Personal Blogs

Ever since I began as a part time tutor in 2006 I have been attending AL development events. A new ‘season’ of them (for me, at least) began in November 2018 when I attended an AL development conference that was held at the Hilton Metropole in Brighton.

What follows is a quick blog summary of the event so I can remember what happened. I’m sharing this just in case it’s of interest to anyone else. All the views expressed here are, of course, my own;  present my own ‘take’ on the things that I 'took away' from the conference.

Keynote: The Open Diaries

Unlike other conferences I had been to, this conference was opened by some colleagues who worked in the marketing department.

The university has recently produced 5 x 5 minute short documentaries about studying at the university as a part of a campaign called The Open Diaries (OU website). This is of wider interest to tutors, since the videos do try to present the tutor perspective. The keynote session also featured a short talk by Finlay Games who is an OU student ambassador, who is an undergraduate student who is coming towards the end of his studies.

The next part of the keynote was important, but also quite informal. It was a joint presentation by Lesly Kane who is from the UCU union and David Knight, director of academic services. Lesley and David have been involved with negotiating what is called a new tutor contract. They outlined the character of the new contract, but were unable to offer lots of the fine detail, since the negotiations are still continuing. A union vote to tutors about the new contract is due to take place soon.

The key takeaway point from the contract discussion was that the new tutor contract will (hopefully) offer tutors the possibility of greater job security; they will be employed for their skills and expertise, rather than employed to teach on a particular module.

Session 1: Dialogic feedback

The full title of this first session, facilitated by Alison Gilmour and Paul McGill was: “The end of feedback as we know it? Exploring recent developments in the literature and practical strategies we can use to develop dialogic feedback practice in a distance learning context”.

The session began with some quick fire questions, such as: What challenges do you face in feedback practice? What is good feedback? How do students want to receive feedback? And, what does dialogic feedback mean to you?

The aim of the session was to get us thinking about the dialogic feedback, not just in terms of correspondence feedback, but also with respects to tutorials and what can take place within them. The term ‘dialogic’ was described as interactive; it is a discussion, and was contrasted with uni-directional and the phrase ‘without expectation of student engagement’.

One point that I noted down was that it can be useful to consider feedback as a dialog, where both students and tutors arrive at a shared notion of understanding what the feedback is, and how it can be useful. I also noted down comments that related to good practice: the development of trust, the emphasis on social aspects of learning, and clarity around purpose of assignments.

We were given an activity. We were asked to brainstorm strategies, activities or approaches that we could use to develop our dialogic feedback practice and why we thought this would work with our students. We were asked to put our ideas on a matrix; the words ‘greater benefits for students’ and ‘more efficient for staff’ were written on the axes.

During the discussion part of the session, I noted down a few interesting ideas and suggestions. One idea was to ask students the question: ‘what are you working towards?’ to understand more about their aims and aspirations. Another comment was about the use of the telephone. Before the widespread acceptance of use of emails, tutors used to ‘ring round’ their students to remind them about their assessments. In my experience, students are always happy to speak to their tutor.

My own suggestion comes from a discussion I had with a tutor who told me about a ‘dialogic teaching approach’ to teaching, where two tutors would have a debate between themselves about a module issue during an online tutorial. Although this approach isn’t about directly understanding where the student’s understanding, it does relate to exposing discussions and debates that are a part of module materials. After trying this technique out in practice, students invariably to begin to join in with the discussions. 

Session 2: Critical Incidents

The second session, entitled “Understanding teaching through critical incidents” was facilitated by myself. Tutors were enticed to attend the session through the following abstract: A critical incident is a memorable or challenging situation that occurred during our teaching practice. In essence, it is a useful tool that can help us to think of our own teaching and help us to reflect on how we might approach similar situations in different ways. Drawing on the ideas from Burgum and Bridge, this session presents the principle of the critical incident, shares a framework that enables tutors to further consider critical incidents and allows different tutors to discuss the different strategies they adopted to solve challenging tutoring situations.

After a round of introductions, I asked tutors to complete a form which helped them to think about their own critical incident, and then to share their incidents between themselves. Tutor were then asked to discuss their chosen incident with everyone in the session. The key questions that students were asked to complete were: “My ‘critical incident’ occurred when…, the incident happened because…, strategies that were/might have been helpful include…, and if a similar incident occurred again I would…”

A personal confession is that this activity has been directly inspired by an activity that I participated in whilst studying for a PGCE in Higher Education at Birkbeck. It was a memorable activity since it led to the exposure of so many interesting situations, circumstances and solutions.

Session 3: Digital Capabilities

The final chapter had the title: “Enhance your digital capabilities, enhance your practice” and was presented by Jo Parker. 

I was really interested in attending this session since I had informally asked the question of if we could have a session about this subject after becoming aware of a JISC project about developing and understanding personal digital capabilities (Jisc website).

The Jisc project proposes and defines a definition of what digital capability is, and also provides a framework that consists of a number of components: digital identity and well-being, digital learning and development, information and media literacies. Well-being is presented as an over-arching wrapper that is important to all these areas. Also, the notion of ICT proficiency sits at the centre of the framework.

I made a note that the aim of the project was to ensure that staff and students have digital skills for digital learning and working. The project has also created a diagnostic tool (which I understand is called a digital capabilities and discovery tool), and provides some resources and training courses.

During the session Jo led us to an activity where we were invited to map our own digital practice. We were asked to draw a triangle that had the sides: consumption, conversation and creation. We were asked to make a note of the different tools that we used, and were asked to annotate the triangle with emoticon stickers to signify how we felt. We were also asked a few questions: What do you want to change? What do you want to do more of? What do you want to do less of? And, what do you wish to do differently?

Towards the end of Jo’s session we were shown a slide that contained a set of links about digital capabilities. The slide had links to resources about the effective use of ICT, such how to best make use of Office 365 and some links about digital creation and communication. The two resources that stood out for me were: Digital wellbeing: staying safe online (OpenLearn), and the link to the OU PALS site (an abbreviation for the Peer Associate Lecturer Support).

Reflections

I always get something out of every AL development conference. For this event, there were a couple of things. Firstly, I really appreciated the opportunity to catch up with a group of Computing and IT associate lecturers over lunch. We had a lot to talk about; there were discussions about the new tutor contracts and discussions about how to effectively carry out tutorial recordings within tuition group clusters. It was interesting to learn that the South East of England TM112 cluster are considering having what could be described as ‘cluster group recordings’. This way, the interactive tutorial can be live interactive sessions which are not recorded. This way, students might be more inclined to speak and contribute to the different sessions.

The thing I got from the dialogic session was the simple reflection that discussions can lead students and tutors towards a joint understanding of feedback. I understand this in terms of the student needs (to move forward with their learning), and what explanations the tutor can offer. Also, through dialogue, tutors can actively learn about what explanations are helpful, thus helping to improve their teaching practice.

The critical incidents session that I ran had a very different feel to the other two times I had facilitated it. The reason for this lies with the fact that the session is very student led: different tutors arrive at the session with different incidents. What may be important for one tutor might not be important for another, and this is one of the really nice aspects of running a session that is quite open.

I was expecting something slightly different from the Digital Capabilities session, but being someone who studied computing as an undergraduate and postgraduate, I’m mindful that I might not be the intended audience. Although the Jisc project and tools that we were told about may well be useful, I was expecting to be presented with some case studies, or for the session to have a more direct practical focus.

All in all, an interesting AL development conference! The next one I’m due to attend is the London event in April 2019. 

On Friday 1 June and Saturday 2 June 2018 I attended an AL development conference that took place in a hotel in Slough, not too far from Heathrow Airport. What follows is a quick blog summary of my take of the event.

There were two keynote speakers: Gail Emms, and Susie Smith. I first heard Susie’s talk at the Bristol AL development event and Gail’s talk during the Cambridge event that took place towards the end of last year. 

Susie shared something about what she gained from studying at the OU. These included: time management, independence, discipline, multi-tasking abilities, dedication, problem solving, motivation, determination, friends and pride. She also spoke of study as a way to demonstrate employability; students need to balance a lot of different things to succeed.

STEM Session

The first event of the day was open for all tutors who were members of the STEM faculty. I made a note that the session was introduced by my colleague Sue Truby, who then handed over to Holly Hedgeland, who introduced the Open STEM degree and the new Open Masters. It was then my turn to facilitate a discussion about student and retention and progression.

During this discussion activity, two questions were asked: what can we (as tutors) do, and what can the university do? In some respects, these two questions connect to what can sometimes seem to be an unhelpful division between central academics and associate lecturers. My point is, of course, we all work together to help our students.

This said, in answer to the question: ‘what can the OU do to help?’ I noted down the following points: the importance of effective marketing and recruitment and the setting of clear expectations about what is involved with OU study, ensuring that students are not studying too much at once, importance of the tutor-student relationship and emphasising face to face teaching, facilities to send text messages to students, short courses, providing each tutor with their own online Adobe Connect room, emphasising to students the importance of interacting and speaking during online tutorials, and the importance of trusting tutors and making sure they are happy.

In response to the question: ‘what can associate lecturers do to help?’ I noted down the following: talk to other tutors and offer guidance about study skills to students.

The discussions emphasised to me how important it is to balance my different roles and identities: I’m a tutor, a staff tutor, and half of my role is as a lecturer too. Another perspective to the two question is that we all have a role to play, and all our roles are important. Another question is: what can we collectively do to work together.

Understanding our teaching through critical incidents

The next conference session was a session about ‘critical incidents’. I first ran this session at the London AL development session earlier in the year. I left the first session feeling a little deflated since I felt that the session didn’t quite work but I didn’t really know why. This said, colleagues did seem to feel free to engage in discussions, but I felt it was a little flat without knowing quite why. I faced a dilemma: I could either change something, or I could do pretty much exactly what I did before to figure out more directly what I might be improved or changed.

The idea of a critical incident is a simple one: it is an incident or moment during teaching that might have been particularly thought provoking or challenging. It might be an incident that made you stop and think, or it might have changed the way you thought about something. 

Twenty tutors came along to this second version of the event. I set everyone the same task that I carried out in my PGCE: use a form to identify a critical incident. After six or so minutes, the discussions were widened out. First, amongst the table, and then back to the entire group. The idea, of course, was to try to uncover our own critical incidents. 

This session was very different to the first: there were so many discussions taking place amongst the various tables that it was difficult to direct everyone’s attention towards a plenary session. This, of course, reflected one of the main objectives of the session, which was to get everyone talking so everyone could learn from each other.

School of Computing and Communications session

The C&C school session was led by Sue Truby. It was split into two sections. The first was facilitated by Sue who talked all the Computing and Computing associate lecturers through the current school curriculum using a series of programme posters. Sue emphasised that the key qualification in the school had the magic code of Q62 Computing and IT (OU website).

I facilitated the second part of the session which was a short workshop about the staff development and training needs for computing associate lecturers. During the session I made notes of the different points that related to the question: ‘what does a computing associate lecturer need?’

• Adobe Connect and teaching of programming sessions
  
• Industry speakers to provide more subject specific training: London Java community, cloud computing talks and AWS, maybe people from the industrial advisory group
  
• Computing continuing professional development: presentations about new technology
  
• Discussions about curriculum: to identify gaps and to get input from tutors, to share information about the lifecycle of a module and to understand what the board of studies group is
  
• Perhaps there could be more talks from module chairs and maybe from the researchers from the school (so tutors can more readily connect their teaching to the research that is taking place within the school)
  
• A question: what can we do that is innovative? 
  

Unconscious Bias

The final session of the day was facilitated by Angela (Gella) Richards. I’ve met Gella a number of times at the former London regional centre which used to be in Camden.

Gella opened with a question: ‘what does unconscious mean to you?’ Some tutors reported that ‘unconscious’ relates to the speed and patterns of action and responding without thinking, or applying a learnt behaviour. Gella said that sometimes ‘blame’ is a term that is sometimes mentioned. What she meant was that unconscious actions can also mean that we may seek to avoid blame.

Gella asked us another question: ‘what do the PC users in the room think of Mac users?’ This question elicited a number of interesting responses. My own responses would be: individual, wealthy and artistic. I felt the question was simple yet interesting and compelling.

As Gella was talking I noted down the comment: “If we act on our unconscious bias without knowing, it will affect our students” and “there’s a lot of different ways it could appear; not just in marks and feedback”.  Gella told us that she used to be a neuroscientist, and introduced us to a subject called cultural neuroscience. I made a note of two references: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and Thinking fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. 

We were given another question: can or why unconscious bias be useful? Again, it comes back to speed: it helps to make decisions quickly. She also gave us another reference; a paper by the Equality Challenge Unit called Unconscious Bias and Higher Education (ECU, pdf). She also mentioned something called Project Implicit from Harvard University.

An important question to ask is how can one overcome our unconscious biases? We were offered some suggestions: by stopping those automatic thoughts, by reading case studies, and by not ignoring differences. A final comment I noted down was: be curious, and this means curious about our own responses.

I enjoyed Gella’s session. It wasn’t what I expected; I was expecting something a lot more formal, direct and serious (although the whole subject was indeed very serious). It was well structured and clearly presented session. She also left us with a series of thought provoking anecdotes which illustrated the importance of thinking things through.

Reflections

I heard from a colleague who works in the ALSPD team that this was the biggest AL development session they had run. I don’t know where I got this figure from, but someone must have mentioned there were 130 tutors attending the conference.  I found the STEM and schools sessions thought provoking and the notes that I made useful. I also found Gella’s final session on unconscious bias thought provoking and challenging. I really like the take home message, which I took to be: be curious, about others, and yourself. A further personal reflection was that I was pleased that the critical incidents session ran as I had hoped it would and I now hope to take it to an AL development conference that will take place in Brighton.

Acknowledgements

This AL development conference was run by the ALSPD team. Acknowledgements are also extended to Janet Haresnape and colleagues who helped to put together and organise the STEM session.