The return...

I haven't posted for a while...well... three years but you know, work gets in the way. However I have done a bit of writing for Imperial College and a few other places (ALT, HEA blog). Most of those have been open but most recently I have been writing for Beacon which is a community site for those working in postgraduate medicine but behind an Imperial log-in. These posts were written to engage with academics so I have decided I should share some of them externally. I think some of those academics that are suffering curriculum review will identify with the excruciating nature of my blog. A name from a long time ago when I was new to teaching, learning and reflective practice but the sentiment remains - if it is worth doing it will probably be hard.

At a meeting today one of the presenters likened learning to going on a quest - not just an adventure that you come back from with photographs - but a journey, where the road is the destination not a defined end point and which changes you as you reflect and react to the ideas, people and concepts that you are exposed to along the way.

The learning designer should be enabling the quest for others as well as travelling their own and the really interesting stuff will happen when the two meet. The next step on my quest will be SFHEA and I am looking forward to the adventures I will have on the way!

A colouring book of accessiblity

Doing CMALT section 3 – wider context, the section that is all about legislation and policy, has brought a number of things based around good practice to the front of my mind, things that would have been thought about in purely abstract terms if at all. One of those things is web accessibility and what it actually means.  I have been guilty of ignoring such things or just relying on the fact that I am working within a VLE or in within the Imperial website so it must all be ok. I guess this has been true partly because I have always had other things to occupy my mind and partly because it has never really come up having trained as a teacher I know all about making work accessible to diverse groups of students and some of that translates into on-line materials. Making things accessible to different learning styles is second nature to me but I have never formally investigated the rules or protocols of web accessibility. Doing my CMALT portfolio has however made me think a bit more in depth about this.

Recently I have been updating a set of sharepoint pages and I was asked if I could put some colour in them. Then jokingly – because the person who asked is also doing CMALT – said ‘ I wonder if that will make it inaccessible’. This was a question I realised I did not actually know the answer to so I thought I would do a bit of research and it was actually quite interesting.

Once I got past the WCAG guidelines that definitely fail on their own rule of language accessibility and found some sites that have been dumbed down a bit (clearly I needed an idiots guide) I discovered that colour – in and of itself – does not make that much difference to people who have impaired vision however contrast and an awareness of it can make a big difference to the useablity of a site.(read article here) Then I found this cool online tool which gives you a rating for how good your colour scheme is.

After I had played with it for about 10 minutes just putting in colours to see what happened (it is quite good fun) I worked out which of the colours from the Imperial palette would give me an AAA rating and used those to add some colour to my sharepoint pages. 

Now I am excited and want to put coloured backgrounds on everything!

Assessment and feedback

I recently went to the Blackboard on Tour event in London which was largely based around assessment and feedback – there was an interesting presentation given by Grainne Hamilton on the topic which regardless of the implications for using Blackboard learn brought up (or more accurately, caused me to revisit) some interesting ideas about feedback and assessment and how we approach it in a HE environment. We were asked to decide which three of the following principles we thought were most important.

My choices were:

• ·         Opportunities to act on feedback
• ·         Develop self assessment and reflection
• ·         Encourage positive motivational beliefs

Not necessarily in that order…

Here is why.

Encouraging motivational beliefs is for me probably the most important on that list as, if done effectively, could be the 1^st step to promoting self directed learning and reflection by fostering  student ownership of their own learning. If, as a marker or assessor, in whatever capacity your feedback isn’t positive andmotivational in the sense that it encourages students to study further, it will not be effective. It may even be damaging as a student who is not motivated is far less likely to succeed. Of course feedback should not be entirely about saying ‘well done you are brilliant’, this will not help them think critically about what they have written and improve on it but equally it is important to balance criticism however constructive with some praise. If you are not told you have done something well you may not necessarily have the confidence to do it again. 

Encouraging positive and motivational beliefs leads neatly into the idea of developing self assessment and reflection, ultimately when they leave HE students are going to be in the workplace and the process of self assessment and reflection becomes a lot more important because there will be no faculty member looking at what they are doing and providing feedback. Self assessment and reflection is not a process that comes naturally to most people so it is part of the duty of an HE establishment to create a positive environment where students are encouraged and helped to develop these skills. 

At the end of the day however feedback positive, motivational or otherwise will achieve nothing if it falls on the proverbial deaf ears. The only way feedback can really enable students is if they are given time to act on it. This is something that is often lacking, especially in HE summative assignments may be marked and commented on and returned to students but there is little incentive to read and engage with that feedback as the assignment has been completed. Giving feedback on drafts and building into the process a requirement for self reflection is one way to help students engage and make allow them to develop self reflection skills. This is something I have been working on so watch this space. 

Making a choice of three important principles, however well justified, is all well and good and saying students must act on feedback and engage with is an excellent theory but on some level as a teaching institution we have to provide them with the skills and a framework which enable them to do that or it becomes a little bit like handing someone three skittles and instructing them to juggle. At the very least they are going to get a headache!

Reflecting on others reflects well on me

I am currently working on my CMALT  portfolio. What that really means is I am writing a reflective portfolio on what I do in my day job. I used to hate reflective writing but the more I do it the more I see how beneficial it is and am actually beginning to enjoy it (not the parts where I am forced to say how amazing I am, but the parts where I think about what I have done and how it can be better). I am not sure if I have more ideas because I am reflecting or if it is just because I am being forced to write them down that I am actually following through on them. Or even if it is because I am getting out of the office more and talking to other people who understand what I do for a living. 

There is an added element to the reflective practice that is happening for my CMALT and that is the addition of the group element. We are all working on our portfolios a section at a time and sharing them and discussing as we go along. Clearly as a very shy little person (yes really) – this terrifies me… but if it ain’t scary it ain’t worth doing right? I have always been one for just working away on my own and getting stuff done so this sharing business is new thing for me but this week I went over a section of a colleague’s portfolio with a constructively critical eye and wrote notes on what I thought. I then went back to my own work and took the same comments and edited my extremely verbose, waffly section of rubbish and made it into something a lot more coherent not only by listening to my own advice (why people don’t do this more often is a mystery) but by evaluating the things I thought she did well and then applying it to my own work. In a non-plaguiarisy way of course. 

The same colleague also read what I had written and came back with some inciteful and interesting ideas which have helped immensely sharing is good apparently!

“it is much friendlier with two, said Pooh”

The discussion board saga

After last year’s epic fail on the discussion board front (three students, if that, posted anything and most of that was in the wrong place) I am trying a new approach. I have looked at the various options that Blackboard Learn provides for discussion and collaboration and it is no secret that I think the discussion boards are hideous and so unaesthetically pleasing that I can see why no-one would want to use them. Ever! 

My revolutionary approach revolves around 2 things which occurred to me after doing some reading around the subject of student participation 

a) students probably won’t be the 1^st to post so you have to do it, even if you have no intentions of moderating the thing thereafter

b) you can’t expect students to use something if you have not taught them how no matter how intuitive you think it is.

With that in mind I decided to use the blog function rather than the discussion boards, mostly because they look nicer and, I think, have a nice structure for students to use. My next big idea was to teach them how to use the things (I know - I am on a roll here) as a way of communicating with each other, sharing ideas and involving distance learners in discussions. I did this by making them post stuff while I was there to help and they seemed to get it although the best peice of feedback I had was "it was good that you told us we couldn't break it, because, you know, I was worried."

What remains to be seen on this grand plan of mine for world domination one discussion board at a time is if it will actually work. So watch this space.

Motivate me... or don't

I have been thinking a lot recently about motivation. It has come up in several situations; work, sport, exercise and life in general and it seems to me that more often than not people are inherently negative. Although perhaps that is just me, in a way, being negative because that is what I notice.

Telling someone they can't do something has 2 possible outcomes. It could elicit the 'screw you' response and make them try that much harder. Or it could make a person believe that they really can't do it. I would definitely fall into the latter category and anyone that knows me will testify to the fact that even if you tell me I can do something there is a fair chance that I still won't believe it.
The flip side being that if you say to someone 'you can do this, you can make that ball, you can lift that weight, this topic is hard but I have faith in the fact that you can handle it' they are one step closer to reaching the target. It will never have the effect of making someone change their own mind from can to can't.

Such is the nature of human beings that you never know which category someone is going to fall into and many people will not give any indications either way some may even change their mind depending on the day. So while setting that baseline at 'I don't think you can do this but by all means prove me wrong' may work for some people it may well leave others sat at home thinking about it for days on end and writing boring blog posts.
However whatever the situation, which could range from stretching that extra half an inch to reach the hockey ball to starting to use a new system at work, a single word of encouragement, 'come on - you can do it', or 'I know it might be hard but if you need help just ask' is to one extent or another going to motivate everyone regardless of their personality and it may just mean the difference between success and not quite making it.

On good form....

In our latest module - Nutrition and weight management - me and the faculty academic decided to hit the 21st century with some real time data collection in class.

"Oh you used clickers, how dreadfully last season darling" is that what I hear you say?

Well no - we did not.

We collected data on 2 different subjects.

The 1st to collect tasting data to be used by students in a course work assignment so there was no pressing need to have the data immediately available at the end of the session but it was fun. However, I did the same session last year and the students filled out the tasting survey on paper instead of on this handy google form (although why I decided to make it purple is anyone's guess) which meant that someone had to put all the data into a spreadsheet by hand. Whereas, with my handy google form (which does work on a smart phone - try it - i dare you ) the spreadsheet was instantly made for me and you get a summary of results in nice little pie charts too. (see right)


Our second data collecting experiment using the same process involved an appetite survey which the students were asked to rate their appetite before and after meals for a day. We had three forms, breakfast, lunch and dinner. This data was used in class as part of a lecture so we put the numbers into a chart, in the way the professor requested, and he used it to illustrate his point using data from the students in the room. This should give you a warm fuzzy feeling caused by a personalised classroom and engaged students but mostly I was just excited to see the prof reffering to my graphs in a lecture!!

Little things to please the geek :)