UCLan Journal of Pedagogic Research provides an opportunity to raise the profile of research into your learning and teaching practice and processes. It aims to enhance the theoretical understanding of teaching and learning at UCLan. ISSN- 2048-8815
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Innovation: Can it be an on-the-spot idea or must it be pre-planned?
This research investigates the value of innovation; why we do it and, most significantly, how we do it. Research and teaching practice would inevitably suggest that a lesson must be planned – and this is not something with which we disagree. However, what this research aims to discover is, whether we can be innovative within a session without it having been fully pre-planned. Can an ‘on the spot’ idea be as successful as something which is planned days or weeks before the session? Our research was carried out within UCLan. The pre-planned innovation was utilised in the Lancashire Law School (LLS) where students were required to ‘peer mark’ for a mock assignment at foundation level. This innovation asked students to engage with the marking criteria and apply it effectively to their colleague’s presentations. The reaction by students from this ‘experiment’ was encouraging. Feedback suggested that the students had a better understanding of the assessment criteria and, perhaps more importantly, although unintentional, an increased level of trust between student and tutor. We used what we shall term an ‘on the spot’ innovation in the Lancashire Business School (LBS). This asked students of systems’ development to engage with the diagramming techniques often used by systems’ analysts. The innovation took place on the whiteboard at the front of the room and students were invited to add one relationship (connection) at a time. The tutor photographed each step and a PowerPoint presentation was made using each relationship to build the finished diagram. This was annotated and circulated to all students. Both innovative teaching techniques were effective in terms of the outcomes experienced by all participants. This research will identify that innovative teaching techniques do not need to be a wholly and succinctly pre-planned activity. Innovation within teaching strategies can be both a thought out process, and a more ad-hoc idea.
An Integrated Coaching Model for the Student and Graduate Entrepreneurial Learning Environment
This empirical research project was undertaken following a period of study on a Post Graduate Certificate in Education ‘Coaching for Organisational Performance’ at the University of Central Lancashire. The purpose was to establish the most appropriate and effective combination of coaching and mentoring for use with student and graduate nascent entrepreneurs at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). Firstly, a literature review was undertaken to identify whether there is a common understanding of key differences between coaching and mentoring and how they are used by entrepreneurial support organisations. Secondly, written records including scripts, reflections and mind maps from a sample of individual coaching/mentoring sessions with students and graduates were reviewed. Thirdly, the development of diagrams and visual models aided a combination of intensive problem solving and reflection on research findings, previous mentoring and coaching experience with student nascent entrepreneurs. The main outcomes included generation of a number of innovative ideas for extra-curricular enterprise programme development and an Integrated Coaching Model for the UCLan student and graduate entrepreneurial learning environment. A proposal for integration of the model into entrepreneurial teaching and learning activities and a shift of emphasis from a content-driven to a more process-driven programme was prepared.
Nostalgia as truth, self preservation or identity formation? – Initial accounts from professional footballers in education.
This paper provides an update on research being undertaking as part of a Professional Doctorate in Education at UCLan. In particular, it discusses a potential theme that may be emerging from the early phases of data analysis. Primarily, the aim of the research is to explore attitudes towards, and perceptions of learning that players aged 16-18 in a Premier League football club display. The first phase of the research focussed on players’ experiences at high school and an initial thematic analysis of one of four focus groups highlighted the emergence of a potential area of interest. Specifically, there appears to be evidence of strong nostalgic recollections from some of the players based upon their past experiences of school. Consequently, it is suggested that this may be due to players becoming anxious as a result of being embedded in the notoriously uncertain and ambiguous environment of professional football. At the time of the focus group the players were waiting on the club to make to a decision about whether they would be offered contract extensions. It is also inferred that the players’ nostalgia could be an attempt to form a shared social identity based upon the machismo stereotypes apparent in elite football. The potential consequences of such a phenomenon are discussed.
Retention in Mathematics students: problems and possible approaches
This article describes and analyses the approach adopted by the Mathematics course team in UCLan to improve retention in the first year mathematics students. After introducing the key aspects of the skills required by a mathematics student and the teaching methods considered in the past to improve such skills, the UCLan method is outlined. Such method is based on a mixture of formative and summative assignments, spread throughout the year. A case study allows to statistically confirm the effectiveness of such method. We conclude the article outlining possible improvements and drawbacks.
“Who Cares if I Care?” Facilitating Learning in Higher Education
Being an academic practitioner for almost three decades, I am continuously enhancing my self-awareness, and developing strategies for addressing my, and student behaviour in order to eliminate the barriers to learning. By leveraging this awareness, I have focused on the facilitation of student engagement and learning, in order to create a caring and respectful learning environment. The paper explores the literature related to the “caring” individual and behaviours which can either enhance or hinder student engagement during student/teacher interactions. By unpacking the inherent complexities in order to identify strategies that promote pedagogical care, a reflective narrative is provided on the personal learning gained while investigating this integral aspect of the student experience. Finally, and, in an attempt to bridge the perceived gap, concluding thoughts and implications provide a synthesis between the analysis and the UK., Professional Standards Framework.
The Benefits of Delivering Formative Feedback via Video-Casts
Universities face the challenge of offering high quality feedback in a time- and cost-efficient manner. In this context, the use of eLearning technologies offers a number of potential advantages to both the tutor and student. For example, eLearning technologies may allow students to fully engage with their studies whilst maintaining other responsibilities (such as childcare or paid employment). The mixed methods study explored both student and tutor experiences of using video-casts (via the eLearning technology, Adobe Connect) for personalised formative feedback. Twenty four final-year students were offered the opportunity to receive video-cast feedback on their project drafts alongside more traditional written and face-to-face feedback. The experiences of eighteen students and the reflections of their tutors are reported here. In summary, students found video-cast feedback to be easy to access, clear, and motivational. Tutors reported that the video-cast feedback was easy to record, and reduced workload. Specifically, subsequent meetings were more focused and further follow-up meetings were unnecessary.
DEVELOPING TEACHING MATERIAL FROM A RESEARCH PROJECT: THE TUTOR‟S GUIDE
It is rightly argued that pedagogic research is crucial in underpinning the practice and development of teaching in the HE sector. The focus of this article, as part of thatendeavour, is a reflection on how discipline-based research and its findings can be made accessible for other academics to utilise in their teaching. The aim of the project was, through the dissemination of empirical research, to provide business and management students with a greater understanding of both the theoretical underpinning of but also practical solutions to managing workplace conflict. To that end the discussion highlights the potential efficacy of developing a tutor manual to accompany a research report to share as common resources online.
International Electronic Link-Up to Promote Interaction in Foreign Language
For two academic years, students of French at UCLan and students of English at the IUT (University Institute of Technology) in Lannion have taken part in an electronic exchange programme designed to promote and extend the practice of their linguistic skills. In the year under review here, students interacted with each other on a one-to-one basis, using any form of electronic communication available to them. There were also several group sessions set up via Skype or video-conferencing. The current paper seeks to explore the implementation of such an electronic exchange from the English students’ perspective, its role in encouraging interaction and Its advantages and disadvantages from the students’ and the lecturers’ point of view. Findings will serve to further develop and enhance the project in future years and provide guidance for other practitioners.
Building Future Research Capacity In Student Healthcare Practitioners Through Research-Informed-Teaching.
The Research-Informed-Teaching (RIT) agenda aims to broaden the scope of learning and teaching within higher education (Jenkins, Healey and Zetter, 2007). This may encompass raising students’ awareness of the research environment and knowledge base relevant to their discipline, developing advanced skills in critical appraisal of published research, engaging active researchers in the delivery of teaching, plus facilitating students’ direct experience of research processes and conduct. It may be anticipated that that RIT is already intrinsic to the nature of professional education in healthcare, where Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) is a now a fundamental requirement of professional regulation (Health and Care Professions’ Council (2014). However frameworks of RIT are not necessarily sufficiently defined to promote the required depth of critical reflection on clinical practice (Dey, Downe, Milston, Roddam and Hart, 2009).
Enhancing Engagement With Mandatory Modules: Forensic Science Students And Learning The Law
This article investigates the lack of engagement which forensic science students have demonstrated with seminars in law, taught by the author at the University of Central Lancashire. With the students’ seminar performance accounting for 25 per cent of their overall module grade, the second year undergraduate module is a requisite for their course and covers the foundations of criminal and civil law as well as the role and scope of forensic science within the legal system. In exploring this issue and its implications for the student experience and assessment, motivational theories and literature, proposals for more creative teaching practices and ideas for curriculum development are discussed, in the hope that feasible solutions can be formulated to aid the planning of engaging lessons for this module in future academic years and improve the learning and teaching experience for both students and lecturers of law-science, interdisciplinary or requisite modules.
Free Coffee and Cake! A Retention Initiative to Promote First Year Business School Students’ Social Interaction With Their Peers And Staff.
This paper discusses the findings from a small case study which involved implementing a social initiative with year 1 students on retention ‘hotspot’ programmes in the Business School. Financed by the internal TLA fund, this initiative involved running four coffee and cake events over an academic year specifically for students on the hotspot programmes. The purpose of these events was to facilitate student interaction with other students and lecturers in the department, to promote social engagement, connectedness to the department and feelings of belonging. With increasing tuition fees and the tendency for students to live off campus, many students attend only formal timetabled teaching events and do not engage in additional activities. Arguably therefore, not all students fully connect to the university or department, thus affecting their feelings of belonging. A sense of belonging appears repeatedly in the literature as contributing towards student retention. Students and staff took part in an evaluation of the coffee and cake events in April 2012 and this paper discusses the findings. Results showed that the coffee and cake events contributed towards students’ feelings of belonging and made students feel valued. In particular, students particularly benefited from the liaisons with staff in a more relaxed, non-teaching environment.
WHAT EFFECT DOES E-LEARNING HAVE ON THE STUDENT LEARNING EXPERIENCE?
The landscape for Higher Education, within the UK, is changing and educational institutions are evolving in order to respond to new challenges. Budgets have been reduced which has resulted in colleges and universities having to re-look at the way their programmes are being delivered.E-learning has become a means of empowering and engaging learners, and enabling the teacher to become an active innovator of new practices and techniques (JISC, 2011). The rationale for this project was to establish whether recently implemented e-learning technology into a traditional course had an effect on the learner experience in terms of motivation, retention and achievement.This empirical research was conducted within a University Centre in a large Further Education College in the North of England and involved twenty new learners enrolled on the new Assessor Award. A variety of research methods were used such as questionnaires (pre and post), focus groups, semi-structured interviews, retention and achievement figures. This small-scale research project aimed to gain insight into learners’ perceptions of learning on-line, and to provide evidence of whether technology affected their learning experience, by evaluating their learning journey.It was found that e-learning had a mainly positive effect on student learning and both retention and achievement targets were exceeded. It was also found that in order for effective on-line courses to be developed, teachers must be given time and training to meet both the needs of their college and learners.
PODCAST OR PROSE? FEEDBACK ON MY FEEDBACK
This article details a study into using podcasts (digitally recorded sound files – in this instance with visuals) as an alternative medium in which to provide students from a variety of academic disciplines with formative and summative feedback on their assessments for a ten credit online work based learning module. The study aims to identify whether students prefer podcasts to prose, and to disseminate the findings to academics interested in alternatives to traditional written feedback. It is suggested that podcasts are congruent with a wholly online learning experience but offer the opportunity for a more personalised approach from a tutor they would usually not meet. In addition it may benefit students who learn best by visual and/or auditory means and podcasts may, therefore, enhance students’ engagement with the feedback provided.
Peer assessment was used to increase achievement of Minimum/Aspirational Target Grades and potential Value Added Scores as learners were asked to grade exemplar pieces of an upcoming assignment. Assessment criteria, grading grids and definitions of the assessment verbs were available in completing this before being expected to submit their own version of the same assignment three weeks later. Following submission, data were collected via questionnaires, focus group meetings, unit front sheet comments and their own assessment grade. The findings demonstrated that this process was beneficial, supporting learners in achieving better grades, understanding the assessment process and developing assignment writing skills.
PRESENTATIONS: WHAT’S STOPPING FE STUDENTS FROM ENGAGING WITH THEM?
With this research, it was important that a way of controlling behaviour in class was found that could be used in future years. The research focussed on developing new methods of teaching presentation skills and measuring the change in behaviour during class. Five new methods were developed to teach the skills needed by the students and behaviour was monitored using a form to track improvements on a weekly basis. Observations and interviews were used to gauge student feedback.The research found that most of the students were open to doing presentations but, the changes did not suit the group as a whole. It also showed that keeping the students busy in class has a positive effect on behaviour. The student approach to the presentations was professional, but affected by peer pressure. This showed itself in the lack of original approaches displayed in the presentations. Finally, the students are likely to keep producing unoriginal presentations until the peer pressure can be overcome.Five conclusions were identified from the results of research and these fed into ways of improving the authors practice. It was concluded that using a buddy system to support students would be useful, while engaging students in the design of their course would also reap benefits. Further conclusions were made with regards to overlooking possible trends in the research and understanding the journey that the students will be taken on. The last conclusion focussed on the tutor’s role in the classroom and the fact that they are there to protect their students from bad behaviour in the classroom.
The aim of the Action Research was to establish whether learners would grasp Maths concepts better by using a learning tree, illustrating the building blocks in the process.There are links with scaffold learning (Bruner 1967), where learners build upon knowledge in small chunks to develop their knowledge and skills.Hairdressing learners studying level 1 Maths pinpointed their achievements on a model of a tree. The main stem had various branches representing a different topic of Maths. I thought by allowing the learners to see their progress visually this may enhance their enjoyment, promoting more engagement and having an effect on success rates. The ultimate result was to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom, whilst challenging learner’s personal constructs about themselves.
CONSTRUCTING KNOWLEDGE: A PEDAGOGICAL EVALUATION OF DESIGN-BASED LEARNING.
In relation to architectural education this article introduces and discusses design-based learning. It outlines key characteristics and pedagogic theories that support this style of teaching and analyses how students acquire subject specific knowledge as well as key transferable employability and life-long learning skills.
REPROGRAMMING 1ST YEAR STUDENTS: AN ACTION RESEARCH CASE STUDY
This paper depicts a large-scale intervention within a 1st year Computing undergraduate university cohort. The course is a full 20 credit, Level 4 module comprising of 120 1st years studying at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). The students are from all manner of academic backgrounds. Many have studied either Computing or IT at school or college, whilst others have not undertaken any previous or formal qualifications in the subject. An Action Research study was organised and the content of the first module was redesigned to take students through a challenging (yet highly-scaffolded) project during the first four teaching weeks. This acted as an introduction to university life and the course in general. The rest of the modules followed on after this initial module finished, and was delivered in the more traditional long and thin mode. The motivation for this study was to improve the student experience generally – whilst specifically targeting issues surrounding student engagement and retention in the 1st year. Additional aims were also to help students make the transition from school to University so that they will be better prepared to enter the 2nd year of their degree. Delivering the first module as a block enabled a small team of staff to work closely with students, building strong relationships at the start of their degree. This meant that students could be carefully monitored and supported at this crucial time. The implementation of the 4WC has shown an improvement in student marks and student retention. The response to this intervention has shown that students have been enthused by the early results and are clearer about what they are going to study in depth later on. Consequently, students are more committed to the course, and retention rates have improved quite dramatically. In addition, students should be able to make better-informed choices about their future course options, having had exposure to the products on some of the different courses.
What does the next generation of professional journalists need? Multimedia skills aside, the core requirements are employability and creativity. The challenge lies in incorporating these into an academic qualification. The Masters in Magazine Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) offers its postgraduate students the option of researching, creating and critiquing individual, original 68-page magazines. In partnership with academic assessors, industry editors and publishers blind second mark the students’ magazine projects according to set criteria. Experts thus assess creativity within an academic framework and potential employers are provided with a professional seal on a coursework showcase of students’ abilities.
Equipping TESOL Trainees to Teach Through Discourse
It has long been argued that Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL teachers) should view language at the level of discourse, that is, beyond the level of the sentence. Despite this, many pre-service training courses do not place much emphasis on such a view of language and this can result in trainees who try to avoid teaching grammar, overemphasize form or, crucially, undervalue the communicative nature of language as discourse. This article outlines these issues before reporting on a change to the pedagogy of an undergraduate training programme which has attempted to remedy this.
Lorraine Foreman-Peck and Christopher Winch (2010) Using Educational Research to Inform Practice: A Practical Guide to Practitioner Research in Universities and Colleges
Delivering, Assessing and Providing Feedback for Fieldwork Modules: A Case Study from Archaeology
In this paper we highlight some of the issues surrounding the delivery of fieldwork modules, using archaeological excavation as an example. There are a whole range of issues surrounding the assessment of fieldwork-based modules, and here we detail approaches we have adopted to ensure consistent delivery and assessment methods. In particular, we have written and launched a web resource which can be used to assist with both the delivery and assessment of fieldwork. Finally, we discuss issues surrounding feedback, and suggest a method for enhancing students’ feedback on field-based modules.
Improving Undergraduate Student Experience and Retention: Development of An Activity-Based Research Teaching Package
A positive student education experience and student retention on course are key issues in quality post compulsory education delivery. Modules identified as having higher refer and attrition rates undergo a review of teaching and assessment methods. This can be the case with research methods studies and reasons reported include reticence about a new subject area and a reluctance to engage with the research process. This is often a subject area that might have not been studied by students progressing on from Foundation Degrees to a top-up degree. A review of perceptions of top-up degree students as part of a learning review within their programme of study identified that they did not feel that knowledge of research methods was integral to the value of their course This paper reports on an action research project regarding an intervention with students studying research methods at levels 3 and 4. Its aim was to enhance the student learning experience about research methods. The intervention was a tutor–led activity-based model for teaching research methods. The findings were that students found activity-led sessions supported a sense of learning progression and a better engagement with the learning outcomes and also earlier engagement with the assessment process.
Enhancing the Undergraduate Research Experience
The inter-relationship between teaching and research is one of the defining features of Higher Education and the demand for the integration of teaching and research has increased further in recent years...
Teacher-Student Talk in the One to One Writing Conference: Who Talks More and Why?
The one to one writing conference between a teacher and student is often viewed as an ideal space for student autonomy. Yet conferences are also instances of 'institutional talk', which are characterised by asymmetry in the relative power each participant enjoys during the interaction and the discursive devices they are able to employ. Much of the literature on conferences has been based on native speakers, yet with an increasingly internationalised populace within UK higher education, there is a need to evaluate international student autonomy, who may face greater challenges due to unfamiliarity with the genre and their spoken linguistic proficiency. This paper derives from an on-going doctoral study that seeks to examine the power relations that occur within the second language writing conference between a teacher and an international student on an International Foundation programme at UCLAN. This study will report on a first step that was taken in measuring conference interaction from a quantitative perspective and relating it to the contextual factors of institutional role and participant beliefs. The findings suggest that teachers dominate the conference interaction in terms of words spoken, turns used and average length of turns. This conversational dominance seems related to the defined roles the institution assigns each participant and the beliefs they carry into the conferences.
Unpicking The Myth Of “The Test”: Using Masters’ Level Investigations To Develop Trainees Teachers’ Understanding Of Effective Assessment For Learning
‘How long are we meant to be using that **** thing – two stars and a wish?’ ‘Er….I think it’s meant to be forever, mate.’ (overheard in a secondary school staffroom)