Well, today's session went smoothly - more smoothly than expected in fact. I set up a Google Presentation and allocated one slide per table to be done within about 20 minutes. The aim was to develop a presentation about the course and studying at this University.
I figured most would be comfortable with Powerpoint, but there are added complications when using Google Drive and multiple users editing at once.
The students seemed to get on with the task fairly easily and the round up session where I showed the whole finished presentation and read it back to them was well received. People actually said they had had fun!
Then I had a tutorial group where one of the student reps relayed a number of concerns about the module.
The first major complaint is that the group is too big. Students don't feel comfortable working in the SCALE UP environment with such large numbers. They feel they don't get enough teaching input or one to one help and the time it takes them to set up the laptops and get started on the task makes them feel they are short of time and missing key information about what they are supposed to be doing. Lots of students apparently mentioned the Macs as big factors in feeling confused, stressed and frustrated, and although I suspect some of the tasks would be challenging whatever the hardware, the unfamiliar interface is definitely adding complexity and confusion.
Interestingly when I asked them about specific sessions and asked if they were useful, the response was fairly positive and those students I spoke to did also feel that although they felt confused at the time, they recognised later that they had picked up some useful knowledge and skills.
The single biggest issue though appears to be navigating through the VLE. They felt that at least one session needs to be devoted to this and they would like help on this built into personal tutorials.
One of the things that emerges for me is the difficulty of trying to develop digital information literacy through just one module. It really makes a nonesense of the idea of "embedding" these skills in the curriculum. Our approach has to be far more holistic. There should indeed be follow up through the tutorial system, but that would mean tutors being comfortable in these areas too and I don't think they would be, 100%.
An alternative could be to provide drop in sessions on a smaller scale, using the technology available in Scale Up, with student mentors and staff on hand.
For me personally, I am disappointed with the feedback so far. I am asking students to take a survey which explores all of these issues in more depth and I think there is a lot we can learn, but my main worry is that the vote will definitely be for smaller sessions.
In some ways I agree as the task of managing 100+ students is stressful and exhausting. But equally running small groups multiple times with very few attendees is just demoralising and a poor use of my time.
I feel I am short on inspiration right now and a bit disappointed that the feedback isn't better, but there's still a way to go till the end of the academic year and I am sure our student mentors' observations will continue to provide valuable insights into this big experiment.
Monday 25 November 2013
Wednesday 6 November 2013
Digital Literacies
yesterday I attended the "Changing the Learning Landscape" strategic conversation to look at how we develop digital literacies in our students and embed them in the curriculum through course design and staff development.
One conclusion that came out of those conversations was the need to listen more to our students. What do they already know how to do? (we make a lot of assumptions around their digital competence). What do they want from their lecturers? ("he's got a PhD in blah blah but can't work the projector...." was my quote of the day). What can we learn from them?
I am learning a lot from watching and listening to my students in the Scale Up environment - so much so that every week is a race for me to keep up in re-planning my sessions as I adjust the pace, the technology and the subject matter to fit with where I see they are.
This week I trialled my laminated "Macs for Dummies" guide, but I think that ship has sailed as most now are fairly competent at using them. (I did however have NO queries this week about the physical operation of the Macs, so maybe they did help).
I also gave the students a READING task - a 9 page article from a medical journal for them to summarise on a whiteboard, working in "tables". This was weirdly old school in such a technology rich environment. My digital literacies twist was that they had to send me a photo record of their whiteboard work. 4 groups used Twitpic or Instagram and tweeted them using our module hashtag, two emailed me and one shared a DropBox photo.
The student mentors/observers commented that they think the Scale Up environment makes exercises like this much more engaging. In part this is because of the physical layout - the groups working together on tables - in part the session design. In last year's version of this module, students also did exercises in groups but the engagement was less intense. Attendance in each seminar group was fairly low, there was lot of off-topic chatter, texting and generally looking bored. This year, even though attendance is not brilliant, the room FEELS very full and noisy, there is minimal input from me and much more reliance on the students themselves to work out how to do the activities. For some this does cause confusion, but as Sharon comments in the previous post, it also forces them to fall back on their own resources and to ask friends for help.
So, is it working? Well, its probably too early to say but I do think overall that they are developing skills in digital information management as witness the NOW discussion board feedback on finding resources, the tweeted photos, the use of Dropbox.com (as opposed to dropbox in NOW). This week I challenged them to have a go with Evernote and Diigo and I am going to follow that up next week. In later sessions we are going to work together on a whole group presentation using Google Drive. (Hope the network holds up!) But to try and make some sort of objective assessment I am going to repeat my pre-course survey and find out what they think they have learned.
One conclusion that came out of those conversations was the need to listen more to our students. What do they already know how to do? (we make a lot of assumptions around their digital competence). What do they want from their lecturers? ("he's got a PhD in blah blah but can't work the projector...." was my quote of the day). What can we learn from them?
I am learning a lot from watching and listening to my students in the Scale Up environment - so much so that every week is a race for me to keep up in re-planning my sessions as I adjust the pace, the technology and the subject matter to fit with where I see they are.
This week I trialled my laminated "Macs for Dummies" guide, but I think that ship has sailed as most now are fairly competent at using them. (I did however have NO queries this week about the physical operation of the Macs, so maybe they did help).
I also gave the students a READING task - a 9 page article from a medical journal for them to summarise on a whiteboard, working in "tables". This was weirdly old school in such a technology rich environment. My digital literacies twist was that they had to send me a photo record of their whiteboard work. 4 groups used Twitpic or Instagram and tweeted them using our module hashtag, two emailed me and one shared a DropBox photo.
The student mentors/observers commented that they think the Scale Up environment makes exercises like this much more engaging. In part this is because of the physical layout - the groups working together on tables - in part the session design. In last year's version of this module, students also did exercises in groups but the engagement was less intense. Attendance in each seminar group was fairly low, there was lot of off-topic chatter, texting and generally looking bored. This year, even though attendance is not brilliant, the room FEELS very full and noisy, there is minimal input from me and much more reliance on the students themselves to work out how to do the activities. For some this does cause confusion, but as Sharon comments in the previous post, it also forces them to fall back on their own resources and to ask friends for help.
So, is it working? Well, its probably too early to say but I do think overall that they are developing skills in digital information management as witness the NOW discussion board feedback on finding resources, the tweeted photos, the use of Dropbox.com (as opposed to dropbox in NOW). This week I challenged them to have a go with Evernote and Diigo and I am going to follow that up next week. In later sessions we are going to work together on a whole group presentation using Google Drive. (Hope the network holds up!) But to try and make some sort of objective assessment I am going to repeat my pre-course survey and find out what they think they have learned.
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