Thursday 17 July 2008

First reflections from second TASH meeting

Just going through my notes from this afternoon's meeting (here's the PowerPoint in case you missed it, and you can also download it from the widget on the left), and I wanted to set some things down while they were still current. Firstly, I felt it was a really positive meeting - lots of interesting and interested participants, and some critical discussions about what TASH will do and how it will do it. Secondly, I was very alert to the point about student involvement, and despite the current difficulties of a transition period between student union officers, CILASS SAN co-ordinators and the like, I think we need to at least scope out precisely how students will get involved while we have this bit of thinking time. Thirdly, the idea of mapping the seven sk/hills we've drafted onto other concepts such as the Sheffield Graduate seems really important, not least so (a) we have another route in to staff and student perceptions of the resource, and (b) we're not repeating work done by other LeTS institutional projects. And finally, the questions of structure we wanted to raise in this meeting were richly and intelligently responded to - thank you for all your contributions. The seven sk/hills structure is only one iteration of an ongoing project, and we will consider all your points about logical orders, the nuances of language, flexibility, multiple ways of using the resource, etc. It was really good to recognise such expertise in structuring student-facing resources in the room today, and we'll be certain to draw on it in the near future. Thanks again for an enjoyable and productive meeting, and stand by for many more future posts!

2 comments:

Sabine Little said...

I'm sure we can find students to engage with TASH, although large numbers might have to wait until everybody's back. I'm always happy to broker the SAN across, just let me have details of meetings - or, if you want online participation, let's have a chat how best to work it out!

Steve Wise said...

I think that one of the keys to the success of TASH will be making the link between teaching staff, students and the materials provided. My suspicion is that this sort of material, on skills development, will be used most successfully when it is introduced to studenst as part of taught modules. anything which sits outside of taught (and assessed) work will always be given a lower priority by students - so simply telling them that is exists and urging them to make use of it will meet with limited success I suspect.

Willy mentioned on the 17th that I'm going to be running a small project to look at using existing materials on developing english language skills with students in Geography - and one of the things I'll be looking at is how well students enagage with the material and how best to introduce it to them.