Theme 2 of the TESS programme was focused on teaching. The idea was to answer 3 “wh” questions:

Who are we teaching?
What do we want learners to learn/achieve?
How do we want learners to learn/engage?

These 3 questions link back to the way people learn. And they are also related to our one teaching and learning philosophy. In this sense, the act of teaching is connected to our professional values and the principles we share regarding our teaching vocation. Hence, I think it’s important that we ask ourselves what our role as educators is. Do we want to impart (static) knowledge [that’s an easy way to teach] or do we want learners to engage in a culture of knowing in which their activity/role is placed at the centre? This requires learners’ participation. Research does say that learners learn better when they are actively involved. This is due to the fact that participation is an act of belonging. We learn better when we are able to connect, physically and emotionally, to what we are learning. And isn’t learning a process of making connections between old and new information?

From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side

This leaves the educator with the responsibility of “animating” the classroom as part of the learning process, making it an engaging experience in which learners feel compelled to take part in. And this is probably our biggest challenge as educators, because it does require that we put that control back into the learning activity.

As part of that we looked at constructive alignment and the need to prepare our teaching sessions in such away that they promote effective learning.
In so doing, we need to be able to answer the 3 questions mentioned above. And those answers can be formalised by the development of clear and achievable intended learning outcomes (ILO) which aim to inform the structure of any given session we prepare as part of our teaching activity.
The learning outcomes – the what? – will then inform the how? in that we need to choose learning activities that may lead to the achievement of ILOs as well as the assessment (which we will explore in Theme 4)

We also looked how to write learning outcomes – these should make use of action verbs that lead the learner to demonstrate what they have learnt and achieved. We explored different types of verbs that help express different stages of the learning process, from the most simple stages such as identifying or following a simple procedure to the creation of something that reflects learning in a particular area. (a list of ILO verbs was provided for this activity)

Photo by GCouros, Retention of Information, (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The session ended with us sharing ideas about how we can teach small and large groups. Our discussions also aimed to demystify the assumptions that we cannot do active learning in a lecture slot, or for that matter, with large groups.
We should approach a lecture just like any other teaching opportunity. It aims to enable learners to learn and be involved in that learning experience. Hence, we should not focus on the meaning the word has acquired throughout the years given the experiences we have had as students ourselves. We should always personalise teaching to match our own convictions (philosophy). It should also take into account our understanding of how people learn and what the purpose of teaching really is! I believe teaching is a form of helping learners grow intellectually, of maturing their ideas… In facilitating that process educators’ grow too. Learning and teaching are not isolated activities. We are all learners and teachers. Understanding this dialectics enables us to understand our role better!

– How are you planning to put these ideas in practice?

– How hard is it to yield the control of the learning experience to the learner?

Resources:

Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy

Learning and teaching in laboratories

Short Guide: Postgraduate Demonstrators and Teachers *

Large & Small Group Teaching

* A big thanks to Dr Gemma Lace for letting me attend one of her lab session and share some literature with me.

Thursdays have now become one of my favourite days of the week. … this because it is the day we meet colleagues participating in the ALT Module and I am having a ball taking part in this (having said that, I must say I have started to like Wednesday a lot too – that’s the day I work with the GTAs )

These last weeks have brought me back to my days in the Navy where I used to teach. I missed having contact with a group of people from different backgrounds for an extended period of time. I like the experience. I enjoy the interaction.

OK, back to the title of this post…

This week we explored the concept of Communities of Practice (CoP) and what it means in education. [I didn’t mention it, but CoPs is one of my pet topics. I did research on an online CoP for my MPhil and this has always been a topic very close to my heart because it is about people, and how they come together to learn with and from each other.]

Five of the ALT participants (Action Learning Set 1) facilitated the entire session. It was a magnificent experience. Not only did they negotiate the planning of the session and the different activities amongst themselves, they approached the topic with class. I liked the diversity of activities, the risks they took, and the way they managed and encouraged discussion. I loved it. I thought it was a huge success!

Some points I would like to reflect on:

• Building on last week’s topic, participation is a key aspect of communal learning.  When Lave and Wenger (1991) started looking at how learning happens in social and informal contexts they noticed that learning involves participation, active participation!

“Participation refers not just to local events of engagement in certain activities with certain people, but to a more encompassing process of being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities” (Wenger 1999, p.4)

 

As part of their research Lave and Wenger (1999) also noticed that individual’s participation in a community evolves as individuals become more confident to contribute to the development of the community. At first individuals engage in what Lave and Wenger call legitimate peripheral participation. Individuals remain at the margin of the community life, participating in low risk activities until they develop the confidence to fully participate.

• Identity: as individuals move into the core of the community, individuals acquire a strong sense of belonging. In so doing, they develop an identity as a member of that community.  They identify themselves with the epistemologies of practices shared by the community. Consequently, they share similar approaches to practice.

• Learning networks are different from CoPs in that CoPs feature stronger social bonds amongst  CoP members than members of a network. Networks can be defined as people sharing the same social space but who are not necessarily driven by the same practices. Yet, this offers something that is often lost, or at least less evident in communities: diversity. In networks individuals congregate around different interests and not necessarily around common practices. As a result, networks may feature a wider range of critical approaches regarding the same topic of discussion given the diversity of its members.

With the emergence of the web as a social space for interaction and collaboration, we are able to tap into different networks, learn from them, and bring that learning into our communities. Individuals belonging to the same community will be linked to different networks. The knowledge acquired in those networks can benefit and shape the learning of the community members.

• As part of my research, I looked at curriculum within a community of practice. Given that communities of practice as usually informal social learning systems, there isn’t a set curriculum or planned activities. As such, the community is the curriculum, i.e., its members set their own learning outcomes which are motivated by their own learning needs regarding their own purposes or the reasons that brought them together in the first place. In so doing, community members develop a shared repertoire based on a joint enterprise and mutual engagement.

• Socialisation is the glue of a CoP. People develop trust, and identify affinities that go beyond their initial purpose of learning something together. The CoP  I studied, the Webheads in Action, a CoP of EFL educators have come up with a saying that expresses it very well: sharing is caring.And indeed it is. Only if we contribute with our ideas, experiences and even questions will people acknowledge our presence. That is sharing. And at the same time it is also caring, because in the process of sharing our knowledge and developing our learning we not only take (what others know) but we also give (what we know) back to the community.

This week I started working with the Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) that have just started their 3 year appointment as PhD students who also have teaching duties. I think that is a great way to experience a bit more of academia beyond the completion of a PhD.

As part of the “deal” GTAs get an introduction to Teaching and Learning. The TESS (Teaching Essentials) programme for GTAs comprises of 6 thematic workshops where we cover different aspects of teaching in Higher Education.

Theme 1 deals with Learning. This was the first time I run this session. I was pretty nervous because I did not know how it would be received. But I guess the result was not that bad.

I wanted to make it as dynamic a session as I could, and I also wanted to inspire a culture of “thinking together”. As such, I used two questions that would guide the entire session. The goal was to answer them by the end of the session. The questions were:

What is learning?

Where does learning happen?

Pretty obvious questions, you must think. Yet, as we start to think about them, we realise how complex the answers can be.

To kick start the workshop we discussed the key reading for that theme. We are reading the Teaching at University: A Guide for Postgraduates and Researchers by Morss and Murray. It is a light, yet informative reading; a good introduction to different concepts and research on teaching and learning in Higher Education. The book leans towards a (social) constructivist approach that suits me perfectly as I feel this is the best approach we can adopt for our teaching. Our knowledge needs to be scaffold, and what’s a better way to learn than to co-construct meaning by participating in the environment that influences our thinking.

We also talked about the writing of the teaching philosophies and how it is hard to transfer our thoughts about our teaching practice into writing. Yet, it is a very important exercise because it makes it clear what our convictions and beliefs about teaching are. And those will inform how we approach learning and consequently teach. At this point it was interesting to see how GTAs were not sure of whether they should have commented on each other’s blogposts or not. I guess it is hard at first to provide a critical comment to someone’s teaching philosophy. Yet, critical does not mean criticism. It is not about telling what people have done wrong or provide a negative comment; it’s rather about thinking together by sharing similar experiences and/or providing people with new perspectives that might make them think differently and thus complement their own ideas.

For the 2^nd part of the session, we did a jigsaw with 4 different readings about learning from different perspectives. Again I took inspiration from my friend Ilene Alexander, who also pointed me in the direction of some very interesting texts, one of them regarding how the brain works.

The exercise consisted in having people working in groups of 4 with each group member reading a different text on different aspects of learning. The idea was to stitch the information of the 4 papers together into a narrative that encompassed different aspects of learning. It’s a long and complex exercise to digest and process new information. As usual it would have been nice to have had more time to develop this exercise, but I think we got some good discussions going on and in the end we were able to (start) answer(ing) the questions that guided this workshop.

Besides the terrible time management issues, I also felt that sometimes I talked for too long at some points. I think I need to refine my thoughts. Yet, I know I am lucky to be working with a group of GTAs that is very participative and keen to discuss things. This has helped my job a lot!

Next week, we will be talking about Teaching. The challenge is to connect what we have discussed about learning with the practice of teaching. I am working on a session that aspires to make those connections. I think it’s important we don’t treat these thematic workshops as isolated sessions but rather build on them so we get a more robust understanding of how we can empower our students with different approaches to teaching and learning.

I truly believe that in this day and age, our role as educators in a Higher Education setting is to make sure our students are able to build on their knowledge to develop new learning, i.e, make connections. And also that they become confident problem solvers by learning to be resourceful and develop new ways of interacting with the realities that challenge their practice and perceptions.

I wanted to show this video in class (recommended by Becci Jackson) but I didn’t get enough time to do so. I think it illustrates the point above very well.

So my questions about this week session are:

• Did the dialogic approach used in this workshop suit your way of learning? Why/why not?
• What aspects of last week session’s would you like me to improve (because they did not work for you)? Please provide examples.

This post was originally posted on the TESSGTA space.

Week 1

The Application of Learning Technologies (ALT) Module started this Thursday. It is a 10 week optional module integrated in the Postgraduate Certificate of Academic Practice here at the University of Salford. We have 16 members of staff taking part in the module this semester, and this is the first time I am teaching on it alongside my colleague Pete Whitton.

The module touches upon several current topics in the field of Technology Enhanced Learning such as Digital Literacies, Communities and Networks, Learning Design, Accessibility and Collaboration to name a few. We aim to make “learning in and beyond the classroom” as interactive as possible and each week we will be using a different technique to achieve that.  The course advocates the uses of different technologies and tools as a form of exposing learners to contemporary practices. Thus we made blogs (for shared reflection) and Twitter (for networking) imperative tools in this module. I am a great believer in connecting theory to practice and in the field of TEL it is essential to try the tools for ourselves to understand its real value.

Week 1 was divided into two sections. First, we introduced the module to the new cohort. We mentioned the tech, we discussed hopes and expectations and also let people voice their concerns. We presented the assessment designed for this module. We will be using negotiated assessment and a buddy system approach to add a peer assessment layer to students’ work. There will also be Action Learning Sets and these will be activated by engaging them in the preparation and delivery of some of the weekly topics.

Week 1 was about teaching and learning in connection to educational technology as a form of laying down the theoretical ground of students’ work given that part of the module assessment will be based on the development of a TEL project that is informed by current literature. I led on this session and Pete will lead on the next one.

I wanted people to have a grasp of the literature – even if only at a surface level at this stage, so that they can start thinking about their projects and connect it to research in this field. Yet, I did not want to perform a death-by-powerpoint presentation about the different research trends and concepts. That would take them right to sleep, not to mention that it could not be farther away from the type of concepts and practices we hope to inspire with this module: collaboration, sharing of ideas, co-construction of understanding.

In a conversation with my friend Ilene Dawn, she told me about this jigsaw activity she does with her students. I liked it, and so I adapted it to my own style. I sought five different texts that would provide an overview of the current literature and made several copies to use in class. I also decided to add ketso to the mix.

This was the lesson plan:

Readings

1.     Thomas, D. & Seely Brown, J., 2011. Embracing change. In A New Culture of Learning.

2.     Dias de Figueiredo, A., 2005. Learning Contexts: A Blueprint for Research. Interactive Educational Multimedia, (11), pp.127–139.

3.     McLoughlin, C. & Lee, M.J.W., 2008. The Three P’s of Pedagogy for the Networked Society: Personalization, Participation, and Productivity. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 20(1), pp.10–27.

4.     Conole, G., 2012. Online communities and interactions. In Designing for Learning in an Open World. Springer.

5.     Belshaw, D., 2012. Chapter 5 – The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. In The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies

Jigsaw activity

–       3 groups of 5 people. (this did not go as planned because some people were missing – we end up with just 2 groups but it did not make much of a difference)

–       5 different texts (referenced above).

10.30 – 10.45

–       Each member of the group will be given a different text to read and 5 Ketso leaves to annotate the main points of the text.

10.45 – 11.05

–       Students reading the same text will come together to discuss their findings. Each member will be given 5 additional ketso leaves to re-write the key points of the text he/she has read, based on the discussions and negotiations of meaning within the group reading the same text

11.05 – 11.40

–       Students return to their group with their Ketso leaves and try to make sense of the 5 readings together. They should create a ketso mindmap that brings together the richness of the 5 texts as a coherent narrative

11.40 – 11.50

–       Break

11.50 – 12.20

–       Groups present their task

12.20-12.30

–       Debrief

I felt the activity went OK as I saw people immersed in the discussions the papers encouraged both within the groups that had the same text as well as in the groups with different readings. I also felt students needed more time and that we could have gotten more out of that activity if we had had an entire morning to devote to the exercise. As one of the groups was summarising their discussions and presenting it to the rest of the class, I thought it would have been nice to have used that opportunity to host a debate concerning the ideas presented in the readings, looking at both sides of each topic: What are the advantages?, what are the concerns?; what does it take from the student and the teacher?, etc

I know that for some people some of the concepts were hard to grasp. Just like in any discipline or area of knowledge, new concepts often come across as a blur, but as we engage more with it, they start to get clearer. I also think that engaging with the technology might help connecting the dots. In the weeks that follow we will be exploring the topics introduced in week 1 in depth.

There is something I want to consider in the future. It would be good to make week 1 just about literature and have the “introduction to the module” as an online session that all participants are required to attend.

This is probably the part that I am more concerned, and at the same time, a little bit  disappointed about: students’ engagement with the technology, especially twitter. Although a small number of students participated in the pre-activities online, the majority did not. I would be naïve to say that I thought everyone would have joined and engaged with twitter in a very enthusiastic way, but I was hoping for a better response. During the session on Thursday I could tell that those involved in the pre-activities could see the links better between their practices and the literature, simply because they had been experimenting with it.

But I am not one to be discouraged that easily and I have hope that by the end of this module we will all be using these tools in an effective and critical way.

So my questions are:

–       How can I encourage people to try the new approaches that technology offers? (as I was standing there reporting about the use of twitter during the module pre-activities I felt like an insurance seller that people tend to avoid. It is hard to explain the potential of distributed online networks and communities to those who have not yet explored that environment. I don’t want to sound so enthusiastic about it that people think I am mad, but I also don’t want not to mention so that people discard it as unimportant. How do you provide a balanced view?

• For those participating in the module: how did you think the session went? What did you like and what do you think needs improvement?

In short, I think Week 1 went well, but there is room for improvement. I hope we have been able to excite people about the philosophies underpinning the use of technology and that people come back next week

I will be leading on week 3 and I am looking forward to working with Action Learning Set 1 on a session about communities of practice. I will report back!

So here it is a glimpse of the “beast”. It took me almost 5 years to complete this. When I started this journey in January 2008 I had no idea what I had let myself into… I don’t think I know exactly where it will take me either. Not the least because the journey ain’t over yet! There’s still the viva. And to be honest, I don’t know if it will ever be, but I am looking forward to the next chapter!

In closing this chapter of my life, a full thesis is ready to be examined. I must confess I am both nervous and excited. I know this is not a spectacular work that will wow people all around, but I hope it’s good enough to move me to the next stage of learning and doing research. The way I see it, a PhD gives you a license to research!

Below you’ll find a summary of what I have been up to in the last 4 3/4 years. For the past two years it really took over my existence!  So, be kind and constructive in your comments. Maybe I can use this as an opportunity for a mock viva!

The Participatory Web in the context of academic research: landscapes of change and conflicts

Abstract

This thesis presents the results of a narrative inquiry study conducted in the context of Higher Education Institutions. The study aims to describe and foster understanding of the beliefs, perceptions, and felt constraints of ten academic researchers deeply involved in digital scholarship. Academic research, as one of the four categories of scholarship, is the focus of the analysis.  The methods of data collection included in-depth online interviews, field notes, closed blog posts, and follow up dialogues via email and web-telephony.

The literature review within this study presents a narrative on scholarship throughout the ages up to the current environment, highlighting the role of technology in assisting different forms of networking, communication, and dissemination of knowledge. It covers emergent aspects of online participation and scholarship such as the open access movement, online networks and communities of practice that ultimately influence academic researchers’ sense of identity and their approaches to digital scholarship. The literature review had a crucial role in informing the interview guide that supported the narrative accounts of the research participants. However, the data collected uncovered a gap in knowledge not anticipated in the literature review, that of power relations between the individual and their institutions. Hence, an additional sociological research lens, that of Pierre Bourdieu, was adopted in order to complete the analysis of the data collected.   There were three major stages of analysis: the construction of research narratives as a first pass analysis of the narrative inquiry, a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts, and a Bourdieuian analysis, supported by additional literature, that reveals the complexity of current academic practice in the context of the Participatory Web.

This research set out to study the online practices of academic researchers in a changing environment and ended up examining the conflicts between modern and conservative approaches to research scholarship in the context of academic researchers’ practices. This study argues that the Participatory Web, in the context of academic research, can not only empower academic researchers but also place them in contention with traditional and persistent scholarly practice.

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