Engaging the reluctant learner

The next Education Development and Discussion Group (EDDG) is on Tuesday 3rd March and Thursday 5th March @ 12.15-1.15 pm , in room 810 . The discussion topic is ‘Engaging the reluctant learner’ . If you have any links to articles etc. which relate to this topic, please send them to me for distribution.

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Suggested article to read from Carole Paterson: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/sept04/vol62/num01/The_Engaged_Classroom.aspx

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Carole also recommended ‘Getting the Buggers Motivated in FE’ by Susan Wallace and, thoughtfully, summarises it for us a bit ...

Wallace (post-compulsory education, Nottingham Trent U., UK) offers thoughtful advice for teachers in "further education" (ages 14 to adult in the UK) who need advice on motivating unmotivated learners. She frames the advice in narrative vignettes followed by bulleted lists of steps and strategies. Characterizing the four major "demotivators" as fear, boredom, previous negative experience, and loss of hope, the author takes on specific populations (e.g. 14-16 year olds, English as a second language students) and discusses strategies that include reward as motivation, the use of entertainment, the motivating power of positive relationship-building, and exercises in self-respect in terms of each of the four concerns.

Teaching two-point-oh

J. Simon van der Walt here from music, guesting on the blog. I thought I'd share a couple of teaching and learning things I've been doing on the web recently.

First up is making and sharing video online, mainly to demonstrate technical points with using music software. My most succesful posting so far is this demonstration of how to connect to the server using one of the college iMacs. The content was made by doing static screenshots, writing out what I wanted to say and recording it as audio, and then putting the whole lot together in a video editing package. The whole thing maybe took 45 minutes to produce, which is a fair investment in time; on the other hand, before this I was quite possibly spending about that amount of time every week dealing with students who couldn't figure out or remember how to do this, so probably time well spent.

I originally shared this on YouTube, but it was getting mixed up with various private postings of mine. My new strategy is to use several different accounts for the various online tools I'm using, so that I can separate my Stevenson College material from my RSAMD material from my personal work.

My new fave tool for this kind of work is ScreenToaster, as in this demonstration of drum notation in Sibelius for my RSAMD students. I'm finding this very quick and easy to use, this can't have taken more than fifteen minutes to do, no other software tools required, it's all on the web and works mac or PC.

What is Web 2.0 anyway? Three key points for me I guess are tools anyone can use without installing software, user generated content, and social features, and its the latter which I'm finding it hard to use effectively in teaching. Quite a while back I started collecting together all of the links I wanted my students to explore on my delicious page, with keywords to match the link to the relevant class. If this had really taken off the students might have started using delicious, bookmarking stuff themselves and sharing it with me... but it didn't. None of them showed much interest, although it does remain a useful place for me to keep my teaching links handy.

The other failed experiment was the wiki which I started to set up as a kind of instruction manual for the music hardware and software we use. There is some nice content here, but again, the real trick would have been to get some of the keener students to maintain the wiki themselves.

Uses of Web 2.0 - meeting 20/1/09

EDDG Discussion: Web 2.0 technology and learning and teaching, 20/1/09

There was a very lively discussion around the use of Web 2.0 technology, with a sharing of current practice, information and a highlighting of difficulties and barriers. There was a mix of experiences from people who did not use web technologies very through (self-proclaimed Luddites) to those who used web 2.0 on a daily basis. Particular issues discussed were:

What exactly are Web 2.0 technologies ? Discussion focussed around the changing trends in the use of the web technology and web design that enhances creativity, communication , information sharing and collaboration. Discussion focussed on the use of social networking sites, wikis, blogs, social book marking.

We questioned whether web 2.0 technologies were a young person’s tool . Young people may be more familiar, but most have are using the internet, Google on a daily basis. However, for many lecturers this isn’t necessarily how we learned.

User responsibility : In particular we debated YouTube . Plenty of discussion here around the appropriateness of using YouTube with students. Do we need to monitor and control the use within college?

Development of students’ ability to search/use information critically.

The need to maintain face to face contact with students. Web 2.0 does not replace the teacher but should be seen as a means of supporting education, collaboration and generating creativity.
Attention span: discussion around whether students really have a shorter attention span, or whether they can focus for longer if learning and teaching is interactive .

Use of staff blogs: some staff groups are using blogs to share information and collaborate on projects. This has potential for staff groups across the college.
There was a suggestion that it would be good for staff to share their social networking ,blogging , and bookmarking sites e.g. twitter, facebook, delicious.

Focus group of students would be useful to establish what technology they actually use , and their expectations from the college.

e-Portfolios

Karen chaired a meeting recently regarding e-portfolios. We had an interesting discussion. It was good to see different points of view on this issue being exchanged.

My, possibly laboured, point keeps coming back to the educational purpose of e-portfolios. What do we want them for? What value will they have for our students? I think that we need to be very clear on educational purpose from the start.

I think the "for our students" bit is important in the question posed in the last paragraph. An e-portfolio's purpose shouldn't be to make our administration easier.

My point at the meeting was that an e-portfolio is an Internet-based space owned by the student. The life-cycle of the space should transcend the the time spent by the student at Stevenson. I showed how my Google account could act as an e-portfolio. My account is a place where I can access all the blogs, sites, groups that I'm involved with. It also acts as a space to work, online, collaboratively on word, excel or PowerPoint documents. I can also develop my online CV from this space. Of course, all of this comes free.

I think (if I can condense the views at the meeting) that there were differences of opinion based on where control should reside with an e-portfolio system: the student or the college.

It might be a good idea for the people involved in the e-portfolio group (and anyone else) to respond to this post so we can thrash out through robust dialogue our vision of e-portfolios. A way forward may just become apparent ...

EDDG meetings on 20th and 22nd January - social networking tools

A Happy New Year to all .
I thought I’d start the year by passing on some really interesting information from Alan MacCorquodale on the use of social networking tools in education. As there has been a lot of debate around the VLE and web technologies, I thought it would be a good topic for debate at our next EDDG (Educational Development and Discussion) meeting. The links (including the podcast) below give some food for thought but if you scroll down even further there is more information available. I’ve been asked to vary the days of the EDDG meetings so I’ve planned the next one for Tuesday, 20th January , 12.15 pm in room 810 , and Thursday 22nd , 12.15 in room 810 . It’s the same topic for both days, but hopefully this gives more people the opportunity to come to a meeting.
Can you let me know if you plan to come to one of the meetings and if you would like your name added to the EDDG distribution list . More information about EDDG can be found on the EDDG blog: http://eddg.blogspot.com/ .
Karen
Karen Lawson
Teacher Fellow
RSC NewsFeed
eNews from the JISC Regional Support Centres in Scotland
Report: Using Social Networking (Web 2.0) in HE
Web2.0 - extended mindcloudmapOriginally uploaded by kosmar.ipernity.com
In the last edition of NewsFeed we highlighted the JISC Podcast: Listening to Students-Changing the Learner Experience, which contained an interview with Sir David Melville, chair of The Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience. The Committee have recently published a commissioned report on “A review of current and developing international practice in the use of social networking (web 2.0) in higher education” [Word Doc, 1.4Mb, 141 pages]. The review looks at:
The areas in which Web 2.0 is being used, including academic and administrative support;
The drivers to use of Web 2.0 in these areas;
The issues encountered and the responses made;
The perceived advantages and disadvantages of Web 2.0 use; and
Prospective developments in Web 2.0 use.
To support the review the Committee highlights the following relevant activities in this area:
Web 2.0 technologies for learning: the current landscape –opportunities, challenges and tensions, BECTA
Learners’ use of Web 2.0 technology in and out of school at KS3 and 4, BECTA
Student expectations study: Findings from preliminary research, JISC
Great Expectations of ICT, JISC
Information behaviour of the researcher of the future, JISC
Effective use of social software by further and higher education in the UK, Open University (Funded by JISC)
Learning Literacies for a Digital Age, Glasgow Caledonian University (Funded by JISC)




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EDD meeting on 10th December 2008

EDDG meeting – Confidence and Well-being 10/12/08


There was a very interesting and lively debate around the issues raised at the FERRN Seminar in Glasgow last week. I’ve highlighted some of the areas that may be worth investigating further, either through further workshops and learning and teaching days, or small scale research within the college.

FERRN Winter seminar

The confident and resilient learner
Work of Carol Craig and Emily Cutts:


Lack of evidence that a focus on boosting self-esteem is meaningful. Research in USA shows practice by teachers and parents to raise self-esteem in young people has encouraged too much self-absorption and contributed an increase in depression.

Teachers tend to : praise individuals too much (inappropriate) , restrict competition, giving everyone praise and recognition, don’t give negative feedback, give grades that are aspirational, restricting opportunities to fail. This can result in students who become over focussed on themselves.

High self-esteem can be a problem !

A focus on confidence , resilience (psychological immune system) and mind-sets is more appropriate and ‘successful’. Important to use negative experiences. Bad feelings have a purpose – galvanise us to do things differently.

Research in Glasgow and Napier– mindsets (fixed and growth)

Small interventions (4 ten minute sessions on mindsets, and altering feedback sheets) can improve academic performance and possibly retention. This is something we could develop and introduce.

Links to goal setting, motivation, giving feedback, tutorial work , induction, personal planning .

Further information on confidence, well-being and mind-sets is available from www.centreforconfidence.co.uk

Handout research : Emma Clays and Kyle Smith (Perth college)

This research examined the outcomes of using formatted and unformatted texts with students studying Higher English. The students who had been given unformatted text did better in tests. This related to content and structure, with students writing in sentences and paragraphs rather than bullet points.

If you would like to find out more about this research and possibly be involved in a small-scale research with your own students then email or phone me.


Karen Lawson

Confidence and well-being

I thought I'd get an entry going on the "Confidence and Well-being" session. I couldn't make it, so I'm interested to know some more about this. Maybe we could use this space to exchange our thoughts on it.

I feel that when I explain to people who don't work in FE what I do (when I say I teach English or Communication they often have some fantastical idea of me holding court around a small group of bookish, eager and able students) that I use the phrase "confidence-building" a lot. And yes, when I think about it, I spend a lot of time encouraging and supporting students who often have low self-esteem. Of course, my degree or, to be honest, my PGCE, didn't provide me with any in-depth training in this. Like a lot of what we do in FE, it seems to be something what we pick up along the way.

So, yes, confidence and well-being are, without doubt, important (would we argue otherwise?). What I'd like to know more about is how, on a very practical level, we can work on these skills with students in a more structured, conscious and, of course, meaningful way.

What would a confidence and well-being programme of study look like? Would there even be a programme of study? What kind of activities would it involve? Would it be integrated across all points of delivery (this seems, at a gut level, to make sense)? Or would it be a stand-alone programme? What CPD do we need to take this forward if we want to?

These questions may all have been dealt with at the meeting, but the blog might be a good place to archive folk's ideas by replying to my entry by clicking on "comment" below.

Here's the link that Karen provided: http://www.centreforconfidence.co.uk/projects.php?p=cGlkPTM4