Tutor-facing pro-forma perfect

The very first TASH pot of gold to the very first completer of a draft tutor-facing web page guide goes to Harriet Cameron of the Dyslexia Support Service who was our fourth and final discussant for the day. We met at the ELTC, and were delighted to take delivery of a draft which did exactly what we were hoping for, so many thanks to Harriet for that. We also had a very useful discussion about ways of signposting students through and beyond particular resources, and the possibility of Harriet sharing her experience with us at the design stage too. As some of you will already know, Harriet is now leading on the final phase of the online Dyslexia resources first developed by Lizzie Pine and taken forward by Frances Brindley and others, and which we were very happy to promote at the July 17 TASH meeting. Harriet has also offered:

• to complete a second tutor-facing guide outlining how one-to-one dyslexia tutorial support can help individual students' academic skills development, and how this kind of support differs from online aspects of the service;
• to liaise on our behalf with Claire Shanks, Sarah Armour and others in the Disability Support Team regarding the writing of one or more similar guides to the more general resources Claire's team can offer.
  

In addition to coming up with some tangible goods so quickly, Harriet's energy and enthusiasm for the project, as well as her coffee and vegetarian tea, was extremely welcome at the end of a day of meetings, and we look forward to working closely with her as the project progresses further.

Just one final thought on the ELTC. I have little doubt that the department will have certain reservations about their building, and particularly perhaps the rather foreboding entry by impersonal grey-box intercom which has to be negotiated to gain access, but they don't half make the most of what they've got. The atmosphere in the reception area - however cramped - is always extremely welcoming; and you will invariably find students and tutors engaged in genuine and lively conversation. This quiet but careful attention to getting the tone right is carried through all of the offices and rooms I've been in - including the Gents' toilets - where the specific needs of international students have clearly been considered wherever possible. Thinking more generally about the design of the TASH resource itself, the Inclusive Learning and Teaching project, as well as the aspiration to improve accessibility and the quality of the student experience for all, I think the organised chaos that is ELTC's reception should be a model of best practice for us all - and something TASH can hope to emulate online and, in time, in a (hopefully slightly less crammed) physical space in Jessop's Edwardian Wing or elsewhere!

English Language Skills

As reported earlier in this blog, and at the second TASH meeting, I am running a pilot project, as part of TASH, to make some of excellent material on English Language skills which already exists, available to undergraduates in Geography. Many of our home undergraduates have quite poor written English - reports in the press suggest that this is a widespread problem which seriously affects the employability of graduates. With help from Paul Wigfield and Claire Allam I have put together a selection of the materials from the ELTC teaching materials and the support site for dyslexic students and constructed a module called 'English Language Skills for Geography Students'. In the spirit of TASH, very little has been done to the existing materials - so there is no specific reference to Geography and the examples which are used are not geographical. One of the interesting things will be to see whether students regard this as a problem or not.

The plan is to

• Let all staff in Geography know about it so that when they meet personal tutees to review the feedback on their assessed work, they can refer students to it if need be.
• Let all students in Geography know about it. We hold a 'welcome back' meeting each semester, with each Level separately, which will be a good vehicle for this.
• Build it into our Level 1 skills module, GEO163, which focuses on essay writing among other things.

If anybody would like to take a look at the material, just send me your Novell login (e.g. I am gg1smw).

Law and TASH

Met this morning with Zoe Ollerenshaw in Law who lectures on the Legal Practice Course and is about to take up the roles of chair of the department's Teaching Quality committee and of teaching advocate across the department's full UG provision. Our conversation ranged over a wide range of skills areas of importance to Law UGs, students on the LPC, and PG students on a range of masters courses. Particular challenges mentioned, amongst others, were those encountered by second language overseas students on masters programmes, given the emphasis upon semantic meanings stressed in legal discourse (and for whom the department is developing compulsory sessions with ELTC); LPC students who, to an extent, have to "unlearn" some of the more fence sitting and discursive elements of UG writing conventions (in favour of some plain speaking advice to clients who wanted to know specific answers to specific questions); and the more general challenge of supporting the huge numbers of UG students throughout their studies given very high staff to student ratios.

There are clearly approaches TASH can learn from Law and LPC, including around the transition from UG to LPC and what this has to say about academic literacy .v. graduate professionalism, and writing (and being assessed) for/by different audiences. Likewise, Zoe sees that TASH and the 7 sk/hills currently outlined pretty much cover all the boxes Law will want to tick - and has the potential to assist greatly in developing a more coherent package of skills enhancement and reflective learning for UGs over the course of their studies.

Zoe is keen to remain involved, will be at the 17 July meeting, and will liaise with Tash Semmens and Norma Hird, both of whom are also closely involved in a "feedback taskforce" and other teaching initiatives within Law. Hopefully we'll be able to have at least one representative from Law at each of the meetings going forward.

Geography case study: embedding ELTC MOLE language tutorials

I attended a very positive meeting yesterday with Richard Simpson, Alice Lawrence and Victor (sorry, Victor, I didn't catch your surname) - all from ELTC - Paul Wigfield (MOLE czar) and Steve Wise (Geography). Steve was the chief instigator and is concerned to address standards of written English amongst home undergraduate students in his dept. In particular, grammatical and other problems which recur and, it appears, are on the increase in many students' work.

It was helpful from a TASH perspective to observe in practice precisely the kind of process we hope to facilitate more easily through the medium of the tutor guides and other staff facing materials. Steve had only recently been put on to the ELTC online language tutorials (by Alice?) and, having now spent a limited amount of time perusing them, can see that many aspects of these provide ready made solutions to many of the areas he wishes to address with his students - hopefully the TFGs (tutor-facing guides) will help to shortcircuit this realisation for others in the future. Better still, Steve now plans to develop aspects of one of his first year modules to make more embedded use of these materials, and is considering supporting this through use of the first year tutorial system. He plans to develop a small amount of new material and possibly tinker with small aspects of the ELTC materials too (particularly to make the grammar tutorials and/or the way the subject of grammar is approached much less technical - since the ELTC materials were originally developed with a second language audience in mind), and is willing to work with TASH to use this as a disciplinary case study to illustrate how more generic materials can be made to work effectively in subject specific contexts.

Particular outcomes then:

• Steve to work on tailored UG "Writing for Geographers" materials using ELTC tutorials as a key component, and to share lessons learned with TASH; it would be good if we can find someone on 17 July to do something similar for PG writing and/or in the pure sciences too;
  
• Alice and Victor to work on TASH TFGs in relation to the ELTC online tutorials - we may want to break these down into guides addressing the needs of first- and second-language students respectively;
• Richard, who knows the back history of the ELTC resources, is happy for these to be shared more widely via MOLE (e.g. the plan is for all 1st year Geog UGs to have automatic access next acad year, rather than having to sign up to be enrolled), and in principle (as Lynn Parker has also hinted for the library info tutorials) is happy for some or more of the tutorials to be lifted out of MOLE and made more easily available via web pages;
• Paul has confirmed it should not be a big technical task to take tutorials such of these out of MOLE and place them onto open web pages if this seems to be the most effective way forward as the project progresses (the main issue for TASH here being that we want to signpost people as accurately as possible ... but if pointing to a MOLE resource, can only do so to the front page and not link any deeper to specific elements of a tutorial or resource);
• TASH will support Steve, Alice and Victor with development time etc. as appropriate, and may also be able to help facilitate some student focus group work around the materials Steve plans to develop (e.g. using our links with the CILASS-SAN and union education officer);
• We need to have a word with Diana Ward (ELTC), who will be working with English Lit next year (Bob McKay, Brendan Stone?) on some first year language development support.

Steve, Alice and hopefully Victor will all be at 17 July meeting where we can begin to put some of these pieces alongside other disciplinary and faculty case study priorities. Thanks to all for a very productive 45 minutes.

Getting Started: introductory meeting - Social Sciences

This afternoon Tim and Willy hosted the launch event for the hub project. Some reflections on the event as a whole will follow soon, but for now I wanted to share some discussion points from our second activity. For this part of the session we split up into faculty groups and Alan Philips (Student Services), Richard Ward (LeTS) and I became honorary Social Science bods, along with Steve Wise (Geography) who is the ‘real thing’!

1. Topics that would like MASH to cover
The top priority (for Geography) is writing skills for ‘home’ students, from grammar through to how to structure and present a coherent argument (no pressure on me then for the rest of this posting).

In terms of existing resources, the department has looked at materials produced by the ELTC. Whilst these are excellent, they have largely been produced for an ESL audience, so they require some modification to make them suitable. The Royal Literary Fund (RLF) has also produced material designed for HE level study that we should explore further. In addition, the RLF writing fellow based in Animal and Plant Sciences has highlighted the benefits of 1-1 support and advice. With this in mind, we agreed that it will be worth exploring peer support, e.g. level 3 students working with level 1, as part of the TASH project.

There was a consensus in the group that in order to be effective, the resources need to be contextual. Therefore role of TASH should be to provide generic material and examples that departments can adapt to meet their own requirements.

2. Challenges
Student expectations and engagement -the student survey highlighted a gap between what departments offer/deliver and what students recognise has been provided. We discussed how this relates to the process of learning and reflection – how can we better support students in developing the critical self reflection skills that can help them to process and evaluate what they have learned and translate this into what they need to do next?

Related to this, we also considered what motivates students to engage with academic skills development. Whilst ‘getting a better degree’ has some appeal, we also agreed that employability and transferable skills are often of equal, or higher, significance. In both instances, we agreed that peer perspectives can be as or more powerful than those of tutors, and it could be useful to have some level 3 or recent graduate perspectives on ‘what I wish I’d known’. In addition, whatever the format or mode we use to provide skills development, we need to recognise that the relevance and importance attached will vary from student to student, and with this in mind, it is important that there is a resource /resources that enable students to revisit things at a time that works for them.

Designing materials that suit student and tutor requirements – it would be great to have parallel access points for tutors and students, but given the previous points it will be a challenge to design generic materials for students that can augment or serve as a prompt to go back to any materials or activities that were provided by their department/s. However, if (or should that be when) we can get this right , it will be a real strength.

In terms of contributing to the TASH project, Steve noted that he would like to work on 'writing skills' in collaboration with the ELTC and LeTS, with a view to sharing materials via the Hub.

Learning Hub in Jessop's Edwardian Wing?

Last Tuesday 17 June, together with colleagues from ELTC, MASH, MLTC, LeTS and Estates, I attended a meeting chaired by Paul White at which he outlined the back-history and proposed future of the Learning Hub Project. Originally conceived as a new build, the present plan is now to pitch for money and space in the Edwardian Wing of Jessops hospital (the bit sandwiched between Broad Lane and the original Victorian hospital building on Leavygreave Rd which is destined to be inhabited by the Music Dept).

If the funds are secured, the renovation of the Grade 2 listed building and addition of a smaller new build to the east/north-east is proposed to result in the creation of at least four key spaces (working from memory as my notes are presently elsewhere):

1. A fancy new build entrance and executive teaching area for CPD and other industry-standard events off to the right (more specifically, a "Harvard style lecture theatre"; though I'm yet to establish exactly what that might mean);
2. On the ground floor of the Edwardian Wing, one or two large open access areas currently conceived as communal spaces for students and others to gather, work individually or in groups, have access to certain specialist IT packages etc. which cannot be provided across campus for licencing reasons (e.g. some of the mindmapping, maths & stats software, and perhaps some more specific software required by PG students in partic. disciplines - may be fancy GIS packages for example?); this could be an ideal space for the development of self-help study groups, and for projects like TASH, MASH and the Sheffield Graduate Award to have permanent display areas in which to provide physical access to study and support materials and resources of one form or another;
3. On the middle floor, 4-6 seminar rooms (min. capacity 24), plus a few small breakout rooms for one-2-one tutorials etc., plus specialist language labs; the teaching rooms would be pooled, probably with first dibs for MASH, ELTC and MLTC, and the possibility that they could also be open to TILL classes in the evenings;
   
4. On the top (attic) floor, office space for MASH, ELTC and MLTC staff.

Volunteers for an "advisory group" were sought, and I have now put my name forward as the TASH link person for the time being. If this development comes off, it will provide an important and much more coherent physical presence for many of the face-to-face skills enhancement services already offered across the institution ... and it also has the potential to provide a physical form to the TASH self-help, self-analysis, easy-access philosophy. In terms of time-frames, if we are very lucky and the money doesn't go elsewhere then we'd be looking at a facility opening on the site in autumn 2010.

As with the discussion of labels below, however, it is essential that this building is seen as a hub for all, at all stages of their learning careers, and not a triage station for learners who don't quite fit the norm ... I'm confident that this is an obstacle that can be surmounted - but that the key is likely to be getting the ground floor right. The fact that Paul White has pulled TASH in at such an early stage in our existence is also very welcome and indicative of the role we may be able to play in helping to lend a little more coherence to the many very valuable services and resources that currently exist scattered across campus, not just online but in the real world too.