both learnt about them and experiecned them as a student – experiential learning. It would be intrifuing to hear from other students what aspect of the course worked best for them / was the most enjoyable. For me it would be the Friday webinars (annoyed I’ve missed a couple), particularly during a pandemic! Learn from other sources – specific Library communities, online information. Try out some of the technology that’s available to support online learning. Talk to other professionals – that chat with Rosie for example, wherein I learnt about MS Sway.
6. Challenged or suprised me – not a lot. I’m still concerned about the focus on ‘engaging’ students etc. – I can see that tipping over into treating them like children with limited concentration spans and failing to stretch them / they fail to learn self-discipline (which has been a complaint from employers). Back in myyyy day, if you wanted to learn and wanted the qualification you were there, at every lecture and you grimly pushed on through the really boring bits (history of corn laws, anyone?). It seems we almost have to entice them into learning…? Ok, I was surpised by the e-tivities; I have never, ever heard of them before.
7. Hard one. I think I have to varying levels of success. I currently don’t have a local teaching setting so that’s a hard one! I don’t think I engaged as well as I could have with the online forum. Noted for the future…
I know I tend to be a very independent learner. This is a result of previous negative experiences of fellow students at school. This worked fine at University as independent learning (as it was then – I feel ancient!) was expected (Race on learner’s ‘incomes’!). Engaging with the forum has been harder than engaging in the webinars that somehow feel less formal and more collaborative – Alex’s community – than the forum, where it feels like everyone’s on their ‘best’ behaviour.
Reading chapter 3 in ‘Blended learning and inline tutoring’ – pg. 28 MacDonald reflects on the various different ‘qualities’ of interventions and media choice: she notes that some qualities are already recognised as necessary, but the relative importance of others will depend on the context, subject and discipline. I had already been reflecting on that as I was reading the various comments on the forums for week 8 & 9 (which is where having fellow students from a variety of different disciplines can be helpful); those teaching more physical or hands-one subjects such as golf (Suzanne) or sculpture may find asynchronous videos less useful than, e.g. face to face sessions where, as Toby I believe put it (?), you need to show the emotion in an action, or correct a student’s posture.
There maybe other tech in development that could benefit – e.g. the use of VR – perhaps a student could be shown a VR 3D silhouette, for example, of a golf poise that they then’step into’ and fiddle about until it goes green, to indicate (within degrees) they have achieved the correct pose. This lends itself to gamification too.
Note; on using a variety of interventions / media; as mentioned elsewhere, we must be careful not to assume all students are familiar with all apps just because we are. Especially for freshers, everything is initially quite daunting and distracting; hitting them with a load of new software immediately may well end up losing some. MacDonald p. 30 backs this up – also familiarity with self-directed study (oh, the temptation to procrastinate!).
This was the week I had several interviews and job applications to submit, so I admit not much reading for this course got done in this week!!
Reflections – our students must have similar distractions and concerns during their studies, especially given the fees, loans etc. I know one of my student Librarians was doing 3 jobs – one as a bartender until 3am some weekends – to earn money. I empathise with them.
I’ve found it incredibly hard to focus on this course since being made redundant. Logically finding another job is the priority, but I’m also aware that this course will help with my career going forward.
Last week, we focused on achieving good ‘convergence’ and integration in your blended learning designs. You were encouraged to engage in the following activities:
Evaluate and discuss flipped classroom case study examples and your own flipped classroom designs, in terms of their integration and convergence;
Progress your work for your EDU720 Assessment 1, by piloting your flipped classroom approach and gathering feedback on its impact and effectiveness;
Produce weekly reflection on your learning for your CRJ;
Explore Digital Resources and attend the weekly webinar.
This week we will continue with activities designed to help you with your Assessment 1, focusing on the final stages – evaluation of the effectiveness of your flipped classroom approach. The aim is to help you to:
Consolidate your learning so far in this module;
Enhance the quality of your evaluations of flipped classroom approaches;
Maximise the potential learning from this flipped classroom approach activity for your own personal and professional development as a reflective practitioner.
First, you will identify and discuss your current views about the key things to consider when evaluating a flipped classroom approach. You will engage with information and guidance to help you develop your flipped classroom evaluations. Then you will create, share and discuss flipped classroom evaluation checklists with your peers. Finally, there are the usual weekly opportunities to reflect on your learning, explore further reading and attend the webinar.
By the end of the learning activities for Week 6, you should be able to:
Identify criteria for making judgements about the impact and effectiveness of flipped classroom approaches, drawing on pedagogical scholarship and learning from PGCHE weekly activities;
Use criteria to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of your flipped classroom designs, drawing on experience, observations and feedback;
Identify strengths and generate ideas and actions for future development of your flipped classroom approaches;
Critically reflect on what and how you have learned this week, identifying potential implications for current and future practice of developing flexible learning environments, for your and your colleagues in your local teaching contexts.
If you think back to your learning over the last few weeks, you will start to realise there are a wide range of possible things we could consider when evaluating and making judgements about the potential effectiveness of a flipped classroom approach.
To get started, reflect on what you have learned about flipped classrooms so far and consider the following questions:
What three key things do you think are important to consider when evaluating and making judgements about the effectiveness of a flipped classroom approach? Why?
Provide a brief outline and explanation of your answers to the above questions (150 words). Post this to the discussion forum.
Comment on the posts of two fellow students, sharing any reflections prompted by their outlines and explanations.
did the asynchronous and synchronous component of the flipped classroom approach allow the student to meet the learning outcomes of the session?
did the design and implementation of the blended learning approach allow for integration and convergence of the podcast content/learning activity/classroom element and assessment task?
both these questions relate to the alignment of course objectives with activities and assessment – constructive alignment. As suggested by Macdonald (2008), learning by doing, to develop lifelong learners by engaging learners, by devising activities which they have to take active part. Thus, designing a teaching method that aligns with the learning activities and learning objectives (Biggs 2003).
did the students feel they were supported through this approach to learning?
whilst research suggests that students feel blended and flipped classrooms offer flexibility (Littlejohn and Pegler 2007), with increased access and convenience, (Stein and Graham 2014), and meet students varied learning styles (Rigby et al 2012). I would like to know if my personal approach/sessions contributed to the students learning and level of support. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Lifelong learners = so important! Especially in a subject such as yours Rachel, you need your students to take the gained knowledge with them and put it into daily practice. The personal side is very important too – but I can see it as a positive. Digital learning can be impersonal, but having a warm engaging live session with someone like you will help soften the edges of online material. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Dario Faniglione
When evaluating and judging the effectiveness of a flipped classroom approach, the student’s reactions to the material is key. Do they engage? Are they managing to achieve the learning outcomes of the course? Is the technology supporting or hindering their performance? As much as we as tutors do not want to be the “sage on the stage”, we also don’t want the technology to take the limelight away from the learning material itself.
The accessibility of the learning material needs to be easy, with as few digital complexities as possible. As pointed out in the Cofa Online video last week, “you can’t assume digital literacy”. Videos are a great way of making content more dynamic and easier to digest.
With all content, it is important to assess it’s relevance against the learning outcomes that the students will need to work towards. This makes me think about how they document their learning and personal development, as this needs to be intuitive for them, but also easy for educators to formatively and summatively assess. I would like to learn about more formats in this context, and how to introduce these into existing courses.
It is important to think about the students on the course – are they full or part time? What other commitments might they have, which they need to fit their learning around? The flipped classroom needs to support students to be flexible in their engagement with the course, so that they don’t feel overwhelmed or intimidated by the challenges set. Reply Reply to comment
Hi Harriet, It’s interesting how everyones teaching experiences contrast: My first consideration or concern with the FC was the technology and students access to the resource. Although slightly perversely, I wanted my students to be a little challenged – enough to be thought provoking by accessing or, more to the point engaging with the digital on line resource for this session. This is because technology plays a major and very significant role in my profession and one of the main LO’s of this FC session is for the students to start seriously engaging with contemporary digital platforms with a view to designing and developing their own web site. Using a web page with links and downloads and correctly sized reference images and podcast started a subliminal engagement with the students about the importance of a web site it’s function and functionality which in itself is aligned with the next module LO. This (for want of a better expression… followed through) as a number of my pilot students commented on, and reacted to, the interface for the FC session – a web page with links etc. This bodes well for the target cohort. Reply Reply to comment
My initial thoughts would be to focus on the following;
1. Did the students demonstrate successful learning against the session’s objectives?
I guess this is more of a generic evaluation question which can apply to all session types, but it seems like the most important & high-level question to ask.
2. Did the flipped nature of the session enhance the effectiveness or hinder it? If the latter; why and how could it be fixed?
I’m wary of thinking about this as a gimmick which appears desirable simply because it’s modern. So I want to make sure I can evaluate whether the particular flipped method is actually justified or not.
3. Was the session practical from a tutor time perspective (especially regarding resource creation) and what are the implications for future use of the approach within the day-to-day practice?
I already know that creating my resource took a fair bit of time and that careful thought would be needed about what is realistic in my day-to-day practice in the future around repeating these sorts of activities. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Your second question is really insightful – is a flipped approach the most effective for the course content and learning objectives? Needs to be substance over style. And the third question is relevant to all teaching methods – are we being efficient with our time and that of the students? Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Dario Faniglione
You make very good points here. While we are now living exceptional times, therefore the answer this query might also be exceptional, I feel it’s really important to evaluate whether the flipped classroom approach has been effective for a particular topic/session when compared to other strategies. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Katie Welch
Great 2nd point there. It’s easy to drink the blended learning Kool-Aid, but we do have to consider that it’s one approach among many, which might not be right for everyone in every situation, despite the positive criticism. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Mia Tedjosaputro
Hi Dejan, I am going through Week 6 after I delivered the micro-teach session so I have an experience to contribute to the forum. Absolutely agree on all three points, and in parallel with my first thoughts on my individual opinion on the 3 key things. As a considerably new approach, to me, as facilitators we need to be really sure that the approach improves teaching and learning experience. Otherwise it is not practical. I concur point no 2, as I spent a full day on material creation of the 3 podcasts (totalling 12 minutes) I made for the micro-teach. It was a fruitful experience (and I really like what I produced) with a relatively new software (I used Videoscribe- Sparkol), but thought afterwards it is perhaps better suited for a small chunk of topic rather than new concept in 1.5 hour of lecture. Reply Reply to comment
Three elements to consider when evaluating the effectiveness of an FC approach is:
1. The flow and organic growth of the class, and the module as a whole. Do the aims, LO’s and assignments flow with the student’s growth from learning into the six forms of assessment knowledge that best demonstrates the aims of the module: procedural knowledge, declarative, metacognitive, quality, contextual and conceptual knowledge.
2. Will the flipped class make sense in respect to the resource available to the LO’s, the environment where the students will be learning, the time management between sessions, the technology available to students etc. The considerations for the teacher must be for all student learners their learning environments, access to technology etc; and not what is best just for the teacher and minority of students.
3. The information provided prior to the face to face session must enhance the student’s ability to fully grasp the concepts the teacher is centred on, and lead the student to additional research if the student is inclined. During the face to face session, the opportunity for the concepts to come alive and develop in the mind of the student should be achieved. This should not be a revision of the work already achieved during the students own time. If this happens due to poor planning or a lack of some students prior homework, the danger will be for boredom and poor evaluation of the class. Reply Reply to comment (2 likes)
Hi Suzanne, Very good points here, particularly around the (perceived) value of the live/face-to-face session. I guess this could be explored and evaluated from both learner’s and tutor’s perspectives. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Considering feedback to measure the effectiveness of the FC approach, I would think about the following:
– What the students have achieved, how does this map to the ILO’s both for the session and any knock on effects for the course (eg. helping with a key bit of understanding or feeding into an assessment task) this could be measured by observing progress through the module and gaining feedback from students. I was interested in the benefits raised by Katie Gimblar that using a FC should move away from teaching to the middle and support both the high achievers and lower performing students.
– Levels of engagement with both the online and F2F sessions as a sign of the students motivation and levels of enjoyment as well as how much they see the materials as useful and relevant. This could also be a measure of how well aligned the activities are and the level of convergence.
– My/your own teaching practice and how this has changed. Has it freed up time to support students in a better way and use the class time effectively? What impact has it had on my own enjoyment and engagement? Also what are the outcomes in terms of content and materials, can these be reused or adapted? This could also involve feedback from other teaching colleagues. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Enjoyment is so important, isn’t it? I was interested in an online course a while back, and the intro (rather sale-sy) webinar was so, so tedious I lost the will to live. Maybe something to consider – make sure your first one’s a good one! Their enjoyment will impact so much on how we feel we’re doing too…their enjoyment is like a pat on the head for us. Hopefully it motivates them to like us more, work extra hard, and hand their work in on time. Reply Reply to comment (2 likes)
Hi Katie, I couldn’t agree more. It seems that enjoyment seems to be the make or break of any session. Whilst it’s not the most important I believe it’s ‘A start to success’. Onsite discussions are also credited with greater spontaneity, (Jared Stein, 2017) 1. Jared Stein, 2017, Essentials for Blended Learning, pg. 154. Reply Reply to comment
Hi Toby, thanks for reminding of the Katie Gimblar notion for supporting the higher and lower performing students and not just the middle. One important aspect, and quite a challenging one I think, is the use of a flipped approach to widen engagement and participation through differentiation. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Mia Tedjosaputro
I absolutely agree on the level of engagement, motivation and levels of enjoyment. I really hate looking at videos of myself, and decided to make three fun podcasts (Links to an external site.) using Videoscribe- Sparkol for pre-classroom activities. It is really fun (and my participants said they enjoyed watching them) to watch with the whiteboard animation, although it was time consuming to produce. Verbally during the micro-teach session, the F2F participants mentioned that this approach is better instead of a regular teaching approach as it gave them time to prepare. I asked 4 F2F learners and 3 virtual learners to fill in an online questionnaire, providing me feedback on the flipped approach. The flipped elements of the class seemed to be positive, although the simultaneous F2F and virtual approach needed improving.
Hi Toby, I agree with when you say ‘Levels of engagement with both the online and F2F sessions as a sign of the students motivation ………. and relevant’. This is very much inline with how I feel could be thrashed out in a pre quiz (Jared Stein, 2017). Reply Reply to comment
My peers have nailed it already with what I also believe is important, at the end of the day making sure the learners achieve the LO’s seems to be the census of opinion, FC or not, and that the asynchronous and synchronous components are aligned with the LO’s – really they need to be in order for the session to be successful.
The only other key thing that I think is important is the time invested in creating and the quality of the digital resource. I know there can be challenges with that not least the time investment involved.
The only way to evaluate properly is by: Engagement, feedback and if it translates into tangible learning / acquired skill results.
If? I had time I would have incorporated an interactive online poll at the end of the digital resource for comments and feedback. Something I intend to do with most / all of my digital resources in the future as I develop these assets. Because the resources are designed in a web page I will be able to make updates to the resources that will immediately be available for the cohort, improvements that the cohort can all benefit from, bit like being the lead learner according to Aaron Sams in his book the ‘Flip your Classroom’. Essentially the cohort will be interacting with the deliverable digital resource and improving it for the benefit of their peers.
I am also thinking about designing multiple web pages with learning resources that are interrelated and integrated this results in large sections of each module becoming aligned back *& forth which I think is not wholly dissimilar to the way this PGCHE course is deigned in Campus? Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Good point re the poll Alex. I was one of the learner for Nick’s session and we had the live version yesterday. He had a simple quiz/questionnaire following his online resource and I found it really useful for checking understanding. He asked us what our ‘ take-away’ was from the session and then used these to start discussion in the live session. It worked really well so I’m going to steal it for my students next term (sorry Nick!) Reply Reply to comment
I agree with what seems to be the general consensus: Did students demonstrate the learning outcomes? I think question will always be the most important regardless of strategy you’re using.
However in an effort not to repeat what everyone else has contributed:
Do your asynchronous and synchronous components help support each other and students learning? These two components should feel valuable to students: they should feel the time spent learning online in their own time had value of its own that is separate from, but also supports, the synchronous learning. Otherwise students might think that your asynchronous content is valuable.
Does the asynchronous content make sense on its own without the face-to-face session? I think one of the additional values of a flipped classroom strategy is that students can refer back to the online content after the session to refresh that learning, or engage with it if they have missed it due to circumstance. How can your online content support future learning and re-learning?
These are potentially additional considerations that could go into the planning phase, but I think these items are helpful when considering the potential effectiveness and value to students of future flipped classes you might plan. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
I like the idea of synchronous and asynchronous communication, and leveraging it to aid in student learning. It’s a concept I had not considered before this module, but it works well Reply Reply to comment
1. Ease of engagement: were the materials relevant and appropriate?; Were they good quality, and accessible and suitable for all participants?; What were the barriers preventing better engagement?; Does the online component align with and feed into the face to face activity, so that students can hit the ground running?; Were the right resources provided/available?
2. Achievement of LOs and beyond: Seems obvious, but probably because it’s fundamental. Is each component of the blended material/activity aligned with the LOs?; How well did the students achieve them?; Did any of the students not achieve them? If not, why not, and what could be changed to resolve this?; How have the students benefitted overall?;
3. Was the planning good enough? We can’t be expected to foresee every spanner hurtling towards the works, but was the planning thorough enough to compensate, or to allow enough flexibility at every stage?; What pedagogy supported the plan? Was it insightful? (is that important?)
Can I have 4?
4. Longevity: Is the design robust enough to pervade? Hopefully, if the planning is considered and informed, then it should be infinitely useable, until trends change, that is. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hi Katie, I think you got a lot more in there than 4! Well thought through and complrehensive coverage. I like your point about longevity, which reminds me of the long-terms issues around information storage and access (software and hardware change so rapidly – it’s hard to access VHS video content now unless it’s been digitised; will the same apply in 10 years time to our online content?). Reply Reply to comment
1. Were the LO’s logical, clear and met? Did the students have the opportunity to demonstrate that, formatively in any of the sessions?
2. Were the sessions constructively aligned and clearly linked? Was there ‘flow’ between the asynchronous and synchronous elements? Did what was delivered asynchronously and synchronously make sense- was it logical that that content was delivered in that way?
3. Was it accessible and inclusive? Was it made as easy as possible for students to access (given not all students will necesarily have access to or afford some of the software that’s available). Was it engaging without being too ‘gimicky’?
I’ll add a fourth if I may…
4. Was there a ‘social learning’ element to it, particularly given the C-19 situation? Was there opportunity for students to engage with each other to share and discuss ideas?
As Race states, learning is best achieved when it’s ‘fun’ and excites students – using online technology does offer some alternatives for making learning fun. Reply Reply to comment
Your first three were the same as mine! I think these are common lessons across learning, in general, and we just need to find the way to best apply them to whatever methods of teaching we are using 🙂 Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
To consider construction of the learning and alignment to ensure the design of the activities, whether synchronous or asynchronous, in person or student-led, is blended and most appropriate for the intended learning outcomes.
2. Integration and convergence
To ensure that any (and all) range of activities and content, communications and interactions, and environments are holistically considered and that they converge with the intended learning of the design.
3. Flexibility and Motivation
To facilitate flexibility and engagement with student motivation through a student-led, student-focussed and empathic approach to the particular set of learners.
Three things that I think are important to consider are integration of the learning outcomes, consistency, and differentiation. If your lessons are not in line with your learning outcomes, students will have trouble learning what they need to learn, and understanding why they need to do the work at all. By having your lesson plans in-line with the learning outcomes, this will promote student engagement and improve student learning.
Consistency is also important, as it provides students a framework through which they can effectively learn. By following a set pattern from week to week, within lessons, and/or within courses, students know what to anticipate and can therefore prepare for modules and learn better.
Finally, although differentiation has not been explicitly stated, it has been made apparent that it is important through the lessons we have learned. For example, by providing students with audio podcasts and write ups of what is said in the podcasts, students can choose the platform that works best for them for learning and digesting the information. This type of flexibility maximizes student learning. Reply Reply to comment
Hi all, I waited until I have delivered the micro-teach class to contribute to Week 6’s activities so it can help me to reflect on the FC approach. There are what came to mind related to effectiveness of the approach. I usually start with a reflection without looking at peers’ opinion, then I scroll up and go through your thoughts.
Better learning experience from learners’ perspective
Apart from a more efficient way of teaching from the facilitator’s perspective, better utilisation of flipped classroom approach resulting in a better experience for learners.
Achieving the learning outcomes
Effectiveness of the approach can be analysed by how LOs are achieved.
How well the pedagogical elements integrate with other elements of curriculum.
As a first time implementing this type of approach i think these are 3 key evaluations:
1) Student engagement – did they engage in the session, did the group discussion flow easily without too much spoon feeding form me? Were the tasks completed by the students?
If the students were not engaged and the session was more of a failure than a success then why? The teacher has to evaluate if it was the implementation of the approach by themselves. Was it that the topic did not lend itself to be taught via this approach. Was the content and/or set tasks not appropriate or engaging for the students. Was the approach well defined by you to them, do they understand why this approach is beneficial to them?
2) Student feedback – did the student cohort you have like this approach or was not suited to them as a group.
When implementing a new approach i think it should be determined by the students if you should continue or not, if they do not see the value in the approach they are unlikely to engage throughout. Plus their feedback may offer you the missing piece that will make your sessions work.
3) Strengths and limitation of the session – particularly, does what happened in your session align with the teaching literature, if not, why? It’s an obvious one but it is important to understand what you need to keep and continue with and what elements need work or need to be left out of future sessions. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Angela Coskey
Q: What three key things do you think are important to consider when evaluating and making judgements about the effectiveness of a flipped classroom approach? Why?
Did the learners achieve the LO’s of the session?
What support was given to the learners for them to meet the LO’s?
If the learnings did not meet the LO’s what can be changed to improve this going forward?
Overly reliant on student trust
What I’ve learned in a short time is that what a student can do is not quite the same as what the student will do. I often make the mistake of thinking that what suits me will suit the learners. When handing over the assignment or task to the learners it shouldn’t be a case of just posting the content on the group thinking the students know how to do this and I don’t need to get involved with that. I think I ought to know when I design the activity what could possibly go wrong and what could possibly go right. I should not be overly reliant on student trust. (Nikos Andriotis, 2018). A pre quiz should be a good way to avoid throwing caution to the wind and get a true sense of what the best way forward should be. Creating small amendments in the design can pay off later on (Jared Stein, 2017).
References:
Yagcioglu, O. (2017). ESSENTIALS FOR BLENDED LEARNING: A STANDARDS-BASED GUİDE – by JARED STEİN AND CHARLES R. GRAHAM – BOOK REVIEW. European Journal of Education Studies. Retrieved 7 25, 2020, from https://oapub.org/edu/index.php/ejes/article/view/776
I have to constantly be aware on how engaged are my students with the material they have. This is very important as to be sure that all learning outcome are achieved.
Furthermore, knowing fully well, that they might have network issue, per their place of residence, I have to also ensure that the podcast I produced will not be saved it a way that it will not be difficult for the students to access nor download when the need might arise.
I prepared an overview of the revision session, I also have to ensure that the materials and steps they are to take are clear and easy to follow, since the class that I prepared the FC session with are beginners. Reply Reply to comment
A lot to take away from this forum. general consensus that aside from the standard pedagogical concerns, online presents new challenges:
Choosing the tech to use is critical to ensure accessibility and differentiation
Choose tech, where possible that suits your subject.
Tutors’ time to create resources
Mia makes an interesting point around not liking videos of herself – I can empathise with that. However, for me then there’s the whole lip-reading thing… there’s no perfect solution, is there?!
LISTEN TO WHAT YOUR LEARNERS ARE TELLING YOU. Take on board their feedback.
Evaluation
Step One: Identify evaluation criteria
Reflect on what you have learned about the flipped classroom approach, to identify evaluation criteria
Step Two: Use criteria to make judgements about what is effective or not
Identify and clarify what is working well and could be continued
Identify and clarify what is not working well and could be improved
Step Three: Plan the way forward
Generate ideas for further improvement
Evaluate and refine ideas for improvement
Develop ideas into specific actions and plans for future improvement
Step One: Identify evaluation criteria
Reflect on what you have learned about the flipped classroom approach, to identify evaluation criteria
It is easy to consider only your first impressions, feelings and thoughts about how effective a flipped classroom approach might be. These are still useful, but the evaluation process will help you to produce a more thorough, systematic, rigorous, balanced and hopefully more accurate evaluation.
We know from psychological research in decision-making, that better quality decisions and judgements tend to take into consideration a range of possible options, rather than just immediately settling on the first possible conclusion. So it makes sense to consider a wide range of different things that are deemed important to the design and implementation of flipped classroom and blended learning approaches.
It would also be sensible to consider a range of different things that have claimed to be good practice in supporting student learning more generally, regardless of the particular teaching approach. You have learned a lot from the PGCHE so far, which you can draw on.
Take a moment to review the different topics and learning activities you have done so far. For each of them, ask yourself:
What did I learn that could be relevant for making a judgement about whether a flipped classroom is effective or not?
More specifically, think about what you have learned in EDU710 and EDU720:
Introduction to Learning Design
Assessment and Feedback
Theories of Learning
Inclusive Teaching and Learning
Embedding Employability, Enterprise and Professional Practice
Reflective Teaching Practice and Learning Conversations
Flipping the Classroom
Designing and Evaluating Podcasts
Designing a Flipped Classroom
Integrating Online and Face-to-Face Activities
What did you learn in each of these that could be relevant for making a judgement about whether a flipped classroom is effective or not?
Consider all the different learning activities you have done too, for example:
Designing, conducting and evaluating micro-teach sessions
Learning conversations, observations and giving and receiving peer feedback
Discussions in webinars
Different discussion forums in different learning topic weeks
Designing and evaluating an assessment strategy
Evaluating your practice in relation to different learning theories
Engaging with different specific sources of scholarship
Reviewing and analysing case study examples from different practitioners
Again, what did you learn in each of these that could be relevant when making a judgement about whether a flipped classroom is effective or not?
Please also go back to the earlier discussion forum for your thoughts on evaluation criteria – which may or may not have changed at this stage.
If reviewing these has given you new ideas for the evaluation criteria, make some notes of them.
This exercise is also useful for the upcoming Challenge Activity, where you will generate, share, discuss and perhaps further revise a more extensive evaluation checklist.
Introduction
Step Two: Use criteria to make judgements about what is effective or not
Identify and clarify what is working well and could be continued
Identify and clarify what is not working well and could be improved
Once you have completed the Step One activity, where you generate a checklist of evaluation criteria, you can then use this checklist to produce a thorough and rigorous evaluation of your flipped classroom approach. What seems specifically to be working well, and what could be further improved?
Reflect / Produce
Draw on a range of sources of information to make and support your critical evaluation against each criteria. For example:
Feedback from your learners in your flipped classroom pilot;
Feedback from any observers (eg colleagues who observed your pilot);
Feedback from other staff colleagues, who may have noticed evidence of any effectiveness or current limitations with your approach (eg when teaching those same learners in other classes);
Your own observations, feelings and thoughts prompted by your experience of designing and piloting your flipped classroom approach.
Now ask yourself:
What does information from any of these sources suggest, relevant to each of your evaluation criteria, about the potential effectiveness of your approach? What specifically seems to be working well? What specifically does not seem to be working well?
Are there any agreements or contradictions between the different sources relevant to each of the criteria? (eg between learner feedback and your own feelings and thoughts as an educator?)
If there is a contradiction, which sources and views will you privilege and treat as most valid, and for what reason(s)?
Keep a note of your answers to these questions.
Introduction
Step Three: Plan the way forward
Generate ideas for further improvement
Evaluate and refine ideas for improvement
Develop ideas into specific actions and plans for future improvement
This is the final step of the evaluation process.
The whole point of doing a high quality, thorough evaluation of your flipped classroom approach is to help you maximise the learning from that classroom session, so you can improve and move forward with your next flipped classroom approach design and implementation.
Even if your current flipped classroom approach was a complete disaster, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you use this opportunity to learn as much as you can – what specifically seemed to work well and thus should be continued, and what specifically did not seem to work well and so could be targeted for improvement.
It’s all very well to reflect on this, but if you don’t go on to do something about it, then it becomes a wasted opportunity. You need to make a clear plan for what you will do in the future, and take action on this plan by having another go at a flipped classroom approach. We don’t require you to do this here in the EDU720 module, but we strongly urge all of you to use the learning you gained here and apply it to your next flipped classroom session, in the near future.
For now, let’s engage in some action planning for the way forward for your flipped classroom approach. This involves generating ideas for further improvement; evaluating and refining those ideas; and finally, developing them into specific actions and plans.
Generate ideas for further improvement
Many of you seem to find this to be the easy part.
Hopefully, assuming you have done a good job in Steps One and Two where you identified a good range of evaluation criteria and used it to judge (evaluate) your approach, you now have a few areas and ideas for where you could make improvements to your current flipped classroom approach. You should also have some ideas about what specifically worked well, which you might want to keep for the next flipped classroom approach.
If you still struggle to address a particular issue you experienced, here are some suggestions for what you could do:
Revisit sources of scholarship and/or practitioner accounts and case studies, to see how other practitioners have dealt with similar issues eg in different Digital Resources.
Discuss the issue / challenge you experienced with (for example) the learners in your flipped classroom pilot, students, other staff colleagues, PGCHE peers; they might have ideas.
Go through Step One again to revisit your evaluation criteria – maybe it was not extensive enough, and you missed important things which might contain answers and ideas for improvement. You can also compare your evaluation criteria with other people’s – perhaps you haven’t yet considered what they are considering? (Don’t worry, the upcoming Challenge Activity will help you with this too.)
2. Evaluate and refine ideas for improvement
In contrast to the previous part, this one is often ignored.
Now you have generated a big wish list of ideas for how to further develop our future flipped classroom approaches, it is time to evaluate and refine it. We need a set of more concrete, realistic and feasible actions that we can actually try out in practice.
So, ask yourself:
How practically feasible is this idea for me, in my circumstances and context? Is it within the limitations of my resources and current abilities? If not, how could I adapt this to make it more feasible to achieve?
Are there any negative implications for others, for example risks, challenges and unforeseen consequences? (Consider the students, other staff colleagues, the wider institution etc.) If so, what could I do to mitigate against these negative implications, while still improving my flipped classroom approach?
Which of these ideas might have the biggest potential impact on the future effectiveness of my approach? Given this, and the fact that we often have very limited time in our working lives to spend on developmental work, which of these ideas and potential actions should I prioritise? Why and when?
3. Develop ideas into specific actions and plans for future improvement
Once you have critically evaluated your ideas and refined them accordingly, you can start translating them into a prioritised set of specific actions to improve your flipped classroom(s). These should be realistic, feasible and potentially achievable. You will also be in a good position to start designing an improved flipped classroom approach, and make clear plans to implement it in the near future.
The purpose of explaining this three-step evaluation process is so you can learn how to produce an ideal high-quality evaluation of a flipped classroom approach (and any new teaching approach), to help with your personal and professional development. It is not just for your Assessment 1 work for this module.
Of course, all this guidance for doing a high-quality evaluation of a new teaching approach might seem a bit daunting, and can require time and effort. But if you are concerned about how much of this directly relates to your EDU720 Assessment 1 submission, then please listen to this podcast:
In folder.
Damn. I had a relevant thought about this in the wee hours of this am and I can’t for the life of me recall it. Something along the lines of: distance learning has been about for decades. Online delivery is just another means – medium – of / for delivering learning. Or was it about accessibility? Ahhh, yes; distance / online learning’s major strength – flexibility- is also a major weakness; it requires greater organisation and discipline from the student than traditional F2F methods, requiring adherence to a timetable that’s planned out for you.
Introduction
Over the last few weeks, you developed your knowledge about flipped classroom and blended learning approaches, and what various people have claimed about this. You developed your understanding of a range of important different things to consider when designing and implementing these approaches. These things can also be useful to consider when evaluating to what extent a particular flipped classroom approach has been effective.
Earlier this week, we asked you to identify, share and discuss just three key things that you thought were important to consider when evaluating a flipped classroom approach.
However, you actually have developed your understanding of a much wider range of these things through different ways. For example: from engaging with sources of scholarship; watching videos; analysing case study examples; discussing different perspectives with your peers and tutors; practice designing and piloting a flipped classroom approach; gathering feedback from learners and observers; giving and receiving peer feedback; reflecting in your CRJ, and so on.
The purpose of this week’s Challenge Activity is to use the three-step evaluation process you have just learned, to help you consolidate, reinforce and articulate what might be important to consider when designing, implementing and evaluating a flipped classroom approach.
It is also to help you open up your thinking to evaluate and make judgments about to what extent a particular flipped classroom approach might seem to be effective (or not). This also helps to identify ways for how you could further develop specific aspects of your next flipped classroom approach. Produce
Using the three-step evaluation process discussed this week, and what you have learned so far about flipped classroom approaches, please do the following:
Produce a flipped classroom evaluation checklist of a range of different things you could examine when evaluating and making judgements about the potential effectiveness of a particular flipped classroom approach.
Share your evaluation checklist (on the next page), so your peers can learn and give feedback, and so you can do the same for theirs. Critically assess the feedback and use it to improve your checklist further.
There is no need to over-complicate the creation and presentation of your checklist – just make sure you can easily upload it as an attachment, and others can open and read it. For example, create a table like this:
Evaluation Criteria
Comments
The criteria list is only an example, whatever form the checklist takes, what matters is the content, and that it is presented in a clear, accessible and easy-to-understand way.
The checklist you are producing here is also a tool you can adapt, keep and use in the future. It should also help with your EDU720 Assessment 1 final submission, where you need to write an evaluation of the flipped classroom approach you have been working on over the last few weeks.
I will be running my live session on Thursday, and then will be asking these questions of the students:
Did you find the content useful and engaging? If not, why?
How engaging did you find the pre-session video tutorials? Were they thorough enough, or too long?
What content do you feel was missing?
Did you enjoy the live session? Was it interesting?
Do you feel like you have learnt new skills?
What questions can I ask my module leader (who will be joining the session)?
Do you think the content was an efficient use of the webinar?
Does the session support the students’ learning outcomes?
What would you change if you were to run the session?
Once I have the results of these questions and my own reflections of the session, I will be able to start answering step three: planning the way forward. I will think about how I could refine and change the session to make it more engaging, making sure it answers the key LOs of the module.FC evaluation checklist Harriet .pdf Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Interesting questions, and I believe they are useful as you covered almost all areas.
In your evaluation criteria, you asked this question ”Does the flipped classroom design answer the appropriate learning outcomes? ”
I find that question very interesting, but at this same time a bit daunting, mostly because from my experience with the pilot I had with the students, the answer to that will mostly be known to you once you have received their response to your questions.
Having had my pilot session with my students, I now have a bit more overview of how to keep improving my flipped classroom. As have earlier stated, I divided my podcast in 2 as to give the students space to follow the content.
Like every evaluation form out there, this process provides me with the opportunity to re-evaluate my approach and improve on the short comings.
Furthermore, by the responses provided by my students with the questions below, it gives me a more in-depth view on the process…
How effective is the recorded material (podcast) towards your understanding of the overview summary provided?
How relevant was this podcast towards your revision of the entire materials taught during the previous Moodle?
Was the audio and sound clear enough?
Was the visuals clear enough?
How engaging was this podcast for you?
Would you recommend this podcast approach to be used for future students?
What areas of improvement would you like to see, when it comes to a similar podcast in the future?
Please rate this podcast.
Is there anything that has developed your thinking regarding the potential effectiveness of your own flipped classroom approach?
Definitely, this whole process has further giving me a more creative avenue that I can use to design my class, while working on achieving the learning outcome.
Here is my flipped classroom evaluation checklist. I must admit, I am a little confused, is the purpose for this form to share with the learners to receive feedback, or is it a tool we can use to make sure we are converging with our lesson design, LO and Aims? I may have done this completely wrong and used the form to send to my learners for feedback?
When I read through my peer’s forms, their questions suggest both questions they would ask themselves in designing and making sure convergence in the design of the FC; and also for the learners to offer comments on how they perceived the session.
How effective is the material (podcast) towards achieving the learning objective?
This question is for both learners and instructor?
Are the tasks achievable and realistic in the allocated time?
Another question that is both valuable information and can be applied for both learners and instructor.
I used all the posted forms so far to construct the questions on my form, I found them very informative and applicable to my FC approach. The time management question (above) is especially important for my approach because the LO take aim at having the students apply the new skills into their own performance. This requires time for me to demonstrate (videos) and then time during the F2F session to make the adjustments themselves. The feedback they receive from me is vital for them to respond and adapt to the new skills and implement. Flipped Classroom Evaluation Questionnaire.docx Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Alex Bailey
I feel I have come up with some good and important questions to ask for my evaluation, but it is all very much work in progress at the moment as I am trying to keep up with the reading, the quite complex advice for the evaluation and assessment which needs digesting and trying to reflect on it all in order to contextualise into valuable evaluation questions.
So these questions below are a ‘bit of the cuff’ but a long the right lines.
Ideally I wanted to do a live group critique on my FC session with students and colleagues, get some debate going from my questions, that is something I am going to look toward adding into my own evaluation as something I will do in the future and improvement.
For my students.
Did the podcast prepare you for the assignment?
Did engagement with the interface used to deliver this session encourage you to explore the potential of on line platforms for commercial & visual representation? (This was a subliminal LO).
Where the example links relevant and inspirational to the assignment?
Did you engage with or intend to engage with the recommended reading?
Did the importance of critical reflection make an impact on you?
Did you download the transcript or will you?
For my colleagues.
Where the LO’s and the assignment brief aligned.
Did the synchronous and synchronous elements of this session compliment each other in achieving the LO’s.
Did this FC session feed backwards to acquired skills and forward in preparing the learner for future skill acquisition?
please see attached evaluation form i used with my students
overall feedback was very positive
students liked the podcast and felt the informal approach was appropriate and engaging and introduced the session well. The links were not clear and therefore I need to think of a better IT solution for this, this was really good feedback and will definitely develop my skills further.
interestingly, students felt they would have preferred a quiz that i designed instead of an online one because they felt I would be able to be more specific to the learning outcomes of the session. although they did find it useful to embed knowledge. The video was not successful and whilst i thought it may lighten the mood and subject, most students found it annoying and unnecessary.
The pre class task, where the students were paired up to find out pathologies about a particular organ to feedback in the class, was seen as very useful by all. It helped focus the student and made them accountable for their own learning and that of others.
All students would like more flipped classroom sessions and felt this should be an integral part of HE.
My evaluation form (and a couple of notes as I went along). I’ve had to include it in the body as Canvas is telling me I’ve run out of storage?
I’ve created and shared a Google form survey to ask students a variety of questions, but I’ve receied some (very nice) feedback already.
One minor technical point – I used the same background for all 3 videos. With hindsight, in the future I’d use different backgrounds as it would help students to differentiate between the videos on Youtube easily.
I found the lack of an ‘audience’ quite disconcerting; there’s not the energy I normally get from a room full of students, and I miss being able to pick up on the NVC’s, which can help to identify issues with how I’ve explained a topic or a word I’ve used.
I can see where – espeically now – this can be useful; students can play back as often as they want, and engage with the material at a time that suits them, which improves inclusivity and allows students to study when they are most ‘awake’ which varies significantly from person to person.
Evaluation Criteria
Comments
Were the LO’s clearly stated?
Were the LO’s met?
Were the sessions constructively aligned with the rest of the course, the LO’s and each other? Did they ‘flow’, were links clear and logical?
Were the sessions technologically accessible?
Were the sessions inclusive (language, concepts, use of tech to enable a large a proportion of students to engage as possible)?
Were there opportunities for students to socially engage with each other, to share ideas and discuss topics?
Was the content engaging?
Is the content easily re-usable?
How is formative assessment carried out (if any)? Do these align with LO’s?
How do the sessions contribute towards summative assessment (if any)? Is that made clear to the students from the outset?
Was the creation of the sessions (time, resources required etc.) reasonable for the delivery of that topic and the student numbers?
Regardless of the value of modern tech in **facilitating** teaching, the single most valuable resource here is still the teacher; they are the ones creating the FC etc. and using their expertise to lead and guide students to higher learning…
USE FEEEDBACK TO IMPROVE / DEVELOP FOR FUTURE SESSIONS – highlight to existing students that their feedback will benefit their peers.
I am attaching two files here: one is the actual evaluation form I used, and the second is the table we were asked to produce. There is not a one-to-one connection between these documents: instead, the evaluation I provided to my students gains general information, and then I can reflect on it to address the evaluation criteria.
Answers to questions below
What do you think is good about their current flipped classroom evaluation checklist, and why?
I think my classmates have addressed some of the issues I see as being important towards the FC (achieving LOs and engagement), and they have also considered factors I have no seen as important. I think this is good, as it shows the evaluations are tailored for each purpose, and not general checklists.
Are there any other things they could add to their checklist that you think might be important and useful to consider? For example, anything you have learned through your engagement with sources of scholarship or practitioner discussions?
Unless I go person by person, this is difficult to address. But as I implied in the previous answer, yes, but the things ignored might not be important in their classrooms.
Is there anything that you could now add to your own evaluation checklist, that has been prompted from reviewing their list?
I cheated and already altered my checklist after reviewing theirs!
Is there anything that has developed your thinking regarding the potential effectiveness of your own flipped classroom approach?
Looking at your checklists, there seems to be a good emphasis on gaining the student view in relation to evaluation topics. Several themes for evaluation points emerged on the board, I have listed these below for future reference:
Learners’ progression and achievementThis is probably a key question of whether the FC approach has actually helped with student progression and achievement, against the module/session learning outcomes. It might happen that sometimes, whilst students may like and believe that a flipped approach was successful, teachers can have a different view.
Learners’ engagement and self-directionSome of you are keen to explicitly or implicitly find out how your session is helping your students are doing in taking ownership of their own learning. This dimension could be evaluated by looking at learner’s engagement with the online activities and the quality of their contributions to the face-to-face/live session.
Obviously, learners’ engagement is one of the key aspects to measure the effectiveness of a FC session. Questions you might probably want to explore here are ‘if and why should learners engage asynchronously in additional work resources as directed’? As discussed throughout the week, most people here agree that students needed to be carefully prepared for what might be something of a ‘culture shock’ to them in terms of what might be a very different way of delivering the curriculum. Perhaps, exploring this aspect might bring good insights into further implementations.
Perceived quality/usefulness of webcast A few of you are keen to know what your learners make of the webcast you have recorded, and perhaps this could be improved beyond the scope of the pilot. It’s definitely a valuable area of feedback, although it might be worth trying to go past the more technical and aesthetic questions and focus on evaluating the value of the content delivery through the webcast.
Live session
Good to see that some of you have decided to specifically evaluate the live session, as this is possibly the key difference of the FC over a more traditional delivery. Perhaps it’s worth concentrating on questions around the effectiveness of the synchronous learning activities and the increased time and focus in practicing/applying concepts.
What do we think and feel?It is of course important to ask your learners what they like, how they think it has gone but we should not forget to ask ourselves what we think of it. What have we observed? Have we asked any of our colleagues to make observations and provide feedback? This is also important as there is always going to be the possibility that students will like something for reasons that may not be as closely connected to the need to demonstrate the learning outcomes, and indeed personal development, as we would like. Learning through flipping is hard work for one thing and students don’t always, or at least some won’t, want to work that hard if it can be avoided. As teachers, I would say that if we believe that an approach is worth it then we need to be careful not to always be too easily swayed by student comments or opinions. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Mia Tedjosaputro
Attached please find my evaluation checklist. It consists of two broad categories:
1. For learners, which I communicated through a survey at the end of the classroom
2. My own reflection, from perspective of a facilitator.
From these two broad categories, I mapped out my evaluation criteria based on the 12 questions. Adapted from Dario’s summary and personal observations, I will be pursuing these three evaluation criteria:
What do you think is good about their current flipped classroom evaluation checklist, and why? The learners enjoyed the flipped classroom.
Are there any other things they could add to their checklist that you think might be important and useful to consider? For example, anything you have learned through your engagement with sources of scholarship or practitioner discussions? I would try to find out more about what the learners really thought of the session and how I would get that out of them.
Is there anything that you could now add to your own evaluation checklist, that has been prompted from reviewing their list? I would add something that would highlight a learners unpreparedness and how that affects the other learners in the group.
Is there anything that has developed your thinking regarding the potential effectiveness of your own flipped classroom approach? Yes, I would try to do more in terms of lesson design based on a pre class quiz. Although the outcomes were inline with the LO’s I thought that it could have been better if I had put in more examples of what I wanted to see.
For ongoing weekly reflection of your learning, and to help with your work for the final Assessment 2: Reflective Blog submission at the end of the module, please produce this week’s reflection for your Critical Reflective Journal (CRJ).
Spend a few moments looking back at your own and your peers’ contributions to this week’s forums. Also, look over your notes from materials you have read this week, and any further reading and independent research.
Consider what you have learned this week about evaluating blended learning approaches.
Check the learning outcomes for this week (Week 6: Introduction) to consider your level of achievement of these:
To what extent do you think you have achieved each of the learning outcomes for Week 6? If you think there is room for you to achieve these more fully, how could you do that?
What have you learned this week regarding the evaluation of flipped classrooms to support student learning? For example, your own and those of your colleagues?
What does all this suggest about the ways you and your colleagues are currently supporting your students learning, in your own practice and teaching context? What does it suggest that is currently good about this, and about how it could be further developed in the future?
How has your understanding of how to use a flipped classroom approach changed from doing this week’s topic and activities?
How did you learn this?
What supported your learning?
What has challenged you?
What has surprised you?
How does this relate to what has been proposed in different sources of scholarship you have read recently? Which specific sources and what specific claims in those does this relate to?
Now write your reflections for this week in your CRJ.
As explained before, although what you actually write in your CRJ weekly activities is not going to be directly assessed, it will still support your EDU720 Assessment 2: Reflective Blog work.
When formulating your weekly reflections in your CRJ, keep in mind Assessment 2’s Learning Outcomes (LO1, LO6 & LO7) and Assessment Criteria. It’s optional to apply them to your CRJ entries, but it’s a good idea to practise demonstrating these in what your write, as you will need to do this for your EDU720 Assessment 2: Reflective Blog.
Remember, there is more helpful guidance, and questions in the EDU720 Assessment 2 Additional Guidance document.
Last week, we focused on designing and evaluating podcasts, as part of your work in designing flipped classroom approaches.
We asked you to share and discuss your current thoughts on your flipped classroom designs through your FC Session Planning Forms. Then we asked you to engage with information about podcast design and evaluation, and use this to evaluate and develop your work. Finally, we asked you to produce the weekly reflection for your CRJ, engage with further reading and participate in the weekly webinar.
This week, we are continuing with activities designed to help you with your Assessment 1 work.
A key focus for this week is working towards achieving good ‘convergence’ in your blended learning designs so that:
Online and face-to-face activities are well-integrated with each other;
Your flipped classroom approach is well-integrated with other parts of the course you are implementing.
First, you will evaluate and discuss your flipped classroom designs in terms of integration and convergence. Then you will review some case study examples to develop your thoughts further. You will implement and pilot your flipped classroom approach, gathering feedback on its potential effectiveness and impact. Finally, there are the usual weekly opportunities to reflect on your learning, explore further reading and attend the webinar.
By the end of this week’s learning activities, you should be able to:
Evaluate and develop flipped classroom designs so that online and face-to-face activities are integrated well with each other, and the flipped classroom is well-integrated with other key aspects of the course in which it is implemented;
Implement and pilot your flipped classroom approach, gathering feedback on its potential effectiveness and impact;
Produce critical reflection on what and how you have learned this week, identifying potential implications for you and your colleagues’ current and future practice of developing flexible learning environments, in your local teaching contexts.
Reflect / Discuss
For any blended learning and flipped classroom approach to be successful, it is important that the online learning activities and resources are well-integrated with the face-to-face learning activities. Likewise, it is important to properly integrate your flipped classroom with other key aspects of the course. This often makes the difference between your students engaging effectively and gaining the learning benefits, or them not doing so – despite all your best efforts as an educator. We will focus on this important aspect of blended learning design as we go through this week.
Now consider the following questions, in relation to your current flipped classroom design:
How are the online and face-to-face learning activities integrated with each other?
How are the learning activities of your flipped classroom integrated with other specific aspects of the course in which you are going to implement them?
Provide a brief outline and explanation of your answers to the above questions (150 words). Post this to the discussion forum.
If you wish, you can also attach a revised FC session planning form, containing any changes you have made to your draft plan since you shared last week.
Comment on the posts of two fellow students, sharing any reflections prompted by their outlines and explanations.
The design of my flipped classroom model has evolved and matured over the last few weeks. I have adjusted the content to best suit the prior knowledge of my learners who are mainly beginners. I had originally maintained the content from the first module and micro-teach session but once I realized I would be teaching less advanced learners, I made the adjustment.
The convergence of the content flows consistently with the course as a whole and provides an opportunity to envision the complete course to be flipped in this way. I have also added a handout pdf of the terminology and description of the content in the face to face session for the learners. I added this after reading Mia’s design for her class and it made sense to provide additional information on the content of the class. In my experience, beginner learners are more self-conscious and nervous prior to any fact to face class setting because of the perceived performance outcomes expected for the class. This is a false perception and hard to convince learners that the performance activities at this stage in their learning are a reflection of their own self-worth. Providing more information could build more confidence prior to the class in learned knowledge. Reply Reply to comment
Interesting that you say how your flipped classroom has evolved and matured over the last few weeks, I feel exactly the same and have also been adjusting the content to suit my learners, in particular I have been thinking about accessibility and interaction / involvement with the session. And I agree with you about beginners and nervousness. Confidence is one of the key hurdles when teaching photography. I have found that empowerment is the route to over coming this issue, often delivered in the form of recognition of current or past achievements. i.e. Not what the student is doing wrong has done wrong but emphasising why they are doing right. Works for me a lot of the time. I get round to correcting the mountain of mistakes when they have grown in confidence.
As you have both mentioned how your ideas around FC implementations have changed and evolved, it would be good to capture these changes and accompanying considerations and reflection in your CRJ – it’s precious “material” for your Assessment 2 assessment 🙂 Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Great thanks for that Dario I had been making a note of changes thinking it was relevant for the CRJ so thanks for confirming. Alex Reply Reply to comment
You are so right Alex, thank you for articulating this point so well. I think we can all remember teachers that lacked the understanding of ’empowering’ students and found it more productive for them to either empower themselves and their ego or pick a student more advanced in their understanding and show them off. I have always been an encourager and positive person so my style of teaching reflects this idea. We can, of course, become frustrated with the lack of motivation in some students and demonstrate a lack of ’empowerment’! The beginners in the class definitely need a slightly different approach if there are distinct differences in skill level between the students. I find this applies more to PE/arts/performance/theatre etc. content. Reply Reply to comment
As the course I am writing my flipped classroom is in fact 100% online, the face-to-face session is challenging me more than it might have in a physical classroom setting. I am trying to work out how to get students to collaborate in small breakout groups online, my main concern is how I will be able to visit each group when they are most at need of my assistance and making sure they are all feeling confident and engaged in the challenge.
I am uploading my recordings to youtube right now! The webinar in week 3 and the reading material from week 4 plus a tutorial with Dario helped me refine my recorded content. My original plan was for one long video but I now see how monotonous that would be! I have also added simple challenges at the end of each section to help the students put into practice the skills demonstrated. 3 of my videos are 5min but one crept up to 10min, but I think that was necessary for the content.
Talking with Dario helped reassure me that the structure of my live session can work, I now need to create the tools that the students will use in the active part of the workshop. Each group will get a kit of parts to create a layout, using the techniques shown in the recorded material. It needs to be simple, so that they can focus on making decisions on layout rather than what image they could use. I will need to prepare the students ahead of the session so that they have the right software open (one student will be the hands and screenshare, with the other students suggesting placement and design direction) so that there isn’t too much faffing in the session itself.
My FC has been designed to help give the students skills that they will need in the coming weeks. They need to produce a designed pdf book of their CRJ, and the majority of the students have little/no prior experience in this type of design. I found out their skill levels through a quiz and a workshop challenge. The prerecorded material will be useful for future classes, as it isn’t specific to this group. Within this module, the students have had a first attempt at type & layout in week 3, this workshop will be in week 6, and there will be a more in depth week dedicated to type & layout in week 10. So this will be a good time within the module for them to learn a few of the basics. Reply Reply to comment
Your session and integrated activities all seem very well worked out indeed. I particularly like your idea of providing a layout kit – practical application at work, something I am very much into: Project based learning.
Well done for uploading the recordings! Yes, the structure sounds good! It might be a good idea to keep an eye on the live session’s timing, and perhaps do any preparation needed in advance (e.g. setting groups and roles, document templates, etc.). Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Suzanne Strudwick
Harriet, It seems to me you have really take a lot of care and consideration in the preparation of delivering your FC. You have an advantage of actually being in class at the moment so you can evaluate the effectiveness of all your work in designing the content, as the module unfolds! You have pinpointed the specific aspects of the aims and LO in the design and delivery during the FC session with the details you mention. Adjusting to three videos instead of one, creating a set of tools for students to use during the F2F activities workshop session and the ability to reuse the tools for future sessions are excellent adjustments. Well done Harriet, I will definitely be interested to learn if your preparation for the class goes well. Reply Reply to comment
I have updated my FC session as I have learnt more from peers and the readings. I have added an online existing video/song regarding the urinary system that Katie previously suggested, this will be used after the webcast to help consolidate learning in a fun way. I have then set a self-assessed online quiz to help gain further knowledge abut the system, and further to this i have spilt the learners into 2 groups and set a task that they can do in their team or individually. The aim will be that they then bring the answers to this element of the post webcast task to the f2f session so that they can feed back to the others and we can create discussion from the feedback.
I hope I have linked the session to the final assessment for the module by explaining how this subject could be used for the assignment (in this instance it is a case study assignment). I have also tried to ensure links between the webcast/student tasks post video and how these tasks will be utilised in the f2f session. I have yet to finalise if we are able to do the f2f session together or is this will be via zoom or microsoft teams. I have recorded my webcast, i think i was procrastinating over this too much, as worried i would make it too simple or too complicated. Andy’s words of wisdom at last weeks webinar “just get on with it”, made me realise I did not need to worry as much as i was. Now to upload to youtube and send link to students ready for f2f session.
Hi Rachel, This sounds a great plan! I particularly like the self-assessed quiz, which seems a good tool for the session’s topic, and the idea to ask learners to bring the outcome of a task to the face-to-face/live session.
I like it Rachel, especially the additional resources! All I have to do is read this and worry that my session is all wrong haha Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
I’ve revised my flipped classroom approach based on feedback and reflection on what could happen. I have also found it useful to work through my own instructions and try to do the task I had in mind. I’m finding it tricky to see it as an isolated thing and it has become a series of things leading to an exercise. I’ve tried to strip it back and think of the stripped out bits as follow on tasks leading to the assessment. The session content is actually aimed at a different group of learners but the process and activities relate to learning outcomes that I think could apply to anyone so I am trying not to major on the content.
The online activity has 3 parts
1. Introduction to the activity including basic principles and how these apply to the task using some examples from everyday life to make is accessible to students
2. A quick individual making experiment (small scale using spaghetti) to put the ideas into practice, share and discuss with peers in terms of opportunities and limitations, leading to…
3. A collaborative design exercise using these findings culminating in forming a set of simple instructions swapped with another group to make the structure in the live session using some pre cut sticks and connectors
The live session will be a chance to try things out, reflect on the clarity of instructions and communication and to collaborate with other peers to make a simple structure. Reflecting on this, making adaptations to improve it (stability, rigidity, connections, aesthetics…) these observations and reflection will be recorded by students and shared online. The exercise will inform a more detailed follow on individual design task for a simple shelter on a specific site. Drawings models and description of this will also form the assessment. The introductory podcast would develop in terms of level of detail in the future weeks. Reply Reply to comment
Hi Toby, “it has become a series of things leading to an exercise” Yeah, this sounds about right! A sequence of learning activities, with instructions first, accompanied by resources and leading to an opportunity to apply concepts and practice skills (hopefully useful for the summative assessment task) seems to be a good structure indeed. Good you have mentioned that the podcast can further develop, as the EDU720 implementation is meant to be a pilot! Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
My learning resource is integrated to both the synchronous session and the wider course as follows:
– The podcast provides an initial intro to the topic, focusing on key elements that the students will actively use/apply in the synchronous exercise which will follow. Basically, the podcast explains how they should format scripts and the live session gives them an exercise in doing exactly this.
– The overall flipped classroom exercise is integrated with the course in that it’s being offered at exactly the point in the semester when the cohort is embarking on their first ever script drafting process (for the module’s main assignment). The flipped activity therefore gives them an opportunity to improve skills required for one of the assignment’s learning outcomes. Hence it acts as a formative feedback opportunity that feeds into the main summative assessment. Reply Reply to comment
How are the online and face-to-face learning activities integrated with each other?
I find online and face to face learning synonymous in nature mostly because they complement each other while I work to ensure that the learning objective and outcome is rightly met. Following the earlier assertions, I designed two separate short videos of less than 14 minutes in total, where I integrated both process.
How are the learning activities of your flipped classroom integrated with other specific aspects of the course in which you are going to implement them?
As this is my last week of teaching in this academic year before the summer holidays, I successfully recorded a mini class session yesterday for my students, using Microsoft Teams, which they are currently going through at the moment. Having successfully published it to the students, I am now working on drafting up questions which I aim to be able to get first hand feedback from the students on how the whole process have contributed towards their study including but not limited to its efficiency. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Katie Welch
How are the online and face-to-face learning activities integrated with each other?
The online activities lay the ground work for the analysis and discussion that take place int he F2F sessions. The video podcast outlines the key principles involved in building a coherent advertising/marketing campaign, from where the students are required to apply this knowledge to answer a short quiz, and to research and identify a campaign using the features from the podcast. The F2F session then gives students the opportunity to consolidate this learning, and to gain confidence in breaking down and critiquing ads in a low stake situation i.e. not criticising the work of someone sitting on the next table. I’m keen to make it a real slag-off fest, just to break the ice.
How are the learning activities of your flipped classroom integrated with other specific aspects of the course in which you are going to implement them?
This FC kicks off a 13 week module on Campaign Creation. Knowing what needs to impact on the structure of an ad campaign is absolutely crucial when generating a campaign of one’s own: is the branding strong enough?; What are the consistent campaign elements?; What differentiates it from the compeition? etc. By knowing this, they will have a solid base on which to jump off, creatively.
The F2F activity is particularly important – over the coming weeks they will be required to critique the developing, very green, ads of their peers. By completing the activities in this FC, they will be armed with a structure by which to base initial criticism on. Everyone will have the same guardrails, and no-one should ever be stuck for something to say, or for an improvement to suggest. Over the weeks, it’s my hope that their ability in this area will mature, and I’m confident it will. It’s so disheartening when you open up the room to comments and…silence. This will speed that whole process up, and ultimately help them be less precious. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Alex Bailey
I was trying to think how best to start writing this forum post, my session has been flipped, blended and now I would best describe it as moulded – if that can be an educational term?
Having read through my peers posts so far on this forum and noting in particular Darios comment on Toby’s post:
“Yeah, this sounds about right! A sequence of learning activities, with instructions first, accompanied by resources and leading to an opportunity to apply concepts and practice skills (hopefully useful for the summative assessment task) seems to be a good structure indeed.
It seems my session has a very similar pattern to Toby’s which is delivered on a web page with links and downloads and several out- sourced web/video links both as references and guidance.
Firstly there is an audio podcast (a short lecture in essence) highlighting and underlining the key concepts for the LO’s which is also available as a downloadable PDF transcript from the web page. As such this is a brief or rather supports and accompanies the instructions / guidance on the web page with links to ‘mentor’ style resources. The learners are then required to carry out two learning activities that they will submit to a cohort forum and present at a cohort F2F teaching session (integration) that could be in a virtual class room if we are still all distant learning? This offers the possibility of interest specific break-out rooms for the cohort.
The complete blended learning / flipped session feeds back to acquired or rather an introduced skill namely a CRJ and forward into developing a web site for the learners which requires the content from the two tasked activities from this ‘moulded’ session, (hope you can follow all this -it’s all clear in my head) hence why I say moulded it seems to have all moulded into one at the moment – not sure if that is good or bad thing, just hope I can reference the pedagogy properly this time? But I certainly know I am learning a lot, or at least I think I am. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Michael Berthaume
For my assessment 1, the online and face-to-face learning activities directly build on one another. During the online activities, students are learning about a topic, and they then have a short assignment to research current events related to their learning. The in-class activity then involves discussing these events in small groups, and investigating what they can do to address the problems discussed in the current events. In this respect, it would not be possible for the students to participate in the in-class discussion if they did not complete the online portion of learning.
The flipped classroom I designed is for a fictional course that does not exist, but it is a course I would like to have exist in the future. In my ideal fictional course, this would fit in perfectly, since it is about anthroengineering, i.e., the intersection of anthropology and engineering. One of my goals for this course would be to teach students how interdisciplinary work works best when you are addressing problems larger than each field – i.e., getting out of the ivory tours of academia. These lessons are directly related to what they are learning in the activities. Reply Reply to comment
re your assignment 1 tasks: how long have the students got to do the short assignment before the f2f session? i like the fact that the students have to do the activity to be able to participate in the f2f session, but have you a back up plan if attendance is low? your fictional classroom idea is really interesting. I hope you get the opportunity to carry it through Rachel Reply Reply to comment
In my current flipped classroom design (an adaptation of my Week 5 teaching), the integration between online and F2F learning lies on the three themes I created, namely:
1. Historical perspective of the parametric design
2. Design parameters
3. Visual scripting
These three themes occur during the podcast, the materials after the podcast and during the flipped classroom (hybrid F2F and virtual) session. Main activities (group presentation and Q&A) during the hybrid 30 minutes flipped classroom are around the three topics. Yesterday I found this Facebook account (Parametric Thinking (Links to an external site.)) and they are making a series of short content with the spirit of ‘Anyone can be a Parametric Designer’. I think it is a fantastic idea and I would like to adapt it (informative and jargon-free) in my flipped classroom, as all of them are not familiar with the area of digital architecture.
This week I tweaked my plan to allow getting feedback directly after the flipped classroom session, using an online questionnaire. I also added the recently completed bamboo sitting pod (Links to an external site.) we constructed a few days ago as a case study (podcast). I think drawing from my own precedent provides informal contextual information. Also I am splitting the podcast into three parts.
After watching the three podcasts posted by Andy. I want to say that I really enjoyed listening to them, they were really good. They helped me get much needed perspective on my own design. I have changed and upgraded my podcast design and I feel ready to go ahead with recording.
How are the online and face-to-face learning activities integrated with each other?
The podcast is the preparation for the F2F session.
Manifest comprehension of the subject.
The flipped classroom is the part of the session, the lecture part of the session which would have taken up most of the session.
Learning the sounds, vocabulary, sentence structures are all parts of the lesson the students can do in their own time as preparation for the F2F discussion.
Giving students more time to master the learning material.
Allowing more time in the classroom for activities rather than lecture teaching.
How are the learning activities of your flipped classroom integrated with other specific aspects of the course in which you are going to implement them?
A guide on the expectations required of the students for the course.
Creating an open door between the teacher and student.
How are the online and face-to-face learning activities integrated with each other?
The online learning provides information regarding two theories; the activities will be to make notes, think about and do some further reading around the theories.
The students will then debate the theories in the f2f session, the idea being to share ideas and thoughts.
How are the learning activities of your flipped classroom integrated with other specific aspects of the course in which you are going to implement them?
The premise is that this session would form part of a module, and the online and f2f sessions would link to a formative assessment in the form of a written essay (I’ve based this on part of a module I studied and found interesting). Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Dario Faniglione
Thanks for your contributions this week. It’s good to see we do share the understanding that a flipped classroom approach would only work if there are some clear (and shared with learners) connections between the online asynchronous learning activities and what then happens within the live/face-to-face session.
Across the range of subject areas that you collectively cover, the purpose of the webcast (I’ll use ‘webcast` here to include a variety of multimedia artefacts: podcast, video resource, narrated powerpoint, etc.) has been appropriately used to explain a concept, an approach, a process or task, posing a problem to solve or trigger learners’ curiosity on a challenge. Then, you have planned to use the precious live interaction time to let your learner use and apply that information or knowledge that has been disseminated in the online space. In some other cases, the webcast has been used to show leaners a practical technique or procedure that they would then be using/exploiting during the subsequent live/face-to-face session.
It was great to see in some of your strategies that you are also trying to generate some sort of discussion, ideas, questions, or other student inputs before the live session: I think this can be really helpful in informing your facilitation of the synchronous session activities. This approach can also help with making any live/face-to-face session more student-centered, as their input will somewhat drive what happens and the focus on the conversations.
A number of really great suggestions were made in post about how to connect the activities to wider aspects of the student learning experience and course, as well as gain engagement including for example:
– introducing interesting or topical elements into podcasts if appropriate;
– using the webcast made to connect to the support of development of a wide range of skills that may be used at various points of a course;
– linking the flipped classroom explicitly to learning outcomes and summative assessment.
Also, a number of you highlighted how useful the webcasts could be for students as revision/reminder aids throughout the course rather than just being used to inform/support one class.
Most of you are not able to pilot your flipped session with actual students. In some cases you have gotten around this by using colleagues at your place of work and in others by seeking help from people you know outside of work with an educational background. This is absolutely fine for the purpose of this assessment tasks, and perhaps something we should all do if possible when trying something new, beyond the scope of this module! Colleagues and others we know who have taught can of course be invaluable in providing us with reasoned feedback on how well an approach works for them and how we might improve or enhance what we are seeking to do.
Overall, you have all considered how the flipped class activities will integrate with the live/ face-to-face activities, and more broadly with the rest of the course and specific learning objectives, skills development, and assessment.
I would suggest spending some time, where possible, ensuring that your (pilot and actual) learners understand their role in the flipped approach. Without that understanding (or preparation) it will be harder to get them to engage (engagement is something we touched on a lot previously).
In past iterations of this module, we have used the ‘oreo’ analogy: look at the asynchronous activities as the cream between the 2 pieces of a crunchy chocolaty cookie (like live/face-to-face sessions) i.e. focus on the importance of better ensuring that the asynchronous activities have less chance of being seen as ‘isolated’. Reply Reply to comment
Going back over the forums is incredibly useful – copying and pasting them into the blog and highlighting comments of interest is working really well for me. Wish I’d thought of this earlier…
I note how quite a few students have mentioned having tutorials with Dario. I recognise an issue I have with this personally, and on reflection I don’t think it’s a strength. I recall coming across this during my Anc. Greek course. I had a teacher in middle school who was very curt whenever anyone (me) asked for help – and I’ve just remembered, I had her for maths as well as french, this is probably where my issues with maths started – and asking my parents for maths help only ever started arguments between them as how to do the blasted sum – I really struggle with asking for help. I get stubborn and proud and I will bloomin’ well do it by myself. This is tipping over into counselling…! Sooo, when I do ask for help I resent having to. Which possibly colours how I ask – tone etc. ?
Introduction to the Podcast Series
To continue with our focus on the importance of good integration in blended learning design (convergence), listen to the podcast series by Andy Peisley below.
In these podcasts, Andy shares two different case study examples of flipped classroom approaches he has used in his practice of supporting student learning in HE. With these case studies, think about and compare and contrast the flipped classroom designs. Consider the questions:
How, and to what extent, do you think the online and face-to-face learning activities seem to be integrated with each other? What are your reasons for thinking that?
How, and to what extent, do you think the online and face-to-face learning activities seem to be integrated with other aspects of the course, and the context in which they were implemented? What are your reasons for thinking that?
Make some notes while you listen to each podcast.
Now you have listened to the podcasts and made your own notes, reflect further on the following questions:
What learning can you apply to the pilot and implementation of your own flipped classroom design?
How might it apply to your colleagues’ flipped classroom designs and plans?
What does this suggest is good about your current podcast design, and how you plan to pilot and implement it?
What changes or improvements can you usefully make to your flipped classroom approach, so that it is even more effective, now and in the future? Shorter videos. Note; the longer the video / podcast, the larger the file, the harder it may be to download / access on some devices e.g. mobile phones. So by keeping files small, you improve accessibility?
Keep a note of your answers to these questions.
Produce
This is the key learning activity for Week 5. It will also form a key part of your EDU720 Assessment 1 work.
In taking practical consideration, some of you may not be able to schedule your flipped classroom pilot during Week 5. That is fine and don’t worry, you have until the EDU720 Assessment 1 deadline in Week 7 to complete the pilot and all the other activities required for your Assessment 1.
However, if you do need to pilot before or after this Week 5, please also give yourself enough time after the pilot to complete the rest of your EDU720 Assessment 1. For example, to evaluate your flipped classroom approach in terms of how well it worked in the pilot and what could be done to improve in the future (see EDU720 Assessment 1 Brief).
For Week 6, we will focus more on the evaluation of your pilot and your flipped classroom approach.
In your pilot, please also remember to gather feedback from your learners and anyone else present. This feedback will be useful for helping you to evaluate your flipped classroom approach, and for helping you to identify what worked well and what could be improved in the future. Make sure you are ready and well-prepared to do this before your pilot. Carefully think through and plan how you could most usefully gather this feedback and what you want to find out, to help you later produce your evaluation of your approach for your EDU720 Assessment 1.
Remember that for this activity, you and your peers can also use the Learning Conversation form (see EDU720 Learning Conversation Guidance in Week 1). For example, there may be opportunities for you to get together with some of your peers and use the Learning Conversation form to observe and give feedback on each other’s teaching practice during the pilots.
For your ongoing weekly reflection of your learning, and to help with your work for the final Assessment 2: Reflective Blog submission at the end of the module, please produce this week’s reflection for your Critical Reflective Journal (CRJ).
Spend a few moments looking back at your own contributions and those of your peers on this week’s forums. Also, look over your notes from materials you have read this week, and any further reading and independent research.
Consider what you have learned this week about blended learning approaches.
Check the learning outcomes for this week (Week 5: Introduction) to consider your level of achievement:
To what extent do you think you have achieved each of the learning outcomes for Week 5? If you think there is room for you to achieve these more fully, how could you do that?
What have you learned this week regarding the design of flipped classrooms to support student learning? There is not that much difference between the requirements of the FC compared to F2F; just the emphasis. Probably the most important element is to ensure they are aligned with the F2F sessions and with the LO’s of the overall module. This will help ensure they are relevant and engaging. Other considerations are around the technology used to deliver the sessions; something that is familiar and easy for the students to use, that doesn’t add to their financial outgoings (e.g. licenses) and that the institution already supports. The other consideration is the workload on the tutor – it seems to me that creating good quality FC can take longer than F2F, HOWEVER if prepped and considered it could be re-useable for another course (only drawback here is things – syllabus, tech, developments in the subject area) may change from year to year.
What does all this suggest about the ways you and your colleagues are currently supporting your students learning, in your own practice and teaching context? What does it suggest that is currently good about this, and about how it could be further developed in the future? I’ve not used the FC approach before. The videos highlighted how it can benefit a greater range of students, which was a valid argument for it’s use. My only concern would be how much the students engaged with the FC.
How has your understanding of how to use a flipped classroom approach changed from doing this week’s topic and activities?
How did you learn this?
What supported your learning?
What has challenged you?
What has surprised you?
How does this relate to what has been proposed in different sources of scholarship that you have read recently? Which specific sources and what specific claims does this relate to?
Now write your reflections for this week in your CRJ.
As explained before, although what you actually write in your CRJ weekly activities is not going to be directly assessed, it will still support your EDU720 Assessment 2: Reflective Blog work.
When formulating your weekly reflections in your CRJ, keep in mind Assessment 2’s Learning Outcomes (LO1, LO6 & LO7) and Assessment Criteria. It’s optional to apply them to your CRJ entries, but it’s a good idea to practise demonstrating these in what your write – you will need to do this for your EDU720 Assessment 2: Reflective Blog.
Remember, there are more helpful guidance and questions in the EDU720 Assessment 2 Additional Guidance document.
By the end of this week’s learning activities, you should aim to be able to:
Identify, share and discuss key strengths and areas for further development in your designs for your flipped classroom approach;
Apply learning about podcasting to evaluate and further develop online elements of your flipped classroom approach;
Critically reflect on what and how you have learned online this week, identifying potential implications for you and your colleagues’ current and future practice of developing flexible learning environments, in your local teaching contexts.
So during week 3, 4 & 5 we were working on drafting, producing and creating a flipped classroom (FC) session.
Not having ever delivered anything like this before, only F2F, I was scared of this quite frankly. It’s like putting yourself on TV!
Looking back at the dates on the forum – 17th June on – this is during my notice period having been made redundant, so I was in full job-hunting mode, hence thoroughly distracted =reduced interaction with the forums (notice of redundancy was around 3rd June).
What three things do you definitely want to keep in your FC session plan and why?
For the flipped classroom which is still an ongoing process, I aim to keep doing group discussion. Even prior to designing the FC, I usually apply such approach in my class, and I have come to realise that it is very effective. It engages students who are slow learners or finds it difficult to communicate effectively in English to actively participate.
I like the shortening of videos, as a learner I find it very efficient as I do not have to always trying to pull up the timestamp to be able to know when the material will end. I believe such approach will also be useful for students as they can easily finish a material in short time and can go back and commence with a different one. Similarly, I use such approach with my online class. For each class I will teach, I design a specific class channel in Microsoft Team, where I will discuss the material with the students. The essence of this is to make it easier for students to easily locate a topic, link, books or discussion in a specific channel, without having to go through a more populated general channel.
I will continue providing online quiz, which I have been using prior to this and I still find it useful.
What three things could be good to change, revise or further develop in your plan, and why? How, specifically, do you propose to further develop your plan?
Maybe to consider redesigning some of my class material, like the topics in a way that with the face to face approach, even though they are already working in groups, however, I will aim to further ensure that few within a group who are less likely to participate in a class presentation, will get to have a more leading role.
I might also consider including in the online activity session a possibility for the students to setup a virtual project that is related to the Moodle, and present it to the class in a virtual setting, especially if we are to find ourselves in a situation that can result to a long time interruption of all class activity as we are currently experiencing with Covid-19.
Please feel free to comment or suggest any other approach as you seem fit 🙂
Hi Stanley, it sounds like you have some good techniques in place already, great! Do you find Microsoft Teams a good platform for collaboration and sharing material? You’re right, short videos work well for the short attention spans of students. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hello Harriet, Actually yes, Microsoft Teams has a lot of functions for that. There is an option for file, where you can go in and create a sub-folder and can give students access to the file, without them being able to edit or modify it. Furthermore, it also has a share point function for colleagues and students alike. Another function that I like there, is that you can create a Turnintin/Moodle or even Canvas type of assignment submission link, where students can submit their work, you provide feedback and they can be able to access it in that same Teams. I hope this helps with the clarification? Reply Reply to comment
I like your idea of creating a Team’s Channel for each classroom so discussions, thoughts and interactions can continue throughout the learning process. I guess this is similar to what we are doing here, but to me, it may look more like a ‘chat room’ or ongoing text dialogue. I may incorporate that aspect into my own sessions. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hello Suzanne, Indeed it is very useful, actually more useful than short time sessions. My reason being that you can create that sub-group for them in a Term/Moodle, and they can always go there for team discussion and specific group meeting, which you also have access to. During general class or seminar, you can ask them to present what they discussed in a group to the general class. Reply Reply to comment
All good points. When you say “setup a virtual project” etc., while this is great from a learning and teaching implementation (medium/long term), please consider keeping the FC plan for the EDU720 to a manageable commitment, as this will need to be piloted within the next couple of weeks. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Last week I ran a quiz with the students I will be using as guinea pigs for my FC session. I’m glad I did, as they are very inexperienced in editorial design, so this FC content will really benefit them. It also helped me understand how very basic I will need to make this as they have little or no previous experience. I will keep the structure of the recorded element the same as in my plan, but I want to look into how I can refine the activities within the live session. I have an hour with them, but there are normally approx 15 students in the session so I have to work out how best to get them doing an active task within the limits of an online conference format. I need to do some more research into different approaches – as we haven’t had much input since we created the plans last week. Reply Reply to comment
Hi Harriet, it looks like we’re doing something similar here; I’m planning a session based around the typography module on the BA Graphic Design degree. Well done for initiating the quiz! Could that be a part of your blended design as it’s already informed your delivery and possible differentiation for the range of learners..? Brilliant. I think the way you preface the in person synchronous element with a video walk through of InDesign would be great to use as a foundation to scaffold up their learning in the ‘in person’ session. And there are lots of existing video tutorials available; Falmouth Uni students will have access to all those on LinkedIn Learning. I wonder if the in person session could be possibly overrun with discussion and dialogue and not much development of a design, which has it’s merit of course… For mine I’m wondering if the in person element should be about an activity that encourages discussion, debate and dialogue (critical reflection) as I am struggling to see a practical way to engage groups in a synchronous activity using a third party software tool… What do you think about this? Are you confident with the use of InDesign and shared screen? Reply Reply to comment
The hybrid face-to-face and virtual class, synchronously. Testing out this I think it is a good chance for me to immediately address student concern raised in module evaluation form.
Activity in F2F and virtual session. With production through group presentation, I think it maximises the learning experience as learners do not have to read the three input texts (they can afterwards) to be able to grasp the three knowledge.
Online peer assessment. A short one worked well during the micro-teach session on EDU710, also giving students an experience of reviewing peers.
Three things I want to revise are:
Recap of the podcast. After reading Dario’s summary, I think this was missing in my plan. And I would like to make this as the bridge between the podcast and the hybrid F2F and virtual class.
Short quiz. Link to short quiz will be provided on the podcast, however I moved this to be an independent activity after watching the podcast. Giving chance for learners to not rush on the quiz, but re-playing podcast until they thoroughly understand the content.
Relating the podcast and hybrid F2F and virtual session without repeating too much of the content, using the summary as mention on point 1.
looking at the things you are looking at to revise, I saw you may adjust the short quiz. I am going to add a quiz to my session as a way to assess the learning outcomes for the class. I like your idea to move this to an independent activity providing the learners more time to understand the content. For my learners, this should reflect a deeper understanding of their own limitations or abilities to adjust and perform the new physical skills. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Nick Raven
Hi Mia, I think I might steal your idea for the online peer assessment. That’s a great idea! Do you know how you’re going to do it? After the micro teach session I thought it would be good to get the students to do peer evaluation and feedback and have been trying to think of ways to embed it in the learning experience… Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hi Nick, apology for the late reply, I am on construction site for the last week. I used an online survey form; and showed the QR code on the ppt slides. I left my files unfortunately, but I attached one of my previous sketch on flipped classroom which has the link and QR code (Top right). It was a less formal activity at the end of session, to get their phones out and started scanning. Thought it was a nice way to wrap up the session. Hope this helps.Mia Reply Reply to comment
Hi Mia Point 2 of your revisions, I’m with you on this one, I keep working on a quiz as part of my blended learning programme as obviously it’s a good qualification of understanding but also I feel engaging for my cohorts, but its dependent on understanding overall of the podcast content, which in turn leads onto the module as a whole, so gets complicated, so maybe foe me it will be a standalone activity as well. Alex Reply Reply to comment
What three things do you want to keep in your FC session plan and why?
I want to keep the pre-lesson practice videos which lead into the F2F.
I want to keep the structure of the F2F lesson.
I want to keep the homework online which will lead into the F2F Discussion.
What three things could be good to change, revise or further develop in your plan, and why? How, specifically, do you propose to further develop your plan?
I would like to add a Tuesday online reading group using my own self- made videos. I will ask the students to read Tuesdays reading material for Wednesdays discussion session.
I would like to add in a Thursday online listening group using my own self-made podcasts leading into Friday’s discussion session.
Ask the students to do an online quiz on Thursday and post the results to the online forum on Friday. (Stein & Graham, 2013).
As I mentioned above, (for the scope of the EDU720 assessment) please be mindful of the required time commitment of your overall FC session tasks.
You will need to pilot the overall FC tasks within the next 2 weeks, with a group of at least 2 learners, so just make sure you have time without overwhelming your pilot group (whether these are current students or friends/colleagues/family members).
Obviously, in terms of learning and teaching implementations in your own context (e.g. in the academic year or the next few months), there won’t be such limitations, so you will be free to experiment and make further refinements and adjustment. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Three aspects that I am going to keep in the FC session are:
1. Provide the video 4-5 days in advance so students can watch, reflect, frame and try for themselves prior to the face to face session. My subject requires physical application and knowledge. Providing ample time for the students to ‘mess around’ with the new skill for a few days increases their understanding, metacognitive awareness of what they don’t know yet which promotes deeper learning, thinking and motivation.
2. Providing two short videos instead of one. This way students can learn in segments and apply new knowledge in blocks for these new skills instead of trying to watch a prolonged long video where they may miss something or become distracted.
3. Face to face session discussion time and review of videos. I understand that there is some hesitation in reviewing the media during the face to face as can present several issues. But since the subject matter of my class is so tied to students physical abilities to comprehend, apply and adjust new skills, i am hesitant to reduce the time for review and discussion.
Three aspects that I am going to adjust are:
1. The time spent during the face to face application of the new skill needs to be longer, I have given only 10 balls for students to try their new skills, this needs to be longer for a deeper understanding of there own assessment to take place.
2. A longer time needs to be given for feedback and review from me to each student. Each person is different in their skill levels, I need to provide a longer time to help each student where they are in the learning curve.
3. Assessment and feedback at the end of the session, I will be adjusting this segment for my evaluation as to their learned knowledge. I need to add an assessment piece to the lesson. Reply Reply to comment
Hi Suzanne, this is looking really great and I agree, based on the last assessment task that we worked on, time for reflection, feedback and review are really important, so adding more time for that I think will be really beneficial. In your micro teach session you paired up students for the activity and this was great for collaborative working and enhancing peer-led learning. I wondered if there could be an opportunity for peer-to-peer reflection and dialogue in this session that could further enhance the feedback and assessment you’re already devising? Reply Reply to comment
Hi NickThank you for this insight, especially since you were on my review team for the last assessment. I have four students for this session, all beginners so quite different. From the reading material we have had for this week, I have added a handout, which I sent to the students last night. This is to help prepare knowledge and understanding for the content of the class. I am also going to include your suggestion of providing a discussion time while they are split up into pairs. I’m recording mine class on Monday. Reply Reply to comment
Unsure if this is already in your lesson plan, but I really liked from your assessment 1 in module 1 how you had students providing peer feedback. Is that integrated here as well?
10 minute seems really short but when I thought about it I think you’re right about making two short videos instead of one longer one. It will likely help break up the online content really well which is a great idea to help make the time in front of the computer digestible. Reply Reply to comment
From my draft session planning form I have decided that I definitely wanted to keep:
The Podcast
The PDF summary with links.
The one to one mentor review resulting in a feed forward plan.
I decided that these three elements formed the backbone of my flipped session and that they in themselves where a steeping stone to the student developing a web site. Therefore I was attempting to much in one session. I have decided to break the session down into more consumable parts and take a more ‘scaffold learning’ approach leaving the other aspects of my draft to at least one other session (maybe more) and aligning the learning outcomes when the leaners build there web site as we go along. To do this I will change:
Webanir brainstorm with break out rooms into a Q&A slide show where the students interact on the Menti app with inspirational thought contributions.
Make the cohort discussion a face to face in small groups rather than an on line forum. This could still be done virtually if there is an issue still with distancing sell via break out rooms.
Make that the draft web pages are on a live web site not PDF pages to ensure the student hit lights web site design challenges.
Hi Alex, I think your plan is clear and well thought through. And I agree that adding in opportunity for more collaborative, peer-to-peer working would be beneficial. Creating small working groups for brainstorming and discussion will be really valuable; have you thought about how you will support, lead and stimulate this activity? Reply Reply to comment
Hi Nick and thanks for taking a look, to be honest I haven’t decided on the format for the collaborative peer-to-peer support/brainstorming groups, mainly because I am evaluating all the different apps and interactive soft ware opportunities there are to stimulate activity within a group, particularly creative groups, I came across an app called menti the other day that was used in a portfolio development session on line with Falmouth Uni. What I liked about this app was it supported/generated creative thought. More research to be done, so many good resources out there. Alex Reply Reply to comment
The modular formative tasks because I believe they will aid engagement through scaffolding a student-centred approach. Using the student’s perception about the characteristics of the tasks puts them at the centre of the learning by making them actively consider, interpret and analyse the subject of the learning, and to critique and translate this into a designed outcome.
The group discussion and dialogue as an aid to be critically reflective. (And I would like to enhance this as a ‘learning culture’ to support opportunities for deeper learning.)
Homework task as a way to further consolidate the learning by actively engaging the students in something that will be (formatively) assessed. (This could also be an opportunity for peer assessment.)
Three things to change:
I need to change up (better define) the prefaced content (lecture) to make it more relevant and meaningful.
I would like the preface to include an activity, for the purposes of differentiation, by way of a simple MCQ. But, this could be a more meaningful activity that bridges (or scaffolds) to the learning in the synchronous session; task 1 could be used for this.
I would like to better support differentiation, as a key benefit of flipped learning, and need to consider how I might be able to do this… I feel that there is opportunity in the tasks for differentiation of student responses, but could there be ways to support the differentiation earlier and to enhance the learning of all students? Widening participation and being inclusive through student-centred approaches is one thing, but how can the learning be more responsive of different learners’ needs?
The online quiz to test and embed knowledge learnt from the webcast, as i think this is a quick and relatively easy thing to get students to engage in post webcast and pre f2f session
linking the webcast/quiz and pre f2f session part by doing a reflection exercise at start of the f2f session, again this hopefully will help to refresh and embed what has already been learnt , without having to repeat the on line component of the blended approach.
use of breakout rooms in the f2f/zoom session, this will hopefully help to improve confidence in quieter members of the group, who may not want to speak up in a large class
3 things to change:
make the aim and LO clearer and link to assessment
add in online video as Katie previously suggested, this will add a bit of humour to a “dry subject”
test webcast to ensure realistic timings have been achieved, as many have suggested the need for the webcast to be 10 mins or less to ensure engagement is useful, I need to check this is achievable
I’m sure you would have come across this already, but when testing the webcast, I always try to remember to test for audio quality, as there is nothing worse than poor audio! Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Three things I definitely want to keep in my flipped classroom session plan
Having the focus of the podcast session be on the SDGs. This will help students make connections between their education and their world, increasing engagement and employability.
Having students find news stories after listening to the podcast. I think this will help them identify real-world issues that they care about, which will, in turn, increase their engagement.
Having students work together, picking a world issue from the research they have done to be the centre of their term project. I think the group work will allow them to think out loud, and begin to develop their ideas
Things I could change/revise
Inclusion of examples of how students could take news stories and mould them into semester projects. By using examples from my own work, I will be able to give students current information on real-world issues.
Perhaps do two podcasts instead of one 10 minute one
Have a way of checking that students really did look up and summarize the three news stories
– General topic focus of screenplay page formatting conventions
– Synchronous exercise idea based on correcting errors on a sample page
– Differentiation approach to ensuring podcast resource is accessible to all
3 things to change/improve
– Use video for podcast instead of audio only. This way I can include visual examples on slides.
– Make the synchronous exercise a group one using breakout rooms to facilitate peer learning and boost participation
– Add a short interim task which follows the podcast but is done prior to the synchronous session, to act as a warm-up for the synchronous session tasks Reply Reply to comment
I would definitely keep the focus on play as it is a core them of my module and one I plan to teach around furthur beyond this session.
I would like to keep the use of case studies from the industry. I think this provides insight into what the industry is doing and contextualises what makes the session important for students.
I would like to keep the discussion of online activity becuase I believe it’s valuable for students to hear from, and discuss topics with their peers. I have experience students taking information from each other better than they do from the lecturer.
3 Things to add/Change
When looking back on my initial plan I see that I have not considered including any academic journals or articles in the content I have linked to the session. I know this will add more time to the length of the session as a whole but it will be worth adding.
I think the discussion I have planned for the end of my session could do with more direction. I’m not sure that simply discussing answers to questions is enough. Perhaps the results of the discussion could be used post session. Also I think it might be worth having the discussion be asynchronous. Currently I have fallen behind on the PGCHE and having the previous discussions to read through has been invaluable.
I had planned to run the pilot of this class as simply as possible, so videos on youtube and the other items required in an email to simulate the VLE, and then have the discussion in person. To be very honest I hadn’t considered the feedback requirement of the assignment yet, so I will be adding a a few questions for the pilot to gather the required feedback.
Three things I would like to keep in the session plan:
– The live build exercise. I have thought through this a bit more in terms of materials and have decided it could work with some options for connector pieces to enable quick testing and assembly. The students will likely feel a sense of motivation and achievement to see their structure at 1:1. A neat follow on exercise could be to ask them to design their own connection piece
– The online collaborative discussion. I’d like to trial this as I think an asynchronous exchange could be beneficial outside the studio space and will get students used to sharing their ideas with peers. I’d like to trial this on our VLE but this may not be possible so an alternative would be Teams
– Swapping designs and building someone else’s. I think this could be a good way of students reflection on the LO of communication and being on the other end of it.
Things I could change
– Although important in our course, for this exercise, the specific site is not that important. Removing this element could simplify it and allow flexibility if the weather is bad as well as allowing other students to complete the exercise remotely. A site could be introduced for a follow on individual design exercise.
– I tried this initial exercise myself and realise that I need to limit the amount of materials and keep instructions really clear initially with room for experimentation on the collaborative stage
Many thanks for contributing to this discussion, as usual with brilliant insights and supportive feedback to colleagues’ work.
For latecomers and for future reference, please find hereafter a summary of key concepts that have been discussed, grouped in two main categories. There was obviously an overlap between these two areas of discussions, and I have tried to capture this in the grouping.
I have included here some of the elements that webinar participants have brought up in the last couple of webinars also, so as to give a more holistic view of things.
Elements people feel generally more confident and happy with:
Clear communication to foster “buying-in” from learners;
Interactive online collaborative activities (e.g. using Padlet, Miro boards, etc.), but also formative activities (e.g. quizzes)
Focus on individual needs (e.g. previous background, time and space for learners to engage with online components;
Alignment between learning outcomes and the session and the assessment;
Meaningful and relevant classroom activities, including group challenges, role-play, problem-solving, case-studies, aimed at applying theory and concepts;
Use relevant and engaging “triggers” as video/audio recording topics;
Chapterization and sequencing of media recordings (rather than longer video/audio recordings);
Keep content (i.e. media recordings) concise and snappy;
Provide a summary of key concepts, online and/or in the face-to-face session.
Elements people generally feel that need further exploration:
Technical aspects of the recording )please do not worry about this too much, as this assessment is an opportunity to learn);
Get pilot learners’ feedback – there is no rule here, please use any format or mean you feel appropriate. The key is asking/soliciting feedback on the areas/elements of the session (including all flipped classroom components) you feel are important to develop for your future implementations in your teaching practice.
The balance between online and face-to-face/synchronous resources;
Length of media artifact (i.e. video or audio recording) – please stay within the 10 min max recommended limit;
Involving learners in the design of future iterations: if you are piloting with your usual learner it’s a good idea to involve them in the “experiment”;
Integrate the online resource/activity with face-top-face/synchronous activities;
Consideration of overall design and how the flipped-classroom feedback “fits” within the overall module design: this area should probably be explored in your flipped classroom rationale;
Bridging individual/group input and feedback on online activities (through forums, online interaction, etc) and the face-to-face activities, where these contributions can be further explored and used for further learning.
1) Timing – the brief introduction to the topic i feel is likely to be long enough to introduce the content and not too long that the student will switch off, while they are on the course to learn it is essentially their free time they are using to complete these activities so short, sharp and to the point i think is key for this approach within my educational setting.
2) Style of tasks – i think the use of group tasks is important to these activities, helping to ensure those that might be less engaged are encouraged by their course mates to partake in the activities set and engage in the learning process.
3) Presentation slide style – the slides allow the students to follow what is being said during the podcast. the teacher does not need to be seen for this element of teaching. the slides provide content and additional info to the students around what is being said.
Change:
1) More detail within the presentation – a little more info in the context of the session could be introduced in the podcast to aid the delivery of the session however, i feel it is a tough balance to strike between the amount of content to provide and ensure they do the learning tasks etc.
2) Providing some additional learning materials/sources for them to use to complete the tasks. some form of direction to some appropriate sources may increase engagement and learning from these tasks
3) Additional presentation styles – the use of videos or excerpts from other podcasts with experts in the field etc could provide a useful tool for learning during this approach to confirm/reinforce the information being provided in the teaching content. Use of videos, athlete interviews etc would really enforce what is being taught and why Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Katie Welch
What three things do you definitely want to keep in your FC session plan and why?
– Structure of the activities – a few tweaks here and there seemed to manage the feeling of overload and over-expectation
– Learning OutcomeAssessment relationship – recognized by peers as well aligned
– Some sort of monitoring of progress during the week to help me assess needs, and to prep relevant scaffolding materials for the F2F session.
What three things could be good to change, revise or further develop in your plan, and why? How, specifically, do you propose to further develop your plan?
– Clarifying resources being used – it will now be a video, that I’ll generate the material for and pre-record myself.
– Adding in a quiz for engagement (Bailey, A. 28/06/20 PGCHE Forum. Falmouth Flexible Canvas) and to help me assess needs. This replaces a peer-to-peer forum, which seemed a bit repetitive of the class activity
– Loosening up the class session, so that there’s less ‘presenting‘ and more open sharing in smaller groups to help ‘deepen discussion and critical evaluation’ (Strudwick, S. 18/06/20. PGCHE Forum. Falmouth Flexible Canvas). Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Anna Dovey
Still catching up – had a change of mind on what stubject I wanted to cover.
What three things do you definitely want to keep in your FC session plan and why?
Using shorter videos. I’ve realised that breaking the areas to cover down like that works like book chapters, and also makes it easier for me to record!
Keeping the live session as a debate around the topics.
Providing links to exta materials for students to access if they want
What three things could be good to change, revise or further develop in your plan, and why? How, specifically, do you propose to further develop your plan?
I want to record both audio (me talking) and visual and a screen – arrrgggh! I want to be able to split out the audion so students can listen to it as a podcast. I have *no* idea as to what software would be able to do that, so I need to research that.
I could align this with a theoretical assessment of a written essay on the topic (sorry, historical topics tend to use written assignments unless it’s ancient tech, science or warfare). That would help with contructive alignment.
This more about the debate – I could include some instrucitons on *how* to debate, since some students I’ve met don’t seem to understand what an academic debate is. Maybe I can find a video of one. Also highlight it’s not a competition – it’s not about ‘wining and argument’, but an exchange of ideas and if you learn something that changes your opinions, who’s actually winning?
What was clear from the above was the range of context and subjects my peers were teaching and how that impacted their approach to the FC – concerns e.g. delivering more practical subjects, how what would normally be hands-one sessions could be approximated via online delivery.
Nice, easy to understand videos – a good example of how to create and deliver a FC sessions. Why it has to be ‘us’ is an interesting and valid point.
When creating audio and video podcasts for supporting student learning in HE, usually what matters much more than high production values and fancy ‘bells and whistles’, are the pedagogic design aspects. Koumi (2015), discussing instructional videos, has claimed that “an indispensable affordance of any medium is its ability to secure learners’ cognitive engagement and constructive reflection” – ie its pedagogic value and affordance. The skills of authors to secure cognitive engagement and constructive reflection (hence learning) often tend to be vastly underestimated.
Pedagogic Design Principles
This framework from Koumi (2015) offers a minimal framework of indispensable pedagogic design principles.
Anderson et al (2006) proposed that the educator’s task is “to create a coherent narrative path through the mediated instruction and activity set such that students are aware of the explicit and implicit learning goals and activities in which they participate” (p.6). For the specific design and organisation of learning activities with instructional material, answering these questions can help you to plan your audio or video podcast:
What data do I have about my current course that suggests a change?
How do I interpret that information?
What do sources of scholarship suggest about how students learn best with media and my subject matter?
What preparation or support material will the students need?
What kind of questions will I pose to students?
When will I ask these questions?
What kind of learning tasks will I align with the instructional material?
What value will the delivery format bring compared to other formats?
When will I deliver these instructional materials?
What approach will I use to create the narrative path?
How do practitioners use podcasts in HE?
This case study examines the use of simple audio podcasts in a fully online, distance learning class. The class was part of the DUCKLING research project conducted by the Beyond Distance Research Alliance at the University of Leicester, UK.
It discusses the benefits of using podcasts as part of an integrated online learning strategy in a distance learning context, and gives an overview of how audio podcasts were used to introduce concepts, provide support for assignments, and give students direct feedback on their work. Of course, these principles can also be applied to video podcasts, such as video lectures.
Based on what we have explored so far about podcast design, reflect briefly and consider the following questions:
How does what you have just learned about podcast design, apply to your own podcast ideas for your planned flipped classroom approach? I no like podcasts. I’m hearing imparied(I hate that phrase – I have one deaf ear). So I lip read quite a lot and *hate* not seeing someone’s face when they’re talking. I can see the advantage in terms of portability – students cans listen, as the Probationers did to that CD, in their car, on the tube, buses etc. via their mobile phone. Which is great for those that can; I don’t like not hearing what’s going on around me – I think it’s potentially dangerous – but I know many people enjoy podcasts and learn a lot from them.
What does this suggest is currently good about your current podcast design? I don’t have one!!
What changes or improvements does this suggest you could usefully make to your own podcast design, to help make this more effective as a learning resource, for your flipped classroom? I don’t intend to use one, for the reasons mentioned above.
Week 4: The IMPALA Model of Podcasting.
The Informal Mobile Podcasting And Learning Adaptation (IMPALA) project started in May 2006. IMPALA investigates the impact of podcasting on student learning and how the beneficial effects can be positively enhanced. It was funded by the UK Higher Education Academy and has numerous HE partners: University of Leicester, Royal Veterinary College London, Kingston University and the University of Gloucestershire.
The design and development of podcast application usually begins with a purpose. IMPALA partners have been experimenting with different approaches of using podcasts to address distinct pedagogical purposes and challenges within specific discipline areas. Some of the purposes and / or challenges embedded within podcasts are:
Integrate podcast with other online learning activities;
Develop students’ study skills through collaborative learning;
As extensions to lectures (eg summary lectures, podcast lectures);
As an extra learning resource to bring topic issues;
Support student field work (eg record field work, provide instructions and location-based information);
Provide guidance on student practical work (eg a visual guide on how to use a software program);
Transfer museum specimens into 3D video podcasts to depict / show structures and tissues of different systems;
Student-developed podcast to promote active, independent and collaborative learning.
One of the outputs from the IMPALA project is the IMPALA model, which is a framework to help teaching and learning practitioners with evaluating and designing audio and / or video podcasts, as part of an online or blended approach.
On the next page, we will explore more about the IMPALA model itself, including the 10 variables. You will also have a chance to apply it to your own podcast design.
Please find attached the completed form for my video session, which I will be creating soon.
It’s very important to keep the recorded material on point – it needs to be relevant, accessible and link back to the learning outcomes. Focus on the material and content! Keep the structure simple to make it easy for all levels and abilities to engage with. The course I am teaching is a visual one, so I should assume that the students are visual learners, solidified by active learning experiences. The Koumi (2015) framework reminds me of the presentation principles I learnt in a RADA drama school workshop – where we had to get people’s attention, then tell them what we were going to discuss, discuss it, then conclude on what had been discussed. Simple but effective. I think this will work well with students, especially in a pre-recorded session. The structure I had planned uses this basic skeleton, which is reassuring.
During the webinar last week, Andy suggested breaking up pre-recorded sessions with questions or tasks for the students, so that it didn’t become to lengthy and disengaging. I need to think about how I can bring this into my session, maybe with questions to help them prepare for the live session. I will place these questions at the end of each new element being introduced – type, image, layout etc. I have planned for a 15/20min video, but it may be that when I record it, it becomes shorter than that, depending on how I get through the content. I want to be clear and thorough, and don’t want to rush it.
To plan for my video, I will write key points I need to hit throughout, rather than a script. I did a scripted video lecture a while ago and weirdly it was the FC content for my students last week! A few commented on the way I read off a script. I have more experience and confidence now, so I feel capable of presenting without a script. I have a clear speaking voice, so I think this will be accessible for students whose first language is not English.
A podcast format would not work for this course, as it needs to have a visual element. But I think that a simple video can be just as simple to produce. If needed, a resource pack of design material can be provided to the students too.evaluation with IMPALA – Harriet Beesley.pdf Reply Reply to comment
Hi Harriet Your right with working from highlighted points / prompts rather than a script – much more fluent if you know your subject and so much more engaging for the audience it always flows better. I have been involved in a lot of documentary live broadcasts over the years – most/all presenters work from prompt sheets that they compile (or the producer)- not scripts. Rehearse once shoot once otherwise you over think it and lose the spontaneity which is a key ingredient of engagement. You tend to work in bite size portions 30 seconds to two minutes and then cut – compile the next point – rehearse once / shoot one… on and on you go – this is on the basis you will cut away to a sample or slide for example. Although now you are into editing – probably at this stage to be avoided so maybe the white board / flip chart like Katie Kimbar, turning the page, gives you that natural break, pause, edit point to turn the page and move onto the next point – that is exactly what she is doing (without physically getting in to editing for real). One is just after that beat of contemplation / the moments silence (turn the flipped chart) punctuates / edits organically with out actually getting into editing in real time. Repeating /summarising the key points is how to emphasize rather than going slowly. Generally it always ends up shorter than you think. Hope that helps a little? – good luck Alex Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Critical evaluation of podcast design using IMPALA model
What have you learned about podcast design from doing or reading this critical evaluation? How and why could this be useful or valuable for you, in your practice?
I’ve learned so much from reading the IMPALA Model, everything is important, timing is important, your voice and delivery is important, there’s just so much to consider when making a recording, the mood and the warmth of your voice is so important. I can’t imagine how terrible it is for students who have to listen to a boring voice, or someone who is always clearing their throat or speaks softly or speaks in a monotone. I always focus on the clarity of my voice because it’s the one thing that students really struggle with for a second language learner it’s of vital importance. Having a neutral accent is actually quite important too. Speaking at a medium speed is also very important. I could go on and on but that’s quite a lot already.
What ideas do you have to improve the current podcast design, to address any potential limitations identified in the critical evaluation, and / or to enhance the students’ learning in the future?
I think it’s limitless because it’s like cloning the teacher. I think the only limits are those in our own minds. However, once we all start using this it will become second nature and the ideas will just burst out of us.
What else might be important to consider when evaluating podcast designs, beyond the 10 variables in this IMPALA model?
What I always am concerned about are using applications that expire or just stop being useful. I believe we should use software that is on our cell phones and software that is upgradable.
That’s a really good point about applications that can die a death – so much of it does these days, which wuld also impact on workload for lecturers. Reply Reply to comment
Attached is my Critical evaluation of podcast design using IMPALA model
What I learned:
I have been involved in broadcast and documentary for a number of years but this has mainly been video. I had not considered so much the power of audio on its own, not least the end user ease of access is a key persuader. The format as such for quick and concise pieces of information is pretty close to the way you use video/ film but you don’t have the advantage of visuals (obviously) to support the webcast although the concentration of audio with out the use/ distraction of visuals is an interesting concept particularly in my situation when teaching a visual medium. Perhaps I have over looked the power of audio only as a point of focus?
What Ideas I have to improve the podcast:
For future improvements in addition to reacting to feedback from the various evaluation sources I am engaging with I have though about having the students offer audio feedback that I might use as sound bites in the podcast in the future to enhance student connection. They get my opinions they get peers and students who have been through the process opinions as well.
Quiz or interactive brainstorming session utilising menti. app
What else for me should I consider for the future:
Alex, Your insight and experience in using different mediums in your career afford you the perfect insight now as a teacher. Your reflections and critical analysis of your own class development using either/or all of the available mediums has enlightened me into thinking about using audio as an option and how to use it to support my students learning. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
This was a useful activity as made me critique further my plan and podcast design. I think whilst we are initially doing this for the purpose of the assessment, I am excited about the wealth of possibilities this mode of teaching brings. I am really interested to find out what the students think about this approach and if it is a preferred method. I think I may be able to use flipped classrooms more in the future if this proves to be successfulCritical evaluation of podcast design using IMPALA model.docx Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Dejan Levi
This was useful as a checklist to eliminate blind spots in the podcast planning process (not something I have lots of experience with). There were one or two IMPALA principles which I’d not given sufficient thought to, such as how the exercise scales with bigger cohorts and whether it has reusability value. Since the answer to the latter is yes, I’m minded to devote some extra time to it to ensure we have a useful resource for the future!Critical evaluation of podcast design using IMPALA model_Dejan complete.docx Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hi Dejan. I agree, a useful exercise. Your plan good. Accessible. Your rationale for style choice is smart in considering how you want students to feel about the topic, regardless of the content. Manipulative. Nice! 🙂 Reply Reply to comment
Learning how to develop and create a podcast is very new to me. I have not chosen this medium for my assignment as the visual aspects for learners in my PE scenario is vital for them to ‘see’ themselves perform at the beginning of the learning process. I would very much like to explore audible only content for my learners as the flexibility of listening to a podcast anywhere is intriguing to me. A further improvement to the class could be the introduction of an audio segment to complement and support the learner’s knowledge AFTER they have been assessed and passed a benchmark in their abilities to perform the movement skills.
One of the biggest feedback comments I receive from learners is remembering the differences in how the body sets up to the ball for different shots. Typically very subtle and small adjustments are required between shots but make a big difference in outcomes and performance. Listening to a podcast specific to the practice that day would serve as a reminder, and cue the visual framing of themselves to enhance there own feedback loop and thus improve performance and confidence. Critical evaluation of podcast design IMPALA Suzanne Strudwick .docx Reply Reply to comment
Very well thought out. You’re right to split topics, and consider cognitive load. I might have to reassess whether to split/add another cast into mine. I think this will only become apparent when I’ve been able to start putting it together properly though.
Out of everyone, your context is probably the most dependent on fast feedback, as you identify. You mention immediate feedback. Can I clarify, do you mean that the student evaluating themselves is the feedback? And you mention the importance of teacher feedback – how is this worked in to your design?
I like your idea of doing both video and audio podcasts, each to fulfil a different purpose. I have not looked into it, but I am sure there is software out there that can turn the audio from a video file into an audio file alone, which would help in decreasing time spent making the webcasts. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
I’ve got to research that for my recording – giving the students the option of a video and the audio as a podcast would improve inclusivity. Reply Reply to comment
Hi All, here is my reflection on my podcast design, bit late but if anyone wants to trade comments, that would be great!
I have found the exercise really useful, in particular breaking things down and focussing on how the sessions could be structured and why. I have ended up breaking my plan into two bits, audio and visual. Not sure if this is allowed but my reasoning is that I want to demonstrate some key concepts using objects and examples so this is suited to video. I also want to put the collaborative linking task that leads to my FC activity into context but don’t want to show examples of this as it will likely limit the outcomes.
I need to work carefully though the timing and level of information. Importantly, this is intended to be an introductory session in first year so keeping it simple, related to students experience and not assuming prior knowledge will be important. I hope that the students future learning could be enhanced by being able to watch demonstrations back whilst reflecting on their own work.
Hi Toby, Also late. Very thorough. Makes mine look a bit pony. In my defence, I couldn’t access IMPALA via the link (it’s a dodgy site apparently, according to my internet monger) and have had to wing it in the depths of the internet. I particularly like your inclusion of the conversation with an engineer – very useful, and memorable, for students. They love a guest lecturer. I’ve found, also, that the forced remoteness makes it fairly easy to get people involved. Time will tell how that fares when everyone’s back on the day job. Also like your capitalising on your own reflections/mistakes – makes it really human and accessible, and, again, memorable I imagine. Are you at a ‘scripting’ stage yet? How are you finding the timings are coming out? Overall, I think this is excellent, and going to go back through mine now. Reply Reply to comment
It’s great to see you have meaningfully engaged with this exercise. At this “design” stage, it’s important to anticipate the expectations and characteristics of your intended online webcast, beyond the mere technicalities. Therefore, the IMPALA model is a tool to help with these considerations.
Throughout this process, you might have reconsidered and reframed some elements of your implementation. I would suggest keeping track of these changes as you go along, as this iterative process may support your reflection and rationale for the assessment. Also, as usual, it’s all food for thoughts informing your reflective journals.
What have you learned about podcast design from doing or reading this critical evaluation? How and why could this be useful or valuable for you, in your practice?
– Keep it focussed
– Make sure it’s doing what it’s intended to do, and that it’s suitable for your audience
– Break it up with interactivity
– Planning over polish
– Do it Yourself
It occurs to me, the more I read, that producing a podcast is rather like producing an ad campaign – hooray! something I know about! – Know who you’re talking to, say one thing, be aware of what you want their response to be, and above all, think before you draw anything.
What ideas do you have to improve the current podcast design, to address any potential limitations identified in the critical evaluation, and / or to enhance the students’ learning in the future?
– I need to included opportunities for student reflection, actually within the podcast
– Seeking the input of others, which may help integrate into the wider course context even more
What else might be important to consider when evaluating podcast designs, beyond the 10 variables in this IMPALA model?
glad to see I wasn’t the only one doing this today! I liked your write up and it made me think about changing my podcast from audio to video, and how include slides may help, even if it is just repeating what I am already saying Reply Reply to comment
Please find my IMPALA model attached. Last week, when I had gotten to this part of the material, I realized I had more I needed to do to develop my podcasts before I could continue with the week’s work. I ended up researching, writing, and recording the podcasts before coming back and filling out this form.
I found the information on the IMPALA model interesting, but my opinion is that, if you stick to what we have already learned from this course, there isn’t much new you can learn from them. For example, the idea of staying on point has been something that has been driven into us since the beginning: make sure your lessons, assessments, feedback, engagement, etc., all align with each other and your learning outcomes. If you do this with your podcasts as well, you have hit many of the issues discussed in the IMPALA model. Similarly, communicate in an engaging manner, otherwise you will lose your students.
In this respect, I am VERY happy, as it means there are a few key themes in teaching, and as long as you apply them to all aspects of your module, you will be successful!!
I think the best way these podcasts can be improved is in relation to my speaking, pace, etc. I hate the way I sound on the recordings (I don’t ilke the way my voice sounds in general, and feel awkward listening to it), and am always critical of my pace, Week 4 IMPALA evaluation.docx Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Anna Dovey
What have you learned about podcast design from doing or reading this critical evaluation? How and why could this be useful or valuable for you, in your practice?
It’s more complicated than I at first thought – I realised I need to incorporate instructions to students regarding how the whole thing will work in relation to the live session.
If this was intended for a larger group, I’d consider the use of things like smaller break-out groups for dicsussion before the live session etc.
What ideas do you have to improve the current podcast design, to address any potential limitations identified in the critical evaluation, and / or to enhance the students’ learning in the future?
None at this point.
What else might be important to consider when evaluating podcast designs, beyond the 10 variables in this IMPALA model?
Hi All, I’m late with sharing(!) this but here is my IMPALA Model Form…
This has been an incredibly informative method for the evaluation of this task. The themes of the model are convergent with designing a more meaningful and valuable outcome based on a higher level of critically reflective informed consideration. The process has forced me to consider details I would have otherwise overlooked. It reminded to be student-centred, but also in relation to principles of assessment, which we covered in the assessment 2 task, there are practicability challenges in addressing the design of this task and the associated podcast. There has to be a balance in terms of staff/course ambition for the level of learning in the activity and an expectation of students engagement and assumed prior knowledge, and a desire to be responsive and agile of these considerations, building on prior knowledge with a constructionism approach and scaffolding of learning.Nick Raven – Critical evaluation of podcast design using IMPALA model.docx
To what extent do you think you have achieved each of the learning outcomes for Week 4? If you think there is room for you to achieve these more fully, how could you do that? I’ve learnt a lot more about FC, their efficacy and popularity with students. I’ve been somewhat distracted the past few weeks, so I’ve not been able to focus as much as I would like on this course. Given how many students now have to balance study with work and have far greater fiscal demands than when I was at Uni, this is likely to be an issue for some students too. AHHH – students from disadvantaged backgrounds are further disadvantaged by the distraction of money worries that do not bother students funded by the bank of Mum & Dad. This more than likely impacts performance in some cases. Has there been any research on this?
What have you learned this week regarding the use of podcasting and online elements of a flipped classroom approach to support student learning? To split videos – keep ’em short – try to include as much activity as possible. Ask questions. From previous learning – tell the what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you’ve told them . Tone / type of voice – yes. I recall one lecturer who sounded like Mr. Bean in my BA. It was so distracting I don’t think I tool any of his first lecture on board. I’ve also had teachers who droned… (interesting consideration; this is apparently a not uncommon trait of people on the spectrum. Some of who can be exceedingly bright, ergo likely to end up teaching at Uni? Is there any research on this?). Also boring topics – corn laws at A-level; the tacher walked around pulling lout dates he’d hidden around the classroom to wake us up. Empathy with students – recognising when a topic is going to be boring for most.
What does all this suggest about the ways you and your colleagues are currently supporting your students learning, in your own practice and teaching context? What does it suggest that is currently good about this, and about how it could be further developed in the future? Apparently my delivery is good; I’m enthusiastic and I try to use a variety of media to break up lectures. God, how would some of these students have survived the lessons and lectures I’ve had to live through? Perhaps that’s the point – someone somewhere has learnt from that and trying not to repeat those mistakes! So; my delivery is informed by my lived experience of bad teachers, which is why apparently it’s good. Note Sheila’s comment about me; I learn and put my learning into practice, unlike many others (she said). So, yes, what I do is apparently not normal. Umm. Remember Birmingham student’s mid-module reviews; my input was the highlight of their term. I fee sorry for their main lecturer…
How has your understanding of the use of podcasting, ‘flipped classroom’ and / or blended learning approaches changed from doing this week’s topic and activities? Massively changed from zero to a much greater understanding of their advantages (if I personally don’t like podcasts). And this is a point to make; in some of the literature and comments people have been confusing podcasts with videos, which in turn has confused me. Having done my Research Librarian thing and looked it up, there is a general consensus online that the term ‘podcast’ specifically refers to audio only. So there :-).
How did you learn this? The videos
What supported your learning?
What has challenged you?
What has surprised you?
How does this relate to what has been proposed in different sources of scholarship that you have read? Which specific sources and what claims in those does this relate to? Race (yes, it sounds like I’ve just read the one book!) -engaging student’s emotions, which is what the voice does in podcasts.
Note- remember ACM trialing use of audio feedback for assessments. Students loved it. Good for those with SpLD’s. They stated they got a lot more info. via the NVC’s, e.g. tone of voice.
By the end of the learning activities for Week 3, you should aim to be able to:
Identify, share and discuss key aspects important for designing flipped classroom approaches.
Apply developing learning about flipped classrooms and knowledge of EDU720 Assessment 1 documents to produce and evaluate session plans and designs for flipped classroom approaches.
Produce critical reflection on what and how you have learned online this week, identifying potential implications for you and your colleagues’ current and future practice of supporting student learning, in your local teaching contexts.
What got me most excited about the flipped classroom is the flexibility of it. This is twofold: both in the face-to-face teaching environment, but also between these sessions with the learning materials. In between sessions, students can watch pre-recorded lectures at their own pace, rewatch, take notes, watch anywhere anytime. Now that the students have consumed the necessary information, the face-to-face sessions can be more workshop, less lecture.
The second benefit I can see is the way it can be adapted to different learning needs of students. People don’t all learn the same way, and this is especially noticeable in creative courses. In Masters courses, we also expect independent study and thinking from students too, so once they have taken in the supplied material they can get on with delving deeper.
Lastly it can be more varied than traditional methods. With flipped learning, instead of students listening to the same lecturer each session, they are spoilt with learning material from a range of sources in a range of styles. This is clearly more interesting for the learners, but also challenges them to think in a broader way. Reply Reply to comment (2 likes)
What is most important when designing a flipped classroom? Make sure the out-of-class content is suitable for the student’s expected knowledge level. It should be challenging but not baffling and too daunting, as this can put students off. In a Masters level, it should challenge students to engage in independent thinking, not just within the parameters of the material.
Give students some idea of what will be covered in the live session, so that they can come with questions and initial thoughts. When working with visual content, they may want to create mood boards of source material for the session activities. This small bit of preparation will mean that they will be able to personalise the session to their interests and needs.
Thoroughly plan for the live session, but plan for the unexpected. Allow plenty of time for questions and discussions, as hopefully there will be questions!
As I haven’t properly planned for a flipped classroom approach before, I’m sure this list will change over the next few weeks! Reply Reply to comment
Another good idea – Visual content / mood boards – love a mood board, I did my A&F strategy around a mood / concept board a quintessential resource for practising creatives – but basically I think the idea of the prep resulting in the session becoming personalised is very applicable for creative courses where specialisation is often a prerequisite. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Michael Berthaume
Ha! I did a similar thing 😛 For me, I was thinking not about what the three most important things were, overall, but what stuck out the most to me.
I find the differences between the flipped classroom and traditional method daunting, mostly because I am so familiar/comfortable with the traditional method, but like you like the flexibility the flipped classroom provides. Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Katie Welch
Hi Harriet, Moodboards – great. Was flailing around for ways to incentivise engagement (admittedly not given it enough thought). I think sharing something beforehand is such a useful tool. Out of interest, if it was posted prior to a session, would you restrict access to those who hadn’t posted themselves or would you leave it open? I can see both sides of that argument. Reply Reply to comment
I agree, a lot of prep needed beforehand, but if it is a module that is repeated regularly, it could be worthwhile. In last weeks videos I’m sure they suggested sharing other people’s material too, where relevant? Or commissioning recorded guest lectures? The students in my class are watching a guest video lecture that I made nearly two years ago, before I was seriously thinking of a career in teaching! Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Your definitely on it with your ideas: ‘In between sessions, students can watch pre-recorded lectures at their own pace, rewatch, take notes, watch anywhere anytime’. I’ve been thinking hard about recording lectures and content making them succinct and most of all engaging and how many you might need to teach a course where flipped / blended learning constitutes the majority of the structure. I believe it will require a great deal of work and dedication to build the appropriate content.
Hi Harriet, ‘Thoroughly plan for the live session, but plan for the unexpected’ I think is a great approach for a live session but also for flipped learning generally where we’re asking the student/learner to be much more autonomous. Really nice. And I think in terms of enabling a ‘lifelong learner’ this will be really important. Reply Reply to comment
Existing knowledge. What the student /students already knows and understands about this topic so as to make the flipped approach relevant to the individual and the class as a whole. This could be resolved by an up front quiz. One concern I have with flipping is exasperating the knowledge and understanding gaps in the cohort. On first impressions flipping may work wonderfully for the top 10 or 20 % who can just crack on and get it all done, by degrees for the middle cohort and could be a disaster for the slow slightly challenged learners in the lower 20%. If they are left constantly having to re-watch the webinar in the class section of the blended learning element, will they just get further behind?
Aligning the flipped part with the blended / class part of the teaching so that a rhythm can establish itself between the two learning contexts which ultimately should compliment each other, support each other and have direct relevance. Project based learning for the class room, ‘guide by your side’ elements might work well?
Engagement. Making the content stimulating and well delivered. At entry level if the idea is to simply video your lecture and possibly illustrated with slides for example. This seems a great opportunity to both analyse the content for LO’s and objectives, are they well explained? Are the LO’s clear and well articulated? Could it also be seen as a chance to enhance the delivery with post production which in turn might increase engagement and the conveyance of knowledge? But I do appreciate the minute you start getting into editing and improving the videos / webinar’s the time investment goes up hugely. I just have this horrible vision of endless droll lectures delivered to camera and the poor student left pausing and rewinding as they labour through it. This in turn makes my mind go back to the inspiring lectures I have sat in on live, delivered by energising teachers that make an impression and inspire. Would it have been as exciting and dynamic if it was delivered directly to camera on a computer? I doubt it. Bit like watching Glastonbury and being there. I know which one I prefer. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hi Alex, I think you raise a really important point on engagement of all the different learners, and I think it will be something that really challenges us in the task. As far as I understand the concept (I have very little real experience) flipped learning should help to foster engagement across different levels of learner, by way of differentiation and personalisation (see F-L-I-P). And yes, none of us want to watch a ‘droll lecture’! I’ve been looking at TED lectures as a starting point for inspiration… It might be an age thing but I do enjoy watching Glastonbury from the comfort of my sofa! In terms of the experience it can’t compare can it… but in terms of widening participation and inclusivity, BBC at Glastonbury is an pretty good distanced experience! Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
I agree Glastonbury on the BBC is pretty damn good. In my mind I just had live gig v watching on TV – I can live with out the mud and the Glasto toilets. Reply Reply to comment (2 likes)
Your consideration of the term rhythm is so important Alex in delivery and engagement with education… really love it that you identified this as it is so important in many aspects of life and work, but especially for students who may well be operating in a wide range of scenarios through digital platforms. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
-make it more than “just lectures online,” but it is ok to start out that way
-several, shorter videos better than one really long boring one
The first point I found very interesting as, although I was familiar with the idea, I had not heard of people discussing communication in this manner. The idea of leveraging these communication techniques to improve digital learning was an interesting concept to me.
The idea of making the flipped classroom more than “just lectures online” is something that is pretty standard for the improvement of any course, not just the flipped classroom: if all you are doing is lecturing and not tying lessons together, students do not learn as well. It’s a nice reminder, and I think important to keep in mind when thinking about employing the flipped classroom approach. Through reflective practice, you can certainly make it more!
Finally, the last one was not explicitly said, but it was something everyone did, and it makes a lot of sense. I will dedicate more time to 3-6 minute videos than 10+ minute videos, even if I end up watching videos for the same, total amount of time. I think having several shorter videos will help keep the student’s attention. Reply Reply to comment (2 likes)
I hadn’t considered having more than one video, so can definitely see the benefit in this approach, especially if needing to break down a complex issue or addressing several learning outcomes. This may also help address the possible lack of student participation/engagement as remains short and snapping so maintains interest levels.
Hi Rachel – my hope with this is also that if students see they have a 45 minute video to watch, they may not do it because they will feel they need to dedicate a large portion of time to it , but they may be more willing to watch 3 15 minute videos, since they can do it in chunks at different times Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Three excellent points, like Rachel, I like the thought of producing a couple of smaller videos instead of just one long one. This concept is similar to John Medina’s Ten-minute Lectures to keep students engaged and learning in chunks. I have definitely used this approach in my teaching of difficult movement patterns, breaking up the larger segments into smaller more manageable chunks. Breaking larger concepts up into smaller videos for the learners would be similar. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Dario Faniglione
Very good points, especially around the use of lectures (in any delivery mode).
One key and challenging aspect of synchronous vs. asynchronous learning activities is probably around the effective integration of these modalities, witing the overarching session. Have you thought about strategies for these already? (we shall explore this dimension in further details in the coming weeks) Reply Reply to comment (2 likes)
As a student myself, the shorter materials are more interesting to look at, as you will not constantly be checking on the remaining time on the video while studying. I prefer to have short materials than a long and eventual boring materials.
17 Jun 2020 17 Jun at 19:36 This is a really interesting outtake from last week, I’m stealing it! Short videos, rather than long ones, great thinking. Definitely a better approach for a culture full of short attention spans. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Alex Bailey
Absolutely, I agree the more I have thought about the video content / lecture to camera part – short, sweet (engaging) and to the point seems the way forward. I think audio (podcast) has its merits as well, not least for accessibility reasons. I do a fair bit of on- line teaching with my 8 year old son and I use video lessons from the BBC and U.S based programme makers. There is no doubt production value goes along way with engagement and information retention levels.
Hi Micheal, I think your point about ‘chunking’ longer videos into multiple smaller pieces is really important. On our Scriptwriting MA, we mostly try to stick to 3-5 minute videos where feasible. Occasionally it may go up to 10 mins but this really is the upper limit. Anything longer and some students are liable to switch off early, assuming they’ve gotten the key point and the remainder will simply be additional repetition. Others are less likely to watch in the first place because they see it as a bigger time commitment. It does however force us to be quite succinct in the content we present. Dejan Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
for me there are more than three important things to consider:
ensuring that the video/online/webcast learning is not repeated/reiterated in the face to face class component.
ensuring that the combined flipped/blended approach meets the learning outcomes,
ensuring the synchronous and asynchronous components flow and aren’t disjointed
allows for differentiation of class, I love the flexibility of the flipped classroom approach, and believe it would be particularly useful for those who learn at different speeds, so they can go back over the video as much as required, to ensure they learn the content fully. I also like the though of including on-line quizzes to test knowledge, these can be repeated until learning is felt satisfactory.
I think because there are several components to the lesson, it maintains interest level, althugh care must be taken to make sure tasks aren’t too onerous as this may detract from the subject matter as students may not achieve or complete the tasks
Generally I agree with others, that the flexibility of this approach appeals mostly. It will be fun and interesting to see how it goes in “real” and also i’m interested to gain the feedback from the students. Reply Reply to comment
The synchronous and asynchronous activities/discussions are aspects that I had not understood in concept or academic name but I have differentiated and used both forms of communication in my lessons. Both offer the learner and the teacher advantages for spontaneity of thought and collaboration or thoughtful and creative engagement. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Dario Faniglione
Thanks for sharing these points, Rachel. Feedback from learners is a key component of the evaluation process, good you have explicitly highlighted this. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
For me personally that stood out with the flipped classroom approach were:
1. Utilizing the face-to-face time for more learning activities, whether these are demonstrations, physical activities engaging with the new learning skill, a task for the learners to undertake with my visual evaluation and feedback. Being able to use the majority of the class time devoted to these activities will develop the students faster and with more engagement.
2. Evaluate learning and knowledge with meaningful activities prior to the face-to-face class. I would provide a short video with a demonstration of the new learning skill, then provide an opportunity for feedback and evaluation by the students to gain knowledge. A vast majority of my students have prior knowledge and have already developed a Schemata’s. By introducing a new concept via video, students have the opportunity to link knowledge to activities that reinforce new information. The face-to-face provides practice, development with feedback and this helps develop mental models, new Schemata, and this is necessary for expertise.
3. To me, this new model will be just plain fun! Seeing my students learn more, have more time to experiment, evaluate, adjust and retry during the face-to-face class time will increase the engagement of the students as they will see a faster improvement rate. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Three solid points, Suzanne. I agree this seems like loads of fun!
I wonder, if you were starting a course now, in these times of social distance, with a group of beginners who had not developed the necessary schemata, what might you do differently? Getting physical form right is hard, even when you know what you’re doing. I suppose I’m asking, could you do an exclusively online course for your field? Reply Reply to comment
I’m glad you mention the fun aspect Suzanne. I too see it like that – the approach fosters a synchronous session which is more consistently interactive and in which students are active on a task for a higher portion of the running time. This is more engaging for them and for us as tutors. The obvious prerequisite is that everybody does the preliminary asynchronous content study which makes the subsequent session work as planned. This is the pitfall I’m most worried about with my own session! Reply Reply to comment
Nailing differentiation. Knowing who you’ve got, what they know and how you’re going to cater, so that you can ensure that you’re providing enough, varied, resource that can support students at whatever level of engagement they can manage. I wonder how we might work restrictions on tech into this…I have one of these CATT sessions this afternoon on re-jigging modules for online, and the tech issue has already been brought up on our faculty side-chat. And from experience over the last few months, tech gremlins can be completely debilitating for some.
Incentivising pre-class engagement somehow. From past experience I’m nervous about students not engaging independently, which would, in turn, make my F2F sessions lack punch. Perhaps a short multiple choice quiz on the LS, if it’s appropriate to the material. Or I do see great value in these forums – that would tick so many boxes too.
Flexible, active class time. I think the more problems to solve, the better. But I acknowledge the importance of loosening up a bit, and being comfortable with maybe not getting through everything I have planned.
Food for thought, and I agree with much of what you’ve said. mixed ability classrooms certainly present challenges for F2F teaching, and even more so for flipped classrooms. This carries over into your second point about engagement I think- it’s a tricky balance to achieve as flipped classrooms are student led, so you can’t really nominate students to provide answers if they’re not engaging as you might in a “normal” class. Flexibility is indeed key, it’s hard to let go sometimes!
Engagement with pre-session activity is the universal challenge of flipped classroom implementations!
If it helps, I think the choice of learning activities for the online dimension should be relevant to the subject in hand and the learning outcomes of the session (i.e. what do you need your learners to be able to do by the end of the session?), rather than a choice made on ease of engagement solely.
1. Clear instruction and guidance to manage student expectation To support and enhance student autonomy the learning activity must be clearly instructed and clear guidance given. This will help to ensure students are on track, confident and happy.
2. Creating meaningful learning experiences for greater engagement To create a learning culture where activities are drawn from student experience and knowledge scaffolded through modular tasks, constructively aligned with the intended learning outcomes and with a feedback dialogue that is maintained for timely feedback between tutor and student and peer to peer.
3. Personalisation and effective differentiation to respond to individual learners Support deeper learning through agile and responsive reflection of individual learners, experience, abilities and learning styles. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
managing expectation is an excellent point. Flipped learning is new to many students and they won’t know what to expect from the activities. I think you’re right that clear guidance is crucial to this. For your remaining points, I think the common theme is that the activities should be student-led, in a sense? This is certainly a key feature of flipped classrooms for me.
On the personalisation and reflection point, have you thought about how this translates in terms of “resources” (i.e. time) needed? How would this be manageable in your context? Reply Reply to comment
Hi Dario Thanks for this. I think this could be a very difficult thing to achieve, but I would hope, although I have very little experience, the flipped class can support this, in terms of (time) resources, by providing more time in class to respond to individual needs. It does depend on the level of student engagement in the online activity… Practically, a MCQ seems to be a simple way of monitoring student abilities/understanding of a asynchronous online ‘spark’ activity. This may not directly translate to my discipline but could be easily replicated in terms of students being asked to demonstrate something about what they have just read or watched – demonstrate the use of type sizes to create hierarchy, for example. This task could then be assessed relatively quickly, before the in class session to, at best (more time), tailor support for particular learners, or at worst (less time), highlight those students who need more attention and support. Reply Reply to comment
Hi Nick Very concisely put. My future in teaching may well be centred around supporting a small cohort of students more in a mentoring capacity than teaching in the traditional sense – guiding students through their own learning journey and setting them for a life time of self motivated learning. This is something I am researching. A new approach to knowledge transfer in the creatives. So your points / approach make perfect sense to me particularly 2 & 3 – thank you. Alex Reply Reply to comment
For me, I think there are three main issues that are particularly germane to my students, especially in the current situation. I’ll begin with the considerations rather than the key guiding principles as that seems like the logical approach to me.
Firstly, my students are currently isolated and studying at home alone. Informal feedback and SurveyMonkey results suggest that they miss the face to face engagement not only with me, but also their peers. Secondly, because of this situation, they can feel adrift if not properly scaffolded. Third and perhaps most importantly, they are all reporting low levels of motivation due to this lack of engagement.
In view of this, here are my three key principles: 1) any technology that allows them more personal interaction is good- e.g. video conferencing rather than forum posts. 2) the set-up materials, the prep, should be staged and scaffolded while retaining a degree of autonomy for the stronger students. This is perhaps the greatest challenge. 3) the prep and the flipped classroom activities should be designed to be as engaging as possible in order to regain student motivation. I think this is best achieved by mimicking the face-to-face classroom environment as closely as possible. Support could be provided by asking students to dress up for their video conference, perhaps wear a suit and tie or nice dress- many of them have conferenced in their pajamas before now, and it seems to me that this small detail, among others, does not encourage a rigorous attitude to the tasks… Reply Reply to comment
Very good points here. Just a word of warning around ” mimicking the face-to-face classroom environment as closely as possible”. While your intentions and motivations are very-well articulated and formed, I think that there might be a danger to constrain yourself to what you already do (from a curriculum design perspective). A flipped-classroom implementation could give the change to rethink certain elements of your session structure, and by definition, will allow for more meaningful interactions during synchronous sessions. I like the idea of “formalizing” conferences. Let us know how that goes and if it brings the expected results. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
– Alignment of activities towards the assessment and learning outcomes. I can image big issues with engagement if this isn’t the case and if students can’t understand or piece together why something might be relevant. This is also linked to the theories of scaffolded learning. To achieve this is seems that personally I might find it easiest to design the assessment first based on the learning outcomes and then work backwards to make sure everything is pointing towards it.
– Really getting to the core of what is happening in my current teaching activities in terms of communication, dialogue and learning and translating these components into activities that can take place on-line if appropriate (eg is it technical, skills based, craft, pastoral support, clarifications etc) I found last week’s reading very helpful in terms of thinking about this. It seems like there could be a danger of just trying to replicate like for like but using technology. I can see that this wouldn’t work well for lots of reasons (let alone my own attention span!) and would not take advantages of all the benefits of blended learning
– My third watch point I think is to be realistic about what I can create, especially when working at home. Try to balance this with found content to both broaden the conversation and reducing time spent generating lots of new content. It seems like considering carefully the best use of self generated content and live sessions as part of a bigger picture will be really important as well as involving other voices, experts, makers etc. We would normally aim for this when teaching and I feel it is an important element not to loose. lots of opportunities inviting people who wouldn’t be able to visit in person (especially to a remote corner of Cornwall!)
I’ve probably cheated a bit there by rolling few things together. So in summary…. engagement, exchanges and a bit of experimentation (or anything else beginning with ‘e’) Reply Reply to comment (2 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Dejan Levi
1. Design the asynchronous content to maximize chances students will do the independent study
This is about avoiding the obvious pitfall where students don’t prepare and the synchronous session has to revert to content-dissemination. To avoid this I think the asynchronous resource needs to be very practicable for students (e.g. not too demanding time-wise, easily-accessible even for those with lower tech competence etc) and tightly aligned with module LOs and assignments.
2. Produce resources with a decent production standard and well-organised content
I’ve seen some resources where tutors turn on a microphone and improvise their content delivery, or others with very poor visual layouts or audio quality. All in all, I think the ‘rough’ finish sends the wrong message to students and decreases engagement. Avoiding this is important, while still remaining realistic/practicable re: tutor time.
3. Prioritize accessibility over differentiation
Perhaps a false dichotomy, but I think the differentiation will happen in the synchronous session. For the asynchronous component, it’s instead vital that nobody is left behind by the level/complexity. I see the initial resource as a foundation which establishes basics, and so the level should be very accessible to all. Reply Reply to comment
Very much agree with your point 2 – poor delivery of content is such a negative for quality learning, these days I feel students have a relatively high expectation for delivery especially digital interfaces. Reply Reply to comment
1. Aligning the course objectives, content, structure and timing of the online resources towards assessment and LOs is vital, especially in terms of engaging as many of the students as possible. Here the notion of adaptability for a broad range of abilities and learning styles should be built in to the structure and objectives. For instance Critical Studies in fine art — which is one of the more structured areas of practice — a strong emphasis on ‘assessment drives learning’ capacities is key. Also, here, there would need to be direct chronology of resources and lectures by artists that scope out the potential for fine art students’ creative approaches to submitting a piece of writing. Here a good mix of synchronous and asynchronous material and events can be provided by staff and external artists and practitioners. This would provide plenty of opportunity for group and peer discourse and own-time research in response to available material. Clarity in terms of timing of events, with a practicable rhythm to where and when students are expected to engage with specific material in specific ways.1.
2.Ensuring that online and flipped classroom T&L is achievable and relevant, and genuinely attends to constructive capacities that give students scope to be creative through clearly defined but flexible activities.
3. I feel before any flipped classroom programme there needs to be a group session that emphasises a social (collaborative) space so students can identify with tutor/ tutors and their peers… especially if there’s a new group being established. This establishes a safe space for feedback and creative development. Reply Reply to comment
When I design a lesson or course I must take into consideration whether the lesson will be effective, how well the learners will achieve the learning outcomes of the course. I need to consider how to bridge the isolation gap of online learning choosing activities or learning styles that keep the learners wanting more. To consider and research a range of tools that can benefit the learners for them to achieve their desired goals. The following are questions I would model my lessons around:
How many learners will be in the class at one time?
At which level the learners had already been exposed to English as a Second Language?
What entry level have the students been exposed to?
Ask the students questions about themselves?
Lastly to consider the disability if any of the learners? (Stein & Graham, 2013), Chapter 3, pg. 51.
When Stein & Graham write ‘Engaging Heart and Mind in ‘Any’ training that does not include the emotions, mind and body is incomplete; knowledge fades without feeling. I have always been a big believer in emotion when learning as this is how I learn so when I teach my students I create a lively and thought to provoke environment grounded in thousands of years of Chinese cultural beliefs. I find it extremely difficult to learn without emotion how others do it I will never understand. The more upbeat the learning environment is the better I learn. I believe that an emotionally balanced environment is suitable for many learners especially second language learners. I could say that the single most important part of my teaching in China is to reach the learners through emotion and if I had not realized that early on I would have been dead in the water (Stein & Graham, 2013). Chapter 3.2, pg. 53. Elizabeth defines it more as a product rather than an equation because she says that it will not occur (the learning) if either element is missing. (Elizabeth F. Barkley)
Efficiency—refers to the resources (teacher/student time, effort, money, etc.) invested in the development and implementation of instructional activity. (Stein & Graham, 2013), Chapter 3, pg. 51.
Race also notes how vital emotions are to effective engagement – if it’s not ‘fun’ it’s less likely to be recalled. However there’s the issue of learning and applying self-discipline to tasks that aren’t fun… Reply Reply to comment
Firstly I would say Engagement. This came up in a few conversation lately about the coming year and in most planning sessions. How do we make our online content engaging so that students are retaining that learning and can bring it to face to face sessions? Especially important when students are learning from home where the environment is full of comfortable distractions.
Next I would have to say the we need to have a good understanding of students existing knowledge. I feel this is quite important for the modules I teach into as they are mostly MA modules where generally students are transferring from another sector or industry and need to not only get foundation knowledge but also be raised to MA level practitioners.
Thirdly, I think it’s worth analysing what you’re going to put online and see whether you’re essentially just setting students homework watching to do on there own time. Maybe this also falls in with engagement a bit but my intention is that it’s important to diversify your online delivery with meaningful activities and content. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Chris Esh
1) Independent learning – the use of tasks in the flipped classroom approach really encourages the student to learn about the subject area prior to the session itself, they come to the session more informed and hopefully a better understanding of the subject and the area around the subject if the task related reading lead them to read around the subject area to find the answers they were looking for.
2) Greater in class environment – although not having carried out this approach yet i feel it will create a better environment within the class. In my experience, as teacher and student, a lecture is not a nice environment to invite students to discuss/question the content. With this approach and more informed students the teacher is able to create an environment where discussion and questions become the norm, the students are more comfortable to do this within each session and the more they start to question intuitively etc the more they will learn.
3) The likelihood of learning what isn’t being assessed – this approach if used in all teaching sessions throughout a module engages students in learning the content from each session, not all content in a module is assessed and as it is widely accepted that people generally learn the things they are likely to be assessed on this approach somewhat negates this from happening. Essentially the tasks and discussions act as an assessment task, if they do not do the work they are not going to be able to participate in the session and if called upon to contribute will not be able to do so, hopefully acting as a strong enough incentive to complete the learning. Reply Reply to comment
Interesting point 3 there. In effect the f2f sessions are an informal form of assesment – if a student hasn’t engaged with the online element, they are left out of / find it harder to engage with the f2f session and there could be an element of shame in front of their classmates (if it motivates them, fine). Using social learning as a motivating factor. Hmm. Reply Reply to comment
“What, for you personally, stands out as the three key things most important to remember when designing a flipped classroom approach, and why are these important?”
– Consider whether students have worked with flipped classrooms before, and if not, explain to them very, very clearly what it is, the benefits to them and the expectations of them. This may help with engagement, especially if students will end up being left out of activities in the f2f session if they have not completed the online, asynchronous elements as describe in some of the previous videos (gives them some motivation – no-one likes being left out! Buuut, would that put them off from attending f2f?)
– Consider inclusivity and accessibility. For example, assessment 1 = design a podcast. As a hearing impaired person who lip reads a fair bit, I’m not wild about podcasts personally and I doubt I’m the only one. Possible options could be to support that with a text script, or a video so students could choose how they consume the information – listen on the bus or watch at home (is there any software that will record both and split out the audio?).
– Constructive alignment – the online element and live element need to be closely aligned and linked, giving students motivation to complete the online element.
I’m concerned about the comments about student’s attention spans. Are they getting shorter because we are catering to reducing attention spans or for other reasons? Isn’t being able to concentrate for longer than 5 mins part of being a life-long learner?
So learning about flipped classrooms was interesting (Week 2). I’ll admit I was a little resistant (mostly around concerns that the students wouldn’t engage), but I’ve come to see the benefits to a much wider range of student than perhaps can be reached traditionally.
This week’s tasks was designing a flipped classroom. This was confusing as I would normally do something around what I did at ACM, but that is no longer the case – I’m not restricted by that anymore. I am so immensely grateful to the other students for volunteering to be my ‘students’ for this exercise! It puts me in a position to offer them a choice; HR the Falmouth way (would be of practical use to them) or on a topic I’m passionate about that might be a bit more fun :-). Esh made some good points, but as I don’t have access to a VLE that limits the scope to an extent.
I have additionally learnt I really, REALLY don’t like podcasts. Same as I never liked radio programmes. Fine for listening to something light on the way to work in the car, not for taking in potentially ‘heavy; information; this is possibly due to my lip-reading. It’s almost physically uncomfortable if I can’t see someone’s mouth when they’re talking (I’d be intrigued to know if other hearing impaired folks react similarly).
To what extent do you think you have achieved each of the learning outcomes for Week 3? If you think there is room for you to achieve these more fully, what could you do to achieve that? I believe I’ve met all the LO’s.
What have you learned this week regarding the use of webcasting and flipped classroom approaches to support student learning? I’ve learnt quite a lot – they’re not as hard to put together as I thought, they potentially support a greater range of students than F2F and improve accessibility .
What does all this suggest about the ways you and your colleagues are currently supporting your students’ learning, in your own practice and teaching context? What is good about these, and how could they be further developed in the future? I’d definitely use these approaches more in the future as I believe they could better support student learning. It looks like many of my PGCHE colleagues are already using these to varying degrees – perhaps not always knowingly – but there are limitations as to what subjects and skill sets they can be used to impart. At ACM I know just before I was furloughed some of the FE tutors were doing brilliantly in delivering online sessions and encouraging students to collaborate online too, but couldn’t comment on HE.
How has your understanding of the use of webcasting,flipped classroom and / or blended learning approaches changed from doing this week’s topic and activities? It’s improved and expanded. I am more willing to experiment with it myself, now I am more aware of the potential benefits to students.
How did you learn this? Via reading other’s comments on the forum and reading/ watching the videos
What supported your learning?
What has challenged you?
What has surprised you?
How does this relate to what has been proposed in the different sources of scholarship you have read? Which specific sources and what claims in those does this relate to?
Discuss
When you have completed the activity on the previous page, please share your initial draft EDU720 FC Session Planning Form as an attachment to a forum post here. You can also add further notes in the post.
Read and give peer feedback on at least two of your colleagues’ FC Session Planning Forms, to help them develop their plans for their flipped classroom approach, and to help with your own learning. Consider the following questions:
What do you think is good about their FC Session Planning Forms and proposed plans for their flipped classroom approach, and why?
Are there any areas in their planning that they could consider and develop further? How could they do that? Why do you think it would be useful for them to do so? Do you have more ideas that might be useful for them to consider?
Is there any learning from your weekly reading of pedagogical scholarship that applies to what they have proposed in their plans (in terms of what is strong about their plan, and what can be further developed)? Please also note down the source references.
Attached is my flipped classroom plan for a session on the basics of layout and typography. This will be held halfway through the first module of their MA, and will help them gain some basic skills that will be used throughout the rest of the course and beyond. As a lot of of the students have little or no training or skills in editorial design, this will be quite new to them all. They will need to produce a designed pdf of their module journal at the end of the term for assessment, so this will be aimed at getting them thinking about this ahead of time. I think the design for the live session still needs refinement, it needs to be interactive and useful – I want the students to work in groups. It makes sense to give them the materials needed for the exercise so that they just have to focus on the act of laying out and considering what fonts would be most suitable for the subject matter, but what themes should I pick for these exercises? Hmm.Flipped Classroom Session Plan – Type+Layout.pdf Reply Reply to comment
I see you say your students have little or no previous training or skills and that you will introduce the flipped classroom in the #middle of the first module. For my own teaching I was considering doing the flipped classroom as an introduction to each lesson. Perhaps it would be too often, what do you think? Reply Reply to comment
Hi Angela, I think that does make sense, do you mean topic when you say lesson? The module I am focussing on has a lot of different themes throughout, the skills that they will learn with the session I am planning will hopefully benefit their general practice but most importantly make them able to design their end of module journal, where they will bring their learnings from the module together in one beautifully laid out pdf. Reply Reply to comment
I mean session. Perhaps a weekly introduction to what will be required for that week? For language sessions the most important part is the speaking. In terms of speaking they often forget the words and how to pronounce them. I was thinking that perhaps I could introduce the weeks vocabulary and the pronunciation in a mini video with some instructions for the week. What do you think? Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Toby Carr
Hi Harriet, I’m catching up, enjoyed reading your plan. I was wondering if it could help the collaborative task if students in the group had different roles in order to give them a ‘mode’ of collaboration. Not sure how this would pan out in your context but it could give them a structure within which to interact? Reply Reply to comment
Hi Harriet – It looks like a well-thought-out activity! I was wondering while doing my form as well, but I was unsure how long the in-class session should be, and whether it should be idealized (e.g., if I was giving this as a module, this is what I would do) vs. reflective of the assignment (e.g., I would normally teach to a class of 40 in person, but this is to a pair of students virtually). Reply Reply to comment
Attached is my lesson plan for the flipped classroom. It is not part of a module/course I am teaching now, but one I would like to teach in the future (as an anthropologist and engineer, it is my career goal to create a field that integrates the two of them, and I imagine this being part of the introduction module for the course).
I assume the students have a basic understanding of engineering and anthropology (perhaps they took an introduction module on each during S1, and this is now S2), and that they are beginning to tie these two subject areas together and see how interdisciplinary research can be used to properly address problems that cannot be addressed in the ivory towers of academia.PGCHE M2 FC Session Planning Form.doc Reply Reply to comment
I like your approach especially with the option of students to brainstorm about one of the news stories/SDGs, and how it can be addressed.
You mentioned that they will produce a brainstorm “outline” of their semester project, will you give them a guide for that or is it going to be looked at in class? Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hi Stanley – I wasn’t planning on providing a guide, but that’s a good point. Maybe I’ll show some examples as options for something they could do. Reply Reply to comment
I think your plan is well thought out and realistic, and you’ve gone into a huge amount of detail, which I think my planning could do with a little more of, actually. I like how active you require the students to be. I wonder how you might make sure that they’re getting the most out of your materials – how can you make sure they are genuinely ‘thinking’ about something e.g. the world’s problems, and not just skipping through to the next stage, because of time/motivation? Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hi Katie – haha I’m not sure I could even do that now! I teaching engineering, and engineers hate to read. Most students don’t do any reading, even when assigned, so I guess I would take it as a victory if they are doing anything outside of class time?? Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hi Michael, I’m catching up a bit, sounds really interesting. I ran a session with our architecture student looking at the UNSDG’s asking them to consider which areas they could have most impact on in which they concluded that they all apply to everything! I wondered if you might need to allocate goals to the groups to get them to focus and also as a plan B if they haven’t done the exercises before class Reply Reply to comment
please see attached draft form of my flipped classroom session plan. this makes up one session out of 8 anatomical systems we discuss throughout the module.
I am aware that their will be lots of learning for both the students and myself when doing these sessions and therefore I envisage I may be tweaking this session plan several times before the actual session.
– I liked your modes of formative assessment, in which you place value on attendance as well as contribution, and how you use this to offer support to the students who aren’t quite getting it.
– I also like how you’ve incorporated feedback into the activity, having already gotten them to agree.
– Good idea to include some discussion of next steps/expectation in the webcast itself.
– I think making time for reflection on the online component at the beginning of the F2F session is important too. I wonder if this affects their eventual feedback?
Some points for development:
– Perhaps consider linking out to other resources that you’ve curated to give another dimension to the information. I see from your differentiation that the students all have a base knowledge of the urinary system but could it be worth putting in a very brief overview, which might even break the ice? such as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Z-Lt58H0s (Links to an external site.)
That might be completely tonally off, so I apologise! Regardless, you might save production time by identifying a good quality resource that already exists.
– Do you need to provide students with any information at all about diseases prior to the F2F session?
– Can your outcome verbs be stronger? In particular, your second outcome might benefit from some clarification on how they might show they understand the mechanics.
Thank you Katie very helpful, love the video very funny, this might even work at the end of the face to face session to draw it all together and end on a fun note, re use of a good quality resource that already exists – this is also a good idea for the future, but obviously for this task I will be developing my own session/webcast Yes I agree I will re-think my outcomes Thank you for the feedback Reply Reply to comment
Your session looks good- well thought-out and quite comprehensive. I have a couple of areas I’m curious about though. Firstly, your aims and learning outcomes are almost identical- there’s going to be crossover I suppose, but how are the aims of the flipped classroom different from F2F teaching? Another thing you’re doing- which I’m guilty of myself- is that your timings look really tight- you’re going to have to really hope that there are no technical issues and that the students are completely engaged! I try to work in a bit of wiggle room myself nowadays.
Thanks Mia, I totally agree, I do need to factor in a bit of wriggle room. Thanks for feedback, this is definitely a new and exciting challenge. Rachel Reply Reply to comment
Attached is a plan for Week 1 of a Campaign Creation module for a BA in Creative Advertising. Perfect timing, as I’m having to redesign this module as blended as we speak. Definitely helps having a real-world project, and having a solid knowledge of how the module currently runs.
The assessment submission for this module is a portfolio of 4 campaigns, for which they are given briefs. Part of their grade relates to a ‘journalling’ aspect of their work, in which they need to show their work in development, other avenues that they’ve explored, and then justify why they have/haven’t pursued a route. This plan is getting them to develop a skill in critiquing their own work according to common principles, which should help them hit the ground running when in an industry setting…I definitely have to caveat these ‘rules’ with the old ‘rules are made to be broken’ though.
Wow! that’s a lot for them to learn for one class. I may be overwhelmed due to a complete lack of understanding of marketing etc but there seems to be quite a large quantity of quality understanding and expectation during this one class? For me, I would consider breaking it up a bit more, using the posts of critical thoughts of other campaigns to form the discussion in the class. Asking to ‘present’ their chosen top 3 campaigns might be quite daunting and use up quite a bit of time. Using the face to face class time for pure discussion between smaller groups may cultivate a deeper discussion and critical evaluation. You could ‘pop in’ to groups and lead deeper thoughts with your own input and questions. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes) Collapse Sub discussion Dejan Levi
This looks really good Katie. I think your differentiation points are simple but effective (seeing them actually helped me recognize mine need a re-write!)
One thing I wasn’t sure about was the reference to both a podcast and a video. Are you planning on using two resources? If so, I think the session plan could make it clearer how the two relate and the specific role of each. Is the video a pre-existing one? Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
I agree with the others , very comprehensive session plan, I worry that this may be a lot to achieve in this session, and also how the students will “demonstrate deepening awareness” in this session (maybe this will be achieved over time instead). Also have you considered how you will monitor and support/control the large group of “rowdy” students, instead of each student presenting to the whole group, have you considered splitting the group into smaller sets, so that the presentation is to a smaller number, this may help with confidence for those students with recognised learning difficulties, or those who are just less able to speak in large groups. I note you state the group are familiar with each other and relaxed, so these potential issues may have been addressed/overcome in previous sessions.
Hi Katie The session appears very well planned with the learning activities well aligned with the LO’s. I wonder if a quiz might be a fun and proactive way (bearing in mind the engaging subject) to establish recognition of the features that make it a campaign? Alex Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Here is my flipped classroom plan for a class of beginners.
Being that prior to the current Covid-19 era, I never engaged my class with such approach, however with the constant teaching online in todays environment, I see the flipped classroom as an added advantage for my students.
I expect that it will likely be a bit more challenging for a new group, mainly because they will likely not be able to understand the importance of self study, as beginners, however, with an engaging approach as I just designed, I hope to engage them and make them actively involve.
Hi Stan, I thought your proposed session with two videos’ teaching the two concepts makes a lot of sense. Introducing two big areas, introduction to a franchise concept and then the law requirements and possible pitfalls could be quite a daunting undertaking. Splitting the class into two smaller groups works very well in this scenario, I would also suggest since this in the introduction class, that one group focuses on the franchise aspect and the other group on the law implications. Then each group provides a summary to each other. this way in the first class, they are being introduced to both topics but focusing on one for discussion. For a follow-up assignment they would reflect on both topics. This would provide you with ample assessment on how well each group gained knowledge. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Attached is my revised session plan for a flipped classroom.
Similar to my micro-teach session, I have utilized a session of a full bunker lesson. The flipped class would apply the flipped approach providing me, the teacher more time to evaluate, adjust, teach the students and provide them more time to gain expert understanding and knowledge. PGCHE Session Planning Form – Suzanne Week 3.doc Reply Reply to comment
Hi Suzanne, I like that your synchronous session has lots of scope for students to practice the skill you are targeting. It feels like most of the session will see them in an active role (which is good for engagement) and also give you lots of opportunity to provide formative feedback. One thing I wasn’t clear on was the use of a video resource, will this be a clip from the recording of the session you ran in last semester? If so, you could perhaps think about adding new content to it while re-purposing it here (e.g. adding a voiceover commentary perhaps, freezing the image mid-swing and talking through key points etc, slow-motion replays etc) Hope that helps! All the best Reply Reply to comment
I’ve now decided to do a completely new session for this assignment, unrelated to the micro-teach task from last semester.
The focus will be on screenplay page formatting conventions, as this will tie in closely with what the students will be doing at that point in the term.
I find your area absolutely fascinating, but there’s a bit of metalanguage in there that I don’t follow 😉 I really like how you’ve included a bit of latitude in your timings, and have actively tried to accommodate different learner demographics (non-native speakers, students doing a refresher, etc.). One area I’m a little fuzzy on though is how you’re relating this session to the assessment- perhaps that could be a little clearer? I also find it’s quite useful to relate the learning outcomes explicitly to assessment at the start of the session- it helps with motivation and engagement.
This version of FC session plan came about from the module evaluation feedback I am doing this week as we are wrapping up on Week 17 this week (astonishing long semester). For this week’s thoughts I manage to work from 27 responses out of 35 students, as the survey will be closed by Sunday, in two days time. What came apparent to me from the survey is the less than ideal interactions during this pandemic. Other issues addressing on practical side of learning two new software, weekly feedback on forum posts and module structure have been mentioned, however I am focussing on the ‘interactions’ part for this assignment.
I intend to do a hybrid face-to-face class and virtual class, synchronously. Unfortunately unless I can find a better classroom setup than the university where I currently live (Uni of Nottingham China, which already has the setup for hybrid classes since May), there is a trade-off. Some of my Y4 international students who have been in the country this whole time (I teach this module in another university) will not be able to get into the campus. I am improvising with getting help from my Nottingham China’s preliminary year architecture students instead as they are already on campus.
I hope this will give me a chance to practice for future purpose when online learning is still our core mean to teach, addressing the interactivity issue I mentioned above.
The plan is very rough and details are still in big question mark (for example, what kind of format of screencast, kinds of static or dynamic content work best for the specific learning units, etc). I combined thoughts from last week’s activity (related to EDU710-Assignment 1 micro-teach session) with Week 5 material of the module I teach. I chose this particular week because it is the most informative topic for the preliminary year students. Mia PGCHE M2 FC Session Planning Form.pdf Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Nick Raven
Hi everyone, here’s my plan attached. It’s very draft at this stage and still considering lots of things. Differentiation is a key element of this and as such is quite vague at this stage… I know what I what to achieve but how I go about doing that I’m currently unsure of… Also unsure of the podcast/content element(s)… Any feedback most welcome!Nick Raven — PGCHE M2 FC Session Planning Form [Draft].doc Reply Reply to comment
Hi Nick, One thing you said was ‘I don’t want to use boring outdated typography… what to do?’. Learning boring material can be turned into a game and made fun. I watched a video the other day and they said that when doing flipped classrooms this is when the teacher can become very creative. Reply Reply to comment
Attached is my draft flipped class room session plan.
That I know is over ambitious, but I needed to get my head around the concept of the flipped class room idea and how it might work in my context of teaching (very well in fact) so then I could focus in on individual component parts. I needed to grasp the jigsaw as a whole. By doing this it has highlighted the importance of the first element the ‘spark’ I believe it is referred to if I understood the five step framework that my Falmouth teaching peers where discussing at the the end of the webinar on Friday? Inadvertently it looks like my draft might have followed the Falmouth 5 step frame work (roughly – I’ll stand corrected on that one).
Dear Alexander, I read through your session planning a few times and I really couldn’t find anything wrong. It does however look like a lot of fun! If I wanted to take up photography I would definitely join your class. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
This is a draft copy of my flipped classroom plan. I ran with this plan with a student the other night and I feel it worked brilliantly. However, I am still awaiting the homework and session feedback which I will attach later. The session is broken up into 3 parts. The first part is the flipped classroom, the second part is the e-F2F and the third part is the Homework. 2 Videos are provided prior to the session which frees up at least 10 minutes of session time. The benefits I experienced from the Flipped classroom where that the student skills where brushed up prior to the lesson. Her confidence levels improved and during the middle of the lesson she showed an even bigger improvement with adding in some of her own ideas and personality to the lesson. At the end of the lesson during the discussion time the student presented a more controversial view which showed me that her learning was deep and meaningful. I found that the students learning prior to the session and with the help of the videos had created a shift in the learning paradigm. PGCHE Session Planning Form – Flipped Classroom – Draft.doc Reply Reply to comment Collapse Sub discussion Dario Faniglione
Thanks for sharing your plans and for providing feedback to each other work. This is exactly what we would like to see!
Having looked at the plans posted to date, please find here some general comments and suggestions. As usual, the points made below might or might not apply directly to your work, but these might be useful feedback points for further refinement and reflection.
Webcast
Good to see that some of you have stated timing for each topic/section of the webcast. This will greatly help with the recording and it will provide clearer navigation to learners. If you realise that your recording will be longer than 10 min, please consider split the webcast into smaller components/chapters. This will increase usability by facilitating learners’ navigation and access to specific sections. Good to see that you are already thinking about more “interactive” components of the webcasts, such as suggesting a pause for reflection, further readings, or a brief recap of take-away points. Some of you are also including instructions for the next steps. There are pros and cons in including specific instructions in a recording: while it’s great to be specific and provide clear directions, on the other hand, the webcast will be “locked” to a particular session, with little scope it to be repurposed. For the EDU720 assessment, you are free to use whichever approach you feel appropriate, this is meant to be just a reminder to consider the pros and cons of the choices you might (not always consciously) make.
Face-to-face/synchronous session
Good to see a variety of learning activities been planed, even within the “constraints” of a fully-online synchronous session. In your plans, I have often noticed links between the webcast content and the learning activities od the face-to-face session. Some of you have made these really explicit, by planning an introductory student feedback activity (e.g. share key points/views, Q&A sessions, etc.). Week 5 will offer more insights and ideas around this integration. As you know, it’s best practice not to repeat the content of the webcast in the synchronous session, by working on the assumption that your learners have already engaged with the material. I have found a “review of webcast/video” activity in some of your plans: it might be a good idea to clarify (to yourselves first of all) what this means, and how you will go about it. At this stage, you might not have an exact sequence of learning activities in mind for the face-to-face/synchronous session. If that’s the case, it would be a good idea to use what others have produced to get inspired and add further details to your plan.
Asynchronous activity (in between webcast and synchronous session
Good to see that most of you are including an asynchronous activity to “bridge” the webcast and the synchronous session. There have been different approaches here, and these would work equally well, depending on the content of the session and the subject area. Some of you are using these activities as reinforcement and testing for knowledge acquisition (the webcast). Others are asking learners to further investigate session topics or collate materials/resources to be used in the synchronous/face-to-face session. Others are using discursive activities (e.g. discussion forums) to commence peer-dialog and interaction which would then further explored in the synchronous session. As I mentioned earlier, all these strategies are equally valid, and it might be a good idea to start thinking about what would work best for you and your learners, and why you think that’s the case.
Links to assessment
It’s great to see that some of you have been explicitly linking at least some of the learning activities (part of the overall plan) to assessment tasks! As we have stressed a number of times, this is probably one of the best strategies you might implement in order to foster learners’ engagement with your flipped classroom implementation. Revising some of the key concepts explored in EDU710 around assessment strategies might be useful.
Session plan practical advice
Please find here some suggestions for further refining your flipped classroom sessions plans, based on what I have seen posted so far. The following might or might apply to you individually.
If you list a particular tool/resource in the Resources section, it would be good to see this explicitly used or mentioned in the plan’s timeline (either in the Content & lecturer Activity or in age Student Activity);
In the Student Activity column, try to be specific around what your learners would be actually doing (rather than only mentioning a concept/topic to explore). This will greatly help with your planning and timing.
Following from the previous point, you might know what you need your learners to do (e.g. “reflect on …”), but you might not know exactly which tool you will be using. This is fine at this stage, although it would be good to start looking at tools and specific activities before piloting your implementation (e.g. is this a written reflection? Do you use group journals/blogs with comments on each other entries/posts? etc.)
If you ideal flipped-classroom implantation spams across several hours or days (as I have seen in at least one session plan), while this is great from a curriculum design perspective, you might want to re-think the session for the purpose of the EDU720 module assessment tasks. Please note that one key activity of this module assessment task is: Implement and pilot your flipped classroom approach (i.e. online resource and activity + in-class face-to-face activities), with a group of learners (minimum of 2 learners), and gather feedback on the approach and how effectively it worked from those learners. Therefore, the more complex your flipped classroom plan, the harder it will be to find willing participants to help out with the pilot implementation.
(A minor point on the plan’s format) The session plan will not be directly assessed and it’s an optional appendix, however, it might be useful to be reminded (for future use in practice) that the Learning Outcomes are not the actual activities that learners do throughout the session, but rather “what learners will be able to do/know by the end of the session.
Slowly catching up with the class. If anyone has some time to take a look at this I would greatly appreciate it.
This exercise is planned to be early on in the study block, so the link to assessment will seem a little flimsy however it will become more clear later on in the module. I’m hoping to introduce a topic that most people probably only think of in the context of games: PLAY. This lecture is there to intro some of theory of play and provide students with an idea of how it lives as a tool to be used in advertising campaigns to give people incentive and/or rewards to engage with advertising rather treating people as passive consumers.Joel Ferguson PGCHE Flipped Session Draft.docx Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Hi Joel, enjoyed reading the plan and the idea of PLAY in advertising. It seems like the introductory tasks and case studies would set the students up well. I wonder if the face to face discussion session might become a bit long if you have 10 students and you go round all of them asking all the questions listed. I wondered if this activity could take place on a shared online discussion forum (like this) with some summary comments from you and a short discussion face to face. This could then clear some time in the face to face session to get the students to a engage in an active group activity possible role play? related to PLAY with some quick reflection on links back to the topic? Might over complicate it perhaps but it seems like there could be an opportunity to get them doing something together in the face to face session Reply Reply to comment
Yeh I’m in a very similar position catching up with week 4 over this weekend. I was just working on week 4 a bit and talking about how the discussion didnt feel like it had a distinct role or was tied a particular learning outcome so it needs work. I really like the idea of the discussion being online similar to this. I’ll work on an idea for the face-to-face class, which I agree should be a group activity.
Thanks so much for taking the time to check out my plan and give some feedback! Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Something I didnt include in my plan and possibly should have is that there is a possibility that the 10 students will be working in pairs. The advertising course tries to encourage that students work in creative pairs to have parity with industry standards here in the UK. However I’m not sure if this will be the case for the new year with Covid. I’m hoping it will work out but I just have to see. Reply Reply to comment
A but late but have been trying to sort out my group of learners and think about a session that could be useful to trial in my teaching too. My teaching colleagues have agreed to be my students and we will use it as a way to reflect on how a blended learning model can work when physically making things and working collaboratively. It is intended to be an introductory week to a 4 week module with the tasks feeding into a summative assessment. It looks at building simple frame structures so would actually (literally) be scaffolded…. any thoughts appreciated. I’m catching up with week 4 over the weekend : ) PGCHE M2 FC Session Planning Form-TC.pdf Reply Reply to comment
Forgot to say.. the students would be first asked to make a model of a 3D form using spaghetti and blue tack. Working at 1:20 scale, spaghetti should break into 5 equal parts (roughly 1m) they will then draw and photograph this and share will group. As a group, students will collaborate online to bring ideas together to design a human scale structure from these pieces. This should be communicated in a number of ways. as a model (1:20) in a set of 2D drawings, a 3D drawing and a written description including a list of pieces. These are swapped with another group to build in the live session at 1:1 using garden canes and connectors rather than blue tack and spaghetti…. probably overly complicated! Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
I like how instead of recording one long video you have broken it down into 3 shorter videos. Swapping ideas with another group sounds like it should be quite fun and give students an incentive to make something that will work. I feel like this should be quite a fun exercise. I think the sessions will very neatly meet your LO’s.
With your face-to-face activity it might be worth considering weather, rain would be quite a damper, but more importantly (I could be wrong and maybe you have done something similar before) I think the wind thats been gusting around lately might blow the lightweight structures around quite a bit making the task quite challenging.
Out of interest I see part of the assignment requires us to get feedback from our pilot students. I’m not entirely sure how to go about doing this yet. I was wondereing, have you had any thoughts? Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Thanks Joel, Yes good point re the weather! We built a clifftop cinema last year in November and it was brutal!! I guess a plan B could be to do it indoors in a studio space. I guess in some ways if it is gusty it could get students thinking about fixing things down and bracing! Not sure about the feedback I thought I might have a series of set questions and ask people to write down their thoughts to keep it focussed on useful observations for the assignment possibly followed with a group discussion. Not sure, as you say, needs some thought! Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
Attached is an initial draft of my flipped classroom approach and face to face session.
This is based on the beginning of a module that has been taught, classes in Qatar are off for the summer at the moment so i have considered how i would implement this in the future when classes start again PGCHE M2 FC Session Planning Form.doc Reply Reply to comment
Your podcast – is there anything more you can add to that beyond slides? Maybe some videos of the impact of heat on athletes?
Have you considered how to encourage your students to work in groups of three? Is it possible to create areas for each group on your VLE / a cloud based G-doc to start and write contributions in a forum, where each student’s contribution can be identified, that could then be monitored?
That’s an interesting idea, i would have to look into it but it would certainly allow for a better assessment of who has completed the work etc. Thanks Anna. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
I was going to run it on Harvard Reference, but thought of another idea based on my two degrees in Ancient History, my main academic passion; I ran a vote past my volunteer ‘students’ – I’m doing it on brother-sister marriage in Ancient Egypt.
Being historical and therefore generally text based in nature, live activites in relation to this are limited, so for the live sessions I intend to have a debate about the various theories that seek to explain this practice. This will require critical thinking, the ability to make a reasoned, logical argument and take other sources into consideration.
Really thorough and well thought out session. I wonder how much ‘bang for your buck’ you would get from the monologue type videos (i.e. would they be watched by the students once they had seen the two theoretical videos). I think the Tutankamun family tree would have a greater impact personally.
Is the face to face session purely debate orientated? Will there be other resources, whether it be presentation slides, videos or even a recording of the in class debate, that the students will learn from. This may well be a personal learning preference but such resources could be useful when trying to recall the topic. Students will likely have learnt their element of the topic they have focused upon but other students will bring slightly different views to the class that can be learnt from and it is unlikely that such things will be easily recalled at a later date. Reply Reply to comment (1 likes)
