Wednesday 26 January 2011

Write, share re-write

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about some of the short writing tasks that we have built into our modules – including into seminar time – in order to promote ‘write to learn’ approaches at our university. Recently I asked a colleague from Plymouth to share some of the activities that she has used in her brilliant and engaging conference workshops (ALDinHE and WDHE). She has graciously shared them with me – and I am sharing them with you:

“Like a good magpie, most of the ideas are of course stolen gems, based mostly on the work of Bronwyn Davies (her book Doing Collective Biography is really practical and inspiring), and Jane Speedy's collaborative writing toolbox which she is currently developing for ESCalate.

Basically, the point is to write and share and then rewrite.

Imposing limits seems to focus the writing better, and some of the tricks are to insist that the participants write in sentences of no more than three words, or write( their life?) in no more (and no less than) 50 words.

Alternatively they can be asked to write a short piece (in a set time) around a particular theme (ie mis/recognition, fear, school, etc.) with the express aim of attempting to capture and evoke (in an embodied sense) a particular moment in time.

The emphasis in this kind of workshop is not just on the writing, but also on the audience. Therefore the listeners should be aware that they have a responsibility to critique and comment (positively) on the writing with the aim of helping the writer edit out all superfluous information. Bronwyn maintains that even if you are listening intently, your mind will begin to wander the minute the writing rings untrue or irrelevant. This is the moment when the writer needs to be made aware that they have 'lost' their audience.

I have to say, the writing I produced in her workshop was the most intense and emotionally dense I have ever done… “

Wednesday 19 January 2011

Learning Development: roles and working lives

The Association of Learning Development in Higher Education is conducting an informal ethnographic study of the work of learning developers across the sector. Each month we are invited to blog what we did on the 15th day – or the nearest working day to the 15th. If you are engaged in any form of learning development role yourself, do go to the blog and add an entry (for January please go to http://aldinheprofdev.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/january-2011-journal/ ). If you do not want to blog yourself, just go and read the entries – they are fascinating. I am reproducing my January blog here, fyi:
I did not work on the 15th and as I am 0.8 and I do not work on Fridays either, my nearest working days include Weds/Thurs 12th & 13th January – but also Monday 17th January – so here’s a little bit about all of those.
Some context: as you all know, we all work in increasingly pressured, work heavy and time poor environments – pushed forever to do more with less, for less and in less time. At the same time we are all deluged with increasingly peremptory and steadily mounting demands and pressures: this year we are all blended learning – get up to speed, produce new course designs & resources, develop new Teaching, Learning & Assessment practices … yesterday – or else. Ooooh, this year we are all transitions & student engagement: three-line whip to attend workshops, sit on discussion groups, produce policy documents whilst remembering that we are still ‘blended learning’ so must keep producing those resources and new course designs and activities whilst the university deletes administrative posts so that we all have to do a thousand extra admin tasks as well …
And so it goes! Thus generally we are all nose to grindstone, shoulder to wheel and forehead to door of fridge – and no matter how hard we work, how many hours or days of unpaid over time we give – we never feel we have done enough or that we are good enough…
BUT – they announced our redundancies in November… and this brings me to the 12th & 13th January:
Last week amongst the email and admin which is endless and forever… I dragged my nose, shoulder and forehead to my desk and decided to play. We learn through play. We are engaged by and in play… So I opened a twitter account and started tweeting. I resurrected my blog (http://lastrefugelmu.blogspot.com/2011) and started blogging. I entered my facebook account without shame – and IM’ed an ex-colleague who now lives in Dublin. I also followed threads and links and posts … I cannot tell you how much I learned in those two days. I now feel ready and able to really DO blended learning. More so than any amount of micromanaging or bullying or hectoring could ever have accomplished.
Homily: In these increasingly harsh times, let us fight for those creative and emancipatory spaces for ourselves. Let us take the time to explore, develop, share, learn and grow – in fun and joy.
17th January: the other day nearest the 15th that I worked involved the usual email and admin – but also our SWAP symposium. The LearnHigher and Write Now CETLs at London Met funded pedagogic research projects in reading, notemaking and writing around the theme of Supporting Academic Writing Practices (SWAP). On Monday we had a symposium wherein the majority of participants were able to report back on their projects. Over 50 people attended the event – and there were fascinating presentations on: Using mobile phones for studying and notemaking; Writing in public: exploring the use of Web 2.0 in developing students’ academic writing; Using tweets for reflection during practice; Re-purposing a Reflective Practice learning object; A teaching resource to guide biological laboratory and scientific report writing; Read to succeed – a project to embed reading and the Academic Liaison Librarian to aid the transition of first year undergraduates; Writing in the disciplines E-pack; and A handbook for creating a story-telling space on virtual 3D environments(Second Life). For reports on these projects do go to: http://www.writenow.ac.uk/outcomes/resources/mini-research-projects/#SWAP
A merry lunch was eaten and a good day was had by all. Hopefully also this event did not draw a line of closure – but has sparked further ideas, including for further collaborations, between participants. Personally I am hoping that our Events management students will get together with our Computing, multimedia and animation students to run a virtual Get Ahead conference for us this year as there is definitely no money left in the pot to run a real one! (For a look at our last conference by students and for students, go to: http://www.catsconsulting.com/getahead2010/#)

Learning Development: working lives, roles and ethnographic study

The Association of Learning Development in Higher Education is conducting an informal ethnographic study of the work of learning developers across the sector. Each month we are invited to blog what we did on the 15th day – or the nearest working day to the 15th. If you are engaged in any form of learning development role yourself, do go to the blog and add an entry (for January please go to http://aldinheprofdev.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/january-2011-journal/ ). If you do not want to blog yourself, just go and read the entries – they are fascinating. I am reproducing my January blog here, FYI:

I did not work on Saturday the 15th and as I am 0.8 and I do not work on Fridays either, my nearest working days therefore include Weds/Thurs 12th & 13th January – but also Monday 17th January – so here’s a little bit about all of those.

Some context: as you all know, we all work in increasingly pressured, work heavy and time poor environments – pushed forever to do more with less, for less and in less time. At the same time we are all deluged with increasingly peremptory and steadily mounting demands and pressures: this year we are all blended learning – get up to speed, produce new course designs & resources, develop new Teaching, Learning & Assessment practices … yesterday – or else. Ooooh, this year we are all transitions & student engagement: three-line whip to attend workshops, sit on discussion groups, produce policy documents whilst remembering that we are still ‘blended learning’ so must keep producing those resources and new course designs and activities whilst the university deletes administrative posts so that we all have to do a thousand extra admin tasks as well …

And so it goes! Thus generally we are all nose to grindstone, shoulder to wheel and forehead to door of fridge – and no matter how hard we work, how many hours or days of unpaid over time we give – we never feel we have done enough or that we are good enough… BUT – they announced our redundancies in November… and this brings me to the 12th & 13th January:
Last week amongst the email and admin which is endless and forever… I dragged my nose, shoulder and forehead to my desk and decided to play to learn. We learn through play. We are engaged by and in play… So I opened a twitter account and started tweeting. I resurrected my blog (http://lastrefugelmu.blogspot.com/2011) and started blogging. I entered my facebook account without shame ... and I also followed threads and links and posts … I cannot tell you how much I learned in those two days. I now feel ready and able to really DO blended learning. More so than any amount of micromanaging or bullying or hectoring could ever have accomplished. Homily: In these increasingly harsh times, let us fight for those creative and emancipatory spaces for ourselves. Let us take the time to explore, develop, share, learn and grow – in fun and joy.

17th January: the other day nearest the 15th that I worked involved the usual email and admin – but also our SWAP symposium. The LearnHigher and Write Now CETLs at London Met funded pedagogic research projects in reading, notemaking and writing around the theme of Supporting Academic Writing Practices (SWAP). On Monday we had a symposium wherein the majority of participants were able to report back on their projects. Over 50 people attended the event – and there were fascinating presentations on: Using mobile phones for studying and notemaking; Writing in public: exploring the use of Web 2.0 in developing students’ academic writing; Using tweets for reflection during practice; Re-purposing a Reflective Practice learning object; A teaching resource to guide biological laboratory and scientific report writing; Read to succeed – a project to embed reading and the Academic Liaison Librarian to aid the transition of first year undergraduates; Writing in the disciplines E-pack; and A handbook for creating a story-telling space on virtual 3D environments(Second Life). For reports on these projects do go to: http://www.writenow.ac.uk/outcomes/resources/mini-research-projects/#SWAP
A merry lunch was eaten and a good day was had by all. Hopefully also this event did not draw a line of closure – but has sparked further ideas, including for further collaborations, between participants. Personally I am hoping that our Events management students will get together with our Computing, multimedia and animation students to run a virtual Get Ahead conference for us this year as there is definitely no money left in the pot to run a real one! (For a look at our last conference by students and for students, go to: http://www.catsconsulting.com/getahead2010/#)

Thursday 13 January 2011

Write to learn, weekly writing tasks +/- VLEs

Someone on the LDHEN jiscmail just asked about short tasks for putting in our VLEs that are designed to promote student learning. Personally I am not keen on multiple choice or drag and drop tests. I think they lead to convergent thinking and the notion that there Is, ONE right answer to every problem... and so forth (do see Ken Robinson's animated talk: Education - a paradigm shift:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U).


To promote active learning with 'my' students, I've become increasingly keen on short weekly writing exercises that can happen either live in class - or be given as an on-line task that is set and submitted via the VLE. These can be semi-structured, along the lines of: 'Summarise what you have learned from today's session and discuss how you will make use of that in your final assignment...' to really quite shaped and formulated writing exercises. If anyone in the blogoshphere is interested, I can send you a module seminar handbook that has a range of different weekly writing tasks that we used with a second year group - though this formulation tends to work at every level.

We found that students who participated in the tasks got the best marks they'd ever received for their final pieces of academic writing, that they felt they had more knowledge about the course content, that they'd felt able to be more creative on the course - and that they finally understood why they were reading.

If doing this with small groups, it would be possible to give feedback on the writing submitted. With larger groups some form of peer review could be facilitated...

To increase participation, you always have the option to incentivise by awarding marks for submission (1 mark per submission up to a maximum of ten, say) - or even allowing the submission of a revised formulation of the written submissions as a patchwork text for the final assignment.

Wednesday 12 January 2011

Starting over... deleting LDUs

It's January 2011 - happy new year, folks! I've decided that I will keep a blog - and I might as well use this one as it already exists.

Most recent news: is the deletion of the Learning Development Unit at London Met. I've written about this on the Student Learning and Teaching Network blog, the story has also been covered in the Times Higher and on the LDHEN jiscmail...

There is a small light on the horizon; we may keep a vestigial stump of LD provision within our Centre for Academic and Professional Development. This will be staff facing and will mainly concentrate on embedding LD provision within the curriculum. Excellent as this - and there is much evidence suggesting that the best learning and writing support does happen in the context of the teaching and learning that the student has to undertake - I hope that we also maintain something that is student facing - that can operate with and for students - and that can match THEIR needs.

I've always believed that whilst emancipatory practice is excellent in the curriculum, students also need to access advice, support and guidance from knowledgeable academics who are not marking their final assignments. Academics with whom it is safe to be honest about hopes and fears, doubts and problems...

But in the brave new world of a privatised HE - what space is there going to be for students within or outwith the curriculum?