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TM112 day schools and tutorials: a message to students

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Monday, 9 Apr 2018, 10:35

The first presentation of TM112 Introduction to Computing and IT 2 began on 7 April 2018. To help all London region students to get an appreciation and understanding what tutorials that been arranged for their studies on TM112, I prepared a short document which summarised everything in one place. This blog post is an excerpt of the first part of that document. One thing I should add is that different students in different parts of the UK might receive different messages to this one.

Welcome

On behalf of the School of Computing and Communications I would like to welcome you to the first presentation of TM112 Introduction to Computing and Information Technology 2.

This document is a summary of all the tutorials and day schools (which the university also calls ‘learning events’) which are available to you as a TM112 student. You might want to print this document out and keep it as a reminder of what tutorials are available.

For this presentation of TM112, there are two face-to-face events, which we sometimes call day schools. There are also a series of online tutorials and drop-in sessions which are delivered by your tutors through an online teaching and conferencing tool called Adobe Connect.

Purpose of learning events

Before summarising the programme, it is important to say something about all the learning events that are scheduled. All learning events and tutorials are intended to help you. They are an important component of your Open University studies. 

They represent opportunities to meet with your tutor, to ask questions, and to develop your understanding of concepts that are taught through the module materials. They are also opportunities to meet with other Open University students. Sometimes, your tutors will give you useful tips about how to complete your important tutor marked assessments. 

They are also intended to be fun and engaging. Do try to attend as many as you can, since they are an important part of your learning: they are for you. Also, do try to attend the sessions that are facilitated by your tutor.

Summary of learning events

Face-to-face events

There will be an introductory face-to-face day school at the start of the module, and another face-to-face learning event towards the end the module to help you with the preparation of your important third TMA. Both face-to-face events will take place at the London School of Economics (LSE), which is one of the OU’s study centres. The LSE is located in central London and is a short walk from Holborn underground station. More information about how to get to the LSE venue can be found at the end of this document. Both face to face sessions begin at 10.30 and end at 15.30. Although there are cafes close to the venue, it might be a good idea to bring a packed lunch. Also, if you can, do bring along a laptop (if you have one) since your tutors may plan some activities which might require a computer (but don’t worry if you don’t have one).

Online tutorials

The module team have set up a programme of online tutorials that will help your progress throughout the module. These tutorials will be facilitated by one of more tutors. You will probably see the name of your tutor against some of the tutorials on the programme that follows. The tutorials are repeated (sometimes with different tutors) to give you the best opportunity to attend a live online session; if you can’t attend on one day, there might be another later. You are free to attend as many of the online tutorials as you want. In fact, we encourage students to attend as many as possible! Remember; sometimes different tutors explain and present things in slightly different ways that work for different students.

The online tutorials can be accessed by going to the ‘Tutorials’ part of your TM112 module website and clicking on the link that says ‘online room’. When you click on this link, Adobe Connect will start, and you will join an online room. An important point is: do use a headset rather than your laptop speaker and microphone; headsets really help a lot with the quality of the audio. Before you attend, do ensure that you are in a comfortable place, such as at a desk, where you can easily make notes if you need to. An important point is: the more that you put into a tutorial, or the more that you contribute, the more you will get out of a tutorial!

If you can’t attend the face-to-face introductory event, do attend both of the online introductory events; parts 1 and 2 will introduce different aspects of TM112.

Online tutorials start at 19.30 and end at 21.00. They may be recorded, but this is currently up to the discretion of your tutor; if you don’t attend, you might miss out.

Drop-in tutorials

Drop-in tutorials are informal student-led sessions where you can discuss module related issues with tutors. Like the online tutorials, drop in tutorials start at 19.30 and end at 21.00. Unlike the online tutorials, these tutorials are not recorded. This means that if you don’t attend, you will definitely miss out! Do try to make it to as many drop-in tutorials as you can. 

Module wide online tutorials

During TM112 there will be two learning events that have been organised by the module team: a library event, and a expert lecture tutorial. The library event is facilitated by the OU library team and members of the module team. It will introduce you to the OU library, which is a resource that will be useful throughout your OU studies. To offer you some choice, two different library sessions will be run; you can attend either of the two events.

The expert lecture tutorial is an opportunity to participate in a discussion that relates to a lecture about cyber security and other themes that feature within Block 3 of the module. You will get to interact with Mike Richard’s, OU academic and speaker and discuss the connections between Computing, IT, security and society.

These module wide tutorials will take place within the TM112 Online module-wide room. You can find this room by clicking on the Tutorials link that you can see at the top of the module webpage.

Booking to attend learning events

To attend any of the day schools or tutorials, do take a moment to reserve your place through the OU learning event management system. If in doubt, do book your place. Booking means that you will automatically receive updates if any of the arrangements for that particular learning event changes.  Whenever you book onto a learning event, remember to make a note in your personal diary so you remember to attend.

As mentioned earlier, do try to make a special effort to attend the sessions that are facilitated by your tutor. Your tutor will always be pleased to see you!

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Christopher Douce

A brave new world of AL development?

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Tuesday, 12 Apr 2016, 11:14

One part of my job that I take really seriously is associate lecturer development. I've been to loads of AL development days. It was through these days that I, essentially, learnt how to become an effective teacher and facilitator. It is true, however, that I was pretty confused and bewildered during many of these events – but, gradually this feeling dissipated as I became more experienced.

AL development has always been a regional activity. Even though many of the regional centres are closing, I have heard that the university is still committed to running these events. I do, however, worry. There are a whole bunch of unanswered questions, such as: will we be able to effectively plan things in the ‘brave new world’ without all of our English regional centres?

Back in February, I attended what was my first ever ‘STEM faculty’ (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) AL development event. It was held in Kent’s Hill Conference Centre, which is just across the road from the OU campus. Since a large proportion of the tutors had to travel, the university laid on accommodation and kindly fed us all.

What follows is a quick summary of the event, or, my main ‘take away’ points. I hope to submit a very different version of this article to the Snowball Associate Lecturer newsletter when I’ve got a moment.

STEM Faculty – why, how and where we are

The keynote was made by Anne De Roek, dean of MCT. Anne spoke of ‘shifting sands’ (in terms of developments in STEM, and in the university), and mentioned that division between subjects, such as science and mathematics is artificial. A thought that came to mind was: surely everything is Mathematics, right? I countered this with another thought, which was ‘I’m not sure the social scientists would agree…’

Anne went onto talk about jobs in STEM, the importance of engineering, security and privacy in IT, and the ethics of technology. Another point was that there were opportunities for growth: there will be new curriculum areas: an MSc in Space, modules in electronics, mechanical engineering and environmental engineering, and the availability of ‘shared research facilities’. Anne also presented a bunch of stats. One notable figure was that there are over 1,800 STEM associate lecturers in just one faculty.

The STEM faculty is being made up of the two ‘heritage’ faculties: Science and MCT. One of the arguments in favour of the faculty mergers is that faculties will then have more of a direct responsibility for retention and progression: the STEM faculty will ‘own’ their students more directly than ever before.

There is clearly a lot going on: work on the ‘student seamless journey’, work on subject specific bootcamps, a review of level 1 assessment, forthcoming changes to the academic year, and a new approach to induction. There were other changes: changes in the staff tutor contract, which means that many of us will become home workers; there are changes to governance and management of curriculum, and in the world outside the OU, there are private providers clamouring to offer degree apprenticeships.

At the end of Anne’s talk, there was a short question and answer session. One of the key points that I noted down was that ‘ALs knowledge of students is not getting through to the people in the student support teams’, with the implication that tutors are not as effectively sharing knowledge about the needs of students as they could.  Other points related to travelling time to tutorials, and the FutureLearn MOOCs (which are paid for by OU capital funds). Anne also emphasised that ‘this faculty has no intention of going on-line only’. Colleagues in MCT had been worried, because as far as I know, Science (I believe) delivers all their modules on-line.

Group Tuition Policy Implementation

The second presentation of the day introduced the Group Tuition Policy (or GTP, as it is known). It was described as being all about increasing student choice of 'synchronous teaching'. One of its aims is to publish timetables a time table of events three months in advance. Students will be able to make decisions whether to go to events, since its purpose (which is linked to module learning objectives) will be described in advance. This means, from the staff tutor perspective, timetables have to be planned five months before the module start date. I have to confess, this is a bit of a worry, particularly when we’ve got to deal with new modules.

A really good bit of the policy is the concept of an academic community. This, I understand, is going to be up to the staff tutors (with help from the module team). This may, of course require us to do some more work, but I think it is important work that needs to be done. The aim of academic community building is also in keeping with the intention of improving the student learning experience and academic success.

Learning events can be either face to face, or can take place online.  Another principle is that if there is a face to face event, there must be an online alternative. In principle, this also sounds like a great idea. The challenge, of course, is that face to face and on-line can never be directly equivalent, since they afford different pedagogies: one teaching modality will be able to convey certain learning objectives better than others.

Tutor groups will be organised in clusters of between six and eight students, and boundaries between clusters will be based on student density (I’m not sure exactly what this means, and my notes are not giving away their secrets). There may be either two or three clusters per module, and these will be managed by a ‘cluster manager’. The ‘cluster manager’ will choose venues where face to face teaching events will happen, but at the moment, I have no idea how these will be booked.

A key bit to the GTP will be something called the learning events manager, or the LEM: a new YAOUTLA (or, also known as ‘Yet Another Open University Three Letter Abbreviation’)

Group Tuition Policy Workshop

After the GTP talk, tutors were encourage to attend a number of different events. I decided to attend a GTP workshop (which I thought might be useful, since I’ll be responsible for scheduling some of the GTP events). The workshop was facilitated by three colleagues are performing some research to review tuition practice at MCT.

We were put into small groups and shared ideas about how the policy might be realised.  We chatted about the scheduling of timetables and events. Another topic that I noted was the question of whether there would be mechanisms to email a group of students who signed up to remind them about an event.

Panel session

The final session of the day was a question and answer panel session, which was run by a group of staff tutors. One important point that was discussed was the associate lecturer contract negotiations; since I’m both an associate lecturer, and someone who is a staff manager (who is the designated line manager for associate lecturers), I’m also very interested in these discussions.

I have to confess that I’m really worried about the new contract, for the simple reason that I have no idea how it will affect my role. I have, however, decided not to worry about it too much, though, for the reason that negotiations are still going on, and the final character of the new contract might be very different to the picture that is being painted through the snippets of information that I receive from time to time.

Another important theme was the impact of the regional closures. All MCT contracts are to be moved to Manchester by the beginning of January 2017, which feels like a very short timescale, especially since contracts from seven regions have to be moved to one region all in one go.

A final point that I’ve noted down was a reference to the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). Tutors were encourage to record any teaching qualifications they might have. I haven’t had a look into it, but there’s a possibility that the TEF might be allied or connected with Higher Education Academy (HEA) professional recognition.

The university currently supports a route to application through something called OpenPAD (an abbreviation for Professional Academic Development), which is currently being refreshed. There was some talk about that the Institute of Educational Technology’s Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice might get reinstated, but there were no clear conclusions at this point.

Reflections

This first STEM Faculty AL development event was overwhelming. I don’t know how many associate lecturers were there, but I seem to recall someone mentioning that there might have been around ‘two hundred’ attending that one event.

In terms of getting a key message out about the group tuition policy and some of the changes happening across the university, the event certainly did its job for those who attended, but I’m mindful that this event just represented the start of a new way of doing things.
I did, however, find it difficult to find everyone I wanted to chat to. I personally prefer the smaller, more defined regional events.

From my side, I’ll continue to do my best to make as much noise as I can to make sure that these smaller (regional) events still happen, but I do worry that the constant movement towards centralisation might make it harder to run the development and training events that help our tutors to make a difference.

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