Conclusion Post

This conclusion takes me back to my original action plan which I set at the beginning of the module in my Educational Biography 1/6. At the time I hesitantly and unconfidently set 5 unambitious goals which I feel I have addressed with flying colours. Not only that, I have created many more goals along my journey of which I am very proud. The UK:PSFs dimensions and module learning outcomes where at the time quite intimidating. At the time I was concerned that my 5 actions did not venture deep enough into the true ethos of the PGCAP here at Salford. I quickly realised that I was on a focused, advanced and serious course with energy and ambition and I quickly became ‘caught up’ in its pace. This has helped transform and re-ignite my passion for education. These combining factors have enabled me to further develop my action plan in through my written reflection blog pages and posts and have benefited from addressing the UK: PSFs Dimensions and Module Learning Outcomes in  a much greater depth. I believe I have fully demonstrated the demands of  Descriptor 1 and have developed well within Descriptor 2. Dare I say that I have my eye on developing myself into the areas and requirements of Descriptor 3. Who Knows! I will find out in time:). To acknowledge and demonstrate my alignment to the UK: PSF I have placed evidence at the bottom of each page and used categories for my posts. Thanks to all on the PGCAP both tutors and fellow students, it has been a pleasure!

Professional Discussion post-thoughts

Here is my lego model that helps to describe my journey on the PGCAP. The gun is for shooting my demons along the way. The path gets more robust as I have stepped forward and my path has become more colourful and creative. And now I can see through the window of opportunity!. The discussion went well, I talked about elements of my good practice including my use of video to record sessions, my use of Captivate to produce short tutorial movies, and how I have used the PGCAP to bolster my teaching foundation and explore new and innovative teaching methods and become more creative in my delivery. I also talked of my increasing confidence with presenting, working in group’s and meeting with other University collegues. Also mentioned my enjoyment of partaking in the peer observations and how I did extra of these and wish to use them in the future. I also mentioned my impromtu presentation at the MELSIG event. I did not discuss e-portfolio’s  and the power of online networks to extend the classroom and improve my own practice via peer to peer discussion. There are other things I did not discuss that I wish I would have and I also feel that I could have gone into more depth with regard to teaching and learning benefits for the students.

Professional Discussion Preparation

Firstly I travel back to my original goals I set out in my action plan at the beginning of the LTHE module. Below are the goals and my current opinions on whether I have achieved these.

1. Develop a system of lesson planning that helps to organise and inform my delivery. Also devise a system where I can capture good and bad practice to inform me in the following academic year.

Have I achieved this? When the module began I envisaged that this would be some sort of ‘prescribed’, ‘dry’ word document prepared before a session. I am glad to say it has not turned into that. In my quest to improve efficiencies in my annually repeating teaching delivery I have begun to record my session delivery in a number of ways, voice (mp3), video, and screencasting using Adobe Captivate. This has enabled me to construct a body of recorded data which has a number of benefits, it can inform me of my previous practice the following year, can be used by students to develop, and has proved a valuable tool of self-reflection. The downside is that the recording are too long for the information to be truly useable. In the future I am thinking of capturing shorter summary information that could be collected as voice (mp3) which will be far more accessible from year to year. I also still wish to capture more of my delivery with full recordings for personal reflective practice.

2. Develop deeper subject knowledge in several identified areas. I aim to challenge and develop my confidence in presentation scenarios in particular to other staff members and adults.

I can safely say that over the last twelve weeks I have not developed my subject knowledge which is due to the added work of the teaching qualification which at this point in my life is very important so therefore am not too concerned by this, it is my intention though to identify areas and develop these. I hope that the next module from September 2012  can be used to develop a combination of both teaching practice and subject knowledge. The PGCAP is helping me to increase my confidence when speaking and presenting to staff members which has been achieved through ‘stepping forward’ more into challenging scenarios and testing myself this is evidenced at several points, acting as chair person for PGCAP group session, consciously being more vocal in group scenarios, taking more opportunities as they arise such as accepting an impromptu invitation to help present on screencasting at the University of Derby the following day at the MELSIG conference, something that I would have previously declined due to confidence. My success is due to through the PGCAP I have realised that we are not to be expected to be the fonts of all knowledge and more about being facilitators of a learning journey.

3. To increase my interest and use in learning technologies and further explore developing ideas to inform my own practice and from this develop possible research areas.

Increased involvement with learning technologies has been the most enjoyable part of my journey so far and hope this will form a strong part of my next PGCAP module.These are summarised below:

• A fuller understanding of the potential of E-portfolios as a networked learning tool has prompted me to promote this amongst students even though this will be done with the next cohort in September for the best impact and this will be used as a reflective learning tool as part of the Professional Framework module.

• An increasing appreciation of the power of still and moving image as a learning medium to increase the moveability of learning materials to computers, mobile devices etc. This is achieved through video, photographing and capturing screen movies.

4. To reach-out further to fully accommodate the wide range of students capabilities and help all to devise meaningful, fulfilling and achievable learning strategies to help them truly understand the meaning of life-long and life-wide learning.

This statement should actually be two. 1. Managing students differing capabilities and 2. helping them to appreciate the power of life-long and life-wide learning. And so I have not fully addressed this as I feel it will take many incremental steps to my working practices though I have loosely began to discuss to the students some of the topics and issues around learning theory to help them to understand that they are ‘organisers of their life course’ (Alheit in Illeris, 2009, 123).

With regard to 1. Managing students differing capabilities: One incremental step I did experiment with was to use short movie screen captures to help regulate class sessions. Students that were struggling with a particular part of the task were led to a short movie to describe how to step through the task whilst the high achievers could also led to a more demanding task to further their understanding. This enabled me to pay attention to specific parts of the session to help its flow. It did seem to work very well with students using and commenting ‘Can you do more of these types of movies’.

Milestones in my journey

Realisation of what it is like to be a student again.

The power of on-line networking to aid learning through the use of e-portfolios (blogs), social media to extend the classroom.

The power of self-relection, sharing reflections and peer to peer and peer to tutor conversations to help learning. (personal learning network)

Increase experimentation with learning technologies.

Increased confidence in presenting and working with my peers.

How effective observations can be.

Student opinion through feedback

Probing deeper with my own thoughts and the questions I ask to students to explore deeper learning.

Do-not need to be the font of all knowledge but need to facilitiate an engaging learning experience.

Illeris, K. (ed.) (2009) Contemporary Theories of Learning, Oxon:Routledge

Truck

Truck Project – Tutorials

Held project tutorials which gave me an opportunity to question the students about their experience of group work, 3D exploration as a learning tool, and their overall project experience so far. A number of interesting patterns are beginning to emerge within this module. I began the tutorial with going back to Week 01 and the conversation started:

Week 01 (GROUP) – Truck Cab Human Factors Analysis – Groups climbed on, interacted, used, tested, measured the truck cab to develop their working knowledge of the overall product. The student response was very positive and all students were excited about the project and enjoyed the first weeks task. Comments included ‘it was good to experience the physical object’, ‘we could test the cab features with different sizes of people’, ‘I have never been in one before but it was critical to experience the object to be confident enough to design one’, ‘its easier to visualise the problems’, ‘I now see the importance of thorough analysis when the opportunity is there’, ‘I should have analysed it more’, ‘we could share opinions and work together’, ‘it was a happy environment and atmosphere’, ‘real research’, ‘good to perform thorough analysis in a limited time’, ‘it forced us to consider human scale which is a fundamental part of the learning outcomes’.

Week 02 (MASS GROUP) – Space-frame build – this activity did not prove as fruitful and some students commented that there was not enough to do. In this activity 2 groups of about 5-6 students formed an action groups to make the frame. This activity took one full day.

Group work is a powerful learning tool, the students have worked in groups for 9 weeks and as a member of staff I thought that it was very risky to continue this way of working without letting them break off into individual working opportunities, I thought that the usual group problems would dominate and begin to make their experience un-enjoyable. It appears that my fear is actual unfounded. The students are appreciating the group work activities and through discussion the students have made the following comments, ‘I am not a group leader but my group colleagues give me confidence with my ideas’, ‘being in a group we could experience the tilt mechanism together, nobody knew anything before but we helped each other to understand’, ‘we help each other with our ideas’, ‘learning together’.

There is though negative comments made about group work as certain individuals have either not taken their responsibilities seriously enough or do not seem to enjoy group working and so it could be said that they are not benefiting from such activities. Comments include, ‘can work in team but would rather be on my own’, ‘easier not to have any challengers’, ‘no group work in design A-level so is new within my design education’, ‘not seen many of my group’.

Working in 3-D both interactive and build. There appears to be something quite powerful happening when students explore and build 3-D situations. They have had very positive experiences so far, ‘I am not very confident with making but working with others is giving me confidence’, ’3-D investigation enables me to make things work’, ‘I now realise that I can see resolve design issues in 3D much quicker’, ‘It  gives me a better understanding’, ‘I can understand detail and mechanisms in depth’. They also appear to be absorbed in 3D activity in a deeper more engaged way.

Student working on 3D problems

Coming weeks: Over coming weeks it is the intention to make groups start to work with other groups to enable them to address any problems that will generate as the different parts of the new design come together this should again offer interesting insights into group working. There will also be another intense build session where teams will build the design into the space frame. My thoughts are changing on the power of group work as a learning tool and using 3D problems to engage the learner, 3D problem based learning!

Food for thought:

• Monday AM staff student briefing sessions each week to set weekly individual and group plans.
• Before we attempt to work in groups a session on ‘what it means to work in groups’ should be conducted.
• How can I get working in 2-D to be as engaging as working in 3-D.

My Truck Story continues!

Any Ideas Why the Bird sits on the front of the kettle? It does have a functional requirement that is to whistle when the water is boiled but from an aesthetical meaning point of view the students deduced that the whistleing bird was reminiscent of the 3D figures that adorn luxury cars like Bentley and Rolls Royce and therefore suggesting that this kettle is a status object. The handle developed discussions around the fun nature of colourful wire beads maze that we played with as children.  These and further finding were presented as a group to the rest of the class.

Following Weeks 02 and 03

Photos: http://s1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb411/despard1974/

Standing back from the activities of weeks 2 and 3 I feel the project has lost some of its pace. In a PBL scenario how do the staff members ensure that energy is consistant from week to week? In this scenario the teacher definetley becomes the facilitator. In weeks 2 and 3 the project began to ask the students to make a replica truck cab based on measurements from week 1. Photos and movie can be found above. This group task enabled them to construct their group area scenario as each group has the task to design different areas of the cab, for instance getting in, sleep area, driver space etc. This making activity created a vibrant, and fun learning space though certain students backed off completley and watched whilst others really embraced the challenge. This was down to some students being more confident with wood construction and the use of saws and other tools. As Facilitator I found that it was important to set mini tasks for group members participating less though feel that next year students need to do a full separate session on the importance of group working inspired by Moon’s studies on Making Groups Work.

The importance of making.

Making is an essential and pleasurable part of the subject of design and often a reason for studying the subject. ‘Making’ steps with the learner through their studies beginning with exploring the basics of materials  such as cardboard, foam, wood and metal. A designer’s ‘mind’s eye’ can work in 3-D, rotating, adding, subracting but limit’s are soon found with complex constructions. This is where making is the only way to realise the vision. So we could say that designers are good at making, and should form an essential part of their learning process, this must begin at a basic level and develop into something that gives designers appreciation from others. It becomes clear that making explores new learning channels for the learners mind. Press and Cusworth (1996) state ‘Craft education appears to impart new styles of thinking, acting and problem solving to its students, which may be more appropriate than traditional learning systems, in our changing culture’. Moving away from pedalogical benefits, Gauntlett (2011) suggests the importance of making as a tool for engaging and a networking the world, ‘making is connecting because through making things and sharing them in the world, we increase our engagement and connection with our social and physical environments’. So we can see that making is important to learning. Craft (2007) talks about creativity in education with children and a technique that uses ‘possibility thinking’, ‘At its most fundamental, it involves the posing, in multiple ways, of the question ‘What if?’ – and therefore involves the shift from ‘what is this and what does it do?’ to ‘What can I do with this?’ and thus has implicit within it, the engagement of learners with what the CLASP team call ‘engagement with problems’ (Jeffrey, 2005 cited in Craft 2007, 3).

Install more reflection in the student journey!

This should take place at the beginning of the year. Making is connecting

The project after week 03 is interupted by easter for 3 weeks before we pick up from week 4 after easter, so I now have time to plan for week 4 to ensure I help the students focus on the project. I plan to do this in three ways:

1. Focused project individual tutorials to ensure they understand where they are at and what there targets are.

2. Clear the studio wall  as to create an atmosphere that ‘work need to be done’ to fill the wall.

3. 3 Dimensional model making of design proposals

References

Alvarado, A.E. (2003) Inquiry-based learning using everday objects . Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

Race, P. (2009) The Lecturer’s Toolkit: A practical guide to assesment, learning and teaching. (3rd ed.). Oxon: Routledge.

Gauntlett, D. (2011) Making is Connecting. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Craft, A.; Cremin, T.; Burnard, P. and Chappell, K. (2007). Developing creative learning through possibility thinking with children aged 3-7. In: Craft, A.; Cremin, T. and Burnard, P. eds. Creative Learning 3-11 and How We Document It. London, UK: Trentham, available at http://oro.open.ac.uk/12952/2/6F6D71D8.pdf [accessed 19 May 12]

Action Learning Set Presentation on Learning Theories

Our task was to create a story around a learning theory to make it more memorable and enable your peers to make connections with their own experiences. ‘Storytelling is recognised as a valuable tool in higher education for sharing information, developing own understanding, reflecting and learning, carrying out research and connecting with others in a more memorable way that captures the holistic lived experience’ (Moon, 2010 cited in Blackboard-Core Module-Wiki). We presented our story as a News Flash to the PGCAP, Corejan12 cohort on Thursday March 15th. I think the audience liked it and it looks as though our group gamble paid off. I think we were lucky we had Liz Peters in our learning set who is a very accomplished presenter and she managed to make us look like experts in her exciting newsflash. The Newsflash can be seen here.

The reading of the theories was quite intense, taking a few reads of the chapter to fully understand and make a summary that would be quick and snappy for quite a heavy subject. I think we succesfully acheived this and made the 14 minute newsflash easy to follow and easy to take something away from watching it. My section starts at 4:51 into the newsflash. I hope you enjoy. Thanks again Liz! We salute you!

Product Design Student’s New Toy

We have just launched the next module to the student’s on the Product Design course here at The University of Salford. Myself and Alex Williams want to engage the students on a deeper level and have responded with this bold project. My intention is to use the module as a case study over coming weeks as part of my PGCAP.

More images available here: http://s1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb411/despard1974/

The students will be conducting a thorough ergonomic and human factors analysis on the on this sleeper cab over the next week in their allocated groups. They will then construct a space frame of the cab in the studio that will be used to design and test elements of the cab.

First Few Days

User interaction analysis, ergonomic studies, human factors analysis have all taken place in the first few days. The students are now armed with an increasing depth of data to use as the module develops.  As I reflect on the first few days of the project I ask myself what type of learning is happening, surface and deep learning? At the moment it appears surface learning is taking place as recording of data is the main activity through taking photographs and recording distance measurements this is low down the pyramid on ‘Bloom’s Taxonomy’ and verbs like list, and name are apparent. Further up Blooms Taxonomy but still low down we are using verbs such as discuss (group work) and sketch. I do anticipate that after a few more days we will be exploring more verbs and progressively climbing the pyramid, but we will see!. I must say though that I prefer ‘Anderson and Krathwohl revision The Cognitive Domain‘ as this uses words of instant recognition to myself in my field of Design headings such as creating, evaluating, and analysing. The Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at Iowa State University (2011) provides an excellent graphic representation on how these two taxonomies can be used together to generate lesson objectives.

Chrissi Nerantzi, our tutor has suggested that this type of learning could be object-based learning and has refered me to a book titled Inquiry-based learning using everday objects. ‘The objects are the central component of the lesson and the overall unit of study’. (Alvarado, 2003). As I read further the learning theory appears to be focused on a group of students analysing an object such as ocean organisms and asking questions and answering them to slowly reveal key information such as where in the ocean does the organism live?, what does it eat?, why does it have a thick shell? etc. It is clear that this theory encourages the students to go deeper into the object than they would in general day to day activities, I find this is a very important skill to have in my subject Design and the teaching team are continually encouraging depth to the students work. The object acts as the catalyst for learning. The Truck in our module does have similarities to the ocean organism scenario, as discussed above the students first task is to research and question the existing object asking questions such as, Is this handle comfortable to use? How do I gain access to the engine? etc these questions are answered by the actvity of doing by getting into the truck and experiencing the product as an experience. So both examples use questioning, inquiry and investigation, so both are object based learning, the Design students are learning how to investigate how a product is used and interacted with by asking questions, revealing answers which then informs the rest of their module whilst the Biology students do the same. There are though a number of diffences but this is more due to the differing subject styles and demands rather than one not being object based, the differences i have observed are:

1. When we ask where do the students go next with this new found information? The Design students use this information as a creative catalyst to produce new possibilities whilst the Biology students use the information to inform how to reveal what other organisms do.

2. It appears that the Biology learning scenario is one of many similar investigations conducted in the module whilst the Design learning scenario is a one off preparation to act as a basis for the module.

3. The Biology scenario appears to demand that the students operate at a deeper level sooner in the activity whilst in the design scenario the depth of learning comes later.

I have though conducted a series of sessions where the task came very close to the description of the Biology scenario. In this 2 week task each group of students had a product to study in depth asking questions about the products visual language, Why is the body of the product made of metal? Why is there a plastic bird on the spout? Why is the product shaped the way it is? etc. Due to reflection I would say that it was one of my most memorable series of lessons but I have not done it for a few years now! One of the product’s studied is below, may I ask you to observe the product and ask yourself the question why is the bird used and positioned on the kettle?

References

Alvarado. A.E. (2003), Inquiry-based learning using everday objects . Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press