Personal Blogs

On 10 September 24 I attended a presentation given by Prof. Agnes Kukulska-Hume entitled Transformative potential of challenge-based learning. The talk was a part of one of the last staff tutor meetings I will be attending (for the time being).

As soon as her presentation started, an immediate question came to mind, which was: “what is the difference between challenge-based learning and problem-based learning”. An accompanying thought was that perhaps a challenge could contain one or more problems? We were moved onto a definition; a challenge is to achieve something worthwhile or exceptional. A challenge could also be individual or collaborative. It could be a competition, or a race, or an event. 

An important point is that a challenge can expands one’s own boundaries and capabilities. A challenge can be used to provoke learners and to develop skills. There is also an interesting link to the subject of professional development too, but I’m not going to dwell on that theme too much.

I made some notes of a mention of a framework which had three stages: engage, investigate, act. 

I guess the difference between CBL and PBL is one of perspective and focus. Problem-based learning may be necessarily driven by teachers and tutors, whilst challenge-based learning may well be more open ended. The necessary educational glue of reflection can, of course, be applied to both problems and challenges (for both learners, and for educators).

A bit of digging…

After the event, I did a bit of digging. I found a site called ChallengeBasedLearning.org which offered a more fuller definition, which identifies it less of a pedagogy, more of a pedagogic framework, which is “collaborative and hands-on, asking all participants (students, teachers, families, and community members) to identify Big Ideas, ask good questions, identify and solve Challenges, gain in-depth subject area knowledge, develop life skills, and learn how to learn”. 

Not too far from this page, there’s something called From something called the Challenge Institute. A few further clicks takes me to a literature review of Challenge Based Learning.

Whilst I was in the area, I remembered the universities regular Innovating Pedagogy reports. I found a reference to Challenge Based Learning in the Innovating Pedagogy 2023 report.

I’m noting all these links down so I can easily find them at some point.

Reflections

When introduced to the idea of CBL, and trying to understand its various definitions, I wondered whether this was yet another pedagogic buzzword? One of my roles is to tutor on an undergraduate computing module. An accompanying through was: perhaps project-based learning is already a version of challenge-based learning? After all, completing a significant project is also a significant challenge.

In some respects, I have once been a part of a challenge-based learning activity through an Interaction Design hackathon event, which established a theme about digital healthcare.  It was an event that was certainly about challenges since students had to uncover their own problems. 

A difficulty that I had with this particular event was how it directly related to module materials. There was no denying the creativity of the design of the event. It offered a great learning opportunity for those who attended, but it didn’t directly and easily integrate with the module materials. This leads to other questions: what are the practical implications on module design? Also, how are challenges assessed, especially if they are open-ended, decidedly personal, or specifically not well defined?

Problem-based learning is scaffolded. Lecturers offer help, guidance, and resources. A related question is: what support is needed for students who are carrying out challenges? The answer is: it depends on the learners, and it depends on the challenge.

In some respects, the OU is running its own challenge, for research focussed academics. It is called the Open Societal Challenges https://research.open.ac.uk/societal-challenges Support is given in terms of administrative support, and funding. I have had a go to set up a challenge all of my own. It is a challenge which relates to green computing and efficient software. I confess to not having made much progress, since I’ve recently had a number of personal challenges to deal with. 

This links to an important point: if challenges are not clearly defined, things might not get done due to any number of barriers. Something that really helps me to overcome barriers is, of course, working with others. Being accountable to others is one way to get things done.

I’ve been to a couple of the HEA Horizons in STEM conferences. The last one that I went to was in Newcastle, which I found it to be an interesting event; it enabled lecturers and students to talk to one another about their experiences of teaching and learning. 

The event in 2019 was held at Kingston University, London between 3 and 5 July. I was looking forward to this event; I worked at Kingston for 6 months just over ten years ago on a contract to help develop some educational technology systems.

What follows is a rough blog sketch of points that I took away from the event. I’ve edited these notes together from the notes that I made in my analogue laptop (my work note book, and pen). Just as with many of these blogs, I’m sharing the post on the off chance that it might be randomly useful for someone (and so my line manager, and anyone else who knows me, can see what I’m doing with my time).

Just to put everything in one place, the hashtag for the conference is #UKSTEMconf19, where you can see pictures and opinions from delegates.

Opening and keynote

The conference was opened by Trish Reid and the opening keynote was by Nona McDuff, director of student achievement who spoke about: Closing the BME attainment gap through an institutional approach. 

Nona asked as an important question: why are the outcomes of some student groups so different? A part of her talk looked at the student journey. There are a number of arguments: BME students start university with different tariff points (points gained from various entry qualifications, such as A levels). There is evidence that suggests that the higher the entrance tariff points, the higher the degree classification. Looking at what is expected at what is expected and what is attained, it appears there’s a clear gap between BME students and white students.

Since there are many factors involved, an institutional wide approach was developed. I noted down the words that “equity considerations [are] being embedded within all functions of the institution and treated as an ongoing process of quality enhancement”. A part of this embedding has been raise awareness of diversity issues amongst course teams. Importantly, closing the attainment gap was considered as a university level key performance indicator at board level.

A publication that was referenced was “Inclusive curriculum framework” by McDuff and Hughes (2010), and I also noted down the words: “pedagogy, curricula and assessment that is meaningful and accurate”. This includes the importance of considering the broad concept of the teaching, its content, delivery methods, assessment, how to approach feedforward and feedback. 

There’s an obvious point in all this: considering diversity means using good practices for all students, since whatever is done or created appeals to a wider audience

A final note I made during Nona’s presentation was to another reference, a paper entitled: “Closing the attainment gap for students from black and minority ethnic backgrounds through institutional change” (Kingston University research repository), McDuff et al. (2018), published in Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning  (Open University).

Equality, diversity and inclusion session 1

The first session I attended was by Rebecca Barnes from the University of Sheffield, who spoke about developing a “Sense of belonging in science undergraduates”. Her talk was based on a model that had been developed from research carried out for an MA in education dissertation. 

Sense of belonging can be linked to self-efficacy, goals, relationships with others. 150 students were surveyed, focus groups were run, and there was something called a ‘free working activity’. Rebecca looked at BAME students, interactions with staff and other students, and asked the question: “what do students’ value during their induction?” I noted down points about opportunities to meet with staff informally and opportunities to gain more detail about what academic work they will be doing.

Next was a presentation entitled: “Exploring differential attainment by assessment type in mathematics, chemistry and life sciences” by James Denholm-Price from Kingston. James presented a quantitative study that asked an important question: do students do differently when they take exams in comparison to other assessment approaches. I noted down the phrase “we didn’t find much”, but the following sentences in James’ abstract is interesting: “The sample data show statistically-significant differences in the attainment of certain groups of students in some assessment modalities, but not all”.

My colleague, Anne-Marie Gallen presented the next talk: “How to develop and embed a discipline-specific accessibility expertise in your teaching”. Disciplines are different, sometimes those subjects introduce barriers, i.e. mathematics has some very specific barriers for students with visual impairments. Anne-Marie was included with a mathematics and statistics accessibility working group which comprised of different members: academics, support staff, disabled student services. Anne-Marie also mentioned module accessibility guides and production of resources, policies, goals and even a video.

The final talk of this first session was also by another OU colleague. Chris Hutton and Julie Robson spoke about “breaking barriers, building community: improving student engagement with preparation for studying online science by distance learning”. They addressed a familiar topic: how to use forums to engage students to help them to prepare for first year modules. Chris and Julie introduced something called a S112 preparation site (S112 being an in interdisciplinary science module called Science: concepts and practice). A key idea was to encourage students to participate in a social activity before the start of the module. 

Equality, diversity and inclusion session 2

The first presentation during this session turned out to be a workshop entitled: “Exploring ‘belonging’ at university from the student perspective: what it is and how can we facilitate it?” facilitated by Daniela Dimitrova and colleagues from Kingston. We were presented with some questions: is a sense of belonging important? Also, is a sense of belonging important to all students? This led to a discussion that it can be thought of in terms of social group, module, societies, institution, discipline or subject, and that notion of personal identity could change over time.

The next presentation had a title that presented a question that was central to an ongoing study: personal tutoring – is there one size that fits all? These questions were explored by Baljit Thatti and Nicholas Freestone, both from Kingston University who had designed a questionnaire study.

The Open University presenters in this session were Diane Butler and Cath Brown who spoke about “students as partners in scholarship in STEM open and distance learning”. Diane is an associate dean, and Cath is the president of the OU student’s association (the equivalent of the students' union). The benefits of including students are cited as being: engagement, commitment, ownership, opportunities for collaboration with staff, and contributing to an opportunity to make things better for future students. The benefits for the university includes: increased understanding of the student experience and access to authentic feedback, and the possibility of increased levels of student satisfaction and retention. There are, of course, some challenges; it’s hard to work with students at a distance.

Technology Enhanced Learning/Computer Science

Neil Gordon, from the University of Hull, began with a presentation about “Flexible approaches to teaching programming”. I seem keep bumping into Neil quite regularly; the last time I saw him was at a Computer Science education conference at the start of the year, and another time was at one of these HEA events. 

Neil made some interesting and important points: CS student numbers are increasing, but there is a poor pass rate in GCSE Computing. In Neil’s words, this represents a ‘leaky pipeline’. There are other concerns too, which are concerned with the relatively low employability rates of computer science graduates. One way to approach this is to look at the teaching of the subject. Neil introduced a CS teacher training case study that used something called Crumble https://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble/  (Redfern Electronics website), a programmable controller that could be used to simple robots and buggies.

A session wouldn’t be complete without an OU delegate. This session had two. The first presenter was Anton Dil, from the School of Computing who spoke about “Layered online feedback on code quality”. Anton is the module chair for M250 Object-Oriented Java Programming (OU website). Anton wants to improve the feedback that is given to students, since he mentioned that there is something that is particularly difficult about programming. Regular practice is considered to be important. How could we support tutors to test code that has been written by students? Two automated tools have been created which assesses different dimensions of code (or software) quality: whether code can compile, whether it meets the task requirement, whether it is efficient, and is presented in a way that can be read by fellow programmers (has good style). 

The second OU presenter was myself, where I spoke about “teaching interaction design teamwork at a distance”, where I drew on my experience of co-facilitating an event that is known as a Design Hackathon for TM356 Interaction Design and the User Experience. If you’re interested, there’s a blog tag called Hackathon that might (or might not) be of interest. 

Equality, diversity and inclusion session 3

This third session took place at the start of the second day of the conference. First to present was Cristina De Mattels from the University of Nottingham, who gave a presentation entitled: “Come on into our research labs: promoting interactions of early-year undergraduates wit researchers to gain insights into the research community of practice”. Underpinning this was the idea of attempting to help undergrads to get more of an insight into what scientists actually do. One way to do this is to try to facilitate some interaction between undergrad students and researchers. I noted down that there was a programme of extra-curricular activities such as an invitation into the research labs, the making of films, and an activity called ‘sharing my bench space’.

Next was a presentation entitled: “how does a vocational qualification (BTEC) prepare students for a degree in biomedical sciences?” by Liz Hurrell and colleagues from the University of Central Lancashire. They reported that there were an increasing number of students taking BTEC courses. The consequences of this could mean a higher drop-out rate and a lower degree classifications (particularly at research intensive universities) for some students. We were told that widening participation students are more likely to take BTEC than A levels but the more applied nature of the courses can have benefits. During degree programs the point was made that some BTEC students may struggle with exams and revision in comparison to A level students, and some may have a sense of accompanying stigma if students have to attend additional classes for maths and chemistry.

I found Liz’s presentation especially interesting, since I used to be a BTEC student. I really enjoyed the course that I studied, and I felt that it equipped me well for the practical computer lab sessions that I had on my undergraduate degree. Although there was an excellent maths teacher during my BTEC, I struggled as an undergraduate. In some respects, the remedial maths classes that I attended felt as if they were an afterthought. There wasn’t much teaching. Instead, we sat in a room and worked through yellow worksheets (which I think I have kept hold of).

The next session was a workshop: what does an inclusive timetable look like in STEM? It was facilitated by Nigel Page and colleagues from Kingston. To be honest, when I saw the title of this session, I was looking for the door for the simple reason that I really don’t like planning my module timetables (and many of them are online). After five minutes into the introduction, I realised that there was no immediate escape without embarrassment for everyone. 

The facilitators looked at a number of different factors, such as commuting patterns and differences in demographics between students studying different subjects. An interesting point was that BME students have to travel further to Kingston than other groups. One of the reasons for this might be the demographics of Kingston and the surrounding areas.

It was also interesting to note that they university had a policy where student’s couldn’t arrive in class after it had started. If classes start early in the morning, and last an hour, all these individual factors have a potential to create barriers for learning. The point was made that there’s a link between timetables, pedagogy and course design. Sometimes barriers might not be obvious. Unexpectedly, this session became one of the highlights of the conference. 

Professional practice session

The penultimate presentation was by Sonia Kumari and colleagues, who spoke about ‘Pedagogy through civic engagement: three case studies from geography’. Their case studies were about the intersections between academic study, practical experience and community involvement. Students went out into the community and carried out an investigative journalism project.

The final presentation had a very long title: how could teaching observation schemes adapt to meet students’ demands of what high quality teaching is expected to be in the STEM subjects? Penny Burden and Nigel Page’s presentation was about the context of the national students’ survey and the teaching excellent framework. We were given two activities: to define high quality learning, and what it might look like, and what does a good teaching observation scheme look like?

I made a note of top 3 points that you might want to look for: checking of learning, tutors and lecturers doing different things (running activities), and delivering materials that meet the needs and culture of student groups. A further point that I noted down was: look at the whole picture, beyond the four walls of the classroom; students may appreciate guest speakers who bring the outside to the classroom. 

Closing keynote

The closing keynote was by Samantha Pugh who spoke of Re-imagining Assessment in Higher Education. Samantha spoke a 12 month project about connecting assessments between programme learning outcomes (PLOs). I was curious about this concept, since I’m more used to the world of module learning outcomes. There was a link to graduate attributes and skills, such as critical thinking skills, able to work critically with knowledge, and effective communication.

We were presented with an example from Chemical Engineering. A phrase that I noted down was: “we need to demonstrate that learning outcomes have been meet at each levels, along with programme level outcomes, but how do we do this?’ We were all asked a question: “what assessments could be used to allow students to demonstrate achievement of programme learning outcomes for your subject?”

We were directed to something called a ‘research-teaching nexus’ by Healey and a report that had been written by Samantha and published by the Leeds Institute called Teaching Excellence: A compendium of assessment techniques in higher education: from students’ perspectives (PDF).

I made a note of some conclusions: assessment is an integral part of programme design; clear programme learning outcomes help with aligning assessment to study, formative assessment should inform teaching and help student success in summative learning, and students need opportunities to revisit learning.

Reflections

Nearly two months passed between attending this conference and writing these reflections. Since the event, my work has become muddied with interviewing, quite a bit of study, and taking on a new role in the university. 

I remember that a few things struck me: the extent to which diversity was featured and discussed throughout this whole conference, the number of university colleagues that I met there, and the clear opportunity of sharing (and discussing) practice with colleagues – which is, of course, one of the great benefits and advantages of this type of event.

Also remember being impressed by Kingston and the work that they’re doing. There was a time when Kingston used to be my ‘local’ university. Rather than choosing to study there (which I could have easily have done), I went to another university in another city. 

Unexpectedly, the session that I found most interesting was also a session about a subject that I find the most boring: timetabling. I took away the point that, when it comes to education and equality, geography really does matter and that it is really important to make the effort to get to know who your students are. You can’t fully understand diversity without taking some important steps towards understanding.

Addendum

When I was sorting out my papers a couple of weeks after writing this blog, I noticed a handout that I had forgotten about. It had the title "Taxonomy of 'high quality' teaching: the students' perspective". I'm not quite sure where I got the handout from, but I think might have been Burden and Page's session. Rather than recycling the handout and risk forgetting about it, I thought it would be both worthwhile and useful to summarise it here.

The taxonomy was split into three sections: attitude, methods and scaffolding. The elements of each are summarised below:

• Attitude: respect; ability of relate to the student experience; high responsiveness; building a rapport; enthusiasm; engagement.
• Methods: engage students from the beginning of lectures; design of reinforcement activities; connection of past, current and future knowledge; detailed explanations during lectures; PowerPoint slides as a guide, not script; workshops to support lectures.
• Scaffolding: updated technologies; mandatory recording of lectures (voice); exams after every semester which counts for 25%; breakdown of workload for both parties; involvement of outside resources to supplement learning.

From my own perspective, the entries under attitude and methods are really familiar (and are important to remember).

Ever since I joined the university as a part time tutor back in 2006, I have found AL development events useful: they have, essentially, taught me how to teach, and how to be an open university tutor and a distance teacher.

When I started as a tutor, I never thought that I would become someone who would be helping to organise professional development events for tutors, but this has exactly what has happened. As the university has changed and technology has developed, some colleagues have realised that there is a space and an opportunity to run 'online' professional development events, and I thought that it might be a good idea to try to run one.

The following message has been circulated to all associate lecturers who are tutors for modules have have been developed by staff in the School of Computing and Communications:

"You are invited to the first ever school of Computing and Communications online AL development conference which will be held on 21 September 2017, between 10.30 and 14.30. The event will be hosted in Adobe Connect and will be open to all members of staff in the school. The conference will be divided into a number of interactive and informative sessions; a morning session and a shorter afternoon session.

The conference will be an opportunity to meet Mark Woodroffe, head of school, David Morse, Director of Studies, and John Woodthorpe, Computing and IT student support team lead. There will be a session about teaching and learning pedagogy, and a session about our OU student support team that is based in Manchester.

If you have recently been to any AL face-to-face conferences do try to come along to this one too; it will hopefully be interesting and fun, and give you an opportunity to meet more colleagues from the school. If you can’t make it, please don’t worry: the sessions will be recorded and made available after the event (but the interactivity that we have planned will hopefully be really useful!)

Although Adobe Connect is both used and featured within this first online conference, it isn’t intended to replace any other Adobe Connect training that has been organised by the university. Also, attendance at this event will added onto your AL activity record and so will appear on your ALAR summary. After the event, we plan to continue discussions and sharing using a conference forum. We will also share copies of all resources that were prepared and used as a part of the event.

If you have any questions for either Mark, David or John about any aspect of work that takes place within the school (or other parts of the university) please email them to me in advance. The deadline for the submission of questions will be 14 September 2017. Also, if you have any additional requirements that you feel the conference organisers need to be made aware of, please do contact Chris."

Here's a planned agenda for the event:

10.00 – 10.30     Virtual tea and cake

10.30 – 10.40     Introduction and welcome: Chris Douce

10.40 – 10.55     Meet your head of school: Mark Woodroffe

10.55 – 11.10     Programme and curriculum updates: David Morse

11.10 – 11.25     Q&A with Mark and David

11.25 – 12.10     Online pedagogy: what do you do? Chris Douce

12.10 – 12.20     Online pedagogy session: Q&A

12.20 – 13.00     Break

13.00 – 13.10     Welcome back! Chris Douce

13.10 – 13.50     Working with the student support team. John Woodthorpe and Steven Wilson

13.50 – 14.20     Meet and share: meet fellow ALs. Facilitator TBC

14.20 – 14.30     Close, summary and next steps. Chris Douce

Over the last few months, the university has been running training sessions to help tutors become familiar with a teaching and collaboration tool called Adobe Connect. I thought this online conference would be a great opportunity to discuss the pedagogy of Adobe Connect, i.e. how it can be used to practically facilitate teaching and learning (as opposed to the detail of what buttons can be pushed, and in what order).

A really interesting part of this conference will be the session that is about the student support teams. A few years ago, student support was offered from colleagues who worked in regional centres. Due to restructuring, support was spread around country and concentrated in different locations (for a period of time, advice for Computing and IT students was provided from a centre in Birmingham). Student support is now provided from a team in Manchester. The afternoon session will be dedicate to learning more about the SST, and also meeting other associate lecturers who work on different modules.

On 25 April I had the opportunity of attending a part of the Open University’s eSTEeM annual conference. eSTEeM is a university body that funds scholarship and research into STEM teaching and learning. More information about the projects that eSTEeM funds can be found by visiting the eSTEeM website.

What follows is a short summary of the conference, from my own perspective. I should add that all these views are my own, rather than those of the university. I’m sharing for two reasons (1) in case anyone who was at the conference might find it useful, and (2) I can remember what I’ve done at the end of the year.

Opening keynote

Due to travel connections I missed the opening address, which was given by eSTEeM director, Clem Herman. I did, however, make it in time to hear the opening keynote, which was given by Nicola Turner (blog), who works for HEFCE. 

As Nicola spoke, I made notes of key points that jumped out at me. One of the early notes I made was that 14 thousand teachers are needed. There is also a skills shortage in STEM. Apparently, 1 in 4 jobs relate to a role that is in a skills shortage area. But what skills are needed, and what skills are considered to be important. One answer is this: digital skills (in the loosest possible sense!) are considered to be important: tech, of course, is a fast growing and changing area.

Investment, of course, can benefit different parts of the country. A worrying point was that Nicola said was that there was no northern city that was a net GDP contributor (a disclaimer is that I don’t personally know where this bit of information comes from, or how you might define what ‘northern’ is). London, however, attracted a substantial amount of investment (but this isn’t much of a surprise), but there are ‘digital strengths’ in the regions. Another point I noted was that there is the need for 1.2 million skilled tech workers by 2022, and 93% of tech employers have reported a skills gap in 2016. The key question is: what can be done?

To show that I was really paying attention, some of the most sought after skills contained the keywords: developer, agile and SQL. There are also skills shortages in the area of cloud computing, big data and analytics. An important point is that workers need to be digitally literate, and this is something that links to that old education idea of ‘lifelong learning’.

If there is a skills shortage, an important question to ask is: why is the unemployment rates from computing graduates surprisingly high? This is something that is referenced in the Shadbolt review : Computer science degree accreditation and graduate employability (UK government website). There is also the Wakeham review into employability of STEM graduates (UK government website).

Nicola went onto talk about the Shadbolt review. As she spoke, I noted down a few points: that employment may come from a pool of students from elite universities and that there is low take up of work experience options (I have to confess, that this was offered to me as an undergraduate, and I didn’t take a year out in industry); this leads to a potential lack of soft skills and interpersonal skills. When it comes to computing and IT, the people side is just as important as the technology side.

I noted down some themes regarding employability. Industry is always after ‘work ready graduate’, but there is a contact challenge that industry is always changing (especially the tech industries). But what are the answers? There are things going on: there is the introduction of degree apprenticeships (of which the Open University is playing a part), ‘200 million in STEM teaching capital’, and government strategies.

There is something called the National Cybersecurity Strategy (UK government website), which is linked to degree apprenticeships, a digital skills strategy (UK government website), and an industrial skills strategy. 

The digital skills strategy was defined as a collaboration between employers, educators and government. There was also a reference to the creation of new institutes of technology, and a national college for digital skills (college webite), which is based in London. Interestingly, the focus appears to be at sixth form students. I have to confess to being perplexed. The website says things like: ‘We develop the mindsets, skillsets and character needed to be a pioneer’ and says that students will ‘join a cutting-edge community of digital-thinkers’.

Another point I noted was about something called the Institute of Coding (HEFCE). A key paragraph on the website appears to be the one that reads: ‘The Institute of Coding initiative aims to create and implement solutions that develop and grow digital skills to meet the current and future needs of the industry’.

One thing is very encouraging: the comment that ‘lifelong learning’ is becoming trendy again. A personal reflection, and one that is echoed in the presentation, is that lifelong learning is an idea comes in and goes out of fashion depending on the government. The OU is, of course, good at delivering supported lifelong learning, but much of its provision has been substantially eroded by the increase in fees.

A connected point is that other higher education institutions are investing in distance learning. There is competition within the sector. At the same time, there may be opportunities in terms of ‘new customers’, which has been something that has been touched on in the current OU strategy.

Paper session

I attended one of the short presentation paper sessions, which consisted of four presentations. 

ByALs-ForALs: an online staff development programme in the STEM faculty

This first presentation was by Janet Haresnape, Fiona Aiken and Nirvana Wynn. I made a note of a point that ‘staff development is often us (the university and its representatives) telling people about things, but it should be more about sharing practice’. I totally agree with this. A personal reflection is when I do staff development, I try to get a balance between the two, but I’m sure I don’t always get it right.

The idea is simple: create an environment where ALs can actively share their experience through a programme of online staff development events. If an AL wants to give a presentation or facilitate a session, they submit a proposal. If they are successful, they will be paid for running the session. Tutors can register to attend different sessions by registering using a simple Wiki, and this feeds into an official professional development record.

A total of 500 associate lecturers have been to the various sessions, with attendance varying between 5 and 54, depending on the topic and the time of day. Interestingly, day time appears to be more popular than evening sessions. Every session is recorded, which means that anyone who wasn’t able to attend can benefit.

Following the merger of the Science and MCT faculties, the programme has been extended to all undergraduate and postgraduate ALs in the new STEM faculty (which now consists of over 1500 tutors). I have to confess to not having been to any of these sessions, but I do know of them, and I always put them in my diary! Two questions were: could this approach be rolled out to other faculties, and secondly, would it be possible to do something similar for the school that I work in? Funding may come from the AL professional development and support team. This is certainly something to think about.

Understanding and supporting the career pathway of mathematics and statistics associate lecturers

This presentation was by Rachel Hilliam, Alison Bromley and Carol Calvert, and related to the Maths and Stats submission to Athena Swan (Equality Challenge Unit website). The presentation was looking at the gender differences between tutors, and asking the questions: do we support tutors in the right way, and what career development is necessary? A mixed method was used: a focus group and a survey.

Some interesting findings between men and women were shared. On average, men had more experience (in terms of tutoring years) than women, and were more likely to have a greater number of tutor contracts.

One area that has interested me for some time is tutor motivation, and this research touches on the reasons why tutors do what they do. Some interesting reasons included: career, challenge and family. A really interesting statistic is that 60% of ALs who responded viewed their AL work as their main job. I also noted down that there was concern about a lack of face to face possibility for staff development.

Success against the odds and the follow through

The presenter for this session was Carol Calvert, from Maths and Stats, but the other contributors to this presentation are: Rachel Hilliam, Linda Brown and Colin Fulford (if I’ve noted this down properly!) The subheading for this talk is: ‘the interesting routes student feedback can open up’.

The interesting aspect of this research is that it adopts the innovate approach of actually speaking to students. To do this, researchers have to find their way through a panel called SRPP, which protects students from being ‘over researched’.

I made a note of top tips and themes that all contributes towards success: the importance of a ‘can do’ attitude, the importance of getting organised, and the need to get ahead. I made a note of another reference: the RSA Animate video entitled How to help every child fulfil their potential (RSA).

Tutorial observations

During the final session I spoke about a project that has been set up to study different approaches to tutorial observations and to ask the important question of what kind of observation or tutorial report would help tutors to develop their teaching practice? At this stage of the project, I don’t have too much to report. So far, a literature review has been completed, and a two focus groups with tutors have been carried out. The next step in the project is to run a focus group for staff tutors (who are, of course, line managers for those tutors).

Workshop: bridge over troubled waters

After taking a bit of time out to attend a module team meeting, I attended an afternoon session that explored the concept of a ‘bridging course’.

A bridging course is a short course that helps student build up their skill and confidence levels before they undertake another module. A bridging course might run between or before modules. An example of a bridging course something called the ‘programming bootcamp’ which helps students to prepare for TU100 (which is to be soon replaced by TM111 and TM112).

The workshop began with a question: ‘would your students benefit from a bridging course to help them transition to the second year?’ There is, apparently, something that is known as a ‘second year slump’. The second year of a degree is where things start to get really serious. To convince us that this was an important issue, Frances Chetwynd presented some evidence, citing research by Douglas and Attewell (American Journal of Education).

So, what things are important, with regard to student progress? Key points include: time management, familiarity with written assessments, unrealistic expectations (which influence drop out), critical thinking skills, and understanding the need to conduct independent research. My notes tell me that Frances also referenced the work of Conley, who has written about college readiness (Education Policy Improvement Centre, PDF). Key points were: cognitive strategies, content knowledge, academic behaviours (which include time management and what it means to be a student), and college knowledge (understanding of how the institution works).

With the scene set, it was time for group discussions. We thought about what our bridging course might contain. An hour isn’t a lot of time. Key points that we chatted about were the importance of tutors and the use of digital materials (and the familiarity of digital materials). A theme that we kept returning to was that of ‘programming’. Another important issue is, of course, study skills.

Closing keynote

The closing keynote, which was entitled ‘is there a role for pedagogy in enhancing the STEM student experience?’ was by Michael Grove, a reader in STEM education. My instinct was to answer this question with a definitive ‘yes’, but to add to this perspective, Michael presented up with a definition of pedagogy from the Oxford English dictionary: pedagogy is ‘the art, occupation or practice of teaching, also the theories or principles of education; a method of teaching on such a theory’.

Underpinning this is definition are the ideas of: preparation, design, development, delivery, evaluation, reflection and dissemination. This helps us to consider other questions: how do you share good practice and encourage wider uptake?

Looking at pedagogy means that we also look at research. An interesting point was made that pedagogy, research and scholarship all blur together, and could all come under the title of ‘education enquiry’. But how does this work? There are approaches that are used, such as case studies, action research, studies that draw on theories and the use of quasi-experimental methods.

I noted an interesting use of terms. To be scholarly means that we inform ourselves, whereas scholarship means that we’re informing a group and using local knowledge. Research, on the other hand, is about disseminating findings to a wider audience. All this is, of course, linked with changes in the HE sector. A particular issue is the development of teaching only contracts, which separates out teaching activity from research activity.

Michael directed us to a document entitled Getting started in pedagogic research within the STEM disciplines (Mathcentre, PDF). It was a document that was mentioned at another presentation, and it looks pretty useful. It contains sections about writing for publication, and list of journals that can be used to disseminate STEM education research. (I also recommend a journal called Open Learning).

In some respects, the original question should have been: ‘is there a role of research in STEM pedagogy?’ I’m instinctively inclined to answer ‘yes’ to this alternative question too. Michael also asks a question about why we should do this. He also offers an answer: it represents an important aspect of our personal academic identify (and also our commitment to our discipline).

Reflections

Although I missed a couple of bits of the conference, I felt the opening and closing speeches worked very well in terms of contextualising the pedagogic research that is done within the university. It is also a reminder that there is a lot to do: not only do academics have to teach (and write module materials), many of them conduct research, and also conduct research into the effectiveness of their teaching strategies and approaches. 

This emphasises that we’re a busy lot: we’re busy reading, writing, thinking and talking pretty much all the time. The event also emphasised how much work is going on, and discussions with others helps us to set our own personal priorities, and learn how we can work with others too.

This blog has been taken from a set of notes I made when I visited the Horizons in STEM conference at the University of Leicester on 30 June 2016. Attending an event like this, to do ‘something academic’, made me feel weirdly guilty since I had been spending so much of my time doing ‘admin stuff’.

The aim of the conference was all about developing teaching and learning in the STEM disciplines, and sharing practice about what works and what doesn’t. Two speakers gave an opening address: there was the head of STEM from the HEA, and Nick Braithwaite from The Open University. Comments were made about the student voice, commitment to the discipline and the constant importance of professional integrity. I also noted down the words, ‘we want to improve our critical pedagogy; encourage everyone to be critical’. The second keynote speech was especially interesting because it was pretty distant from my know experience and knowledge: it was about how shared laboratory and learning spaces could be used to create an interdisciplinary subject centre.

Day one: first session

The first presentation I attended had the title ‘the educational value of student generated videos’. The idea was to replace a static poster with a five minute videos. As I listened, I thought of the Open University T215 module which requires students to create a short presentation.

One of the presentations that I particularly liked had the title: ‘undergraduate eJournals’. An eJournal is an official university publication for undergraduate studies that was linked to a ten point module. Interestingly, the articles published in an eJournal can be picked up by Google Scholar and the national media. Students could adopt the roles of author, referee and play a role on an editorial board. A new term that I’ve learnt was: synoptic learning. A key point for students was: try to create a paper that links science and fun topics; wacky can be good.

Discussion session

The next session was about discussion. I made notes about issues relating to ‘normative practice’ (without really understanding that this meant), social justice and inclusion.

An interesting question that was posed was: ‘are you aware of attainment gaps [in your programmes and modules]?’ Accompanying questions were: ‘are they discussed in your module team meetings, and do you know why they happen?’ and ‘do you discuss potential solutions?’ There were a series of related points: the importance of transition between levels of study, the importance of data, and the importance of critical reflection. Inclusion was discussed in terms of inclusive curriculum; making a subject relevant to individual students.

Flexibility and Personalisation

Neil Gordon from the University of Hull spoke about two pieces of work: flexible pedagogy and attainment. Flexible pedagogy was defined as giving students more choice about when to learn, where to learn and how to learn (mode, pace and place). Some interesting points that relate to computer science: it is a popular subject, but there appears to be a mismatch between expectations, i.e. computer science does not equal information technology. There are some clear challenges: computer science was noted to be the second worse subject for awarding good degrees (I should add that I’m not sure whether this was a national perspective or an institutional perspective), and 83% of students are male (again, I’m not sure on where this figure was taken from). Are there solutions? Some ideas were: to develop interactive tutorials, to create automated assessment, and look at the transition between school and colleague, and look to community engagement.

The next presentation was by Derek Raine from the University of Leicester. My notes read: ‘personalise the content to match with the aims and objectives for students – usual approach: core, options and a capstone project’.  Other points were: ‘drivers of change include finance, non-standard providers, media, and MOOCs’. The following question could be asked in classes: ‘what would you like to be discussed in the sessions?’

Final session

The final session that I attended was opened by Simon Grey from the University of Hull who spoke about ‘Games, learning and engagement’. Simon presented a brief history of gaming followed by a summary of the concept of gamification and game based learning. I learnt that there were eight different types of fun: sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discover, expression and submission (these terms reminded me of usability and user experience goals that are found in interaction design). Other points include the importance of mechanics (rules), dynamics (the system), and aesthetics (the look and feel), before Simon spoke about the concept of flow, and that we needed to give students clear goals, immediate feedback, and challenges that match their skill.

I think it was then my turn to do a bit of speaking. I spoke about a university funded project to study the teaching of a second level module about web technologies. My key points were that students differed significantly in terms of their backgrounds and abilities, and tutors differed significantly in terms of their online teaching practice.

The next session, entitled ‘teaching programming and data analysis with a MOOC’ was given by my colleague Michel Wermelinger. Michel talked about his experience of teaching on a MOOC entitled ‘learn to code for data analysis’ which has been presented through FutureLearn. Michel mentioned some software that students could use: a Python distribution called Anaconda (Wikipedia), something called SageMathCloud (Wikipedia), and Jupyter notebooks (Jupyter website). We were also told of a blog post that Michel had written called the First Principles of Instruction (blog post). The post which presents a very brief summary of five principles of instructional design that promotes learning and engagement. These are: problem centred, activation (of past experience), demonstration (to show new knowledge), application, and integration (of new knowledge into existing knowledge or practice).

It was a good talk. I have one other memory, which was that Michel was pretty robust in his views about much workload running a MOOC actually entails from a lecturer’s perspective.

Day two: first session

The first session had the title ‘development of digital information literacy’ by Eleanor Crabb who was also from the OU. I noted down the terms ‘understanding digital practices, finding information and critical evaluation’. There was a mention of an online pinboard tool, which was a bit like Pinterest, and a presentation about different activities: an icebreaker activity and a collaborative activity where students had to summarise a chemistry paper.

The next session had the title ‘encouraging students’ reflection through online progress files’. All students were required to make comments every week on each module, which in turn, acquire marks – which is an interesting parallel with a scientist’s notebook.  Key challenges included engagement with students and staff and students knowing what to write (which was ameliorated by a set of more detailed guidelines).

A session that I found especially interesting was entitled ‘maths advice and revision for chemistry’.  A key term that I noted down was: ‘the maths problem’; some students didn’t have mathematics as a prerequisite when they started to study chemistry as an undergraduate at Glasgow University. I also noted down bit of research that one of the best indicators of success in chemistry wasn’t having studied chemistry in the past, but instead, having an existing maths qualification. As I listened I started to think about (and remember) my own experience as a computer science student where I had to attend remedial maths classes (since I didn’t study A-level). I had to attend these classes where we were given maths puzzles printed on yellow paper. In Glasgow University, students could attend voluntary labs, workshops and group tutorials. Subjects included complex numbers, vectors, matrices, differentiation and integration. I couldn’t help but feel that such an approach would have been really useful during my own undergraduate studies.

The final session had the title: ‘understanding the process by which students manage their employability’. Employability was defined as ‘personal assets, how they are deployed, how they are presented to employers, and the wider context (such as economic conditions and personal circumstances). Another thought I had was that employability also relates the information that employers might find easily discover about potential employees if they do a quick internet search (which was a theme I think I was introduced to at another HEA workshop). Much food for thought.

Keynote summary:  Future directions in teaching and learning

The second conference keynote was by Derek Raine (who spoke during an earlier session) from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Science from the University of Leicester. Derek mentioned something called the New Directions in the teaching of Physics which presents opinion pieces, pedagogic research and reviews.

Before considering the future, Raine looked to the past to consider the historic and contemporary roles of universities. As well as being centres of study for the sciences and humanities, they can also be considered to be an ‘engine of social mobility, a driver of economic growth, and a cornerstone of our cultural landscape. Points were drawn from the 2016 white paper (THES explanation), and the 1963 Robins Report in Higher Education  (Education England) which states that higher education should be available to all who are qualified by ability and attainment to pursue it (page 9).  

According to Raine (and my notes), the 2016 white paper cites problems: that courses are inflexible, that students are dissatisfied, and there are national skills shortages. An important point is that there is increased competition from different types of education providers which is connected with an important change in perspective. Historically, higher education has been viewed as being a public good (the view that an educated and skilled workforce helps all members of society) whereas it is now being presented as a private good (that an education helps the individual to earn money). My view, and those of others that I work with is that the first perspective needs to be protected.

Another point was that there is research that tells us something about what works in higher education teaching. Key points include: time on task, trained teaching staff, the importance and use of collaborative learning, class sizes, quality of feedback, and the sense of community (Gibbs, Dimensions of Quality, Higher Education Academy PDF).

I made a note of some pedagogies (approaches to teaching) that were mentioned: personalised lecturers (that are based on student questions), flipped classrooms (where students listen to lectures before attending a tutorial), problem-based learning, MOOCs (which I’m very cynical about), gamificiation, extension tasks and student journals. As our speaker was speaking, I made a note that I felt important: ‘an alternative division of labour where pedagogic research or scholarship plays a part’.

Another interesting idea was the importance of sustainability (of higher education, and education per se) as a fundamental idea or principle. I also noted that it is important that ‘history is linked with the present, science linked with society, and economies with social justice, and this is achieved through interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary’. I agree: connections are important since they offer us perspective.

These final thoughts inspired an interesting point during the concluding question and answer session: ‘it isn’t just about what a university is for, but also what is an economy for; it’s not just about money, it’s about culture and our place within it’. 

Final session

The first of three sessions was from three of my OU colleagues, Ann Walshe, Anne-Marie Gallen, and Anne Campbell who were studying ‘associate lecturer perspectives on supporting students through tuition in groups’. They were asking: ‘what is tuition?’, ‘what can we learn from tutors?’ and ‘are there some common understandings across stakeholders?’ The research is being carried out through workshops and telephone interviews.

The next talk had the title ‘a student monitoring and remedial action system for improving retention of computer science programmes’ by Stewart Green from the University of West of England. I noted that there was a role of a retention co-ordinator. This is someone who gets different sources of data, such as attendance data, VLE logins, and assessment results. A key task is to periodically review the data, and to choose actions supported by student support advisors. Interventions might include email messages, face to face chats, and referrals to advisors. Students may, of course, be affected by a whole range of different issues, including illness, family issues and caring responsibilities.

In some ways Stewart’s role represents a human equivalent of various learning analytics project that I have heard rumours about in the OU. I really like the human element that underlies the looking of reports about attendance and attainment; this backs up my opinion that what really matters in education isn’t technology, but people.

I also noted down a couple of useful reports. The first that I noted had the title: Building student engagement and belonging in higher education at a time of change by Liz Thomas (HEA website). The second was entitled Undergraduate retention and attainment across the disciplines (HEA website).

The final session was called ‘visualising student progress: identifying patterns in the behaviour of students learning databases’. It was given by Andrew Cumming from Edinburgh Napier. Andrew spoke about tutorial exercises, where students had to perform SQL database searches across a number of live databases. I also have made the note ‘can we tell the difference between formal and informal learners?’ but I have no idea what this means.

Concluding thoughts

By the end of the two days at Leicester, I was pretty tired: there had been loads of presentations, and a lot of take in. Even though several months have now passed since the event, I can still remember some highlights. I was particularly interested in three things: the idea of an official ‘student journal’ as a learning tool (it was an interesting pedagogic approach), the idea of a ‘retention tutor’ (retention is a theme which crops up at almost every meeting I attend), and a welcome dose of perspective given to everyone during the second keynote.

There was one theme that seemed to go through every session: the importance of connecting teaching and research. Even though some of us might work in a discipline that doesn’t change very much (such as mathematics), the context and environment in which a subject or discipline sits is, of course, always changing. This means that we must always think about, study and explore ways to engage our students.

This is a quick summary of a meeting that occurred on Saturday 27 June 2015 at the university's London regional centre.  The aim of the meeting (or session) was to think about a thought experiment, namely, 'what should the perfect OU Live session look like?'

If you've stumbled across this post via a search engine, then I should (perhaps) say something about what OU Live is: it's a tool that tutors can use to deliver on-line tutorials to their students.  Think of it a bit like Skype with a whiteboard and a bunch of other useful controls (such as a 'happy face' button).

This session was attended by around twelve experienced associate lecturers, all of whom had used OU Live quite extensively with their students. 

This, in essence, is what they said a perfect Computing/ICT session might look like.  (One point to bear in mind is that other disciplines might run slightly different sessions - but more about this later!)

Setting the scene

Firstly, the moment we click on our OU Live room, OU Live should open in an instant.  There should be no delay!  We don't have to download anything extra (or enter any really annoying administrative passwords).  The Java software, which we need to run to use OU Live, should always work perfectly.  We should never have to upgrade it!

With the perfect OU Live session, not only will we have a perfect internet connection (which will never go down), our students will have a perfect internet connection too!  Our connection will be really fast (with little or no latency), and none of our students will be connecting up to our session whilst travelling by train.  An important point is: there will be no delays. 

We should also assume that all students have their own microphones and headsets, all of which are perfect.  This means that there is absolutely no feedback.  Of course, our own audio setup works perfectly, and there are no other software products battling to use our computer's audio channel.

The perfect time, length and group

We decided that the perfect time for the perfect OU Live session would be towards the middle of a module presentation (or, roughly half way through).  This means that, of course, everyone is making pretty good progress, and all students are now familiar with the OU Live interface.  Also, everyone has, what I call, good 'mic hygiene'. This means that students don't leave the microphone switched on (so other students can't speak!)

One important thing to say about our 'perfect group' is that they're all willing to interact; they're all engaged.  No one has kids in the background vying for attention, and there are no cats jumping on keyboards.

A 'perfect size' for an OU Live group would be considered to be around 10-12 students.  Since there would be no technology problems, there won't be any drop outs.  Also, everyone arrives exactly on time.  There will be no one arriving half way through the session asking, 'what have I missed?', or 'could you just go over that bit?'

Ideally, all the students who turn up would belong to our own tutor group.  This way, we know who they are and what their learning needs might be.

Our view was that our perfect session should last anything between 60 and 90 minutes.

(One thing that we didn't talk about was the best time to hold the perfect tutorial)

The perfect preparation

Preparation can be considered from two different perspectives: the tutor's side, and the student's side.  A tutor might prepare by, perhaps, doing a practice run through.  A tutor could also post a copy of a draft agenda on a tutor group forum.

Of course, in a perfect situation, all students would read the OU Live session agenda, and take the time to prepare for the session, which might mean having read sections of module materials, and having some questions to ask the tutor at the OU Live session.

Another thing that we could do to help with our preparation is to ask all our students in advance what topics they would like you to cover.  Since every student reads every message you post on the forum, you're able to design a session that is just for them.

The perfect OU Live tutorial structure

Since we're running 'the perfect session' in the middle of a module presentation, we can dispense with the idea of running any icebreakers: all the students should know each other already.

In our perfect session we would present a short introduction which relates to a set of really clear learning objectives.  This would be followed with a series of short interactive activities (say, around three).  These activities, of course, would be entirely appropriate for OU Live.

Since we (of course) would have planned out everything (and have a backup plan!) we would know how long each activity should take (also, in a perfect world, we would have run the session before, so we know what to expect!)

Towards the end of our tutorial, we would ask all students if they had any questions about what has happened.  We would then do a quick recap of what has happened, and remind everyone about the next TMA cut-off date.  We would also say something about what is going to happen in the next OU Live session (or module activity).

The perfect use of OU Live features

During our session, we chatted about the perfect use of various OU Live features.  One thing we discussed was the importance of polling, i.e. asking our students to respond during a session; students clicking on the 'tick' or the 'happy face' icon.   One suggestion (which was apparently given as a part of Blackboard training, the company that has created OU Live) is to poll students every 20-30 seconds.  Polling will allow you to keep the students engaged; it enables you to check whether everybody understands all the points that you are making (which is important since there's an obvious lack of visual cues).

Even though all students will have perfectly working microphones (with no crackle, delay or feedback), the text chat channel is still considered to be useful.  Students can ask for clarifications.  It can also be used to share links and other resources.  (Such as links to the OU study guides).

During our activities, we might want to use breakout rooms.  Of course, all our breakout rooms will work perfectly!  (There won't for example, be a situation where one student has a microphone and another hasn't)  We would be able to set a timer and move between different rooms, checking on what is happening in each of the sessions.

One of the things that we can't do in breakout rooms is to make a recording.  A related question is: 'should we record our perfect OU Live sessions?'  Different tutors have different opinions about this.  On one hand, a recording of an OU Live session becomes a useful (perfect) resource (that could be potentially referred back to, perhaps during the revision period).  Alternatively, if we record a session, students might argue that they don't need to turn up.  Also, if students know they're being recorded, they would be reluctant to speak.  (This is clearly an issue that is going to be debated for quite some time; there are clear arguments either way).

All tutors have used the application sharing feature of OU Live to show students how to use features of the programming tools that they need to use.  In the case of TU100, this is the Sense environment.  In the case of TM129, this would be RobotLab.  Sharing an application can allow the tutor to ask students some questions to determine whether they understand certain concepts.  It can also be used to demonstrate what happens when you run some code, and also how to begin to use different debugging strategies.  You might also give control of the application to students, so they can demonstrate their skills.

Of course, in a perfect world, the application sharing feature is really responsive!  (One comment was that, in the real world, we might use quite a small window, since this uses less bandwidth)

After the perfect session

At the end of the session, you would post a copy of the slides to your tutor group forum, and share any other resources.  A tutor might also post a number of follow up questions or activities, and the date and time of the next session.

Closing thoughts and acknowledgements

Before running this meeting I had never explicitly asked myself the question of 'what does a perfect OU Live session look like?'  Instead, I had worked on instinct: trying something out, and then reflect on whether it seemed to work or not. 

I found it really useful to hear everyone's opinions and views about what makes a good session.

During our meeting, I remember there was a conversation about OU Live examples.  I've managed to dig out the resource I was once told about.  It's called:  Teaching with online rooms (OU VLE). The page contains a set of different OU Live examples that have been created by tutors who are working in different disciplines. For those who teach programming and computing modules, the 'writing and running simple code' is a really interesting link.  The other resources about level 1 and academic referencing, and study skills are useful too.

I would like to personally hank all the tutors who attended this session for their contributions: everyone who was at the London region on the afternoon of Saturday 30 June contributed to discussions and ideas that led to the writing of this quick blog.  Thank you all!

On 17 January I found the time to attend a T216 (OU website) day school that was hosted at London Metropolitan university.  T216 is a module that is all about Cisco networking and, in some respects, it’s a little bit different to other OU modules, but it’s different in a good way. 

Students who study T216 can gain credits towards their degrees whilst at the same time taking a set of vendor exams that allows them to gain a widely recognised industrial qualification.  You study one module, and have the potential to gain two different outcomes.

Labs

Another way that T216 differs to other OU modules is that students are required to attend a number of compulsory lab sessions.  These lab sessions are opportunities for students to get their hands on real Cisco equipment: the same type of equipment that powers much of the internet.

I have to confess that I’m not a network engineer, but have been a student of networking in the past.  I first studied it as an undergraduate (when things were very different) and then briefly went down the Microsoft systems engineer certification route, but I’ve always known that the official Cisco certifications are a whole lot more demanding.

When I worked in industry, I once made a case to develop a product that could be used to help to teach the fundamentals of computer networking, using a set of tiny PC-like computers.  When I was heading to this event, I remembered these old ideas and I had two questions in my mind. The first was: what is the Cisco way of teaching networking and, secondly, what might happen in a Cisco lab.

The teaching bit

I met my colleague in the foyer of the university and I was quickly taken to teaching lab where a lecture was taking place.  I found a seat at one of the empty workstations and started to listen, hoping I would understand something.

‘How do switches learn mac addresses?’ our instructor asked.  The class was still pretty quiet: the students hadn’t yet warmed up yet.  I knew what a ‘mac’ address was: it’s a unique id that is used to identify a network node.  You can have them on either Ethernet cards and are used by wireless devices (as far as I know), but in this context, the lecturer was only talking about wired networks.  I also knew what a switch was too: it’s a device that decides where different signals (or frames) should be transmitted to.  Switches have ‘ports’, which are linked to physical cables (if I’ve got this right!)

The answer was: the switch populates the CAM tables, and if it doesn’t know where to send something, the switch transmits everything on every port by doing a broadcast, so it gets to behave a bit like a ‘hub’.  Broadcasting also happens if a CAM table gets full, and this is something that hackers can exploit.  To deal with this, there’s also something called port security.  To make things even more complicated, there are different types of port security too.

Within fifteen minutes, my head was exploding with in-depth technical detail.  I was also reminded about the different layers of the ISO 7-layer networking model (‘a switch is a layer 2 device whereas a hub is a layer 1 device’): I was being reminded about parts of my undergraduate studies.

During the teaching part of the day, we were introduced to the concept of a VLAN and its benefits, and the concept of ‘VLAN trunks’. I also made a note of the glorious phrase ‘a router on a stick’. 

On the subject of packet routing and routers (which was a ‘level 3’ device, apparently), other concepts were introduced, such as a ‘routing table’ and different types of dynamic routing protocols, which had names like: EIGRP (enhanced interior gateway routing protocol), OSPF (open shortest path first) and RIP (routing information protocol).  These protocols were different in terms of the extent to which they were connected to vendors, and the way they approached ‘cost’.  Cost, in networking terms (it seemed) could be considered in terms of networking distance, or state (or quality?) of a link.

I appreciate all this sounds pretty hard-core technical, but what does all this mean?  Routing protocols (as far as I understand) are important, since they convey the status of the network to the other magic devices that keep the internet working.  If there is a bit of the internet that stops working, it’s important that other devices know about it, so they can channel packets around the bits of it that are having problems.

During this part of the class, I had another flashback to my undergrad years, where I studied different types of computer algorithms.  One of those algorithms, called Dijkstra’s Algorithm, was all about finding the quickest path through a network.  His algorithm can be used to help your satnav to find the shortest route to a destination, or to find your way around the London Underground Tube map.  It can also be used to direct internet traffic.  If you’re interested in this kind of stuff, I recommend you have a quick look at M269 Algorithms, Data Structures and Computability.  In computing (as with networks) everything is connected (in one way or another!)

Other ‘teaching bits’ included information about something called an ‘access control list’ (which allows for network filtering), DHCP (an abbreviation for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) and NAT (network address translation).  This connected to the point that there are two different internet standards: IPv4 and IPv6.  Please don’t ask me about IPv6, because I don’t know too much about it, but what I do know is that NAT is like a ‘fix’ to get around the problem that there are more internet enabled devices in the world than there are IPv4 internet addresses.  There’s also something called PAD, or port-address translation (but I don’t know too much about).

In essence, we were being taught about the nuts and bolts of the internet and how it worked.  It’s all very well hearing theory, but nothing beats actually playing with physical hardware.  That’s when the lab session comes in.

The playing bit

We had a task to do: we had to connect three different routers together, configure them, and get them talking to each other.  The routers (along with ancillary hardware, such as racks of switches and cabling) were situated in different parts of the lab.  After our tutors described our task, we were all encouraged to go up to the racks to try to figure out what was what: we had an opportunity to eyeball and touch real physical Cisco hardware.

I followed the cables between the different devices and asked some questions about the various interfaces.  I could see how it was set up.  I was also informed that the hardware was set up in ‘a raw state’ that meant that we had to send commands to them, to try to get them speaking to each other.

I sat down at a computer workstation.  I then figured out that a workstation had a link to one (or more) of the routers.  Each workstation was pretending to be a really old ‘dumb terminal’, which was the kind of interface you needed to use to talk to the router.

Our tutors gave us a handout, and a glossary of commands, and it was left up to us to figure out how to get the routers working together.  Thankfully, I was paired up with someone who knew how to issue the device with instructions.  Between us, we figured out how to send a ‘reset’ command and give it a name.

After quite a bit of head scratching, asking questions and mild cursing, I suddenly understood what was going on.  There were three routers.  Each router was connected to a separate terminal (or workstation) where we had to issue different sets of commands.  I was trying to be clever and think that you could do everything from a single computer – but, there were clear pedagogic reasons why it was designed this way: to keep it simple, so we could more easily figure out what was going on.  (Or, at least, this was my hypothesis!)

Half an hour later, we had all the routers (pretty much) talking to each other, which was our first assignment (which was what everyone would have done at the end of the previous day school).  Other groups in the lab session (who were more familiar with the commands that they needed to issue) were storming ahead, spotting mistakes in the script, and forging a path to the next assignment.

Since I was there just to observe and to learn, and I was becoming increasingly confused (and I had another appointment), I decided to call it a day.

Final notes

The teaching bit was great, and the lab bit was good fun, but there was a huge amount of detail to take in over a very short period of time.  I managed to understand some stuff, but quite a lot of the detail passed me by – especially when it came to working with the actual hardware.  This, of course, relates to the importance of the labs.  Nothing really beats an opportunity to work with real kit (and also to work with other students who are going through the same learning process that you are).

Although I left early, I did feel that I would be able to master a lot of what was being covered during the day school.  This made me wonder: I wonder if the other day schools might be different.  Also, since I found the stuff so geekily interesting, I had another question, which was: could I find the time to officially study this module? 

At the moment, time, is a challenge.  I’m currently embroiled in writing up three different teaching and learning research projects.  Once I get these out of the way (and another couple of side projects I’m working on), I’m sorely tempted to give T216 a go.

On 25 June 2013, I popped over to the London Metropolitan University to attend a HEA sponsored workshop that was all about how to best teach the programming of mobile devices.  My role there was to present something about an OU module that I help out on: TT284 Web Technologies, but I'll be saying a bit more about that in a little while.

Yanguo Jing, from London Met kicked off the day by talking about the twenty credit MSc module that he leads.  Yanguo said that his module is strongly connected with industry and various technology vendors and important themes are that of innovation and enterprise.  Importantly, students have an opportunity to carry out research themselves, create their own projects, develop their own apps and present their own findings.  One way that they do this is by making their own videos (which is also a great way to create evidence which can be contributed to assessments).

Yanguo also mentioned something called the Wow Agency. One of the important points of having a more direct connection with industry is that students get more immediate exposure to demands from industry.  This was thought provoking stuff.

Teach the future, not the past: Blackberry 10 development

Luca Sale and Simon Howard gave the first of two vendor presentations.  I'll put my hand up and say that I know next to nothing about developing applications for Blackberry devices.  In fact, I don't think I've ever used a Blackberry device other than to scroll through a message, when a friend briefly gave me their device to look at!

This presentation was all about developing for a new device, the Blackberry 10.  I have heard bits and pieces about this, but the new device has a totally new operating system called Z10.  Interestingly, it is based on an operating system called QNX (Wikipedia) (which I had vaguely heard of before).  Basically, it uses a microkernal architecture (which means it has a way to enforce stronger separation between the hardware and the main operating system that runs a device), it's pretty small, and is used in a range of different embedded systems.

Apparently, there are number of Software Development kits (SDKs) which means that it's possible to take an existing Android app and port it to the Blackberry (and have it deployed to users via the Blackberry equivalent of an app store).  The SDKs that were mentioned included Qt, HTML 5, Blackberry native, Adobe Air, and Java Android Runtime.

There was a quick live coding demo of how to create apps using the HTML 5 framework.  Other languages that might be used to craft code included Javascript (in conjunction with HTML 5), C++, and Java (as far as I understand).  At the end of the presentations, Nafeesa Dajda described the Blackberry Academic Programme (Blackberry).

Microsoft devices and services

Lee Stott continued the vendor specific part of the day by making a Microsoft themed presentation.  Microsoft, of course, has been investing significantly into the mobile devices space.  Not only do they have Windows phones, but they (of course) also have their Touch PCs.  So much so, that their new operating system (Windows 8) aims to create an experience specifically for tablet devices.

Lee talked about software eco systems and mentioned that services (as well as devices) are important too.   Services can also be thought of in terms of cloud services, and we were told that the cloud was becoming more and more important.  Since data is stored elsewhere, users have the potential to move between different devices and still have access to their documents and data, thus enhancing the user experience.  

One of the most interesting part of Lee's talk was where he spoke about the Microsoft Azure services.  I have to confess that it's been quite a while since I've been a Microsoft developer (in the intervening years I've done some PHP and coding using open-source frameworks), so it was useful to learn what the company has been up to and what services they are offering.

One of the challenges that I've always puzzled over is if you run your own tech company, how you might go about running and maintaining your own servers and databases.  System administration is a necessary, important and essential evil: getting to grips with real kit and devices is important, but is a detailed technical specialism in its own right.

If I've understood this correctly, Microsoft can host a virtual server which then can host your own database.  I'm also assuming that if you want, you can also write your own web services to do whatever magic stuff you need to do, which can then be consumed by users of mobile devices (or any other kind of client).  Customers of this service are then billed per minute of processor time.  I can see the benefits; server plant depreciates quickly and keeping them maintained is always going to cost money.  I find this approach to hosting and consuming data really interesting, especially since it offers an approach to devolve risk to a third party.  Of course, there are a number of competitors (Wikipedia) in the cloud services arena.  This whole area seems to be a new subject in its own right.

Just in case you're interested, here's a couple of links I've gathered up: the main Microsoft Faculty pages, the UK faculty connection blog, and a link to the Azure education blog.   Another link is DreamSpark which seems to be about giving students and institutions access to some of the latest tools and technologies.

TouchDevelop for Windows Mobile 8

The next talk was by David Renton, who is a lecturer in Computer Games Development.  David introduces a platform called TouchDevelop (Microsoft website) which used to be a Microsoft Research project. TouchDevelop is a programming language that has a graphical feel.  Programs that are created using it have an appearance of a textual language, but elements of code can be created using a series of menus (as far as I can understand).

The software that you can create using TouchDevelop can be run on different mobile devices.  In some respects, TouchDevelop occupies the same space as Scratch (MIT website).  David makes the point that it's difficult to create good games in Scratch.  I can (personally) neither confirm nor deny David's assertion, but my own view is that Scratch is a fun and useful environment which allows users to escape from the tyranny of syntax, whilst at the same gradually introducing users to different (and essential) programming constructs.

What was really interesting was that TouchDevelop contains cool stuff, such as a physics engine.  By providing such a facility, I can certainly see how and why such an environment could be particularly interesting and engaging.  Again, for those who are interested, David has a blog called Games4Learning.  A final interesting point is that TouchDevelop runs in a web browser, so will work on different platforms.

Shorter presentations: Lua and Corona, Digital Summer Camp

Ian Masters gave a short presentation entitled, 'teaching cross-platform mobile development using Lua and Corona'.  Corona (website) is a software development SDK and Lua (Wikipedia) is a programming language.  Like TouchDevelop, Ian demonstrated the use of an integral physics engine.  During the follow on discussion, there was quite a bit of talk about the Unity Engine (Wikipedia), which I've heard mentioned at a number of other HEA gaming and mobile events.

Martin Underwood talked about Digital Summer Camp which is an event where universities, colleges, industry vendors and other organisations have come together help to inspire young people who are interested in technology.  The Open University is also one of the 'digital skill leaders'.

iPhone game development at Robert Gordon University

Gordon Eccleston has been teaching the development of apps for quite some time.  He gave a short talk on what works and what hasn't worked.  Gordon introduced a new term: a flip classroom!  I hadn't heard this term before, but apparently this is where students do some preparatory work at home to prepare for tutorials (I think I've got that right!)

Gordon spoke about how things have changed.  These days students invariable have their own devices.  One difficulty is that vendors are always changing their devices, which means that lecturers face challenge in terms of an inability to control in their own environment.  This said Gordon does have access to some iPod Touch devices, allowing code created using the XCode platform (the environment used to create iOS applications) to real devices.

Gordon also mentioned that the school had access to the Unity3D engine.  This gave way to an interesting discussion about the difference between games programming versus games design courses.  I've also made a note that when it comes to submission of course work, submission to an apps store represents one judgement on quality.  When it comes to further assessment by the lecturer, one approach is to ask students to create a screen cast.  Assessment, I seem to recall, is a perpetual challenge (especially with the continual changes in technology), as is how to provide both teaching and resources through a web based environment.

Mobile apps development: enhancing student employability

Sally Smith and Scott McGowan, both from Edinburgh Napier University gave a short talk and presentation on the importance of employability skills.  Sally, who is the head of school, said that employers value relevant experience, want to see applicants who have a relevant degree, and have good soft skills. 

Faced with the necessity to demonstrate employability skills, it was argued that it would be useful if students could create something (say, an app, or some other related project) that can be both added to a CV and talked about in an interview.  Sally also talked about the importance of industrial experience and how her institution and school tackled this issue.

Teaching and assessment strategies in mobile development

David Glass teaches mobile development to second year undergraduates at the University of Ulster.  Students can create apps for the Android platform with Java using Eclipse.  Important parts of the module that I've noted down are subjects such as user interface design, data persistence and networking.  There is also a period of self-study where students are to gain an overview of mobile devices.

Challenges include teaching of programming and understanding what to assess and how.  The assessment approach that David mentions sounds really interesting.  Students are required to address legal, ethical and social issues.  They are then required to develop a basic app before moving on to creating something that is more advanced.  A basic app might be something such as a simple calculator or a measurement converter.  

Interestingly, a more advanced app might be something called a 'my run tracker' app.  David made the important point that the task of creating apps lends themselves to more open-ended assessment and group work.  Taking this approach has the potential to encourage creativity and help with motivation.

Design designers, don't program programmers

Lindsay Marshall, from the University of Newcastle, gave an impromptu talk that described his own ten credit postgraduate module and connected with many of the earlier debates.  At the end of his module, students are required to submit a portfolio.  Relating to the challenges of assessments, students were allowed to choose whatever platform they wanted, and choose whatever problem they wished to solve.  Students were encouraged to produce a design log and to present some kind of demonstration.  Moving forward this may take the form of a video presentation or recording.

Lindsay made the important point that it is also important to take the time to look at the code, as well as the final product.  Another component is the writing of a reflective essay, to describe what was learnt during the project.  Interestingly, there are no lab sessions.  Instead, Lindsay mentioned the importance of crit sessions, which is an important technique used in design.

What was really struck me from Lindsay's presentation was something that was also pretty obvious: that there are significant connections between the design disciplines and software development.  Both are fundamentally creative subjects, and both require people to understand the inherent nature and characteristics of problems.

Web technologies

And finally, it was my turn.  During my slot I spoke about a new Open University module called Web Technologies (TT284, Open University website), emphasising the point that there are so many important technologies that underpin the use of mobile technologies and devices. 

TT284 is interesting in a number of different ways.  Firstly, is uses a set of case studies of increasing size.  Students move from understanding how to create an app for a small club or society, through to understanding what might happen as a part of a software development company.  Students are then introduced to 'software in the large' (or sites that have incredibly high volumes), and what practical issues might need to be addressed.

When it comes to mobile technologies, drawing on a case study, students are asked to create an app for an Android device using MIT App Inventor (MIT website).  App Inventor is a graphical programming language, where code can be moved to real advices.  One of the challenges for any module that aims to either teach mobile technologies is the way that technology changes so quickly.  A really good aspect of this particular module is that it also addresses a good number of fundamental and really important standards and technologies.

Reflections

I learnt quite a lot from the vendor presentations and it's always useful to hear about the industrial perspective, particularly in a field that is moving so phenomenally quickly.  Whilst it's great for academics to learn what industry is getting up to (and you might argue that this is a thoroughly essential part of the job description), the presence of vendors links to an implicit battle for the hearts and mind for developers.  Users choose devices and technology that allows them to do cool stuff.  Cool stuff is created by developers.  Developers, in many cases, come from universities.  Taking this even further, developers are employed by industries who ultimately want people to be skilled in using particular software infrastructures and ecologies. 

Things have changed since I first started to go to these mobile technology events.  There are now many more devices than there were before.  The devices themselves have changed - they have more memory and power, and on the horizon there is a new generation of faster mobile networks.  By the same token, there are, of course, new tools, development environments, frameworks and libraries.  Educators are faced with the challenge of what to teach.  Some educators choose particular platforms, whereas others leave this decision entirely up to students.

When it comes to pedagogy, project and group work appears to be fundamentally important, particularly when it comes to developing employability skills and creating artefacts that can be presented to potential employers.  Keeping things open (in terms of either platforms or the problems that can be solved by the application of mobile technology) can present some challenges when it comes to assessment.  There seems to be some consensus in terms of asking students to produce videos of their working apps might be a good approach.

Making a decision about what platform to use or to develop for isn't an easy one.  When I was a student I was once told by a faculty member that 'you really need to know how to use all types of technology'.  His point was that you will more readily be able to move between one platform and another.  In doing so, you'll gain a degree of flexibility that will allow you to appreciate how things might be done in different ways.  This is a perspective that has stuck with me and one that is important since the platform that you're using now will eventually become obsolete in a couple of years' time.

When it comes to mobile technology, everyone is trying to figure what things we should be teaching and what the best approaches for teaching might be.  When we're dealing with an industry that is moving as quick as it is, these kind of events can be useful in terms of making connections and putting a marker in the ground whilst saying, 'this is how we do things today'. 

I attended a HEA workshop about the teaching and learning of programming for mobile and tablet devices at London Metropolitan University on 15 June 2012.  This is a quick summary of my own take on what happened on the day, combined with a set of personal reflections, some of which I've added in the body of this summary.  I'm writing this with the hope that this summary might be useful for some of the attendees, and for others who were unable to attend.

In some ways, this was a second of a 'mini series' of two workshops about mobile technologies, the first being held in the University of Buckingham back in May 2012.  A quick write up of this earlier workshop, which has more of a focus on employability skills can be viewed by visiting an earlier blog post.

The day began with an introduction by Dominic Palmer-Brown who clearly emphasised the importance of mobile technologies.  Dominic commented that the subject is particularly important 'to ourselves and our students', going on to emphasise that skills working with and developing mobile technologies are in demand by industry.  A number of presentations appeared to confirm that this was the case, particularly the final presentation.

The potential of social media and mobile devices in informal, professional and work-based learning

Professor John Cook, from London Metropolitan University gave an opening keynote about how mobile devices could be used to help facilitate teaching and learning.  John introduced us to a number of different ideas and projects, enabling us to appreciate the variety of ways in which mobile devices may be used.  Mobile devices can be used to 'add information' to physical space, for instance, reminding me of research into wearable computing and the development of Google Goggles, for instance.

Connecting to the themes of location, history and learning, John introduces us to a project that enabled students, through the use of mobile devices, to learn more about the ruins of a Cistercian Abbey (Fountains Abbey, Wikipedia).  Mobile devices facilitate the delivery of different types of media which can be chosen depending upon the location of the user

Whilst technology on its own is always interesting, its use and application can be enhanced through the understanding and application of pedagogic theories.  John made reference to Vygotsky (Wikipedia), who coined the term Zone of Proximal Development (Wikipedia).  Other important points that I've noted is the role that peers play a very important role in learning, and John emphasised the importance of scaffolding of learning activities (the subject of pedagogy, particularly inquiry based learning was the focus of an earlier HEA event).  On a related note, I personally feel I have a fair way to go in terms of understanding how to make the best use of the technologies I have at my disposal.  The pedagogy of technology is something that I am sure that I'll continue to mention in these blogs.

John also introduced an abbreviation that I was not familiar with: BOYD, meaning, Bring Your Own Device.  Perhaps it has already got to a point where it may be surprising if a student doesn't bring some kind of mobile technology to their lectures. 

It was interesting to hear the view that social media used in the work place was considered to be an area that is under researched.  This thought reminded me of an earlier presentation by Vanessa Gough, from IBM at a previous HEA workshop about professional on-line identities where she showed how employees were making use of social media to share information with each other.  Perhaps it is an area that is under researched, but I do sense that social media within the work place is certainly being used and applied.

John also mentioned a new EU funded project called Learning Layers.  Like many EU projects, Learning Layers has a number of collaborators from different countries. Finally, some slides that connect to the ideas and the projects that John spoke of can be found on SlideShare.

Teaching Mobile App Development at Postgraduate level at London Metropolitan

Yanguo Jin gave the first 'main' presentation of the day where he shared with us some of the experience that had been gained at London Met over the past five or six years.  Yanguo made reference to an industry report which predicted that mobile internet will take over fixed internet by 2014.  It was also viewed that mobile technology skills, such as HTML 5, iOS and Android are considered to be increasingly important.

Knowing about a particular skill is one thing, being able to demonstrate mastery in something is a different (but related issue).  To address this challenge Yanguo holds the view that students should ideally create a portfolio of apps (perhaps in combination with other students) to demonstrate their skills and abilities to a prospective employer.

Teaching of mobile technologies at London Met is through an industry-oriented practical approach that emphasises depth (in terms of making use of a single platform) as opposed to breadth (covering a number of different platforms).  I think this is important, since whatever platforms developers end up using, they always have got to 'get into the detail' of the environments and tools that they have to use. 

Key subjects that are covered in the module includes the model-view controller (MVC) design pattern, the use of an integrated development environment (IDE), aspects of visual design, issues relating to power and memory management, web services, development methods and object-oriented programming.

One particular aspect of the teaching that was said to work well is the facilitation of peer-to-peer support (a point which connected to John's keynote).  Another great technique was to encourage students to teach each other through their own seminars, and allowing them to choose their own projects (thus helping to keep students motivated).

Approaches to teaching programming of mobile devices

Gordon Eccleston from Robert Gordon University shared with us some of his experienced he gained whilst teaching students to develop iPod and iPhone apps. Gordon began by asking an interesting question.  He said, 'is programming mobile devices different to other kinds of programming, such as programming using Java or .NET?'  His answer is 'not really'.  Like with other aspects of programming the only real way to learn is to get on and do it.  Gordon also made an argument that we might get to a point where we may not distinguish between different types of device, such as a phone, a tablet or a laptop - we may end up calling them all 'computers' (especially that some mobile phones are now as powerful, computationally speaking, as laptops).  At some point in time, mobility may be an attribute that we automatically assume.

Gordon echoed John's earlier comments about BOYD.  Whilst at the moment Gordon provides his students with a set of iPod Touch devices which they can use (separately from any other device that they may own), one important consideration when teaching mobility may be the availability of effective WiFi in the classroom.

Increasingly, students may wish to work from home or work part time (which connects to John's earlier keynote on the subject of mobile learning).  To facilitate different ways of learning, institutions can make use of technology to allow students to gain access to learning.  Material can, of course, be delivered through an institutional VLE.

Gordon concluded his presentation by speaking about interactive books, which I remember reading was going to be Steve Job's 'next big thing'.  Gordon mentioned a company named Giglets which produces interactive multimedia 'books' for either PCs or eBook readers.  There is also the increasing possibility (or, even, likelihood) that students in primary schools may begin to make use of tablet devices.  

This broader discussion about tablet devices in schools made me begin to wonder about the extent to which digital books and institutional services or systems (such as VLEs) can be connected together and how institutions can support the use of mobile technology through the use of organisational structures.  Whilst technology may sometimes help, organisational structures and support must always facilitate its use, but understanding how to best achieve this can be a whole different challenge.

Teaching Android Programming at Oxford Brookes

Ian Bayley and Faye Mitchell gave a joint presentation about their experience of teaching Android programming at Oxford Brookes.  I remember hearing that they clearly emphasise that mobility is a whole lot more than just the phone.  I completely agree.  One interesting observation is the programming is an activity that is continually difficult.  When it comes to learning how to program, high levels of motivation is really important.  An interesting point is that students who may be strong at mathematics can find programming difficult.  Whilst mathematical skills may be useful, 'algorithmic thinking' may be something that is quite different.

Students are introduced to programming through the use of other tools and languages, such as Alice (which has been mentioned at a number of other HEA events), and Processing (which is a Java-based language that can be used to create graphics and data visualisations, for example).

I also remember hearing about the creation of screencasts to allow students to get a more direct understanding of some of the applications that are used.  Towards the end of the presentation there was time to discuss assessments.  Students are given the opportunity to create their own app.  Examinations, it was argued, was considered to be an inappropriate way to assess knowledge and understanding.  This is especially pertinent given the practical nature of mobile programming.

Bedfordshire's Experiences teaching app development with Lua and Corona SDK

Ian Masters presentation was very different from the others.  Ian's talk was more of a demonstration of two different (and related) developments: a programming language called Lua (which I had never heard of), and a corresponding SDK called Corona (which I had also never heard of).  In combination with each other they can represent a 2D game development environment for different mobile devices.  Interestingly, Lua and Corona are multi-platform, which means that code is (of course) transferrable between different mobile operating systems and devices, making it a really attractive tool.

Ian began his presentation by defining a simple environment in which a game may be played.  This involved defining screen elements, such as a floor, and also blocks.  Another interesting aspect of the environment is that Corona also comes with its own physics engine.  Items that are defined on the screen can bounce on and fall off items that have been defined.  It looks to be really good fun!

Mobile Teaching Experience from University of Buckingham

Harin Sellahewa told us about a new module that is being taught at the University of Buckingham from September onwards.  The aims of the module is to introduce students to mobile application develop, to help them to create a realistic app and to enable students to understand the wider commercial opportunities and issues that surround mobile app development.

Some of the learning objectives include understanding the components of a smartphone (such as its various peripherals), to critically understand the difference between mobile devices and PCs and for students to be able to design, develop and test applications.  Interestingly, the module is using a Windows development platform.  One reason for this different focus is due to familiarity with the Xbox development environment that Buckingham already uses.  I look forward to hearing about how the first presentation went and what challenges were overcome.

Our experience of teaching mobile programming on different platforms at Staffordshire University

Catherine French and Dave Gillibrand presented some of their experiences of teaching mobile programming at Staffordshire University.  It was great to see that mobility has been a subject that has been taught at Staffordshire for quite some time, beginning with Java ME and Windows CE (PDAs) before moving onto Android and iOS.

One of the tasks (or assignments) that students are presented with is the challenge of creating a 2D game, which sounds like a tough challenge.  To address this issue, a very useful and helpful teaching paradigm has been adopted where students are given code examples where students are then encouraged to change the example.  This was considered to be particularly useful with some aspects of programming, such as multi-threading, which students can find difficult.

I hold the view that using examples is a really good idea; I very often used this strategy when I was working in industry.  Examples give students a combination of relatively immediate results (which can be rewarding) whilst also providing the materials that allow learners to gain an understanding of how things work, which may be only acquired over time.

An important point that was made is that a using a real mobile device is so much better than an emulator.  Whilst an emulator can simulate the operation of some mobile peripherals, such as the GPS sensor, for example, other aspects of a mobile device, such as the behaviour of the touch screen are best experienced (and tested) with a real device.

I was impressed by the breadth of subjects that students may be introduced to as a part of their studies.  These may include consuming public web services, development of an application using agile techniques which can include the use of test driven development (TDD) and using tools that are used in industry, such as Subversion.

A final point is that some students may begin a module with the view that developing apps may be something that could be easy.  Programming is something that certainly isn't easy.   I guess a personal reflection is that educators not only need to convey difficult technical concepts and expose problem solving challenges to students, educators also need to work to manage expectations.  Programming, irrespective of whatever form it takes, is a craft and it takes time to acquire craft knowledge (and experience).

From the desktop to devices: teaching interaction design

I have to confess that I was responsible for the penultimate presentation of the day.  Tempting though it is, I'm not going to write in the third person for this part of this blog.  Instead, I'll refer to myself as 'I' as opposed to 'Chris'.

My own presentation was slightly different than all the others since it wasn't about mobile technology or even about programming.  Instead it focused upon the process of designing interactive products and experiences (of which, programming will eventually play an important part).  My presentation was based on experience gained as an Open University associate lecturer over the past six or so years where I have tutored a module entitled Fundamentals of Interaction Design (which I'll call M364).

M364 is a great module.  It introduces students to key concepts such as usability goals, user experience goals and design principles.  It then helps students to appreciate the power of sketching.  Students are introduced to the concepts of evaluation where they are then encouraged to understand the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches.

During my presentation I described a scenario where a mobile device to guide a visitor around a historical location needed to be designed.  I quickly outlined different types of sketches.  The first was a storyboard, which enables designers to think about the broader context in which a product is used.  The second is a card-based prototype which allows designers to consider the sequence of interactions (and even simulate them).  The final sketch was a more detailed interface sketch which contained more detailed design about icons and how information is presented to a user.

The title of my brief presentation reflects the notion that the design process can be applied to many different kinds of platforms and devices.  Not only can the interaction design process be applied to mobile or desktop applications, but also to static devices, such as ticket machines, for example.

Why teaching mobile? An Industry's perspective

The final presentation of the day was by Abdul Hamid.  One of the striking aspects of Abdul's presentation was where he shared with us some graphs from an on-line job site (Indeed) which emphasised the demand for certain mobile skills.  Some older skills, it was argued, were waning in popularity whilst others (particular those that were mobile related) were becoming increasingly popular.

Reflections

I felt that this was a very cohesive event, in the sense that there were a number of presentations that were entirely dedicated to sharing of not only teaching practice (and insights about what works and what doesn't), but there was a lot of commonality in terms of technologies and tools.  Although there were many high points of the day, the highlight for me was finding out about Lua and Corona.  I had never heard of these tools before, which reminded me of how difficult it is sometimes to keep up to date in a fast moving field, such as mobile technology and software development.

As mentioned earlier, technology is a part of a bigger picture.  John's presentation touched upon the importance of theory and history, particularly with regards to the domain of mobile learning.  Mobile has an important role to play within business, commerce and our wider social environment.  Other disciplines will undoubtedly play an increasing role when it to understanding the increasing role that mobile technology plays in our everyday lives.  Just to echo words from John's keynote, pedagogy, usability and content are all important areas.

At the end of the workshop there was a short opportunity to discuss how the participants could potentially work together, collaborate and continue to share practice.  There was also some debate about having a follow up meeting next year: a really positive outcome - congratulations to the organisers at London Met!

I attended a HEA eTeaching and Learning workshop at the University of Greenwich on 1^st June 2011.  It is always a pleasure visiting the Greenwich University campus; it is probably (in my humble opinion) the most dramatic of all university campuses in London - certainly the only one that is situated within a World Heritage site.

My challenge was to find the King William building (if I remember correctly), which turned out to be a Wren designed neo-classical building that sat adjacent to one of the main roads.  Looking towards the river, all visitors were treated to a spectacular view of the Canary Wharf district.  Visitors were also treated to notes emanating from a nearby music school. 

I first went to the eTeaching and Learning workshop back in 2008 where I presented some preliminary work about an accessibility project I was working on.  This time I was attending as an interested observer.  It was a packed day, comprising of two keynotes and eight presentations.

Opening Keynote

The opening keynote was given by Deryn Graham (University of Greenwich).  Deryn's main focus was the evaluation of e-delivery (e-delivery was a term that I had not heard of before, so I listened very intently).  The context for her presentation was a postgraduate course on academic practice (which reminded me of a two year Open University course sounds to have a similar objective).  Some of the students took the course through a blended learning approach, whereas others studied entirely from a distance. 

The most significant question that sprung to my mind was: how should one conduct such an evaluation?  What should we measure, and what may constitute success (or difference).  Deryn mentioned a number of useful points, such as Salmond's e-moderating model (and the difficulty that the first stages may present to learners), and also considered wider economic and political factors.  Deryn presented her own framework which could be used to consider the effectiveness of e-delivery (or e-learning).

This first presentation inspired a range of different questions from the participants and made me wonder how Laurillard's conversational framework (see earlier blog post) might be applied to the same challenge of evaluation.  By way of a keynote, Deryn's presentation certainly hit the spot.

General Issues

The first main presentation was by Simon Walker, from the University of Greenwich.  The title of his paper was, 'impact of metacognitive awareness on learning in technology enhanced learning environments'.

I really liked the idea of metacognition (wikipedia) and I can directly relate it back to some computer programming research I used to stidy.  I can remember myself asking different questions whilst writing computer software, from 'I need to find information about these particular aspects...' through to, 'hmm... this isn't working at all, I need to do something totally different for a while'.  The research within cognitive is pretty rich, and it was great to hear that Simon was aware of the work by Flavell, who defines metacognition as, simply, 'knowledge and cognition about cognitive phenomena'.

Andrew spoke about some research that himself and his colleagues carried out using LAMS (learning activity management system), which is a well known learning design tool and accompanying runtime environment.  An exploratory experiment was described: one group were given 'computer selected' tools to use (though LAMS), whereas the other group were permitted a free choice.  Following the presentation of the experiment, the notion of learning styles (and whether or not they exist, and how they might relate to tool choice - such as blogs, wikis or forums) was discussed in some detail.

Andrew Pyper from the University of Hertfordshire gave a rather different presentation.  Andrew teaches human-computer interaction, and briefly showed us a software tool that could be used to support the activity of computer interface evaluation though the application of heuristic evaluations. 

The bit of Andrew's talk that jumped out at me was the idea that instruction of one cohort might help to create materials that are used by another.  I seemed to have made a note that student-generated learning materials might be understood in terms of the teaching intent (or the subject), the context (or situation) in which the materials are generated, their completeness (which might relate to how useful the materials are), and their durability (whether or not they age over time).

The final talk of the general section returned to the issue of evaluation (and connects to other issues of design and delivery).  Peiyuan Pan, from the London Metropolitan University, draws extensively on the work of others, notably Kolb, Bloom, and Fry (who wrote a book entitled 'a handbook for teaching and learning in higher education - one that I am certainly going to look up).  I remember a quote (or a note) that is (roughly) along the lines of, '[the] environment determines what activities and interactions take place', which seems to also have echoes with the conversational framework that I mentioned earlier.

Peiyuan describes a systematic process to course and module planning.  His presentation is available on line and can be found by visiting his presentation website.  There was certainly lots of food for thought here.  Papers that consider either theory or process always have a potential to impact practice.

Technical Issues

The second main section comprised of three papers.  The first was by Mike Brayshaw and Neil Gordon from the University of Hull, who were presenting a paper entitled, 'in place of virtual strife - issues in teaching using collaborative technologies'.  We all know that on-line forums are spaces where confusion can reign and emotions can heighten.  There are also perpetual challenges, such as none participation within on-line activities.  To counter confusion it is necessary to have audit trails and supporting evidence.

During this presentation a couple of different technologies were mentioned (and demoed).   It was really interesting to an the application of Microsoft Sharepoint.  I had heard that it can be used in an educational context, but this was the first ever time I had witnessed a demonstration of a system that could permit groups of users to access different shared areas.  It was also interesting to hear that a system called WebPA was being used in Hull.  WebPA is a peer assessment system which originates from the University of Loughborough.

I had first heard about WebPA at an ALT conference a couple of years ago.  I consider peer assessment as a particularly useful approach since not only might it help to facilitate metacognition (linking back to the earlier presentation), but it may also help to develop professional practice.  Peer assessment is something that happens regularly (and rigorously) within software engineering communities.

The second paper entitled 'Increased question sharing between e-Learning systems' was presented by Bernadette-Marie Byrne on behalf of her student Ralph Attard.  I really liked this presentation since it took me back to my days as a software developer where I was first exposed to the world of IMS e-learning specifications.

Many VLE systems have tools that enable them to deliver multiple choice questions to students (and there are even projects that try to accept free text).  If institutions have a VLE that doesn't offer this functionality there are a number of commercial organisations that are more than willing to offer tools that will plug this gap.  One of the most successful organisations in this field is QuestionMark.

The problem is simple: one set of multiple choice questions cannot easily be transferred to another.  The solution is rather more difficult: each system defines a question (and question type) and correct answer (or answers) in a slightly different ways.  Developers for one tool may use horizontal sliders to choose numbers (whereas others might not support this type of question).  Other tools might enable question designers to code extensive feedback for use in formative tests (I'm going beyond what was covered in the presentation, but you get my point!)

Ralph's project was to take QuestionMark questions (in their own flavour of XML) at one end and output IMS QTI at the other.  The demo looked great, but due to the nature of the problem, not all question types could be converted. Bernadette pointed us to another project that predates Ralph's work, namely the JISC MCQFM (multiple-choice questions, five methods) project, which uses a somewhat different technical approach to solve a similar problem.  Whereas MCQFM is a web-service that uses the nightmare of XSLT (wikipedia) transforms, I believe that Ralph's software parses whole documents into an intermediate structure from where new XML structures can be created.

As a developer (some years ago now), one of the issues that I came up against was that different organisations used different IMS specifications in different ways.  I'm sure things have improved a lot now, but whilst standardisation has likely to have facilitated the development of new products, real interoperability was always a problem (in the world of computerised multiple-choice questions).

The final 'technical' presentation was by John Hamer, from the University of Glasgow.  John returns to the notion of peer assessment by presenting a system called Aropa and discussing 'educational philosophy and case studies' (more information about this tool can be found by visiting the project page).  Aropa is designed to support peer view in large classes.  Two case studies were briefly described: one about professional skills, and the other about web development.

One thing is certain: writing a review (or conducting an assessment of student work) is  most certainly a cognitively demanding task.  It both necessitates and encourages a deep level of reflection.  I noted down a number of concerns about peer assessment that were mentioned: fairness, consistency, competence (of assessors), bias, imbalance and practical concerns such as time.  A further challenge in the future might be to characterise which learning designs (or activities) might make best use of peer assessment.

Pedagogical Issues

The subjects of collusion and plagiarism are familiar tropes to most higher education lecturers.  A paper by Ken Fisher and Dafna Hardbattle (both from London Metropolitan University) asks the question of whether students might benefit it they work through a learning object which explains to learners what is and what is not collusion.  The presentation began with a description of a questionnaire study that attempts to uncover what academics understand collusion to be.

Ken's presentation inspired a lot of debate.  One of the challenges that we must face is the difference between assessment and learning.  Learning can occur through collaboration with others.  In some cases it should be encouraged, whereas in other situations it should not be condoned.  Students and lecturers alike have a tricky path to negotiate.

Some technical bits and pieces.  The learning object was created using a tool called Glomaker (generative learning object maker), which I had never heard of before.  This tool reminds me of another tool, such as Xerte, which hails from the University of Nottingham.  On the subject of code plagiarism, there is also a very interesting project called JPlag (demo report, found on HEA plagiarism pages).  The JPLAG on-line service now supports more languages than it's original Java.

The final paper presentation of the day was by Ed de Quincy and Avril Hocking, both from the University of Greenwich.  Their paper explored how students might make use of the social bookmarking tool, Delicious.  Here's a really short summary of Delicious: it allow you to record your web favourites to the web using a set of keywords that you choose, enabling you to easily find them again if you use different computers (it also allows you to share stuff with users of similar interest).  

One way it can be used in higher education is to use it in conjunction with course codes (which are often unique, or can be, if a code is combined with another tag). After introducing the tool to users, the researchers were interested in finding out about common patterns of use, which tags were used, and whether learners found it a useful tool.

I have to say that I found this presentation especially interesting since I've used Delicious when tutoring on a course entitled accessible online learning: supporting disabled students which has a course code of H810, which has been used as a Delicious tag.  Clicking on the previous link brings up some resources that relate to some of the subjects that feature within the course.

I agree with Ed's point that a crowdsourced set of links comprises of a really good learning resource.  His research indicates that 70% of students viewed resources tagged by other students.  More statistics are contained within his paper.

My own confession is that I am an infrequent user of Delicious, mainly due to being forced down one browser route as opposed to another at various times, but when I have use it, I've found browser plug-ins to be really useful.  My only concern about using Delicious tags is that the validity of links can age very quickly, and it's up to a student to determine the quality of the resource that is linked to (but metrics saying, 'n people have also tagged this page' is likely to be a useful indicator).

Closing Keynote

Malcolm Ryan from the University of Greenwich School of Education presented the final keynote entitled, 'Listening and responding to learners' experiences of technology enhanced learning'.  Malcolm asked a number of searching questions, including, 'do you believe that technology enhances or transforms practice?' and 'do you know what their experience is?'  Malcolm went on to mention something called the SEEL Project (student experience of e-learning laboratory) that was funded by the HEA.

The mention of this project (which I had not heard of before) reminded me of something called the LEX report (which Malcolm later went on to mention).  LEX is an abbreviation of: learner experience of e-learning.  Two other research projects were mentioned.  One was the JISC great expectations report, another was a HEFCE funded Student Perspectives on Technology report.  I have made a note of the finding that perhaps students may not want everything to be electronic (and there may be split views about mobile).  A final project that was mentioned was the SLIDA project which describes how UK FE and HE institutions are supporting effective learners in a digital age.

Towards the end of Malcolm's presentation I remember a number of key terms, and how these relate to individual project.  Firstly, there is hearing, which relates to how technology should be used (the LEX report).  Listening relates to SEEL.  Responding connects to the great expectations report, and finally engaging, which relates to a QAA report entitled 'Rethinking the values of higher education - students as change agents?' (pdf). 

Malcolm's presentation has directly pointed me towards a number of reports that perhaps I need to spend a bit of time studying whilst at the same time emphasising just how much research has already been done by different institutions.

Workshop Themes

At the end of these event blogs I always try to write something about what I think the different themes are (of course, my themes are likely to be different to those of other delegates!)

The first one that jumped out at me was the theme of theory and models, namely different approaches and ways to understand the e-learning landscape.

The second one was the familiar area of user generated content.  This theme featured within this workshop through creation of bookmarks and course materials.

Peer assessment was also an important theme (perhaps one of increasing importance?)  There is, however, a strong tension between peer assessment and plagiarism, but particularly the notion of collusion (and how to avoid it).

Keeping (loosely) with the subject of assessment, the final theme has to be evaluation, i.e. how can we best determine whether what we have designed (or the service that we are providing) are useful for our learners.

Conclusion

As mentioned earlier, this is the second e-learning workshop I have been to.  I enjoyed it!  It was great to hear so many presentations.  In my own eyes, e-learning is now firmly established.  I've heard it say that the pedagogy has still got to catch up with the technology (how to do the best with all of the things that are possible).

Meetings such as these enable practitioners to more directly understand the challenges that different people and institutions face.  Many thanks to Deryn Graham from the University of Greenwich and Karen Frazer from HEA.