Reflecting

In some ways it feels like I’m learning to reflect on teaching, before learning to teach. But from a Constructivist point of view, perhaps this is the best way to learn. This method of learning:

• identifies assumptions and perceived knowledge.

• encourages me to look at ideas and incorporate them. This might be like adding more and more coloured pieces of plasticine to a plasticine ball. It develops but eventually it is unwieldy and you need to take it apart and give it some structure in which you will hold the ideas.

Investigating a Classroom Management Approach in a Computer Suite - Annie Haight

This article focused on specific issues related to teaching in an IT classroom. Issues that arise in these environments include background noise and the layout of computers – perhaps the dominance of computers?

Getting student attention back after a session working on the PCs was the main issue approached, and non-verbal signals were advised (flash the light, put music on slowly getting louder for 1 minute).

The importance of a ‘Psychological Contract’ was discussed, to encourage mutual respect. This would involve the teacher being open about issues and distractions, and acknowledge the difficulties around changing focus from using the computers to listening. There can be non-negotiable things such as mobile phones being turned off.

Perhaps out new IT classrooms like SOLSTICE’s ICE room will change the interactions in the room. The laptops will make the students feel more visible and less lost in the computer. If the teacher could turn off the monitors in a room this would force students to take focus away from the computer, but the mutual respect thing means that this should only be used with warning.

The article is very relevant to my teaching in IT rooms, when we let them loose on the Chat or Discussion tool. I tend to talk loudly to get the attention back, but this is not seen as good practice (“never start talking until the room is quiet”).

'Emotional Design' by Donald Norman

This book has some interesting points but the main one about there being 3 levels of reacting/interacting is most interesting, as it can be used in most areas of life.
 
The 3 levels are Visceral, Behavioural and Reflective.
 
Visceral is the animal/biological reaction that is fast and subconscious. This is designed to react positively to things that help survival (such as warmth), and negatively to danger. Appearance has a big effect on this. Films play on this level with action, horror, blood lust and the thrill of motion. Music can play on this through its initial effect. Design can play on this with novelties, prettiness and colour.
 
Behavioural is again partly subconscious, and relates more to the pleasure of use. Films would play on this through the viewer's connection with the character and them putting themselves in the character's position. In music this would include playing music and dancing. In design it includes the pleasure and effectiveness of use, if a novelty includes usefulness it is no longer just a novelty. The pleasure and usefulness of objects can increase if the user’s mental model of the object is correct so training users to use your product can increase engagement at this level.

Reflective is less immediate but more powerful and can overcome the Visceral effect. In film this would involve considering the complexity of events and characters. In music it would involve listening to the complexity and being impressed by a musician’s skill.  In design is relates to the image and meaning that an object carries (e.g. clothes with labels, but even much less shallow meaning). If a novelty has cleverness of design, then it would appeal to this level.

So I guess we can look at ways of making our teaching appeal to these three levels whenever possible.

At the Visceral level we can make attractive looking materials online, in lectures we can become great story tellers using shock and surprise. The space that we provide for learning can be clean, tidy, relaxing and attractive where possible. Research shows that relaxed people are more creative in their approach to problems, whereas when people become unsettled they have a very narrow vision, so if you want students to discuss creatively, then a relaxed, comfortable environment is very important.

At the behavioural level, we can encourage the students to see the usefulness of what is being studied. Keeping their challenges (both subject related and technical) at a high enough level to keep interest, but not so high that they become frustrated is important to keep engagement at this level.

Finally at the reflective level, the students need to see the development of their own learning. Assessments can play a part in this if we help the students work towards improving parts of their learning in each assessment. I guess developing student understanding of why the subject or a part of the subject is so important (and relevant to them), is engaging them at this level too.

Crash Course in Learning Theory: Part 1

Kathy Sierra’s ‘Crash Course in Learning Theory’ is an interesting read. The summary sheet is designed to help you apply the ideas to your own work. The ideas it brings up that I can relate to my work are:

• You need to get past the brain’s crap filter: The students’ brains will try and focus on something more interesting/important if your content is not interesting. Even if the student is interested in the subject! How to do that with WebCT? Well like I said at the end of the previous post, keep the language student focussed, and keep reminding them of how much time and effort they will save if they listen to you… although that doesn’t sound the most positive angle… if they use this technology there are benefits, and how amazing they will appear and be if they use it well!

• Knowledge is not passed from you to the student, it is co-created. Use metaphors and ideas that the student can use to understand what we are talking about. So the WebCT Discussion tool is like a notice board, threads are like conversations, WebCT is an area of the internet that you need a password to enter.

• Use visuals to improve understanding, retention and recall. We use the screens and ‘walk and talk’ through processes anyway, but I could make more use of the ‘Course Map’. You can add the icons to course map to help students recognise the icons as landmarks if there are a lot of files in a course.

• Use redundancy to improve and speed up understanding: e.g. the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon approach – say the same thing in a different way to expand the meaning.

• Use conversational language – not as if you are reading a text book on how to use WebCT, more like it was a 1-2-1 session.

• Maintain interest with variety and surprise – if we are on PCs, a question to answer in chat or on discussion can keep interest.

• Use mistakes, failures and WTF – Show the students things that will go wrong and might go wrong.

Teaching Large Classes

Linda pointed us toward Graham Gibbs video on ‘Teaching Large Classes’ on the Dowhousie University site.

This looks at the issues around teaching in large classes, from the lecture theatres being uncomfortable, to students losing focus after 20 minutes. It asks how you can use this kind of contact to inspire students to learn and study outside of class, and how you can develop communities or even just get students to talk and discuss.

He gives some ideas for making the learning active. Give the students a break after 20 minutes, to discuss and reflect perhaps alone or in groups. Give them an opportunity to apply knowledge with small case studies in the lecture theatre, which can lead into what you are trying to get them to accomplish out of class.

How do those ideas influence how I teach large classes. Well in the past those classes for me have been WebCT inductions. I try to keep these to about 20-30 minutes any way, if the students are only listening. But what if our induction 20-30 minutes was a section of a much larger session – could I add any activities to this induction when there are no computers for the students to use?

Possibly looking at the way I talk in the induction, I could keep my language focussed on the student – “this is what you will do to achieve X”, “this feature will save you time in situation Y”. I try to keep reminding the students that it is simple to do what they will need to do.

Session 2

'What it means to be a critically reflective teacher' Brookfield
(1995) was reading for Session 2.

This argues that reflection was about hunting assumptions, and that there are three types of assumption:

1. Paradigmic assumptions – about the way things are (e.g. Adults are self-directed learners).


2. Prescriptive assumptions – about the way things should work (e.g. because adults are self directed learners, they should be encouraged to take over their own learning).


3. Casual assumptions – usually stated in predictive terms (e.g. using learning contracts will increase student effectiveness.

Here I couldn’t think of anything that I knew I had to reflect on, but this fitted in well with what we talked about in the session.

Then the question, ‘What makes reflection critical?’ is asked. Brookfield argues that it’s purposes are to understand how considerations of power affect learning situations, and to question hegemonic assumptions which seem to make our teaching easier but may in the long term work against our interests.

Finally Brookfield asks “Why is it important?” Answers might be that it looks at your practise through others eyes, it develops a rational that can be communicated and tested.

Moving on to the lesson, Trish and Jeanette led us through a discussion on what Critical Reflection is.

Some things that stood out to me were, that your perception of an event will vary depending on your mood (and someone pointed out research that says those with low self-esteem like reflection less). That is another reason to get someone else in to peer review and help you look at your work.

Trish and Jeanette pointed out that different critical approaches and models appeal to different people and so choose one carefully that fits your style – you need to enjoy reflecting or you will not do it. I need to have a look at the models and experiment with using one.

When you are reviewing your work don’t get focussed on what went wrong – look at “What made you feel good?” and “Did anything make you feel uncomfortable?”.

If reflection is done to “help us learn more about the way we work” (Berns, we perhaps do not need to use the word reflection. Lets ask ourselves “how can we learn more about the way we work?” and perhaps we will come up with different ideas, and ideas that we will enjoy putting into practice!

Using a Wiki as a reading list

Developing further the thoughts about reading lists, could we use a Wiki for this.

The Wiki could have a main page linking to each of the books, and the pages linked to could contain details from the teacher about the book and why it is there. Students could add their own feedback rather like on Amazon where people can add their review, hopefully a more reflective one than "this was rubish" or "I love this".

I'll try to create this and offer it to people (like Bernie Pennington in the discussion board), who might like to consider the technology's use.

Reading Lists

One of this weeks discussion questions relates to reading lists.

I do a lot of reasearch, and keeping up with developments in learning technology by reading blogs. What some people call 'Blog Reading Lists' are files which contain a list of feeds (broadcasts) from blogs on a certain subject. People can pass their lists of blogs between different blog aggregators (programs that organise the blogs that you read and let you see which are updated) or between different people.

Could teaching staff add useful blogs to their reading lists and supply students with Blog Reading List files (saved by the blog aggregator in the OPML format) to upload into a blog aggregator.

Some posts on the subject are:

Next steps in RSS, Reading Lists

Critical Reflection - Part 2

Feins et al (1996) created 5 questions to ask before you develop your course.

• Who am I teaching?
• What am I teaching?
• How will I teach it?
• How will I know if my audience has understood?
• How will I improve my teaching next time?

What if I apply this to one of the courses that I would like to find time to create soon, 'Using WebCT 6.0'.

• Who am I teaching? - Edge Hill staff and students related to various courses, who have for whatever reason gone online to look for training materials.
• What am I teaching? - How to log in, find what you need in a course, use tools, develop courses in WebCT 6.0.
• How will I teach it? - Talking and demonstrating how to do certain things, walk throughs of certain processes, advice on general things that relate to the subject (e.g. pop-up problems).
• How will I know if my audience has understood? - Perhaps links on the web pages to contact me with feedback or questions.
• How will I improve my teaching next time? - Take into consideration feedback, develop other courses to improve my skills, ask for peer review on the course related to how I 'perform' vocally, and if the material was OK.

Moving on from this example, when we write our assessment we need to meet certain criteria in relation to Critical Reflective Writing.

We should show understanding of the purpose of reflective commentary, which affects what we decide to focus our reflection on [so perhaps I could start off by discussing the importance of reflecting on the subject that I choose to reflect on, and developing that into a direction for the rest of the writing].

The description should involve:

• statement of observations
• comments on personal behaviour
• comments on reactions and feeling
• the context
• and additional ideas

The description should also demonstrate:

• an ability to work with unstructured material
• links between theory and practice
• different points of view
• the ability to 'step back'
• metacognitive processes

Finally it should demonstrate:

• new ideas tested in practice
• evidence of review and revision
• a statement of something learned/solved relating to the purpose of the description, or, a new area for further reflection or a new question.

Critical Reflection Introduction

Part of the course involves learning to and providing evidence that we can critically reflect.

Brigden, Lilley and Sackville note that we reflect naturally,but this means that we can take reflection for granted. We can reflect in action or on action, and the Kolb (1984), Gibbs (1988) and Smith and Irby (1997) models are designed around reflecting on action. My post about the session1 article by Randy Bass noted that there is a school of thought that sees reflection as best done in action, but these assume that there is value in the on action method.

Gibbs (1988) saw reflection as:

• 1) describe what happened
• 2) describe what you felt and thought
• 3) evaluate whether it was good or bad
• 4) analyse
• 5) conclude what else you could have done
• 6) create an action plan for next time.

I could try to apply these to my work at some point.

Smith and Irley (1997) had 3 ideas to help with reflection:

• 1) Use a reflective notebook
• 2) Have a mentor
• 3) Use learning groups

Well, if we count this as my reflective notebook, those 3 things will be part of my course experience.

My eLearning Group

We found out our groups lat night. Mine is led my Linda, Graham and Trish, with Susan, Eddie, Donna, Sue, Jean, Bernie, Victoria, Samuli, Elaine and myself as members.

The aim of having these groups is to facilitate discussion, or rather discourse as this has more to do with developing our reasoning process through articulating and sharing it. This creates an atmosphere where misconceptions show up and conflict of new ideas occurs (see Terry Anderson's "Teaching in an online context").

The process is supposed to involve the tutor posting on Monday/Tuesday and we discuss the question including at leaset two substantive posts (i.e. one aimed at furthering the groups understanding). Other posts could involve expressing opinions or observations, making connections between discussions, experience and concepts and synthesising others responses.

Action Learning Associates simplify the learning process to L=K+Q, which means learning = knowledge through experience and questioning skills. Thier courses aim to develop the questioning skills of their students, through them meeting in groups and looking for solutions to problems.

I hope that being in a group will allow me to hear the perspective of those in other teaching roles, as part of gaining a better understanding of how I can support them. Perhaps them I can better reflect on how the technologies we support can help the teachers and learners.

My worries are that my experiences will be so different from the other group members that I'll find it difficult to get involved in the discussion

Session 1 - Teaching and Learning in an Online Context

Pre reading for this session was The Scholarship of Teaching: What's the Problem? by Randy Bass.

(This post was lost in Publishing, but it covered the topic of the article - the need to evaluate our teaching, and then went onto the fact that there is a different school of thought that says good teaching is learned through experience, and studying teaching and learning has little value.)

The Art of Teaching - Part 2

In the next section of The Art of Teaching Joy talks about finding your 'voice' or the mask you will wear as a teacher. What does that mean to me? He talks a lot about clothes and the importance of the way you dress to how your voice is displayed to your students.

I don't think that the way I dress is going to be what I focus on, especially as most of my teaching and training is done online. I guess that my voice would be what the students notice if we are creating training using Camtasia, and I could get training for myself on 'using my voice'.

Thinking along those lines further, could my online lessons convey more that just how to use a piece of software? Could I be teaching everything from good practise (interaction design, accessibility) and workflow techniques, to good attitudes (again attitudes towards accessibility, how to enjoy what you are doing).

The Art of Teaching - Part 1

Been reading the beginning of 'The Art of Teaching' by Jay Parini, 2005. It got me thinking that there are very different experiences of work for technologists and academics, and different pressures on us.

Academics have to teach, research and write. As technologists we have to train people in the use of technologies, research and develop the technologies and their use, advise academics (among others) on the technologies uses, and maintain the developments we make.

Jay talks about the need to find balance between the different things that keeps you both inspired and happy. If you don't find this balance, Jay argues that you lose your passion. Creating Passionate Users has a post about 'Re-igniting passion' for teaching, or whatever you do.

A New Start

Started the re-validated 'Teaching and Learning Support in Higher Education' course last night. Looks like it is much more structured than the last one, which will help me plan what time I put into it.

It's 150 hours learning time over the whole year, of which 16 hours will be face to face over the first module. Linda seemed to think that I'd need to find a couple of hours per week to interact with the course materials and the rest of the group online, and then extra time to work on the assignments.

The group look diverse enough to allow some interesting discussions on various issues but it felt like a quite gentle group, so that the discussions might be more constructive than when there are people just there to argue.

I'm going to find it interesting seeing their views on the use of technology. I already got the feeling that many of them struggle with it, possibly showing that the use of technology in teaching and learning has expanded before the technology is user-freindly enough for most people to have developed the skills to use it.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to completing this course. I'm in a much better possition to do that than when I started 2 years ago.