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.

Meeting with Higher Futures

A very positive meeting this morning with Jackie Powell and Mike Bruce from Higher Futures, the lifelong learning network for South Yorkshire. The LLN is a way of bringing together FE colleges with HEIs on a regional basis, and ensuring that there are clear progression pathways available to students from the FE sector. Clearly, there is a job of work to be done here; both HE and FE institutions need to learn more about each other, and what each can bring to the learner's journey, for local students to be given a high-quality service. Vocational learners often bring rich and diverse skill sets to higher education, and often bring a passion for and knowledge of their subject that A-levels, structurally, can't mirror. So Jackie, who co-ordinates the Information, Advice, and Guidance (IAG) aspect of Higher Futures, and Mike, based in this institution, are working hard to make sure this message gets out, and that both sectors are working effectively together.

They were, for obvious reasons, excited about the potential for TASH to bridge this gap between FE and HE learning. They recognised how it might be used as part of an IAG route within their work, and how it could aid both staff and students in understanding what was expected from university study. As much as anything else, it might help develop the confidence of FE students in recognising the skills they can offer HE, particularly important given how much current language and thinking in HEIs is oriented towards students with A-levels rather than other forms of qualification. Alongside all this good feeling, the practical outcome of this meeting was that IAG staff in Higher Futures institutions will have a chance to play with the draft TASH resource, once it is ready after Easter in a testable form. This is clearly good for us, as we get feedback on the resource from practitioners in one of its application contexts; and good for the IAG staff, as they see how the resource will work, can contribute to its ongoing design, and begin to think about embedding and promoting it in FE colleges.

Quick feedback from Inclusive Learning and Teaching events as part of Good Practice Week

I went to a session on Inclusive Learning and Teaching today that was a front for a number of different workshops on various aspects of the project. The over-riding message of the day was that practices for inclusivity were also practices for high quality teaching and learning, and that small adjustments made to benefit one group of students would usually also benefit others. Elena described pitching ILT to departments as a way of helping them meet the aims of the University's LTAS and Sheffield Graduate characteristics, and this seems to have worked, helping raise awareness of issues and engaging with a wide range of departments. It could be worth adopting a similar strategy when discussing TASH.

Elena also fed back on an event in April where students had outlined what they saw as do's and don'ts of inclusive teaching (on a handout in the pack - suspect you've seen it already); the detail of these was as interesting as the more creative work they'd done, suggesting metaphors for the ILT project. They talked of "isolated islands" of students wanting to cross the sea (with support) and come together under the sun of ILT; and of there being certain ILT-based keys to unlocking the box of their award and learning. This last in particular deserves some unpacking, as while it has strongly teleological undertones, it does strike a nice balance between supporting students and allowing them to develop their own ideas.

The other prevalent theme of the sessions was lecturer assumptions , especially in the guise of cultural or linguistic references not everyone could follow. There was one student who had felt excluded from a module by being on a joint honours programme and not understanding the references to previous modules that single honours students had done. Again, this could be one way in with TASH, and certainly provides another aspect to the continuing problematisation of student and tutor expectations. Ali Hayward said nice things about TILL and the support she'd received, and emphasised the importance of a holistic understanding of the student, not seeing them as disabled, foreign, etc. but as a whole person, with a whole person's needs. Again, potential material for use here.

On another note, as a passing remark at the end, Margaret Freeman mentioned that HCS were considering offering tandem learning sessions for English pronunciation, which could be of great benefit to some of our learners. It would be really interesting if this took off, and might help integrate some of our students with other departments and the general life of the university.

The Ultraversity

The project to which Phil pointed us on Friday is here. From an initial look, the programme looks just as exciting and innovative as she described it; and from more a more pragmatic point of view, I quite like the look and feel of the site. Oh, and they do exhibition preparation and reflection as part of their assessment; at level three. There are only a few ideas ever in circulation...