Final student focus group, and meeting with Patrice Panella

Continuing the stepped-up pace of recent blogging, this is a short report on two good TASH meetings this week - the fourth focus group with more students from across the institution, and a helpful discussion with Patrice Panella of CiCS. The focus group first - thanks to the students who came out for this, and shared their views about study support, academic writing, and a whole host of other issues. One particular skill that drew plenty of comment was time management, again identified as a key skill that students need to quickly develop at university - as one participant explained, "If you don't manage the time well, your self-motivation goes, because you think there's too much for me to do, and I can't be bothered". Greater guidance on how to divide up your work time and meet the competing responsibilities all students face would be welcome, as would more of an acknowledgment that the practices of academic life are complex and not necessarily natural -

In your first year, you're literally sent off to a lecture theatre with a notepad and a pen, and told 'go and learn, go and learn, it'll be good', and you sort-of go, 'Right, ok'...It takes you a good three or four months to work something out.

This group of students in particular were keen on writing support, and offering more clear guidance about what is expected from university essays. Greater support early on would mean "a lot more effort would be available for people to do the beginning of their academic work if they weren't trying to get the nuts and bolts right". Yet at the same time, there was acknowledgement that maybe different disciplines required different things in essay writing - and maybe even different tutors within the same discipline. So (and I'm drawing heavily here on work by Mary Lea and Brian Street) the TASH resources on academic literacy need to equip students not just to determine and address the demands of different disciplines, but also to be comfortable switching between different disciplinary paradigms of knowledge. We all do this all the time, of course, but the academic world might offer an appearance of epistemological uniformity that belies its varied and complex nature.

The academic world has also passed through a strange historical moment, where learning, teaching, and research were seen to be done over here, in oak-panelled libraries and high-tech laboratories, while supporting the infrastructure for these activities was done over there, in open-plan offices and functional administration blocks. Thankfully, we're now coming out the other side of this, and at Sheffield, it's particularly welcome to see CiCS becoming explicitly recognised as playing a part in learning and teaching. They have always, of course, supported these activities (and much else of what goes on in the institution - Chris Sexton's blog does a nice job of spelling out how far their influence spreads), but through projects such as Clearspace, this role will become much more visible. Our meeting with Patrice talked through some of these developments, and how the peer communication facilitated by Clearspace and other Web 2.0 technologies relate to the TASH project. We're moving closer to responding to how students perceive the university as service-users, rather than how we see it as service-providers; and this can only be to the good.

A full report on all the focus groups, and how they've affected the developing TASH project, will follow shortly.

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.

Feedback from Faculty of Science and Medicine

Willy and I amalgamated our groups (primarily because there were no medics at the meeting). I'll pop down the points I recall but feel free to chip in, Willy!

• As with the other faculties there appears to be a desire to embed the resource into the curriculum somehow.
• Resources should be both specific and generic-i.e. as well as generic resources to help students develop good grammar and syntax there could also be resources such as a guide to writing a lab report.
• For students and staff to value the resource there needs to be some clear discipline relevance-it was therefore proposed that perhaps each department should make a list of say 5 resources they would like their students to have available to them.
• Chris Stokes and Julian Burton were highlighted as key staff to speak to in the Faculty of Medicine.
• There was also a valuable suggestion that we should get the Medical Soceity on board for some student input.
• The Learning Advocates in Pure Science are a group that meets regularly and has disseminated many excellent resources to develop independent learning in students and therefore are worth contacting.
• Ed Warminski and Kath Linehan have offered several resources for the project which should be relevant to students/staff in Pure Science and Medicine.

Feedback from the Engineering Group at the 24th June TASH event

Feedback from the Engineering Group:

Group membership: Plato Kapranos (Materials Eng), Juliet Wilson (plagiarism working group ) , Jen Rowson (Mech Eng), Tom O’Brien (student – Biomedical Engineering) , Alice Lawrence (ELTC), Linda Gray (ACSE)

Priorities/ what does Engineering need from TASH:

• Lab reports – how to write. (Please note that Tom O’Brien is writing a guide. Also Jen Rowson (Mech Eng) has a guide - see below)
• Observing that engineering students have lots of contact time early on, and that therefore engineering students appear to expect that all work must be done in contact time. Engineering departments want to move students on from much contact time/little independent work to little contact time/much independent work as their academic career progresses. To do this, one priority is to encourage student skill acquisition in information gathering and to get students to buy into doing this information gathering.
• Referencing – with a real need for consistency within departments and across departments. At the moment students are either told to use one method for one piece of work and another method for another, or they aren’t given a specific system to use at all.
• Helping students relate criteria used in assessment to examples of real work. Helping students understand how different assessment criteria reflect developmental stages.
• Helping to show students how they are expected to develop through their academic careers.
  

Resources already available:

• ELTC resources – online and face-to-face
• Library’s ISR , in which there is a specific Engineering hub (which ACSE contributed to)
• MATLAB tutorials – several available in University, and Tom is writing another MATLAB tutorial
• JAR’s (Anthony Rossiter's) animations on MOLE for systems related to modelling electrical circuits. JAR’s simulations on MOLE for pendulum and particle3D.
• MASH material – extensive support for Maths
• MECH eng has guides to
  o Writing lab reports
  o Literature reviews
  o Referencing
  o Plagiarism
• ACSE and AERO have material for educating about plagiarism and collusion, which has also been adopted by the Uni plagiarism working group
• Peter Judd (EEE) has developed some animations to support teaching the C programming language
  

How could TASH be used in departments:

• Linked to from student portal - with noticeable pop-up or other attention getting icon.
• Buy-in by lecturing staff, to include mention of during lectures/assignment descriptions. If appropriate could also demonstrate interaction with TASH during lectures
• Personal tutors – could devote personal tutorial session to showing tutees material on TASH
• Perhaps don’t talk about TASH much in induction, because of the information overload problem.
• “Foreground expectations” – repeatedly make it clear that lecturers intend students to use the TASH resource.
• Weekly calendar reminding students of academic schedule (specific to department), with mention of relevant material in TASH for the current assignment/task
  

Challenges for the TASH project:

• Making it specific enough for individual students
• Every department will want different things from it
• Finding material that is already available
• Embedding into the subject discipline, because TASH type material is not of itself interesting. For this reason a large example set for subject specific tutors will be necessary.
• Making resources available to allow students to catch up to already assumed levels. (This is a particular issue in the service-module oriented engineering faculty).
• Overseas students (of which the engineering faculty has a large number) – may be overwhelmed by visual information if their English language skills are weak, so the design needs to carefully limit the information on the page without being too simplistic therefore patronising.
• Overseas students’ previous experience of using IT will vary depending on country.

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.