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.