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.
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