More statistics about that Marmite....

I ran an online survey about the module at the end of Term 1. Here are the results so far (50 students responded).

Students do seem to dislike the delivery of the seminars in the Scale Up environment. 58% feel that the classes are NOT well organised although 74% say they get good tutor support in class and 82% feel they get equally good support outside of class. 56% say they enjoy the group based activities but 96% think the class size is too big. (The room is intended to be for 108 students seated at 12 tables each holding 9 students).

"..l have a bit of problem with the research and professional practise module.It goes very fast and the group is too big.At times l get lost whilst carrying out a task.lt takes long to get back on track."

is a fairly typical comment.

I have to agree that the size of the class is absolutely overwhelming and the much vaunted advantages of Scale Up seem not to be being realised (e.g improved attendance). It is interesting that since these problems started to emerge I have found some information on line about the well known problems of this style of teaching. These were not discussed when the pilot was mooted and volunteers sought!

From my survey and other discussions with students I would say that noise levels, the use of the microphone and cramped seating conditions are the most frequent complaints about the physical environment.

Half of the students say they have not experienced too many difficulties with the Macs (56% say they are easy to use) but that leaves 44% who have struggled and again, anecdotally, the students complain about the need to adjust to the Mac operating environment for this one class - it has slowed down their productivity and made them feel stressed and lagging behind.

Generally though the session specific satisfaction ratings are fairly positive:

60% found the sessions on digital identity to be useful
88% rated the sessions on Harvard referencing very positively :)
92% found the plagiarism and Turnitin session useful :D
82% were very satisfied with the session on search techniques using the library catalogue, databases and Google Scholar
60% also say they have learned new ITC skills in the classes.
There was quite a lot of support for sessions we ran on Evernote, Diigo and Google Drive (60% satisfaction for each), but the verdict was 60% against the use of Twitter - some enjoyed it but  the majority found it irrelevant or an intrusion on their private spaces.

A couple of positive comments were:
"its amazing what we can find for ourselves with a pc or a laptop"
 ".. it is more interesting to learn about new techniques and how you go about it,and that can boost my confidence up and be able to do a lot on the internet through my studies"
".. It is very interactive ... and I enjoy the different tasks eg. the collaborative task."

Generally I think there is something about the readiness of the class to work independently and smaller class sizes may be helpful at this point to be able to give more support to students in carrying out the group tasks. There is also an argument for putting some of this teaching into drop in workshops or integrating the skills into other tasks - even into other modules?

We have already adjusted the timetable so that the next two terms will be taught in 2 smaller groups, but still in Scale Up. The project continues....