CLTAD Pg Cert Profile 2 Les Bicknell
The purpose, for myself, of signing up for the Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching course has, to a large part been accomplished in that I am beginning to ask questions again. My teaching practice has been re-ignited – there is energy and creativity where there was duty and a job. Attending the 3 days residential element was an intensive experience – being presented with a range of often conflicting educational theories and ideas enabled me as a student to navigate my own path through the words. On reflection this experience has been not unlike a compressed version of the undergraduate student experience – one of being given information, again much of it diametrically opposed. The student moves from being passively presented facts and figures and then undertaking given tasks – effectively a surface activity lacking the depth of real engagement. To the student taking control, developing his or her own learning and being proactive in the pursuit of information. This for me was highlighted when my ‘off the record’ comments about sitting back and not being in charge were made known to a wider audience in Susan’s introduction.
I feel invigorated with much of the passion when I first started teaching but its now stronger, experience without the innocence. I have taken control of my teaching – this is with generous support from my line manager who at present appears to of recognised my enthusiasm and given me a blank slate with which to review, rethink and remodel my role on the course. I have been considering and reflecting on my many roles within the course and feel that I now have the academic tools to begin to engage in general but also with specific reference to the Personal Development Profile and its delivery. I am beginning to understand and value this key to learning, encompassing as I believe it can the deep question of who we are and where we want to be. The concept of reflection has at its core true learning and it is this that needs to be addressed, especially within the current climate, there is more than ever a need to teach how to learn within the context of limited support and resources. This revelation was cemented when I found myself in the textile office in Norwich University College of the Arts talking with and supporting my fellow textile staff team members. A condition of the award is the rewriting of the learning outcomes in relation to the school and university aims. I was surprised to find myself able to engage with and often direct the educational debates that we as a course are currently involved in due to the course being revalidated. The session on the residential course on team building observations brought a new dimension to my understanding of the roles played out by the various members of the textile team. This insight enabled me to reconsider and reposition my role. This has been positive for all concerned the course, the team, individual team members and myself. To add to this I have been reflecting on a series titled The Wire. The Wire is a HBO police drama series set in Baltimore Maryland which at its core is an examination of how institutions mould or are moulded by the individuals within them. It is easy to project reasoning from your armchair onto fictional characters – to solve their issues and problems. It is possible to match the characteristics of the individuals around you onto the characters in the fictional world of a television program. My line manager becomes Officer James "Jimmy" McNulty played by Dominic West. A risk taking rule breaker and a co-worker takes the form of Officer Beatrice "Beadie" Russell played by Amy Ryan. A dedicated cautious professional. When undertaking this exercise it becomes easier to envisage a route to solving personal or team issues. This ‘mirror’ can also be interesting when identifying oneself.
The whole concept of constructive alignment and further reading around the idea of a golden thread has given me a new insight into the structures I have been working with over the past 15 years. My relationship to strategies around teaching and learning has been passive. I have understood only the course documents that I have been working with at that moment in time. That might be the learning outcomes of a specific unit within an assessment context or aims and objectives within a briefing for the beginning of a semester. But I now see the documents joined up, linking with each other they make a new sense, richer, deeper. There are patterns revealing themselves and I can see myself fitting within them. Reading chapter 2 of Becoming a Critically a Reflective Teacher - Becoming Critically Reflective – a process of learning and change (1995) the idea that course documents especially learning outcomes, aims and objectives are manmade, constructed through discussion and I can play a part in remodelling these – if I so wish.
Within my role as a Senior Lecturer on the Textiles BA I have responsibility for the Virtual Learning Environment student experience. As a result of attending the PgCLT course I have developed a clearer overall approach to both the ‘physical’ layout and actual content of the VLE course. This is as a result of really considering how the students I work with actually learn. What is their experience of learning and being taught? What are their expectations? What do they want from the course? As an element of recent group meetings or seminars that I run I have been asking these questions – the answers when reviewed will form part of a brief for the redesign and new approach to what, how and why we will deliver the PDP. There have been a number of conceptual rethinks around our approach to the VLE within the textile team already. These have derived from notes I made during the residential element of the course from several discussions with fellow students about their experiences of using various VLEs. I have been looking at numerous software add-ons to make moodle more approachable or more accessible to the students. As a part of this research I have been working with Slideshare, a piece of software which enables you to post PowerPoint on the Internet. It is easy to use and rather than posting the whole presentation within Moodle, a time consuming exercise with issues around storage capacity, a simple link can be posted which the students can follow.
Reading Richardson (2005) and attempting to consider the student experience has led to a more transparent approach, using clearer language and addressing their requests within 24 hours. All this has led to an obvious yet interesting outcome - an extended workload. The students are much happier, clearer in their role and have a strong sense of being cared for. I meanwhile leave over an hour after I am being paid and this work has bled into days when I am not at college thus my practice is under threat and projects I am working in outside the University are being compromised. This is a situation I believe will evolve and possibly be resolved when a number of proposed strategies and systems are put in place and it is something that at present is at an acceptable level. Hopefully the concept of exponential growth will occur with the work I have undertaken – especially if the process is to become sustainable. I am involved in discussions about how to use my hours more strategically – looking to my strengths and actively repositioning my role on the course.
I am currently developing opportunities for supporting students learning by recognising shared interests, developing informal peer assistance groups who will support each others learning whilst reducing student/lecturer contact time. As Davies stated the links made by the students are richer and deeper as they take ownership of their own learning – developing ways to learn together, often slower, but an activity which will be more rewarding and long lasting. I have been influenced by the work of Sugata Mitra – he talks about and promotes strategies to enable children to teach themselves within groups. He works with children in isolation and poverty in remote rural areas of India and provides stark evidence for the value of group learning.
I am in the process of keeping a reflective journal, this is something new to my practice. As an artist I have been working with the idea of the sketchbook in some form for over 30 years but the specific remit of the journals intention and purpose has enabled me to consider my role within the course. If I note on 30.04.09 I was as part of a revalidation meeting/conversation when my newly acquired knowledge around learning outcomes became relevant. This was specifically looking at the verbs, as recommend by Davies in his presentation titled Outcome led learning in Art and Design which gave a direction to the discussion and supported the writing of the new document.
My responsibility around the design and planning of the BA Textile Course has not changed but my engagement with it has. With the support of the PgCLT course and the reading material I have been directed to I have been able to support the course team. My specific reading around learning outcomes especially both the article itself and Carol Carters review of Hussey and Smiths The Uses of Learning Outcomes (2003) has informed the discussion. I have understood the connections between the project, unit, year, course, school and university learning outcomes. This is again an idea embedded within the concept of the Golden Thread, but this is an idea lacking at the NUCA and this omission in itself illustrates a gap in how we as members of staff could measure the activities we are engaged in.
I have been in conversation with a fellow member of staff – Senior Lecturer Jill Rodgers and we are working together collaboratively to consider all the written elements of the course from the learning agreements, tutorial forms, reflective essays and the PDP. We are looking at how to streamline the experience for the student, developing a clear strategy, which will outline the different reasoning behind each aspect of the writing.
Initially we began by analysing the learning outcomes attached to each submission, looking at why and what they are learning. Why are we asking the students to undertake certain pieces of writing? What do we expect of them as students? When we cross-referenced the documentation it became obvious that there was duplication. We are now beginning to deconstruct the various written elements of the course and asking how the individual learning outcomes could, perhaps be embedded within the student’s practice in a holistic form and along the way attempting to instil that reflection is a process not an outcome?
I am currently in the process of organising the end of year shows for all years. I have specific responsibility around the 3rd year final degree show. In previous years this has entailed an element of tension on behalf of the students. This year by reflecting on the students perspective I have been especially clear in my directions to the students – this transparency has enabled the individual students and the group as a whole to address the issue of the final show with a calm determination. Meetings have been used give a voice to individual students fears and requests. The use of notice boards and the VLE to disseminate information has been very successful and will be a model for forthcoming years.
The research that I am engaged in on a daily basis has become more consciously strategic since embarking on the course. The subjects were and still are wide ranging due to the nature of my practice encompassing as it does at the moment; granite sandblasting methods, the history of the first production line, the effect of textile activity within the development of cities and training on AVA. This heightened awareness of critical learning and reflective processes has in effect given me time, time to work faster, more direct and therefore more effective.
On a person level the session on different types of learners and my reading around the subject especially rereading Biggs solo taxonomy has enabled me to support my eldest child’s GCSE options choice. Looking at and completing the approaches to studying questionnaire – supplied at the residential element of the course - led to a full and frank discussion around the type of learner he was within each subject. This enabled me to support his decisions by matching learning types to the specific teaching experience within each subject. Sad but true.
The need to develop separate strategies or approaches for each subject was interesting – it was evident that as Gibbs states in Innovative Assessment in Higher Education (2006) “students are as strategic as never before, and they allocate their time and focus their attention on what they believe will be assessed……..assessment frames learning. “
My child has been in training - learning within this framework for 9 years – no wonder he is strategic or the students I encounter in my teaching capacity..
Ending 1
What kind of teacher am I? Has been an interesting question to reflect on. Why am I good with certain students and with others I have difficulty spending time in their company? I have been looking at my relationships with members of my tutor group. Working with Entwistle’s (1988) cataloguing methods it became evident that there is a degree of conflict with certain teacher – student types. I either need to consider very different approaches to individual students or to ask for a reallocation of the students within various tutor groups. This is also an appropriate comment on parenting – although more challenging to reallocate!
Ending 2
What kind of teacher am I? Has been an interesting question to reflect on. Why am I good with certain students and with others I have difficulty spending time in their company? I have been looking at my relationships with members of my tutor group. Working with Entwistle’s (1988) cataloguing methods it became evident that there is a degree of conflict with certain teacher – student types. It is obvious if I consider the ramifications around reallocation in relation to my children that as a teacher it is my responsibility to consider very different teaching approaches to individual students and their individual needs. Maybe the re-evaluating of my relationship to responsibility has been the most interesting outcome of the PgCLT so far.
“Be the change that you want in the world.” Mahatma Gandi
The purpose, for myself, of signing up for the Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching course has, to a large part been accomplished in that I am beginning to ask questions again. My teaching practice has been re-ignited – there is energy and creativity where there was duty and a job. Attending the 3 days residential element was an intensive experience – being presented with a range of often conflicting educational theories and ideas enabled me as a student to navigate my own path through the words. On reflection this experience has been not unlike a compressed version of the undergraduate student experience – one of being given information, again much of it diametrically opposed. The student moves from being passively presented facts and figures and then undertaking given tasks – effectively a surface activity lacking the depth of real engagement. To the student taking control, developing his or her own learning and being proactive in the pursuit of information. This for me was highlighted when my ‘off the record’ comments about sitting back and not being in charge were made known to a wider audience in Susan’s introduction.
I feel invigorated with much of the passion when I first started teaching but its now stronger, experience without the innocence. I have taken control of my teaching – this is with generous support from my line manager who at present appears to of recognised my enthusiasm and given me a blank slate with which to review, rethink and remodel my role on the course. I have been considering and reflecting on my many roles within the course and feel that I now have the academic tools to begin to engage in general but also with specific reference to the Personal Development Profile and its delivery. I am beginning to understand and value this key to learning, encompassing as I believe it can the deep question of who we are and where we want to be. The concept of reflection has at its core true learning and it is this that needs to be addressed, especially within the current climate, there is more than ever a need to teach how to learn within the context of limited support and resources. This revelation was cemented when I found myself in the textile office in Norwich University College of the Arts talking with and supporting my fellow textile staff team members. A condition of the award is the rewriting of the learning outcomes in relation to the school and university aims. I was surprised to find myself able to engage with and often direct the educational debates that we as a course are currently involved in due to the course being revalidated. The session on the residential course on team building observations brought a new dimension to my understanding of the roles played out by the various members of the textile team. This insight enabled me to reconsider and reposition my role. This has been positive for all concerned the course, the team, individual team members and myself. To add to this I have been reflecting on a series titled The Wire. The Wire is a HBO police drama series set in Baltimore Maryland which at its core is an examination of how institutions mould or are moulded by the individuals within them. It is easy to project reasoning from your armchair onto fictional characters – to solve their issues and problems. It is possible to match the characteristics of the individuals around you onto the characters in the fictional world of a television program. My line manager becomes Officer James "Jimmy" McNulty played by Dominic West. A risk taking rule breaker and a co-worker takes the form of Officer Beatrice "Beadie" Russell played by Amy Ryan. A dedicated cautious professional. When undertaking this exercise it becomes easier to envisage a route to solving personal or team issues. This ‘mirror’ can also be interesting when identifying oneself.
The whole concept of constructive alignment and further reading around the idea of a golden thread has given me a new insight into the structures I have been working with over the past 15 years. My relationship to strategies around teaching and learning has been passive. I have understood only the course documents that I have been working with at that moment in time. That might be the learning outcomes of a specific unit within an assessment context or aims and objectives within a briefing for the beginning of a semester. But I now see the documents joined up, linking with each other they make a new sense, richer, deeper. There are patterns revealing themselves and I can see myself fitting within them. Reading chapter 2 of Becoming a Critically a Reflective Teacher - Becoming Critically Reflective – a process of learning and change (1995) the idea that course documents especially learning outcomes, aims and objectives are manmade, constructed through discussion and I can play a part in remodelling these – if I so wish.
Within my role as a Senior Lecturer on the Textiles BA I have responsibility for the Virtual Learning Environment student experience. As a result of attending the PgCLT course I have developed a clearer overall approach to both the ‘physical’ layout and actual content of the VLE course. This is as a result of really considering how the students I work with actually learn. What is their experience of learning and being taught? What are their expectations? What do they want from the course? As an element of recent group meetings or seminars that I run I have been asking these questions – the answers when reviewed will form part of a brief for the redesign and new approach to what, how and why we will deliver the PDP. There have been a number of conceptual rethinks around our approach to the VLE within the textile team already. These have derived from notes I made during the residential element of the course from several discussions with fellow students about their experiences of using various VLEs. I have been looking at numerous software add-ons to make moodle more approachable or more accessible to the students. As a part of this research I have been working with Slideshare, a piece of software which enables you to post PowerPoint on the Internet. It is easy to use and rather than posting the whole presentation within Moodle, a time consuming exercise with issues around storage capacity, a simple link can be posted which the students can follow.
Reading Richardson (2005) and attempting to consider the student experience has led to a more transparent approach, using clearer language and addressing their requests within 24 hours. All this has led to an obvious yet interesting outcome - an extended workload. The students are much happier, clearer in their role and have a strong sense of being cared for. I meanwhile leave over an hour after I am being paid and this work has bled into days when I am not at college thus my practice is under threat and projects I am working in outside the University are being compromised. This is a situation I believe will evolve and possibly be resolved when a number of proposed strategies and systems are put in place and it is something that at present is at an acceptable level. Hopefully the concept of exponential growth will occur with the work I have undertaken – especially if the process is to become sustainable. I am involved in discussions about how to use my hours more strategically – looking to my strengths and actively repositioning my role on the course.
I am currently developing opportunities for supporting students learning by recognising shared interests, developing informal peer assistance groups who will support each others learning whilst reducing student/lecturer contact time. As Davies stated the links made by the students are richer and deeper as they take ownership of their own learning – developing ways to learn together, often slower, but an activity which will be more rewarding and long lasting. I have been influenced by the work of Sugata Mitra – he talks about and promotes strategies to enable children to teach themselves within groups. He works with children in isolation and poverty in remote rural areas of India and provides stark evidence for the value of group learning.
I am in the process of keeping a reflective journal, this is something new to my practice. As an artist I have been working with the idea of the sketchbook in some form for over 30 years but the specific remit of the journals intention and purpose has enabled me to consider my role within the course. If I note on 30.04.09 I was as part of a revalidation meeting/conversation when my newly acquired knowledge around learning outcomes became relevant. This was specifically looking at the verbs, as recommend by Davies in his presentation titled Outcome led learning in Art and Design which gave a direction to the discussion and supported the writing of the new document.
My responsibility around the design and planning of the BA Textile Course has not changed but my engagement with it has. With the support of the PgCLT course and the reading material I have been directed to I have been able to support the course team. My specific reading around learning outcomes especially both the article itself and Carol Carters review of Hussey and Smiths The Uses of Learning Outcomes (2003) has informed the discussion. I have understood the connections between the project, unit, year, course, school and university learning outcomes. This is again an idea embedded within the concept of the Golden Thread, but this is an idea lacking at the NUCA and this omission in itself illustrates a gap in how we as members of staff could measure the activities we are engaged in.
I have been in conversation with a fellow member of staff – Senior Lecturer Jill Rodgers and we are working together collaboratively to consider all the written elements of the course from the learning agreements, tutorial forms, reflective essays and the PDP. We are looking at how to streamline the experience for the student, developing a clear strategy, which will outline the different reasoning behind each aspect of the writing.
Initially we began by analysing the learning outcomes attached to each submission, looking at why and what they are learning. Why are we asking the students to undertake certain pieces of writing? What do we expect of them as students? When we cross-referenced the documentation it became obvious that there was duplication. We are now beginning to deconstruct the various written elements of the course and asking how the individual learning outcomes could, perhaps be embedded within the student’s practice in a holistic form and along the way attempting to instil that reflection is a process not an outcome?
I am currently in the process of organising the end of year shows for all years. I have specific responsibility around the 3rd year final degree show. In previous years this has entailed an element of tension on behalf of the students. This year by reflecting on the students perspective I have been especially clear in my directions to the students – this transparency has enabled the individual students and the group as a whole to address the issue of the final show with a calm determination. Meetings have been used give a voice to individual students fears and requests. The use of notice boards and the VLE to disseminate information has been very successful and will be a model for forthcoming years.
The research that I am engaged in on a daily basis has become more consciously strategic since embarking on the course. The subjects were and still are wide ranging due to the nature of my practice encompassing as it does at the moment; granite sandblasting methods, the history of the first production line, the effect of textile activity within the development of cities and training on AVA. This heightened awareness of critical learning and reflective processes has in effect given me time, time to work faster, more direct and therefore more effective.
On a person level the session on different types of learners and my reading around the subject especially rereading Biggs solo taxonomy has enabled me to support my eldest child’s GCSE options choice. Looking at and completing the approaches to studying questionnaire – supplied at the residential element of the course - led to a full and frank discussion around the type of learner he was within each subject. This enabled me to support his decisions by matching learning types to the specific teaching experience within each subject. Sad but true.
The need to develop separate strategies or approaches for each subject was interesting – it was evident that as Gibbs states in Innovative Assessment in Higher Education (2006) “students are as strategic as never before, and they allocate their time and focus their attention on what they believe will be assessed……..assessment frames learning. “
My child has been in training - learning within this framework for 9 years – no wonder he is strategic or the students I encounter in my teaching capacity..
Ending 1
What kind of teacher am I? Has been an interesting question to reflect on. Why am I good with certain students and with others I have difficulty spending time in their company? I have been looking at my relationships with members of my tutor group. Working with Entwistle’s (1988) cataloguing methods it became evident that there is a degree of conflict with certain teacher – student types. I either need to consider very different approaches to individual students or to ask for a reallocation of the students within various tutor groups. This is also an appropriate comment on parenting – although more challenging to reallocate!
Ending 2
What kind of teacher am I? Has been an interesting question to reflect on. Why am I good with certain students and with others I have difficulty spending time in their company? I have been looking at my relationships with members of my tutor group. Working with Entwistle’s (1988) cataloguing methods it became evident that there is a degree of conflict with certain teacher – student types. It is obvious if I consider the ramifications around reallocation in relation to my children that as a teacher it is my responsibility to consider very different teaching approaches to individual students and their individual needs. Maybe the re-evaluating of my relationship to responsibility has been the most interesting outcome of the PgCLT so far.
“Be the change that you want in the world.” Mahatma Gandi
Bibliography
Biggs’ structure of the observed learning outcome (solo) taxonomy
Teaching and Educational Development Institute The University of Queensland Australia
Carol Carters (2003) review of Hussey and Smiths The Uses of Learning Outcomes
Davies (2009) Outcome led learning in Art and Design.
Entwistle, N. J. (1988) Styles of learning and teaching: an integrated outline of educational psychology for students, teachers and lecturers.
Gibbs (2006) Innovative Assessment in Higher Education
Hussey and Smiths (2003) The Uses of Learning Outcomes Teaching in Higher Education, Volume Issue 3 July 2003 , pages 357 - 368
Richardson, J.T.E. (2005) 'Students' approaches to learning and teachers' approaches to teaching in higher education'
Stephen D. Brookfield. (1995) Becoming a Critically a Reflective Teacher - Becoming Critically Reflective – a process of learning and change
http://www.hbo.com/thewire/
http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=5433140
http://www.TED.com/
http://www.ted.com/talks
http://www.ted.com/search?q=Sugata+Mitra
http://simoja.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/wk12-a2-richardson-2005/
Biggs’ structure of the observed learning outcome (solo) taxonomy
Teaching and Educational Development Institute The University of Queensland Australia
Carol Carters (2003) review of Hussey and Smiths The Uses of Learning Outcomes
Davies (2009) Outcome led learning in Art and Design.
Entwistle, N. J. (1988) Styles of learning and teaching: an integrated outline of educational psychology for students, teachers and lecturers.
Gibbs (2006) Innovative Assessment in Higher Education
Hussey and Smiths (2003) The Uses of Learning Outcomes Teaching in Higher Education, Volume Issue 3 July 2003 , pages 357 - 368
Richardson, J.T.E. (2005) 'Students' approaches to learning and teachers' approaches to teaching in higher education'
Stephen D. Brookfield. (1995) Becoming a Critically a Reflective Teacher - Becoming Critically Reflective – a process of learning and change
http://www.hbo.com/thewire/
http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=5433140
http://www.TED.com/
http://www.ted.com/talks
http://www.ted.com/search?q=Sugata+Mitra
http://simoja.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/wk12-a2-richardson-2005/
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