I have blogged more about the digital skills survey results here:
http://thevirtualleader.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/all-i-want-for-xmas-is-more-statistics.html
Thursday, 19 December 2013
Monday, 16 December 2013
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."
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....
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.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.
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....
Thursday, 5 December 2013
The marmite experience
I've now finished my teaching for this module (apart from the assessment session around Easter), and gathered some written feedback from the students at the end of my last session. There's a ranking scale of 1-4, with 1 being poor, and 4 being excellent. Normally I receive 3s and 4s, but there were quite a few 1s and 2s this time. I'm trying not to take it personally, as the comments show the students either really enjoy the group work, or they hate it, so these extremes of feeling are reflected in their opinion of the session. Despite the majority (fortunately) rating the session as good or excellent, quite a few commented on the size of the class and would prefer to learn in groups, but as part of a smaller class. I felt happy at the end of my last workshop as every group made progress with the task, and not one resorted to searching Google instead of the prescribed databases. In fact, far more had a go at searching Academic Search Complete than students in previous years, so this was a positive result for them and for me.
Monday, 2 December 2013
Student mentor bogs 2
My name is Holly and I am a second year Health and Social
Care student. I am a Digital Skills Mentor for the module Research and
Professional Practice for the first year students studying Health and Social
Care.
My experience of being a Digital Skills Mentor has been a
good one. It has given me an insight in to the different ways of teaching.
Having taken part in the same module last year, I think using Scale Up with the
MAC computers has given the module a more interesting and interactive
perspective, making it more enjoyable for the students in learning the module.
However, the Scale Up project hasn’t come without its
problems. At first, the students weren’t very confident with using the MACs, as
most of them had never used one before so it took time to get used to learning
in this way, and using a different operating system to Windows. By the end of
the first term however, the students have been much more confident in using the
MACs and haven’t needed as much support in finding their way around one, for
example knowing the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste and how to use the
mouse.
Also, the NOW system, for the students, took a lot of
getting used to especially finding the resources for the sessions such as Padlet
and the discussion boards. The class size has seemed quite big to teach for the
lecturers and having smaller class sizes would maybe be a benefit but it would
be difficult to fit that many seminars into one week of teaching.
However, I think having two mentors in the classroom for
students has been helpful to them. Even though at first the students seemed to
be quite wary of us being in the classroom, it didn’t take long for them to get
used to the idea and were soon asking us for help as well as the lecturer. It
has offered them help from people who have experienced and completed the module
before so have an idea of what should be happening and how the tasks should be
completed. It also offers them a way of getting help from someone who may know
how to explain a task in a simpler way from how the lecturer may have explained
it for them, to get a better understanding of what to do. Also, another benefit
for the students has been that they have been able to ask us questions about
second year and our experience of first year generally. Even though that’s not
our reason to be in the classroom, I think the students have found it helpful
being told from someone who has been through first year what it will be like
and how different second year may or may not be.
Student mentor blogs 1
Hello!
My name is Sarah Metherell, I am a 2nd
Year Health and Social Care Student/Digital Skills Mentor.
When I first started as a Digital Skills
Mentor, I was excited to get started and help develop the Learning Landscape
and felt this would be something I would enjoy, especially as I have a skilled
background in ICT. Before we started the job we were given relevant training
and introduced to all the staff we would be working with who were all very welcoming
and supportive.
The role of a digital skills mentor,
involves attending a first year Health and Social Care (Research and
Professional Practice) class every Monday for an hour and observing the way
they learn. The session I attend on the Monday is called a Scale Up session,
which is a new interactive way of learning on a large scale, where students get
to use MacBooks to complete activities (usually in groups) that tutors have set
them. A few examples were, using Google Docs and Diigo to help students become
more organized in the future when finding resources to use in their work.
Another task was to create a power point presentation as a class, where each
table was assigned one task each. Personally, from observing these classes, I
am jealous that we were not taught using the Scale Up method in first year, as
it seems engaging, interactive and fun compared to last year, where we had to
sit there and listen to a power point presentation.
As the year first started off, many
students seemed very shaky and unconfident using the MacBooks, but a couple of
weeks later, students had begun to get the hang of using them, and I think the
installation of the mouse’s most definitely helped. The majority of the
students, found the tasks pretty easy to complete, although there were a few
comments here and there that said the tasks can be difficult at times and
sometimes boring. Also, there were some students that suggested they prefer
working in smaller groups, as big groups feel very disorganised and students
feel they can’t get the best possible help they can. However, the general gist
of the class seem to find the tasks easygoing. The other observations I found,
were usually technical difficulties such as adding a picture, or copying and
pasting.
As a digital skills mentor, I was invited
to attend a Learning the Landscape conference, in which those who are involved
in the project gathered to discuss what could be done to develop ways of
teaching. I found this very interesting and it really gave me an insight as to
what the project is about.
I have very much enjoyed my first term of
being a digital skills mentor and have found observing very fascinating and I
look forward to the second term.
Monday, 25 November 2013
the story so far ......
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.
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.
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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