Rod Horton said
at 8:43 am on Nov 16, 2010Reply Delete
Very good information and convincing yet 90% of people still belive in VAK.


Ben said
at 10:47 am on Nov 16, 2010Reply Delete
I liked the bit on confirmation bias. We notice things that confirm what we already believe. It makes me think about what preconceptions I must have and the evidence that I must ignore to enable me to continue that preconception. It ties in nicely with the class we had on the Pygmalion effect in the classroom and the hidden curriculum.


Ben said
at 11:19 am on Nov 16, 2010Reply Delete
That's right Ron and that's what Prof Dan was saying is a problem. Something close to the VAK theory is right, 90% of people do believe it and if you believe something then you will interpret ambiguous circumstances as confirmation of your belief.He said learning styles weren't taught in the text books of education but maybe a greater effort should be made to discredit learning styles and the reasons why because often people enter their teacher training believing in them and nothing is done to change that.I like the take home message - Good teaching is good teaching and don't match the learning style to the student -match the teaching style to the content. You don't tell someone the shape of a country you show them a map and you need to hear a French accent not see it.

Formative Assessment Exercise Perscription

This is my first year teaching so I'm still finding my feet but I have learnt a valuable lesson regarding formative assessment and promptness when it comes to marking.

My mentor, Mihi, who I teach with, was sick and had a bereavement so I was left with quite a busy few weeks. While I was just trying to keep my head above water with teaching and prep I neglected marking. Once Mihi returned to work I was able to look at all the assignments that had been piling up. In doing this I was able to give great formative feedback to each student and change my next lecture and lab to accommodate the deficits in the students' knowledge that I was now aware of. Because it had taken so long to mark and return the first assignment the mistakes had been repeated for all the other assignments. Now it feels like groundhog day when I mark assignments and correct mistakes that I know students would now not make.

Next year I will make sure, come hell or high water, that I get and give feedback from formative assessment asap. It may mean working harder/longer in the short term but if student learning improves quicker then it will be worth it. Marking the other 15 assessments correct first time instead of having to mark resubmits will be awesome!

Formative Assessment Solutions

My last post included benefits and barriers to formative assessment. I will now discuss solutions to those barriers.

1 Classroom Culture
This must embrace interaction and the use of assessment tools. Students need to feel safe and confident to answer questions without fear of embarrassment or humiliation. Questioning should be encouraged.

2 Learning Goals
Learning goals must be created and students’ progress towards those goals must be followed. Pride in students work and the process must be instilled rather than focussing on grades alone. Goals should be evaluated and modified if necessary.

3 Varied Instruction methods
Different approaches and techniques should be employed to explain concepts. All learning styles (VARK) should be used to promote student engagement. As Stefan said in class, “A good teacher is one that doesn’t put you to sleep”

4 Varied approaches to assessing student understanding
-Diagnostic assessment to assess prior learning to ensure teaching is at an appropriate level.
-Questioning
To assess student understanding during class
Varied questions at different levels of the SOLO taxonomy
Should allow ‘thinking time’ before moving on
-Engage students to critically discuss their assignments and each others
-Project based assessment
-Peer-assessed presentations
-Peer and self evaluation
-Group tutorials
-Portfolios

5 Feedback
Feedback of student performance should be given and instruction should be adapted for each student’s needs if appropriate

6 Involvement of students in the learning process
Scaffolding learning by assessing student’s strengths and weaknesses and showing them how to proceed with the next step in their learning progress. Giving hints not answers and asking questions to help them find answers. Helping students to develop a series of learning strategies and skills.

Formative Assessmant in Practise / Barriers to Formative Assessment

Assessment for learning (aka Formative assessment)

We saw a video on successful mistakes in class. This was to emphasise the need to have no fear of failure and to encourage creativity. The relevance of this for our teaching is that a great deal of learning can be achieved through our mistakes and this is where formative feedback is vital.

The Benefits of Formative Assessment will include:
-better teaching
-better relationships with students
-more student engagement and motivation
-improved ‘learning skills’
-improved retention/attendance rates
-Improved academic achievement

Barriers to Formative Assessment

We were put into groups to discuss the barriers to formative assessment. Our group talked about

Time- marking written work and providing meaningful comments and giving one on one verbal feedback is time consuming

Student apprehension/fear of appearing foolish- Students may be reluctant to question or answer questions if they fear appearing foolish to their peers or lecturer

Motivation- of both student and teacher. If one or the other are not engaged or motivated then they will be reluctant to do any more than the bare minimum. Two of our group were college teachers and their experience was students became ‘Credit driven’ and wouldn’t engage with anything unless it ‘counted’.

Preconceptions- of students and teachers of what assessment is, was or should be and how formative assessment fits into that.

Perception of importance- If an assessment is not recorded or doesn’t count toward the summative grade then students may not try as hard thinking that it isn’t important. Therefore your assessment may be inaccurate showing a poorer result than may be true.

Educational Research and Formative Assessment

The 1966 Coleman report found that academic achievement was related to family background in the early years but going to school created greater disparity between black and white Americans. Expectations (of teachers and students) and quality of teaching are a greater predictor of academic success than race.

The hidden curriculum can dictate the potential performance of students. Even unintended messages given to students will affect their learning.

The Pygmalion effect (If you love the statue enough- it will come to life) was demonstrated in 1968 by Rosenthal and Jacobson when they arbitrarily labelled some pupils gifted and informed their teachers. By the end of the year these pupils did better than their peers.

Four factors may be responsible for this

-a warmer verbal and non-verbal environment created by the teacher

-greater input given to the pupils by the teacher

-greater opportunity for pupils to respond

-greater feedback given to the pupil/teacher won’t accept a low quality answer and has a greater expectation of the student.

Again- it seems quality of teaching and expectations of students and teachers are the most powerful force in predicting academic achievement.

VARK- Four learning styles have been described as Visual, Auditory, Read/Write and Kinesthetic. This can be problematic if people are pigeonholed into one style and limit themselves because of that. You can find your strengths and weaknesses and those of your students but it shouldn’t preclude yourself or your students from developing their non dominant learning styles. Rather it should encourage us to try to incorporate all learning styles into our teaching and assessment

Purpose of Assessment

The purpose of assessment

Why do we assess?

To certify a student is ready to progress to the next level or graduate

To classify and rank students’ performance

To improve students’ learning

To justify and ensure accountability

Feedback is required from teacher to student and from student to teacher.

There are 2 broad forms of assessment that have considerable crossover between each other:

Formative Assessment : This should be a frequent, interactive process of assessing students understanding to identify learning needs and adjust teaching. This includes all activities undertaken by students and teachers to provide feedback to modify teaching and learning.

Summative Assessment: This is the assessment at the end of a course or unit of study.

Formative Assessment

In lectures getting formative feedback is challenging. When asking students if they understand or if they are following, the difficulty lies in knowing whether the feedback you are getting is accurate.

People are reluctant to appear foolish by admitting they don’t understand or their culture or personality makes it difficult to challenge an authority figure. Rod, a colleague from a different department, shared a method he used in a maths class he was teaching. To assess how well his students were understanding he asked them a question and they had to write their answer on a sheet of paper and hold it up.

This allowed him to see their answers and modify his teaching accordingly. The students couldn't see each others answers so they weren't afraid of being wrong and being judged by their peers. Also it forced students to give an answer so they couldn't say 'yes I understand' when they didn't or remain silent when asked "Are there any questions?".

Rod said this went really well but he went through a ream of paper. I think this was a great idea and I wound like to use this in my lectures without needing an excessive amount of paper. If I laminated 3 or 4 sheets of paper with different colours, letters or numbers then I could ask multi choice questions and reuse the sheets.

Someone else suggested Quizdom which is an electronic version of the above. I am going to have to have a play with this.

Heart rate calculations

In a recent class there was a timetable mix up so many students were late. There was a component of the class that involved numeracy. Many students struggled with this whilst others found it quite easy and the class became talkative and off task. Students who finished early would have been bored and therefore talked and students who couldn’t understand may have got confused and therefore talked.

On reflection I can see there are ways I could have taught it better. Next time I will need to slow down and dedicate more time to that part of the lesson and not rush to get through the planned content. I will have to use more repetition of concepts and processes and go through more worked examples. I will have to find some engaging real world examples and use students’ data as an example.

A technique that I could try would be the folded line. The students would line up in order of how competent they feel they are after they have attempted the first activity. I would then fold the two ends of the line together bringing the most competent and the least competent students together. The students could then work in pairs to complete further exercises thereby utilising the expertise of the more ‘competent student’ to help the student who is struggling.

The students who finished early would have a task to carry on with and the students who were struggling would have a tutor. Hopefully the talking in class would then remain on task and we would get a better result.

Some of the students appeared to have the preconception that they wouldn’t be able to complete the numeracy aspect of the task before they even saw it. Samson, a colleague from a different department who teaches Maths told us he took over a class that was struggling and underachieving. He told them that he expects that they all will pass if they do what he tells them. He found that his expectations have positively changed the results his students are obtaining. Next time this is a technique I could also use.

Fear in the Classroom

We had a discussion in class using the 'Post-its ranking frame' technique as a starting point. We had to think about who had an impact on our learning and what did they do. Then we had to write words on a post-it and form a ranking frame within our group of most effective and least effective techniques.

Interestingly fear came out at the top and bottom of our ranking frame. The top 2 learning experiences involved fear of letting the teacher down , not knowing the answer and the consequences that would occur. This lead to excellent learning outcomes. So high expectations and demands from the teacher lead to academic success.

The worst learning experience also involved fear. The student was so scarred and intimidated by the teacher she wouldn't engage or ask questions so she failed.

The challenge for us as lecturers is to create a climate that demands excellence without scaring students and stopping their learning.

Some good tips were
- when asking if there are any questions if there is silence ask if there are any comments or what questions aren't they asking.
- Use hangman to encourage students to voice an answer
- Give the first letter of an answer to get students started.
- Ask the question and pause before naming someone to answer it. This forces everyone to actively think rather than just the person you name before asking the question.
- If someone can't answer then give them the option of phoning a friend
- Emailing students after a good class praising how well they went and reinforcing key points and good behaviours.

Design and Delivery Jigsaw Reading 2

Last night at the literacy class I found out that what I described in my previous post was called "Expert Groups". Students are divided into a group (eg colour-Pink, Green, Blue) then each member is also given a number. A larger reading is broken into parts and is assigned to each group. When your colour group has become expert in that one part then the class is broken into its number groups and they teach each other their expert topics.
This exercise utlises what we learnt about how people learn (see above). Hopefully instead of remembering 10% of what they read they will remember 70-95% of what they talk about with others and teach each other.

Design and Delivery Jigsaw reading

Kate set up a Jigsaw reading exercise for us in class. There was a piece of information for us to read but instead of everyone reading the whole paper we were broken into groups and told to feedback on one section to the class.

We used this technique in Exercise perscription with descriptions of program design. There were 5 concepts so each group took 1 and had to be ready to teach the rest of the class. The class was quite large so you could see there were some students doing the work and others that weren't engaged. To rectify this, the next time we used this activity the groups were told they would be broken up into twos to form new groups so that each member of the group was going to have to explain/teach their concept to their new group. This worked well to ensure every student was engaged.

Design and Delivery

We did a 'Quick Write' in our 'Design and Delivery' class. We were given 5 minutes to write as much as we could remember about a topic. This was a good tool to link concepts or previous classes together and to get formative feedback on your teaching and how much your students have retained and understood.

I tried this in my own teaching and found holes in student's knowledge that I was able to correct. This is a valuable tool that I will use again.

Another vartiation of this is the KWL. This stands for what do I KNOW, what do I WANT to know and what have I LEARNT. Formative feedback is given to add reflective practice and focus on student's needs.

Teaching inspirations

Teaching inspirations

When Pamela Tarulevicz spoke to us in class there were many aspects of her teaching that I could apply to my teaching.

She developed numerous resources that she recycled so that she could tailor an activity to whatever level her students were at.

She had many variations of the same handout that were progressively more difficult ie. Full info, matching, 1 side empty, different parts empty with partners with answers, models/jigsaws on laminated cards.

My colleague Scott said he used these techniques with his high school students and mentioned he used to put magnets on the back of his models/jigsaws so students could present their group’s work. I can see many opportunities to use this in my subject areas.

I was discussing with Scott that it seems good tertiary teaching appears to be more similar to what we used to do in primary and secondary school and very different from our experiences in university.

Other things that were discussed in class were role play and using emit to complete a circle of learning. I have been using emit more in this role. Also make sure you have lots of beginnings and endings, don’t talk too long and break up sessions with activities- individual, pairs and groups, and get students to feed back and teach, and have a standout example. The standout example Pamela used was when she turned the lights off to demonstrate a concept and she was able to refer back to this for the rest of the paper and the students would remember.

Pamela got us to compose a twitter to concisely summarise what we had learnt - this is a good technique that I can see my class could relate to. It also gives the lecturer feedback as to what level of understanding has been achieved.

Bjorn mentioned that he has been using many techniques we have learnt in class but many students were still not getting it. Techniques used included pairing up brighter students with those who were struggling, presenting the information in different ways, using activities and making it practical and applied. After discussion Pamela said keep up the good work and continue with repetition, repetition, repetition because even the most simple person can spell their name!

Other ideas that I can use in my teaching are using puzzlemaker.com and having one member of a pair act out the clues to solve the puzzle and using the postbox activity we did in class to generate questions for groups to quiz each other. Also Diane showed me an article where at med school they were using Plasticine to build anatomical models and using colouring in to show concepts.

After a recent lecture on levers and biomechanics I have been thinking of ways to make it more practical and applied. I came across a teachertube video using lego to create the 3 different types of levers. This would be a good activity to try next year.

Reflecting on other department’s lessons (2)

The social workers presentation contained a good learning spiral where the lesson linked to an activity on emit and then to her next lesson. This is great for repetition and for creating more beginnings and endings to facilitate learning. This is something that I think I can bring into my lessons. Instead of having discrete lectures having only one beginning and end I can have emit links and reviews of previous lectures before starting a new one. The other thing I liked about the social worker's presentation was the use of a high end solo question at the completion of the lesson to promote deeper thought.

When the accountants were questioned about the use of pair work versus group work they said they chose pair work so that both people were involved in the activity. With larger groups some students can slack off or be lost in the crowd. This is something I should consider when giving out tasks.

Reflecting on other department’s lessons

Being passionate about your content will inspire your students to follow. This is especially true with a subject that could be viewed as dry, difficult and/or boring. The builders were talking about maths but they could easily have been discussing students views about my subject-anatomy.

The builder’s also found their students had preconceived ideas around maths so to combat this they didn’t refer to their content as maths but rather called it ‘construction calculations’. They were also going to adapt their course so that the maths component was very practically oriented so the students saw the purpose and relevance of each step.

Another topic that came up was literacy and numeracy competence. The builders referred students that were struggling to a learning support person and held extra voluntary tutorials. We have started voluntary tutorials too but I think I will look into the learning support services to see how they can assist our students who are still struggling.

The other department’s presentations made use of lots of beginnings and endings,

individual, pair and group work

feedback/forward

practical examples

students presenting/teaching

Listening to the ideas from the other disciplines made me realise they way I learnt anatomy was not the best way to teach it. We were told information and expected to learn it. I can see the more a student has to think, act, discuss, present and engage the better and more affective the learning will be -as these 2 clippings from our previous class show.

Most people learn …
10%	of what they read
20%	of what they hear
30%	of what they see
50%	of what they see and hear
70%	of what they talk over with others
80%	of what they use and do in real life
95%	of what they teach someone else

I hear and I forget

I see and I remember

I do and I understand ’

Session 4 Why we do it- the thinking behind the learning

Our last class was a case study for how we should aim to set up a lesson.

We started with 'The Big Picture' so as students we could understand the reason/purpose of the session. I felt that this was important so as to encourage 'buy in' from the students. I know that if I don't feel something is important or if something is just waffle I wont engage. The rest of the lesson could then consist of bricks that filled in the big picture.

As a class we were broken into groups to brainstorm our experiances of good/bad learning/teaching then came back to report our results to the class. The lecturer then rephrased our answers to suit her lesson plan. Throughout the lesson we didn't spend too long on any one activity and there was a variety of activities to keep us engaged.

The lesson ended by creating a flow chart that summarised all we had learnt and pulled it together

MMLTE - Helen's story

Many issues came out of Helen's story.

Ensuring the correct person is chosen for the role. It seemed that Helen was too inexperienced and underqualified for the role she was given. Also much of her team resented her appointment. This is not condusive to a cohessive team. When Helen tried to gather information and advice her team gave poor or self serving advice.

Ensuring adequate information is handed over/obtained. The orgainsation Helen was working for lacked structure, direction and a strategy. Without this and evidence of performace she was left without information to base desisons on or a goal to work towards. She couldn't reflect on the effectiveness of previous decissions because there was no recording or reporting. This was not an example of a Learning Organisation. Therefore any sucess or failure would be more good luck than good management and no positive change can be actioned. No learning can be assimilated into the organisation's mode of action. Examples of information and evidence is shown above in the activity we did in class (see above)

An organisation will struggle to florish with poor leadership. Whatever the motivation for Helen's appointment- (short shirt and eye candy versus potential for professional development for a promising young employee versus spiteful insult to older staff), she was always going to struggle if her superior wasn't going to give her the support she needed to succeed. How are employees 'hearts and minds' going to be without supportive leadership and a common purpose?

Support Helen would have benefited greatly from a mentor but if the organisation doesn't have systems in place to gather evidance and learn from that information then her success and that of the organisation will still be limited. It may not be so suprising that her predesessor had a nervous breakdown.

80/20 Anatomy

Since my last post I have been thinking and discussing with colleagues how the 80/20 could be incorporated into my anatomy lessons. After my initial skepticism I can see how this can be easily and effectively achieved in so many ways if we were to utilise the interactive learning suite.

Teacher tube and You tube are great resources that would enable a student to break each concept down into small parts and replay it as many times as they need. In a lecture you can feel left behind and can miss things and lack the confidence to ask the concept to be repeated. Whereas with this digital version you can replay until you get it.

I have talked to the people at the LTC and am very impressed with all the interactive learning tools they are able to create that will assist in memorisation and understanding. They are creating some things for our classes now.

I have also found some animations, DVDs and software that comes with the latest versions of the text books that I once laboured over. These are real assets that I wish I could have had.

Also it doesn't take that much searching to find websites that are very useful too.

I can totally see how if we had access to these resources in a lab then I could set out tasks for students to complete and float around adding value and clarifying where needed.

I am excited by the prospect.

Design and Delivery

Here we go. First blog.

I'm new to teaching, this is my first year on the other side of the lecture hall. I've come from a physiotherapy background

I enjoyed Nuddy's class and the interactive nature of it and I can see how appropriate it would be to encourage independent thought, promote discussion and challenge ideas and concepts. Also the 80/20 concept that was discussed sounds great but I struggle to see how to apply it to some of my classes. My coleague Scott's sociology class would suit this model well but with anatomy a lot of content has to be delivered and memorised and dosen't lend itself to discussion and debate.

With a large group of students and a large quanitity of information the 'old school' lecture seems the most efficent way of transfering information for a black and white subject like anatomy. I remember hearing last night that only 4% of lecture information is retained but I remember as a student it was my responsibility to learn the information that was presented. This learning was done independently from the lecture.

The labs/tuts that follow up after a lecture are more condusive to 80/20 with group work and tasks that can be suppervised/facilitated by a lecturer. The classroom we were in last night would be brilliant for this.

One thing I enjoyed with Nuddy's discussion was the theory affecting practise and practise affecting theory (theory <---> practise). I can think of instances in my education as a physio where this was not followed. It will be my challenge as a lecturer to be relevant and remain open minded.

Regarding blogs and teaching: the dificulty I see with this medium is the risk of students being too susinct or waffleing on and on.......................and me having to sift through it. On that note I think I should sign off.