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Computing pedagogy notes

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I subscribe to a magazine called Hello World which is all about computing teaching and pedagogy. Last year, I read a message about a special issue, which was called the big book of computing pedagogy (BBoCP), and would I like to order a copy? I would, and I did.

What follows is a set of notes from that ‘big book’ (which is approximately 157 pages), beginning with the broad summary that is featured at the start of the book. I’ve then pulled out techniques and approaches that relates to the topic of physical computing. At the end of the post, I offer some reflections which may (or may not!) be useful.

Principles of computing pedagogy

What follows is a really high level summary, which begins on p.12. I’ve annotated key principles with some of the pedagogies and ideas that appear to get to the heart of a particular principle:

Lead with concepts: use concept maps, create learning graphs.

Structure lessons: adopt a scaffolded approach, apply universal design, use frameworks.

Make concrete: socially and culturally relevant pedagogy, learning through making, and manipulatives with computing.

Unplug, unpack, repack: semantic waves, go unplugged (don’t use a computer).

Work together: peer instruction, pair programming, collaborative problem solving and programming.

Read and explore code first: code tracing and read before you write.

Foster program comprehension: the block model.

Model everything: worked examples and live coding.

Challenge misconceptions: addressing misconceptions, use metaphors, tackle naïve conceptions.

Create projects: project-based learning.

Get hands-on: physical computing.

Add variety: apply variety in teaching and assessment, consider using art and storytelling.

Learning through making

Following on from the notion of culturally relevant pedagogy, is the idea of learning through making. This approach is about building things as a “way of learning and understanding the world” (p.36). Some key headings to note are: from concrete to abstract, affective learning (which is related to experiential and feelings based learning), and learning as becoming.

Learning through examples

A couple of related pedagogies that are worth emphasising are: the importance of worked examples, live coding, and the use of videos to demonstrate principles and ideas. I’ve highlighted these approaches with respect to physical computing since ‘watching and learning’ is an undeniably helpful approach when working with ‘bits of computers’, whether those bits are bits of physical equipment, or bits of code.

Project-based learning

The BBoCP describes project-based learning as “an approach to teaching computing in which the learning activities are organised around the design, creation and evaluation of a digital artefact”. In some cases, this digital artefact could be an element of physical computing – or, it could be a bit of code that solves a particular problem. Examples of potential problems are mentioned within the book, and this leads me to an important reflection, which is: the problems chosen should be inclusive, and be attractive to different groups of students. This links back to an important point about inclusive pedagogy.

Physical computing

There is a whole section about physical computing, which can be found on page 130. In addition to sharing a reference to a useful taxonomy of physical computing devices, four benefits are highlighted: “it provides a holistic experience …, it develops broader skills, including collaboration and design and prototyping, it connects to subjects beyond computing” (p.131). Some practical pedagogic tips are shared, which include provide interesting themes, integrate creative methods, and provide scaffolds. A reference to further reading, a doctoral thesis by Przybylla, entitled From Embedded Systems to Physical Computing: Challenges of the “DigitalWorld” in Secondary Computer Science Education is shared.

Theories

In education theories can be thought of tools to understand and think about learning.  In turn, they can be used to guide particular activities, or underpin pedagogies. What follows is a list of some of the theories that I’ve identified. I haven’t picked out everything, since there can be, of course, debate about what is (and isn’t) a theory:

Cognitive load theory (CLT) (p.20): learners have a limited working memory, which means that educators need to bear in mind when they introduce and teach new principles to learners.

Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) (p.46): help learners to move from being novices to experts.

Other theories (and theorists) that have been mentioned include the notion of the mental model (an understanding how something works), the work of Piaget (stages of development) and Papert (constructivism).

Frameworks

In computing, there are loads of software frameworks. In pedagogy, there are also a fair number of pedagogic frameworks. Think of a framework as a set of ideas that are potentially useful, and less formal than a theory. Theories can be used to potentially predict, whereas frameworks can be used to make sense of something.

Here are some of the frameworks that are highlighted in the BBoCP, along with a summary of some of their key elements:

The PRIMM approach (p.22): Predict-run-investigate-modify-make (Primportal.com); a series of steps in a lesson.

UDL framework (p.26): multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation, multiple means of action and expression.

Four Cs of the 21st-century learning framework (p.28): coding and critical thinking, coding and collaboration, coding and communication, coding and creativity.

Arena Blended Connected (ABC) (p.30): acquisition, collaboration, discussion, investigation, practice, discussion.

Misconceptions to understanding science (p.104): preconceived notions, non-scientific beliefs, conceptual misunderstandings, vernacular misconceptions, and factual misconceptions.

Physical computing device taxonomy (p.131): a taxonomy is an ordered set of categories. Hodges et al. (2018) attempt to make sense of a range of different physical computing devices that can be used by students.

Read, act, model and program (RAMP) (p.146): a pedagogic framework that draws on the use of storytelling and children’s literature. 

Other concepts, which might fall outside of the category of a framework, includes the notion of the metaphor.

Models

A good question to ask is: what is the difference between a model, a framework, and a theory? In some instances, a model can be a theory, in the sense that it can help you to understand something, but might lack an element of predictive power. Another difference is that a model is more descriptive, whereas a theory (in an educational sense) can be more interpretive. 

A model is different from a framework in the sense that a framework allows you to ‘do things’. A model, on the other hand, can help you to understand. All these, of course, link to and connect with pedagogy, which is what you do when you teach.

In the BBoCP, the following models that are mentioned:

The Block Model of program comprehension (p.79; p.86): this splits programs into four levels, which are (1) atoms, (2) blocks, (3) relationships, and (4) macros structure. It is interesting to compare this model with something called the Stores Model of Code Cognition (PPIG.org).

Reflections

What I really like about this magazine sized book is that in addition to being really accessible, it contains very clear references to research articles that underpin the ideas that are presented. Each of the pages are complemented with a set of hyperlinks, which often takes readers directly to the relevant article. I also really appreciated that it presented all the ideas (which were a mix of practical and theoretical articles) using a set of helpful principles. In addition to the helloworld.cc website another site to look at is csedresearch.org. If you’re doing research into CS education. When it comes to the topic of physical computing, I was struck by a few things: the taxonomy and the link to a dissertation on that explores physical computing and secondary school teaching.

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Christopher Douce

2nd Annual STEM Teaching Conference 2021

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Tuesday, 13 Apr 2021, 08:21

On 3 March I found some time to attend an internal OU event that was called the 2nd Annual STEM Teaching Conference 2021. The event has an accompanying conference website  and a detailed programme (PDF). For those of us who were not able to attend, and can access some of the OU web pages, there are also recordings of the various sessions, for anyone who might be interested.

A further note is that this conference was a STEM Faculty event organised and sponsored by Diane Butler and Carlton Wood, who are associate deans. What follows is a quick summary of the sessions that I attended, and a short reflection section that is towards the end of this blog. I do hope this summary might be of interest to some of the follow delegates.

Keynote: Changing the attainment gap

The keynote was given by Dr Winston Morgan, Reader in Toxicology and Clinical Biochemistry, and Director of Impact and Innovation, School of Health Sport and Bioscience, University of East London. An abstract for the keynote is as follows: “Changing from the attainment gap to the awarding gap is an attempt to shift interventions away from fixing the students and their deficits; a strategy which has failed over the last 25 years, to fixing the tutor and their biases. … the presentation will show that making changes to the design and delivery of assessments and assessment practices will not change outcomes, primarily because they assume a student deficit. A more effective strategy would be to highlight the role and impact of tutor bias linked to racialised stereotypes. This is particularly important to the allocation of privileges to students which will enhance performance, the marking of assessments and who is accused of academic misconduct. Finally, the presentation will provide examples of how we can minimise or mitigate the impact of racialised bias on BAME student outcomes, particularly the awarding gap.”

We were introduced to the concept of the awarding gap, and an important question: how do you teach through a racialised world? The point was made that our biases have real impact, and denial about the gap is not an option: we have both a collective and individual responsibilities. Related to this point, I noted down the words (which I hope I’ve noted down accurately): “reflect on how much time you invest in your BAME students, and make genuine effort to engage your BAME students“.

Another point was: within your scholarly activity, seek out people from different groups. I also noted down a “take back to the classroom slide” which presented the point: we live in a racialised world, this leads to bias and inequalities, and this means that we much allocate academic privileges in a fair way.

A few days before editing this summary, I noticed a newspaper article that related to some of the themes that were presented within this keynote: I'm quitting as an academic because of racism and joining Surrey police. The following sentence jumped out at me: “I have found a serious diversity problem; I have been unable to get past overt and subtle prejudice in order to make a difference to BAME students and potential future academics.”

Proactive help for ill-prepared Level 3 students

The first main session I attended was by three colleagues from the School of Life, Health and Chemical Sciences: Louise MacBrayne, Fiona Moorman and Janet Haresnape. Their session was described as follows: “A new proactive support scheme is being piloted for S317 and S315 20J. Students deemed to be ill-prepared were targeted for proactive support. This presentation will update on ongoing results and will reflect on the potential usefulness of such an approach to increase student retention and success at level 3.” For reference, S317 is Biological Science and S315 isChemistry: Further Concepts and Applications

Different criteria were used to identify students that might be potentially at risk, and may potentially benefit from support. One group was students who have a weak pass on important level 2 modules, such as S215 Chemistry: Essential Concepts, and S294 Cell Biology. Another group were students who were new to the university, having transferred academic credit from another institution, or students who may have a limited background in science. Pass rate for these group of students is less than half that of other students.

Two different groups of students were identified: one that was high risk, and another group that was a moderate risk. Students were provided proactive support through one-to-one sessions. There were further plans to develop drop in sessions.

I didn’t make notes of any firm findings, but I liked the approach of attempting to identify groups of students that may potentially benefit from additional support or guidance from tutors.

Caps, quotas and standby lists

The second presentation I attended was facilitated by my Computing and Communications colleague Frances Chetwynd. Her presentation had the subtitle of “a guide to managing student waiting lists (and reducing your stress levels)”. Her abstract description presents the challenge clearly: “with the University seeing unprecedented rises in student numbers … ensuring we have enough tutors on each module is an increasing problem.” One her (and our) aims is to reduce the student waiting list.

Frances offered a definition of a quota. It is something (a number) that limits registrations and reservations, and is set by staff tutors and module team, and is set by academic services. A quota is important since it gives university colleagues time to carry out tutor recruitment, reduces costly deferrals, and can ringfence module places for certain reasons (such as apprentices), and reduces legal challenges. The point was simple: “if you have any uncertainty over student numbers, do have a quota”.

There are a number of resources that can help (within the OU world) that can help to make decisions about the setting of quotas. There are tools called PowerBI and Ratatosk which can provide useful numbers and summarise a trend of student registrations. Also, academic services colleagues also produce weekly/daily data.

Some useful early actions include send messages to ALs about modules that may be advertised, have pre-application briefings to help tutors with their application process, ask to advertise internally and externally, and try to get adverts out to external sites.

It’s important to keep everyone informed, and trying to increase the quote all the time; speaking with staff tutors to get a handle on what potential capacity there might be. Other actions: you can ask the SST to ring around to see if they can register, and interviewing.

After final enrolment date: reserve students will drop off, so standby can be moved to reserve status. We got money to call ALs to call students to remind them to register, and the only way to register, is to ring into student registration services.

A collaborative framework for associate lecturers to enhance student and tutor satisfaction 

Next up was a presentation by my Computing and Communications colleagues Marina Carter and  Richard Mobbs, who spoke about how they provide student support through “the adoption of a collaborative framework” which “enables students to benefit from consistent, coordinated, and enhanced support and the sharing of the tuition workload among associate lecturers (ALs).” They go onto explain that “the framework involves the staff tutor working closely with ALs using tutor forums to support the collaboration.”

An important aspect of this is a tutor forum: “the tutor forum facilitates peer support amongst tutors, sharing of experience of all the key elements of module tuition, including consistency and accuracy of correspondence tuition right through to broader teaching philosophy and pedagogy issues.” Also, “the framework is enhancing student’s tuition provision by the inclusion of topic focussed tutorials hosted by subject experts. Additionally, a weekly teaching email is sent to all students (via their tutor), with one tutor responsible for composing the email each week.” Tutor also share students’ activities, “keep track of student engagement, progression and retention analytics”.

I noted down that some threads were set up on the tutor forum, such as a student cluster forum posting plan, and a TMA marking guide thread that is designed to encourage tutors to share good practices. I also noted down that working together has the potential to mean less work. Through the forum tutors are able to working together to create a set of tutorials and share tuition tasks, such as sharing what needs to be done. When reviewing tutorial attendance, those tutorials that have a focussed topic may be ones that are most popular.

Other benefits of the tutorials are that tutors can cover each other, new ALs paired up with more experienced tutors, and a team approach means that there are high registrations and attendance at tutorials. Collaboration encourages different tutors to do different things and encourages the development of a community of practice.

Producing a module outside the VLE 

Sticking with the theme of Computing modules, the next presentation I attended was given by Michel Wermelinger and Oli Howson, who are also based in the School of Computing and Communications. Michel and Oli have been working on an update to a module called M269 Algorithms, Data Structures and Computability.

Here’s how they introduce their session: “We're producing a Computing module to be fully delivered (study materials and TMAs) via Jupyter notebooks, not the VLE. We're authoring in a simple text format (not Word), automating the process as much as possible, and hosting the production materials on a version control platform to work together.”

They go onto say that: “a new edition of M269 is being authored in a different way to provide more programming practice to students  … [The module is being] authored entirely (both book and TMAs) in Markdown, a very simple and widely used text-based mark-up format. A set of scripts written by [the module team] transforms the Markdown files into Jupyter notebooks, which will be the main medium for students to study M269. … Using freely available software we convert the Jupyter notebooks to PDF and HTML to provide alternative read-only formats to students. Traditionally, the module team, students and ALs work with multiple documents: the TMA questions, the student's solution document, the tutor notes and additional code files. This leads to inconsistency errors and time overhead in authoring, answering, and marking TMAs.”

There’s a lot of technical abbreviations to unpack here, but all makes complete sense. I’ve heard it said that an attribute of a good programmer is laziness, in the sense that good programmers want to find efficient ways of solving problems. Sometimes programmers and developers create (or curate) what might be known as a ‘toolchain’ to solve certain problems. This is exactly what Michel and Oli have done.

One of the most important bits of their toolchain (since students will be using this too) is something called Jupyter notebooks (Jupyter.org). Michel and Oli describe it as follows: “Jupyter notebooks are interactive browser-based documents, allowing students to read the text, run the example programs and solve the exercises without the overhead of switching media.” In essence, can use it to play with (and learn from) a programming language.

Text for M269 is written in Markdown (Wikipedia). I found this really interesting, since I hadn’t heard of Markdown before, but it does look pretty easy to follow and understand. Markdown documents are converted to notebooks, which can also be used to create zip files, HTML and PDF files.

I noted down that they also used something called Nbsphinx which is Jupyter Notebook Tools for Sphinx. This is where everything gets a bit recursive, since Sphinx (Sphinx website) appears to be a documentation tool that is used with Python.

Everything that is created by the module team is saved to GitHub. Michel and Oli described Github as “the worlds largest repository of software; we know who has changed what and why – no more emailing around of Word files”. Plus, each Github repository has a wiki, which is used to document who has changed what.

Since learning the principles behind algorithms isn’t easy, the module team have tried to reduce cognitive load on students. Previously students have to change between different documents and resources. With the current version of the module, using Jypiter notebooks, everything is kept in a simple document. The module team also wanted to reduce the cognitive load on the tutors too. 

The takeaway points from this presentation were simple: automation is important and useful, have proper version control, use Markdown to focus on content, and consider using Jupyter notebooks for interactive content.

Plenary session

The final session of the day was facilitated by Dr Diane Butler, Associate Dean Academic Excellence, from The Open University, Dr Neil Williams, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing, Kingston University, Professor Sally Smith, Head of Graduate Apprenticeships and Skills Development, Edinburgh Napier University and Dr Elinor Jones, Associate Professor, Department of Statistical Science, University College London. 

The broad focus of the plenary was about what “other STEM practitioners and institutions have experienced the last year and how they feel their teaching practices may be permanently altered as a result of the pandemic and the switch to digital delivery of curriculum”. There is an accompanying question, which is whether there have been long-lasting implications for STEM Higher Education both in traditional and distance learning institutions.

Diane began by asking all participants to reflect on the impact of the pandemic in each of their institutions, and also asked: what would you not do, what you might keep, and how has the delivery of HE changed?

A point was that everyone has become learners, since everyone has had to learn new skills. In UCL practice has changed, moving from traditional face-to-face lectures “flipped” learning. I noted down the word “trying” a couple of times: trying to replicate some of the things that happens on campus, and trying to actively facilitate peer-to-peer activities. Assessments have had to be done in a different way. There have been impact on staff. One participant reported that “some are on their knees”, but it has also driven forward staff development activities; staff know more about technology enhanced learning.

What hasn’t worked? It has been harder to ‘connect’ with students, and harder for students to connect with each other. Some students really liked pre-made materials. Difficulties exist since students often have their microphones and video turned off. 

There are contrasts: some students like working in their own time, but not everyone has faired well. There might be a gap between those who have flourished, and those who haven’t. The sudden short term change in practice might lead to a longer term change: more use of the flipped classroom.

What will happen to Higher Education after everyone returns? What is going to stay and what is going to go? I made a note of something called a “blended learning task force”. There might be more independent learning and changes to assessments. The sudden shift to online has also accelerated professional development. There is also a concern that the pandemic has magnified digital divides. 

With everyone, and every institution emerging from the pandemic, there was the suggestion that it may be necessary to find ways to give student and staff reasons to come to the campus.

A final question: is there still a place for the OU if other intuitions are now doing what the OU does? A face-to-face institution isn’t a distance learning university; it’s all about creating a blend with more materials being placed online. One of the final points was that the OU has nothing to fear, since the OU continues to innovate. 

Reflections

For this conference, I mostly stuck with the computing sessions. Looking back, I think there were two reasons for this. The first is that I wanted to support them, and secondly, there were some colleagues that I have not had much contacts with some of my colleagues over the last year, and so it is good to catch up with what they have been doing.

Like with the previous AL development conference I wrote about, I would have much preferred to attended a face-to-face session, rather than an online session. I miss the coffee chats, and when you’re actually attending a conference, you can’t get so easily distracted by emails and phone calls. In a virtual event, it’s too easy to drop out or to move away to do something else. These things said, Dr Winston Morgan’s keynote set the right tone, and presented messages that continues to resonate. I really enjoyed Michel and Oli’s presentation about M269. Finally, a very interesting plenary session.

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Christopher Douce

HEA 2017 Annual conference: Generation TEF

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Monday, 14 Aug 2017, 10:56

A couple of weeks after attending the European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN) conference, I attended a UK Higher Education Academy conference that took place in Manchester between 4 July and 6 July 2017. In some respects, it was good to attend both events so close together, since ideas from the first conference were still at the forefront of my mind when I attended the second.

What follows is a conference of report of the HEA event. Like all of these conference reports, they represent my own personal views of the event; different delegates, of course, would have very different experiences. I should add that I attended two of the days: one that concentrated on STEM education, and the other that was more general.

The second day of the conference was opened by HEA chief executive Stephanie Marshall. Stephanie noted that this was the first annual conference for three years. She also hinted at the scale of the HEA, reporting that there were now ninety thousand fellows. A key point was that ‘teaching excellence is a global ambition’ and that discussions about the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) has been dominating recent debates within higher education. The notion of the fellowship was an attribute that can change university cultures to foreground the importance of teaching. Other issues that I noted were the importance of student engagement, student satisfaction, student retention and the idea of creating a ‘connected curriculum’.

Keynote: How digital engagement enhances the student experience

The opening keynote was by Eric Stoller. Eric has built a consultancy about using technology and social media to create digital engagement, with a particular emphasis on higher education.

I’ve noted that Eric said that there are social media skeptics and that social media is a subject that can be polarising. There was the suggestion that social media is all about learning, and the learning doesn’t stop when students leave the classroom. A point I noted was ‘life-long learning should be at the heart of the experience’; this is especially interesting since the life-long learning agenda within my own institution has been fundamentally impoverished due to government increases of tuition fees. It is now harder to study for an entirely different qualification, or to study a module or two with the intention of developing skills that are important in the workplace.

We were presented with a series of questions. One of them was: can social media be used for critical thinking? Perhaps it can. Information literacy is an important and necessary skill when we are faced with working out what news is fake, and what news isn’t. Other questions were: how do we use social media to build communities? Also, how do we connect to others when there’s one of ‘you’ and lots of ‘them’? In answer to ‘how’ you ‘do’ engagement through social media, I remembered that one of my colleagues, Andrew Smith gave a talk entitled ‘how our classroom has escaped’ at The Open University about how to use some social media tools (specifically Twitter) to reach out to computer networking students.

Another broad question was about digital literacy and capability. This immediately relates to another question: is there a benchmark for digital capabilities? A challenge about this perspective is one that Eric mentioned, which is: different people use social media in different ways. Another question was: how about addressing the subject of social media in staff appraisals?

A theme that appears regularly is that of employability. Perhaps lecturers should be ‘role modelling’ to students about how to use social media, since these can and do have implications for employability. Social media can be used to engage students as they become acclimatised to working within a particular institution, helping them through their first few weeks of study.

As Eric was speaking, I had my own thoughts: one way to see social media is a beginning point for further engagement with students; it can be used to expose issues and debates; it should, of course, be a beginning point and not be an end in itself. There are other issues: what are the motivations and incentives for the use of social media amongst different communities?

Day 2: Morning Sessions

The first session of the day was by Anna Hunter from the University of Central Lancashire. Anna’s talk was entitled: ‘What does teaching excellence look like? Exploring the concept of the ideal teacher through visual metaphor’. I was interested in attending this session since I have an interest in associate lecturer continuing professional development, and Anna was going to be talking about her work on a PGCE in HE module (which is a subject that has been on my mind recently). Some of the activities echoed my own experience as a PGCE student; activities to explore views and opinions about teaching and thinking about the notion of academic identity. I noted down a question that was about team teaching, but I didn’t note down the response; the issue of how to facilitate and develop team teaching practice remains both an interest and a question. 

Kath Botham from Manchester Metropolitan University gave a presentation that was also in the form of question: Is an institutional CPD scheme aligned to the UK PSF and HEA Fellowship an effective tool to influence teaching practice? Kath’s research was a mixed method approach that aimed to assess the impact of the various fellowship awards. Some practitioners wanted the ‘HEA badge’ to be seen and recognised as someone involved in teaching and learning’. It is viewed as something to validate practice. Also, gaining accreditation is something that can help lecturers and teachers overcome ‘imposter syndrome’. The question remains: does accreditation change practice? Accreditation can help people to engage with reflection, it can represent an important aspect of CPD and can stimulate personal skills and study development.

Day 2: Afternoon Sessions

After attending a series of short five minute ‘ignite’ sessions, I couldn’t help but attend: ‘Removing the elephant from the room: How to use observation to transform teaching’ by Matt O'Leary and Mark O'Hara who were both from Birmingham City University. This presentation directly linked to the theme of the conference and to a university funded project that is all about online and face to face tutorial observations. We were treated to a literature review, and introduced to a six stages of an observation cycle: (1) observe self-reflection, (2) a pre-observation meeting, (3) observation, (4) post-observation reflection, (5) post-observation dialog, and (6) observee and observed post-observation reflective write up. I also noted down that there was an observer training and development sessions. Another note (which I assume is about the feedback) was: ‘we chose a blank page approach; we don’t want to forms corrupting what we see’, which reflects observation reports that I have personally received. The closing points were important; they spoke about the importance of management buy-in, that there is anxiety in the process, and there needs to be time to have conversations. 

Rebecca Bushell from the University of South Wales asked: Can innovative teaching techniques effectively improve engagement, retention, progression and performance? Rebecca’s innovative technique was to ask her students to create businesses that are funded using micro-capital (student groups were given fifty pounds each). The points were that this was immersive problem based learning that allowed students to share experience. It also allowed to reflect on their experience, and it created learning situations for students on other modules; accounting students were asked to audit their accounts. For me, the take away point was: simulations can expose real challenges that can immediately relate to the development of employability skills. 

Day 3: Opening Keynote

The final day of the conference was opened by Giskin Day from Imperial College London. Giskin taught a Medical humanities course which was all about Putting medicine in a social and cultural context. It is a course that explores the connections between the arts and science, with an emphasis on creativity.

An interesting point that I noted was that much of science is about minimising risk and beating uncertainty. With this context in mind, how can we encourage students to tolerate and manage ambiguity? This, of course, is an important skill in higher education; it is something that is explicitly explored within the humanities, where students are encouraged to be ‘creatively critical and critically creative’.

Another point is that there is a change in student expectation: students are no longer willing to be ‘talked at’, which is something that was echoed within my recent blog summary from the recent EDEN conference that I attended. A question remains: how do we engage students in new ways? One approach is to consider ‘playful learning’ (the notion of games and gaming was, again, something that featured within EDEN). Games, Giskin argued, enable students to develop empathy; they allow students to enter into a safe imaginative space where failure is an option and a possibility.

We were introduced to a speed dating card exchange game that had a medical theme. As a part of her teaching, we were told about a field trip to the V&A museum that was connected to skin, sculpture and dermatology. Students had to find exhibits within the museum and had to decide whether the sculpture needed a medical diagnosis, developing student’s communication, sketching and observation skills. Other games involved role playing where students played the roles of doctor and consultants. There was talk of escape rooms and creative puzzle solving.

Giskin offered some tips about creating effective games: consider the audience, make sure that things are tested, and think about a balance of playfulness and usefulness whilst also asking questions about what would motivate the student players. Also, when planning a ‘game’, always consider a ‘plan B’, since things might change in the real world; a game-based field trip to a museum might become unstuck if a museum suddenly loans an artefact to another institution.

In some respects, Giskin’s presentation was in two parts: the first part was about games; the second part was about her research about the rhetoric of gratitude in healthcare (Imperial College). Her point was simple: grateful people want to express gratitude; it is a part of closure, and an acknowledgement of that expression. The language used with both patients, and with challenging students is very important. I noted down the importance of moving from a rhetoric of coercion to a rhetoric of collaboration.

During the question and answer session, I think Giskin referred to something called the Playful learning Special Interest group (Association for Learning Technology). I found this interesting, since the introduction to design module, U101 Design Thinking uses both the idea of play, and explores design through the development of a game. 

I enjoyed Giskin’s reference to different types of learning approaches; her references to field trips and role play echoes various teaching approaches that I have tried to adopt. During a moment of inspiration I once spontaneously ran a field trip to a university corridor to encourage a set of design students to look at a set of recycling bins! Hearing about other practitioners such as Giskin developing a systematic and more comprehensive approach to designing field trips offers real inspiration and insight into how to develop interesting and entertaining learning events. I remain wondering how to embed these different approaches into a distance learning context.

Towards the end of Giskin’s session, we were each given different postcards, and we were asked to write down the response to a simple question: ‘what teaching and learning tip were you grateful to receive?’ Our challenge was to find the same card as another delegate and swap tips. When I found another delegate that had the same card as mine, a card that had some drawings of some craft tools, I made a point of offering a grateful thank you, which was, I believe, graciously received.

Day 3 : Morning Sessions

During the morning, I moved between different sessions to catch various presentations. The first talk of the morning was by Nagamani Bora, University of Nottingham, who spoke about ‘Curriculum Design - Opportunities and Challenges’. There were references to employability, interdisciplinary and the notion of the spiral curriculum (which was recently mentioned during my PGCE in HE studies). Other points included the importance of involving students in curriculum design and introducing them to international and global perspectives. An interesting point was made about the question of programme level assessments.

Siobhan Devlin who was from the University of Sunderland spoke about ‘Engaging learners with authentic assessment scenarios in computing’. Interestingly, Siobhan spoke about the ‘demodularised curriculum’; bigger chunks of curriculum were considered to be the order of the day. A key point was that authentic assessment needs to reflect real world practices. Siobhan also referenced some of her earlier research that asked the question: what does inspiring teaching look like? Some key attributes I noted were: enthusiasm, passion, adaptability, empathy, friendliness and enjoyment. I also noted down a reference to Keller’s ARCS model of motivation (e-learning industry).

Day 3 : Afternoon Sessions

Christine Gausden, University of Greenwich, continued to touch on the authentic in her talk ‘Embedding Employability within the Curriculum’. Christine is a senior lecturer in the built environment and said that although students might have technical knowledge, they may lack the opportunity to apply that knowledge. To overcome this, practitioners were asked to talk to students, and students were asked to study real live construction project, which links to the earlier point of authenticity. 

After Christine’s talk, I switched sessions to listen to Dawn Theresa Nicholson and Kathryn Botham from the Manchester Metropolitan University talk about ‘Embedding Reasonable Adjustments in the Curriculum (ERAC): A Faculty-wide approach to inclusive teaching’, which relates to my own experience of tutoring on an Open University module called Accessible online learning: supporting disabled students (Open University website). The idea was to embed accessibility in the curriculum (MMU) to such an extent so that personal learning plans could be phased out completely. A solution was to look at what adjustments were being applied, provide a set of standard adjustment and to offer staff training. An important principle was to make sure that all learning materials were available online in advance of a session. 

Carol Calvert, a staff tutor colleague from The Open University talked about ‘Success against the odds’. A key driver the research was the principle of student retention; it was hoped that the project would suggest actions to help students to complete their studies. The key research question was: ‘what can students who we think may not succeed, who have been able to succeed, able to tell us?’ Factors that might suggest challenges include: previous study success, socio-economic status, and level of prior educational attainment. Students offered some pointers: (1) that it was important to start early, (2) that it is important to share and to get network (and to tell other people that you are studying), (3) use a study planner.

To conclude, students that do succeed have a can do attitude. The important question is: how can we foster this from a distance? There were some accompanying actions: the module team could take time to introduce the module and gives students some useful study tips. Another action is to ask students whether they wanted to start study early and then try to make this happen. When asked, it turned out that half of the students on Carol’s module said that they might want to do this.

The final presentation I attended was given by my colleague, David Morse. David talked about ‘Truly virtual teams: twelve years on’. It isn’t a surprise to hear that students don’t like team working, but David made the point that group working is an important element of the QAA computing subject benchmark statement. Twelve years earlier, things were different: students didn’t have broadband, but online collaboration is more about people than it is about the details that surround particular technologies. A question is: what must students do? They must set rules, roles and responsibilities. They must also identify knowledge and skills, make regular contributions to online discussions, give and receive criticism, and apply good netiquette. A tutor needs to be a facilitator and not a manager. A tutor also needs to know when to step forward and when to step back. In response to this, David presented an interesting helical model of team working (which reminded me of a spiral model that had been mentioned earlier during the conference). 

Reflections

I like HEA conferences; they’re always well run, they are interesting and relevant, and represent a great opportunity for networking. In comparison to other HEA events that I had attended this one had a slightly different feel. I think this difference is due to two reasons; the first is the sheer scale of the event. Secondly, due to the fact that it was very interdisciplinary. Whilst I always enjoy meeting people who work in other subjects, I did feel that the sheer scale of the conference made it a more difficult event to navigate and choose the sessions that looked to be the most relevant. These things said, I did feel that the keynotes were well chosen and well presented. The second keynote stood out as being particularly thought provoking, which is exactly what keynote sessions should be.

During the workshop, I also facilitated a session about module design with my colleague, Ann Walshe. We offered a space where delegates could be creative and design their ‘ideal’ or ‘perfect’ module. The resulting designs were fun and playful, and make significant use of different technologies that had been mentioned during the first keynote. 

I’m going to conclude with a more personal reflection. This conference took place in the grounds of the university that was once known as UMIST, which was where I studied as a doctoral student. Wandering around the campus brought back many memories; I remembered how challenging it was. I was trying to conduct research into what was a very specific aspect of computing: theoretical models of how programmers go about understanding software code. I remembered how difficult it was having a part time job whilst at the same time as being a full time student. I also remembered how alone I felt, and this underlined the importance of community, which was also a topic that had arisen during the various sessions.

It not only struck me that community was really important for researchers, but it is also really important as a way to facilitate excellent teaching too; teachers and lecturers need to talk to other teachers and lecturers. In some ways, this was, ultimately, what the conference was all about.

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RSA: Teaching to make a difference, London

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On 3 September 2016 I found the time to attend a short event at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA website) that had the title ‘teaching to make a difference’. This blog summary comes from a set of notes that I made during the event.

Over the last couple of years I have increasingly been involved with and have been thinking about how best to provide continuing professional development (CPD) for Open University associate lecturers. This RSA event was all about how to provide CPD for primary and secondary school teachers; I felt that this event might be able to help me in my day job (but I wasn’t quite sure how).

One of the first speakers of the evening was former Schools minister, Jim Knight. I noted down the sentence ‘more than 2 in 3 [teachers] don’t have any professional development’ (I don’t know the extent of whether or not this is true) and ‘most head teachers do professional development’. An interesting point is that this can be connected to regulatory stuff; things that need to be done to make sure the job is done well.

When delivering a CPD session a few months back I showed tutors different models of teaching and learning, some of which were in the shape of a triangle (which appears to be a common theme!) In this RSA talk we were presented another triangle model. This one had the title: ‘what really matters in education’. The model contained three points that were all connected together: trust (and professionalism), peer learning (learning from each other), and the importance of skills and knowledge.

Another note I scribbled down was: ‘there are CPD standards, [but are they] enough?’ I know of one Open University CPD standard or model, but this made me realise that I ought to know about the other CPD models that might exist. 

Two other notes I made were: ‘intangible assets’ and ‘long term mentoring’. I guess the point is that CPD can build intangible assets into the fabric of an organisation, and this can be closely linked to belonging to a community of people who are involved with teaching. The term ‘long term’ mentoring was also thought provoking: was that something that I unexpectedly and implicitly have been doing in my day job?

I also wrote down the phrases ‘learning from failure’ and ‘equip teachers with CPD; personally develop those teachers who stick with it’. In terms of my own teaching experience, I really relate to the idea of learning from failure; sometimes things just don’t work as you expect them to. It is important to remember that it is okay to take risks, and it is okay if things go slightly wrong. Teachers are encouraged to step back and reflect on what went well, what didn’t, and what could be improved the next time round. During the talk, I was also reflecting on the Open University strategy which has the title ‘students first’. My own view is one that reflects my own perspective: I believe in a parallel but unspoken strategy of ‘teachers first’.

Panel discussion

After Jim’s talk there was a panel discussion between four discussants. The first discussant was David Weston who I understand was from the teacher development trust (charity website). He spoke about big differences between schools. I made the note: ‘I feel alive, pushed; tears, nobody attends to my needs’ (but I’m a little unsure as to what the context was). I did note down five points: (1) help teachers learn; students’ outcomes increases, (2) evidence and expertise (I’m not quite sure exactly what this means), (3) peer support and expert challenge, (4) they need time, and (5) senior learners [need to] make it a priority. (I am assuming that ‘it’ means CPD).

The second discussant, Alison Peacock (Wikipedia) CEO of the Chartered College of Teaching (college website) spoke about CPD standards, trust, expertise and the importance of listening. An interesting thought was that ‘pedagogy is all about experiences’. I didn’t catch the name of the next discussant, but I noted down that ‘taking risks means trust’ and that good teaching means stepping into other people’s shoes.

The final discussant was Matt Hood from TeachFirst (TeachFirst website), the organisation that trains and develops teachers. A key question is: what should CPD entail? I’ve noted down: reading, watching and practice. Matt told us about a couple of interesting web resources and programmes: Teach Like a Champion and Urban Teachers.

Reflections

I’ve had a busy few months: between attending this event and writing this summary, I have returned to being a student again (whilst keeping my day job): I’m studying for a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education at Birkbeck College. I realise that I’m doing this extra bit of studying for one reason alone: to get additional CPD; to learn how to become a better university teacher.

When I looked at my notes again I’m reminded that the higher education sector can learn a lot from other sectors. I’m also reminded that I really ought to look into whether I ought to become more involved in an organisation like SEDA, the Staff and Education Development Association (SEDA website) now that CPD is quite a big part of what I do.

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AL moderators training: using OU Live

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Monday, 21 Nov 2016, 15:12

The university makes extensive use of a software tool known as OU Live, which allows tutorials to be delivered over the internet. OU Live is, essentially, a branded version of a conferencing and teaching product called Blackboard Collaborate. In the next few years or so, this tool will be replaced with something else, but before this happens tutors are regularly encouraged to attend a series of online training sessions.

Despite being relatively familiar with OU Live, I decided to book myself onto one of these sessions. This blog post is a version of some rough notes that I made during and after the ‘AL moderators’ course that I went on.  (I took these notes back in May, and I’m writing this blog in November, so I hope I can remember everything correctly!)

My main comment is: if you’re an associate lecturer, and you need to deliver the occasional OU Live tutorial, either by yourself, or with other tutors, do try to find the time to book yourself on this course. It’s a pretty useful and it won’t take up too much of your time. It’s also a really useful thing to put on an application form for any other tutoring role that might take your fancy.

Notes

There were three sessions. The first session began with a set of introductions: I really liked the approach that was taken. All participants were asked to put up their hand by clicking on the ‘hand raise’ button. This had the effect of creating an orderly queue of who is going to speak. During the intro, the facilitator got everyone used to turning the ‘talk’ button on and off (which has the effect of preventing background noise). I’m going to term this practice: ‘good microphone hygiene’.

The facilitator had prepared a number of slides and used an interesting technique to create an animation: parts of the slide were covered up with squares which could be dragged out of the way to reveal answers (or other types of information). By way of analogy, think of a big piece of paper that was covered with pieces of card. It was a neat trick!

We were shown how to use OU Live pointers. I tend to use these quite a lot, since they can make things interesting. You can emphasise different points, and move different types of pointer to different parts of a slide.

An interesting open question given to all participants was: ‘What are you looking for from this module?’ It’s a really neat question that gets us talking. Different participants had different perspectives, and the answers allowed the facilitators to create a session that was specialised to those who were attending.

A topic that is regularly discussed is the use and etiquette about recordings. The policies for recordings are not as well defined as they ought to be, but I hold the simple opinion that tutors should always make recordings. In my eyes, recordings have three uses: (1) they help students who have not been able to attend, (2) they can help students who have attended who want to listen to stuff a second time, and (3) can advertise how engaging sessions are, and what a student might miss if they don’t attend a live session. (I don’t hold the view that if you record a session students won’t bother to come along).

Regarding the third point, I remember that there was a discussion session, where the recording was turned off, and a timer was turned on. The timer is a countdown timer, which makes an audible ‘ping’ sound when the time runs out. Two thoughts were: those students who are not attending the live session will miss out on this bit, and ‘I’ve never used a timer before, and it looks like a really useful feature!’

Looking at another tutor’s OU Live session (or teaching practice) really helps you to think about your own. One thing that struck me from the Tutor Moderator’s session was how much space was given over to questions. My own practice is slightly different; I tend to ask for questions at the end (after turning the recording off, to allow students to speak freely). I don’t know whether there is a right or wrong way to do things.

One of the most memorable parts of the course was the bit about breakout rooms. Breakout rooms are virtual spaces where participants can chat between themselves, usually to discuss a predefined issue or problem. Facilitators can also share whiteboard slides to breakout rooms, and can also collate slides from breakout rooms into the main presentation; imagine giving pairs of students’ big pieces of paper which they can write onto during their chat. We were encouraged to click and drag participants between different rooms.

Towards the end of the session, we were asked to consider the difference between ‘ice breaker’ and ‘warm up activity’. I hadn’t ever heard the term ‘warm up activity’ before. I now understand it to be something that a student can do in the moments before the start of an OU Live session. An example might be a message on a whiteboard that goes: ‘write your name, and where you are from’. A warm up activity helps participants to become familiar with the OU Live interface and how it works. An ice breaker, on the other hand is, of course, might be all about talking.

The next step was to share a bit of ‘online teaching’ with someone else who was on the course. Since beginning to study for a PGCE at another institution, I’ve learnt that this kind of practice can be known as ‘microteaching’. In the context of this course, I have to confess that I found myself too busy with various admin activities to complete this bit, which is a shame. If you do this tutor moderators course, don’t repeat my mistake!

Final thoughts

A couple of interesting questions to ask are: ‘what did I get from doing this?’ and ‘where would I use what I have learnt?’

The most useful thing that I learnt was about breakout rooms. Before this session, I didn’t really know how to create breakout rooms, and I found the opportunity to practice really helpful. The idea of dragging live students around on a screen into virtual rooms is pretty terrifying, but it’s a whole lot easier if you’re doing this with a bunch of fellow tutors who are just as befuddled as you are.

Would I use the ‘using white squares to hide bits of the screen’ technique? Probably not. It was a neat idea, but my own practice is to very carefully prep some slides and to use pointers a lot. This said, it’s an interesting technique, and one that I will think about.

I really liked the idea of a warm up activity. I might give this a go.

Since attending the tutor moderator’s course, I’ve used breakout rooms twice. I ran two cluster briefings. A ‘cluster briefing’ as I call them is an online meeting where all the tutors in a group tuition cluster informally discuss tutorial plans. If you are an associate lecturer, and you’re reading this, and you would like a cluster briefing before the next presentation of your module, do ask your staff tutor to run one!

Another question is: ‘what next?’ Or, put another way, ‘what would I like to do better in OU Live?’ The answer to this is ‘team teaching’. At the time of writing, there isn’t any guidance about team teaching best practice with OU Live. Perhaps I’ve stumbled across a whole new research project… Do get in touch if you’re interested in collaborating! 

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Christopher Douce

Experiencing a T216 Cisco day school

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Friday, 20 Feb 2015, 14:13

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.

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