Time to start making...

Today's meeting in Bartolome House was a great opportunity for colleagues to catch up with progress on the TASH project, and find out where we're going next. Given the busy time of year, not everyone could make it, and particular thanks to those who did; it was really useful from the core team's point of view, especially in getting feedback about the general structure and design of the site. This is only the first report from the meeting, trying to reflect some of the key ideas; there will be others, thanks to Louise and Willy's prodigious note-taking skills, and materials like Willy's PowerPoint presentation will also be posted in due course.

So, what did we learn today? Mainly, that it feels like time to take what we can from the consultation process (roughly, the last six months of the project), and move onto a stage where we're doing, creating, and testing (the next six months). Input from colleagues has been important throughout, and particularly so in today's meeting, but it seems like we need to start firming up what TASH will be, do, and look like, before we can move onto the next stage of testing and consultation.

The materials Willy and I presented today were always going to be rough, but I think it took the comments of participants to identify just how much more work needed doing. We handed round some draft "rapid routes", linear pathways that would take users from general introductory pages to specific resources. Questions were quite rightly asked about how long these would take, and whether the tone was quite right; and the difficulties were discussed of modelling the complexities of website navigation through a series of essentially linear routes. We also shared some rough reflection exercises, intended to help students get a better sense of what TASH could do specifically for them. These need a lot more work - they need to be more interactive, more focused on targeted academic skills and resources, and more reason given for students to engage with them (encouraging tutors to use them in formative assessment were suggested, and this seems like a good route to pursue). So while the specific materials we disseminated weren't perhaps as camera-ready as we in the core team had hoped, the feedback we got on them was extremely useful, and we can spend the next few months doing the spade-work of constructing the TASH resource for testing.

And that's what we'll do, really; retreat to individual offices, putting pen to paper, cursor to screen, or crayon to wall depending on our creative styles. Come April (or so), we hope to have a version of the site ready for testing, and we'll be in touch with everyone who's ever shown an interest in TASH then. Then during the summer, we'll promote it across the institution, and start the long, slow process of embedding it in institutional practices. One of the most useful comments today came from Lyn Parker, talking about her experiences with the MOLE Information Skills tutorials. First, she had to create them, and publicise them to academic staff. Then, she needed to get them embedded in individual modules and departmental cultures. It was during this second phase that the largest number of students engaged. It might well be that TASH follows a similar arc.

Thanks again to all who came today, and more reports will follow soon!

Moving on...report on the September 16th meeting

Today’s project meeting was very successful, both in terms of being able to disseminate what has happened on the project thus far, and for getting feedback, questions, steers, and more interested parties on board. In terms of disseminating project activities, this was done through a series of presentations by core team members – Kath Linehan on her work with the Pure Science LTAs and the tutor-facing guides written to date; Linda Gray sharing her work with the Engineering LTAs and the location of academic skills resources within her faculty; Steve Collier reporting on our first focus group with students; and Willy Kitchen talking about the evolving design and structure of the resource. (Copies of all these presentations are available by clicking the links, or from the project website). There were very helpful questions asked, and lots of good discussion points raised, both in this reporting section and the more general discussion; and I’ll discuss a few of the ones that stayed with me.

The over-riding message was that we need to emphasise the relevance to students of the resource. Their motivation, it was suggested, includes fair slices of wanting to get a job, and wanting to learn more about a subject that interests them; so we need to ensure that TASH addresses both these user needs. This relates closely to getting the language right – not all staff, let along students, will respond to phrases like “academic literacy”, so we need to ensure the terms we use are broad and welcome enough to encompass a range of perspectives and users. One way to achieve this is via student-generated material, or, equally excitingly, materials generated by recent graduates; there are precedents for both of these, for example the excellent CILASS Student Ambassador Network pages, and the Careers Service’s podcasts about “A day in the life of…” all sorts of exciting people. We also need to ensure that the resource meets its promises of being multimedia and rich, to cater for the wide range of learning styles and backgrounds of our students. This is by way of some defensiveness – if at the moment the project team are concentrating a lot on written documents, it doesn’t mean that the entire resource will have outputs in this format! And finally, we need to ensure the whole range of staff in the university are included and interested in the resource. The particular groups identified in discussion included hourly-paid staff, in teaching and support capacities, and full-time support staff; often, these people are the more friendly face within a department, to whom the student will turn. They, therefore, need to be in-tune with TASH, and aware of what it has to offer.

So, what next? Organising focus groups is the next big task, and we’re in active discussions with the Union of Students, CILASS, and other established networks to support this. We’ll also be concentrating on finding what resources are already available within the institution, and where possible, generating tutor-facing guides to communicate these in a standard form. And we’ll also be continuing to look at our skills areas, and benchmarking them against documents with general currency, such as The Sheffield Graduate profile. If we receive as much support and enthusiasm for the rest of the project as we did in today’s meeting, then it should be (relatively speaking) a walk in the park.

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!

Feedback from the Arts focus group

The group discussing TASH from the Arts faculty was nothing if not eclectic, with only one bona fide academic from the faculty, and a range of other central services staff and fellow-travellers. However, what they said about TASH was extremely helpful, and a really good exploration of many of the key issues. Here is, in rough form, a report of their conversations.

• Students are coming from a wide range of learning backgrounds, and A-level marks aren't always a good way of identifying their strengths and weaknesses. There is also the student perspective - they've done well to get this far, and aren't always (or initially) receptive to the message that they need to change what they do. The consequent need to recognise the diversity of their backgrounds and skills was therefore emphasised, especially given the pluralisation of post-16 routes. It was also underscored that the skills they have been rewarded for in secondary education may not be the same as those they'll need in higher education, and that this could be one of the moments of difficult identity transition that Alice Lawrence referred to in the first discussion.
• It was strongly suggested that TASH should be a standard route for all students, without identification of special needs or shortcomings. However, one incidental good of TASH could be to provide a way to support students currently slipping between the cracks in current support provision - for example, students who display characteristics of dyslexia, but who have not received a diagnosis. This is particularly common with ESOL learners, where the distinction between second language difficulties and other learning difficulties is technically impossible to make.
• TASH needs to be promoted to students throughout their learning journeys. The key points this group identified were pre-arrival, helping them clarify their expectations of what HE will be about; and at the start of Level Two, where again there may be a shift in expectations, and other interfering sociological and cultural factors distracting them from study. It was also suggested that TASH should somehow be structured to promote recurrent engagement - it should be ok, and indeed positively encouraged, to go over the same thing several times. PGT students also need to be included within TASH, and thought given as to how material might need to be presented differently for them than to other groups.
• One particular skills need of Arts students was around constructing a good essay, and this, as with the language of the earlier discussion, was cast in terms of recognising what skills were required, and how they might be different to what they've done in school (for example, critically engaging with material rather than repeating it by rote). It was also suggested (picking up on earlier discussions about modularisation) that the links between skills and modules needed to be emphasised, and how they could carry their learning from unit to unit, and ultimately into the big wide world.
• It was recognised that TASH was ambitious, and the quite correct question was asked of are we trying to do too much? Working with our current timescale, what are the achievable outcomes? What is our fall-back plan if we don't achieve all of these? A very good question, and again something that should be borne in mind throughout the development process.

General feedback from the first TASH event

This is just to reflect back my experience of the event, and share some of the key points of the discussions. Overall impressions of the event were extremely positive - there was a lot of interest from staff and a high level of engagement throughout. A number of useful resources (in terms of people, materials, ideas, and general goodwill) were identified throughout the afternoon, and I am optimistic that these will be followed up by email and personal contacts in the next few weeks.

There were a number of issues that cut through the day, and questions that pertain to them, and I've tried to separate out some of them below. The big one I'm left with came up in several guises - namely, what is the relation between the staff- and student-facing sides of the project? We clearly need to say different things to each constituency, so how do we structure this, and ensure engagement on both sides? The image I stumbled on in discussion was of a Venn diagram, with an overlapping core but different edges, and by implication, ways into that core. It's right that the precise answer to the question won't emerge until later on in the design process, and it's also right that we keep it in mind throughout these early stages, shaping our response as we go along.

Picked out in rough order of importance (and too much detail - blog posts are meant to be short) are some themes that came up throughout the day, in small and whole group discussions.

Student engagement. This was the most commonly-identified issue. Nick Fox helpfully intervened with the suggestion that before we start engaging students with the development of specific skills, we need to first persuade them of the benefits - they need to recognise that there is a culture in higher education that they need to adapt to, and that their academic achievements will ultimately be closely linked to the level of success of their integration. This culture is, as Willy responded, embedded in practices and lived experiences, which is precisely where TASH needs to be - in induction processes, assessment feedback, Union links, Student Services support, and so on. The academic lifestyle is a performance, and TASH can help (1) foreground this performative element, and (2) support students in developing their own performance. Nick's useful phrasing was that we need to promote academic literacy, and this begins with spelling out that this will be different to what they've done and been good at in school (or other non-HE contexts). Nadine indicated the success of the Inclusive Learning and Teaching project, and how this had been attributed to its emphasis on student involvement; she even suggested student champions for the resource, embedded in departments, and perhaps financially rewarded (or maybe given credit through the Sheffield Graduate award) for actively promoting the resource amongst students.

Tutor engagement. Feelings on this were largely positive, with one participant reporting discussions at Faculty level, calling for exactly this kind of thing. There were, however, outstanding questions about engaging certain tutors who were so embedded in their disciplinary context that the value of generic material would be difficult to communicate.
This might shift the focus of the promotion of the resource onto what has worked thus far - local, personalised approaches, explaining the benefits and taking time to work through anxieties and misunderstandings. The second element to this was the fact that the deficit model of student skills is probably one of the more commonly-held ones for academics, so while we want to move away from that in all we say and do, we should still be prepared to address it amongst academic colleagues.

“Soft skills”. Alice Lawrence noted how HE study was a period of identity transition for students, and that we should be mindful and supportive of this frequently difficult process. This got me thinking about an issue that Debora Green raised, namely the generic skills materials that were on the fringes of TASH, and that she didn't want to be lost. Her example was the Counselling Service's Life Skills materials, which are indeed great, and would benefit all students coming to university. Another question on the already long list might be to what extent TASH wants to signpost resources for the personal development aspects of HE - it's not subject-specific, yet a different kind of generic skill to something like time management. The phrase “soft skills” was used by some Engineering and Science colleagues, and included many of the critical thinking, groupwork, communication, and motivational skills explored during the first exercise. Is this a phrase we want to add to the lexicon, and what would be some of the consequences of that? To come at this another way, is a clearer definition of “skills” required? In the first group exercise, there were clearly different levels being discussed, and how we define this term might help restrict or control the shape of the resource. There's doubtless an academic literature on this, and I'm becoming more and more aware (through a whole range of conversations at the event) that we might want to do this reading sooner rather than later.

Embedding the resource. The feeling of participants overall was that the resource would have greatest utility and force embedded in particular departmental structures, modules, and perhaps even assessment. Students and staff would both welcome (perhaps mainly at Level One) an immediate link with the subject area; they both might be willing to explore later on in their learning journeys, but there should be a familiar starting-point. The idea of centring the interactive self-reflection exercises around Sheffield received a double boost in the Arts group that I was facilitating. Firstly, Stephanie Pitts says she does something similar with new postgraduate students, asking them to produce an index of musical events across Sheffield - this sharpens their research skills, provides a useful product, and allows them to learn a little more about the city. Secondly, Claire Shanks showed our group some work the Generic Skills group had previously done (and which I wonder, Willy, if it's in the folder Margaret gave you). This consisted of “seven hills” of generic skills (can't remember what they were), which they'd considered as a possible basis for a generic skills website. This will be an excellent source when we come to considering in more detail the student-facing activities, and once again proves there's little new under the sun.

There are doubtless more to run with, but that's enough for now. A good discussion, and initial sharing of ideas and perspectives, and it bodes well for future project events.