Learning and Teaching Conference

1. Learning and Teaching Conference Doing things differently or doing different things?

2. What’s coming up? • Some background to my perspective • What are students saying about HE now and under the new fees regime? • How might we respond? What do we need from students? What do they want /expect from us? • Implications for teaching, learning and assessment • Back to the question..

3. An account based on… • Some research into the student HE learning experience • Some research into the experience of teaching and managing HE programmes • An interest in critical approaches • 15 years as a sociology lecturer in FE and HE • 10 years in educational development (+ some lecturing) • 10 years involvement with Staff and Educational Development Association, 2 as chair • 20 years as a parent experiencing the UK educational system • First in family to enter HE … with the aim of providing a source for debate today at least

4. Doing things differently from what?

5. Quick questions What is most of your teaching like? • Large Lectures • 30+ classroom workshop • On line • Small seminars • Field work / lab work What’s the learning like? • Listening • Taking notes • Discussion • Working on activities in the classroom • Working on activities elsewhere

6. How differently?

7. Doing different things?

8. Question What’s been the biggest change in what you do, over 5, 10, years? What’s been the impact on your teaching? What’s been the impact on students?

9. What ‘different’ ways of teaching and learning do students value? (2010-11) • Student made films https://my.roehampton.ac.uk/information/lteu/Pages/lteu.aspx http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aawXnoeXdbk • HEA funded Gender and Pedagogies Project http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/researchcentres/cerepp/index.html • ‘Journeys to Success’ Project on the attainment of Black and minority ethnic students http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/ourwork/inclusion/wprs/Roehampton_University_BME_Summit

10. Across all projects students talk about valuing.. • Lecturers who have high expectations of them • Lecturers who care • Assessment tasks which give them a chance to show what they know (an are not bunched together) • Enthusiastic lecturers • Outside speakers and opportunities for visits and placements • Feedback which they can understand and learn from • Small group sessions

11. I like it when there’s a variety in the lecture so you’re not just sat there watching a powerpoint for 4 hours or something. Most of my lectures it’s been really good in that it’s a variety of watching a bit of a video, then you get to do some reading back and talking and you get your powerpoint and that’s quite good. There are teachers who are a bit too lenient with people. So they’d be telling them like a few times to be quiet. It’s a bit like – you just send them out! This is university. I think a harder approach is probably needed towards them. The best lecturers you can go to them and say ‘Can you tell me how this works, can you explain it to me?’ and they’ll come over and quite happily just talk to you about it which is quite nice to have

12. There are times when they say ‘look at the feedback’ and you turn to the feedback sheet. A)You can’t read their writing – it’s like scribbled down and I don’t know what you are trying to tell me which is the most off putting thing as well. Like when you go to a lecturer and say ‘can you tell me what’s wrong with it?’ ‘No read the feedback’. I can’t read the feedback. You’ve scribbled it down in like 2 seconds. You know I wish they would just write it quite neatly. B) Also sometimes they don’t really put anything on there. They say ‘read your feedback sheet’ and it will say you know you could have included maybe another reference. And you’re like – is that all? It’s probably not, there is probably a lot more that they could tell you. They just don’t write it down and it’s really frustrating when you can’t get the kind of in-depth knowledge of, you can’t sort of nit pick your assignments which is the only sort of real problem that I have with the course. ‘Cause other than that it’s quite good. It’s just when you try and look back. They don’t seem to want to look back at your assignments. They want to move forward. And I’m like ‘I need to address these problems.’

13. Like I remember when he walked in and we were all like waiting to get our things. He goes ‘They’re all rubbish’. He basically said something similar along the lines of ‘They were not very good’. You know it was really weird ‘cause the weeks leading up to it, he seemed quite shy, quite kind. But as soon as he marked my work, he was basically just like ..dashed our work on to the floor. No like last year I was really excited. I always wanted to go to lectures. And like if when I was on campus you know I wanted to go ‘cause I was so close by and even if I was tired. But now I have to really force myself. I do enjoy it and I do get up still. But there are days when it’s like pouring with rain and you think I’ve got that long walk and he’ll just talk to the powerpoint slides so shall I bother? My tutor, she is great, really professional- never misses a meeting and rearranges for a more convenient time if she is unavailable.

14. What might be the impact of increased fees? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aawXnoeXdbk

15. What did David Willetts tell me? • Oh yes I was one of 8 asked to discuss ‘excellence in teaching’ in February and this is what he said ….

16. Doing things differently or doing different things? What do the quotes + video suggest to you?

17. For me.. Students want: • more opportunities to learn from the lecturer through low risk practice and feedback which points to how to improve • good large lectures from enthusiastic, staff and small active seminar groups It’s not about high contact hours, it’s about • the nature of the contact • need to communicate high expectations and ‘care’ • an engaging curricula for today’s / future students AND Students aren’t necessarily the best judge of effective learning environments – it’s complex and we need to talk to them.. multiple identities, inequalities and differences intersect in complex ways with pedagogical experiences, relations and practices. This includes but goes beyond gender, age, class, ethnicity and race, to also consider for example nationality and institutional and disciplinary identities

18. Doing things differently or doing different things? Some concluding questions • Is the weekly lecture redundant? • How do we communicate care while communicating high expectations? • What kind of small group activities can help students understand academic standards and conventions in a low risk way? • How can assessment better contribute to learning? • How can we do more with our students to explore these issues?

19. Access to what? • ‘An educational strategy which is out of touch with the lived relations and experiences of its subjects is of course one which signifies that in order to learn in the formal mode of schooling you must forget who you are, where you come from and what it is like there. However to be confined to one’s own experiences is to know the world one dimensionally.’ • Stuart Hall (1983)