Student mentor blogs 1

Hello!

My name is Sarah Metherell, I am a 2^nd 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.

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.

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.

Not quite as planned

Well, the referencing session was a challenge - nothing to do with the activities and the students. One of the partitions had jammed so most students were crammed into 2/3 of the space, with the overflow in a separate room. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse the microphone batteries died, and there was not a spare set to be found anywhere. [I observed a colleague on Wednesday - still no spares, and still no moveable partition. Is it a case of "out of sight, out of mind" with IS and CADQ now we're a few weeks into the pilot?]. There was never a more pressing need for the microphone, as we had to relay information to students behind the partition. Someone, not sure who (it may have been the CADQ man) appeared with batteries fairly quickly, but only the two needed for the microphone - no spares. This was another joint session with Sian, so we had a true double act as one of us had to keep popping next door to make sure those students were engaging with the tasks and weren't neglected. At one stage it sounded as though I had an echo as we were feeding back on the referencing task, but were slightly out of sync with each other. Despite the set-backs (I forgot about the drips from the ceiling and the latecomers) we covered everything we'd planned and the students engaged well with the tasks again. I was really pleased to see the majority of groups brought along a book to reference. Some brought a printed article, but most found one online in the session. I was supposed to gather feedback but felt a bit frazzled by the end of the session and ran out of time for this, but will ask for some next Monday as my manager is keen to see if the students felt the same concerns we had about the session. I suspect not, as I didn't hear any grumbles, and they all seemed to get on with the activities. We had success with one of the SCALE-UP objectives as, by the time I was able to get to one student who wanted help, her group had sussed out the answer themselves - result! I used Apple TV for the first time. It was very slow initially, but the promise/threat of showing the students' work kept them focused. It was so tempting to chicken out of trying out a new technology but I was determined not to. I'll feel more confident in using it again now. On reflection, I don't think Sian and I appeared to be as fraught as we felt. I certainly hope we kept our composure. A sense of humour definitely helps under such circumstances. I'm looking forward to my last session running like a dream!

So far so good?

I continue to have my little chats with students on an informal basis whenever I can to try and sus out their feelings about the Scale Up experience.

So far, top of the list when it comes to the moans is, you guessed it, the use of Macs instead of PCs.

The unfamiliar key board and desktop is causing a lot of lag for some in the classroom tasks and students respond fairly grumpily, but they are getting on with it. It just seems a shame that they have to "get on with it" when other solutions were available. In my view teaching equipment really needs to be selected by teachers (and students) not by technical staff.

I also still maintain that providing a simple laminated card with a SHORT list of gestures and essential info would have helped enormously. So I have now made my own which I will take to class with me. There will be one per table and it will be based on the most common questions I get asked as I patrol the classroom.

The other moan seems to be around pacing. I have been conscious a couple of times that students working on tasks in their separate groups tend to do so at different speeds (not really so surprising). This can mean that some feel left behind as the class moves to the next activity whilst others get bored, tune out and start to check their Facbeook updates.

I think what we need to plan here is a basic plus an extension activity. The basic one is something everyone can accomplish in the time allowed, the extension activity could be achieved by the quicker students in the hour, but is certainly do-able by everyone in their personal study time.

An example of this came from this week's session run by Sharon where she asked students to find two articles, then answer a series of questions about these in a Discussion Board post. Some managed to find just one in the time available; others did both; some posted during the allotted hour and some did so after the workshop.

When you work in this way (inquiry/group based learning) you have to let go of the need to control pace - and of the fantasy that you can determine what people will learn in a given space of time. Standing up at the front and lecturing do we imagine that every student is understanding every point to the same extent? That some don't drift off or get confused? Of course we don't - that's why we set reading tasks or upload lecture notes on to the VLE. So we have to accept that groups will work on tasks at different rates and allow for that.

For me, working in this environment - and taking a more inquiry-based learning approach - has meant letting go of control in a number of ways. The noise level for one is something you have to simply accept if you want 12 groups of 9 students to be working actively on a task for the best part of the hour.

When I have spoken to students about their experience of the environment and the group based activities, they seem to have found it strange to begin with but then come to accept it and when they are actively engaged in their group tasks, seem to be able to blot out what is going on around them.

For the teacher (well, for me) this also takes some getting used to. I generally feel less exhausted by the end of the session now than I did at the start of term and more likely to be satisfied with the outcomes. I find the noise less of a problem and can similarly focus on a specific student or table as I do my rounds and am able to use the mic to get the attention of the whole group when I need to. I am becoming more comfortable with the technology and consequently a bit braver in the things I ask the class to attempt (as I know what works, for example).

One tip I have learnt is to plan the group tasks by having them written up as a web page on the VLE with any links they are going to need on the same page, but opening in a new tab. This makes it easier for them to follow the tasks without having to go back and forth between different sections of the learning room (for example - if I need them to make a post to the Discussion Board, I simply put the link to that Discussion Board on the same page as the instructions.) I also try to avoid paper handouts if I can, unless again it helps to avoid the problem of navigating between multiple pages. (For the level three students, who are more familiar with the VLE, this isn't quite such a problem).

So yes - so far, so very interesting, but there is much to think about in this project.  In particular, the need to adapt teaching and learning to the students' level of knowledge and skill, to the physical environment, to the VLE and to the technology.

Attendance

Just to make me feel better - here are some statistics from the attendance registers in other Level 1 modules in the first 3 weeks:

Module A - (large lecture) 78% attendance Week 1 to  66% attendance Week 2

Module B -  (small seminars) 82% attendance Week 1 to 71% attendance Week 2
                    (large lecture)  72% attendance Week 1 to 63% attendance Week 2

Our module - (Scale Up) -  81% attendance Week 1 to 66% attendance Week 2
                                         
             

Welcome to our new Digital Assistants!

Sarah and Holly were appointed this week as the student mentors/digital assistants who will be supporting the Changing the Learning Landscape project to embed digital literacy in the curriculum.

We discovered by accident that both are experienced Mac users which will be a great boon for us tutors as well as the students.

The other great thing about them is that both have been through this module themselves just last year, albeit not in the Scale Up format.

In truth, most of the students are managing OK with the Macs but do occasionally suffer frustrations. It's fun asking them to Tweet with a hashtag when the keyboard doesn't have a # !!!!!!!! (It's Alt+3 if you must know) or when CTRL C/ CTRLV doesn't copy and paste (it's command instead). We have been helpfully provided with a cheat sheet  in a long manual which lives in the cupboard, and there are videos on Apple's website to explain the gestures used on the touchpad, but in the middle of a class you really don't have time to find these things.

The students themselves worked out the Command C thing (trial and error?) and Googled the # solution. So some good digital skills in evidence anyway :)

Numbers attending have dropped over the last three weeks. On the one hand this is fairly normal but on the other it is worrying that we are not seeing the promised increase in retention and engagement. It's impossible to know if we are doing something wrong without being able to talk to those who haven't attended. I think we also need to compare attendance from last year, though I have a feeling 2012 registers have been deleted from the VLE..... Maybe I can compare my registers with other current modules instead?

What it does mean is that the small Friday workshop can be integrated into the larger Monday session from November. On the one hand I will miss the smaller more intimate discussions in the small Friday group, but getting everyone in the same room will ensure a consistent experience across the year group.