Social media, the democratisation of knowledge and physiotherapy. Can they play nice together?

Last week I attended a teaching and learning colloquium at Granger Bay, near the Waterfront. It was organised to showcase some of the teaching practices being used at the 4 teaching institutions in the Western Cape. I was fortunate to be invited to present one of the keynotes on Friday morning and since I’ve been thinking about PLE’s lately, that was the focus of my talk. Below you can see the graphical notes taken by Ian Barbour of the 2 keynotes of the conference.

Here are my notes from the 2 days.

Innovation through foundational provision and extended programmes: future trends, threats and opportunities (Professor Ian Scott)

It can’t go on with us doing “more of the same”.

Higher education is elitist, with a tiny proportion of the population being recycled through the system.

We are moving towards mass participation, with all the associated problems that this brings

Innovation = taking new approaches, doing things differently from the mainstream (creative solutions to problems)

The main difference between HEI that do well and those that don’t, is the attention of the institution (Carey, 2008). There is effort and professional accountability, systemic enquiry and research

Success = developing strong foundations and completing the qualification well. Not just about access. It’s dependant on complex issues e.g. teaching and learning approach, affective support, material resources

Future challenges in academic development:

• Meeting the needs of the majority
• Low participation and racially skewed
• Poor and skewed graduation rate after 5 years = 30%
• Under 5% of black youth succeeding in HE (unsustainable)
• Makes little sense to continue on our current path, given the above stats

Who should extended programmes serve:

• Mainstream students who are now failing or are dropping out for learning-related reasons
• The majority of students who are not graduating in regulation time
• But EP’s are reaching less than 15% of the intake, even though it’s a majority need (how can we justify the status quo?)

What can be done?

• Extend the reach of EP’s in their present form, with a focus on improvement?
• Move to a flexible curriculum framework with a 4 year degree as the core?
• Can foundational provision be successful with limited student number, and if so, what are the limits?
• How does this sit with the need for expanding the programmes?

If success is dependent on small numbers, we have a big problem

Institutional differentiation: Looked at stratifying HEI’s, but who would end up in the “bottom” levels. Moved towards “reconfiguring the institutional landscape” through mergers. But there is a danger of institutions losing their way, and not sticking to their mission. Is this a distraction from the central goal of producing more, good graduates?

Implications

Will differentiation lead to further polarisation of the student intake in terms of educational achievement? Because educational achievement is not potential, and is still polarised along racial, socio-economic lines.

Will there be pressure to remove EP’s from “research” universities? → which will result in less funding and educationally disadvantaged institutions becoming the “new mainstream”

Are these bad things?

To what extent can structural change, in itself, make a difference? Are there any alternatives?

Building student confidence through a class conference in an extended curriculum programme (Maryke Meerkotter)

Some students are resistant to the concept of evolution (in biology)!

Initially, 45 students split into groups and given topics for poster presentation. But it was too open.

Next year had more specific guidelines, with more focused topic (53 students), and individual talks about their own poster

This year, conference was very specific. 87 students, so much more structure was needed i.e. specific mammals were assigned to individual students. Questions had to be answered to prevent cut and paste.

Initial intent:

• Relieve lecture stress
• Students to engage with “irrelevant” content
• Raise awareness of importance of course content
• Allowed students to take ownership of the content, especially when assigned individual animals
• Practice oral presentation
• Exposed to poster making skills
• To have fun trying something new

Initial scepticism and advice:

• Doubt that it would succeed
• Too much unnecessary work
• Needs a good relationship with class, as lecturer should be confident that students can perform
• Some envisioned chaos, so needed clear guidelines
• Some advised no rewards, but students appreciated being acknowledged

Setting guidelines:

• Holiday assignment
• Written and verbal communication of assignment tasks
• Guidelines about poster and oral presentations
• “Computer literacy” = Powerpoint
• Specific questions needed to answer in poster and presentation
• Lecturer created a poster as an example, in subsequent years take the best examples of previous years
• Provided rubrics for evaluation
• Minimum requirements for posters, and not part of evaluation, so students who could afford more weren’t advantaged

Evaluation:

• Oral presentations marked by lecturer and teaching assistant (reliability)
• Audience tested at the end of each session (to ensure attendance of non-presenting students)
• Posters were peer marked, using similar content as the marking group (each student marked 3 other posters anonymously)

Administration:

• Assignment of topics
• Find space for posters to be displayed
• Due dates for posters to be mounted
• Loading of oral presentations prior to talks (use email, caution with flash drives, time constraints)
• Lecturer needs to listen and mark at the same time
• Students were assigned posters to mark to avoid students marking their friends work

Empowers students to take ownership of course content, especially the “boring” courses. Recommended for small classes

Introducing concept mapping as a learning tool in Life Sciences (Suzanne Short and Judith Jurgens)

A lot of diversity in the course, in terms of student population

Some of the problems:

• The gap between school and university
• Testing of concepts reveals confusion
• Basic concept knowledge is inadequate, lecturers want to make assumptions about what students come into the course with
• Poor literacy levels for required university levels
• Low levels of student success
• Low pass rates
• Unable to manage the large volume of content
• Textbook content is “unfriendly”, not contextually relevant, language is inaccessible
• Poor integration of knowledge
• Don’t see how biology fits into scientific study
• Don’t apply knowledge and strategies from other subjects, concepts are compartmentalised

Hay, Kinchin and Lygo-Baker (2008). Making learning happen: the role of concept mapping in higher education.

Concept map: an organising tool using labels to explain the relationship between concepts, the links making propositional statements of understanding. Can be interesting to see how different “experts” in the course see it differently. We need to first negotiate our shared understanding of the course before we can expect students to understand it.

Rationale:

• To “deconstruct” faulty knowledge acquired at school and reconfigure it
• Better grasp the relationship between all areas of study
• Empower students with a learning and knowledge construction tool
• Facilitate better use of the textbook

Don’t rely on one source

Facilitates textbook use:

• overview of concepts and relationships
• awareness of learning strategies
• active use of resources
• Assists with knowledge construction:
• identified major concepts and links
• identified gaps in school learning
• useful as studying tool
• knowledge construction can be individualised
• Enables evaluation of student learning:
• view of student understanding “at a glance”
• encourage discussion of concepts and categorisation

Difficulties:

• time consuming
• high levels of collaboration between staff
• not all student work visually / spatially
• takes practice to do well

A genre based approach to teaching literacy in a university bridging course (Taryn Bernard)

How do structure a writing course to develop academic literacy, including other cognitive skills in the first year, among diverse student groups?

Students compartmentalise knowledge and find it hard to integrate into other courses. How can this be addressed?

Students want to feel as if they’re dealing with university-level content, and not high school content

Genre:

• Text-type e.g. journal articles, books, essays
• Abstract, goal orientated and socially recognised way of using language, limited by communicative purpose and formal properties
• Social code of behaviour established between author and reader
• “A term used for grouping texts together and representing how writers typically use language to respond to and construct texts for recurring situations”

Students need to be introduced to the “culture” of academic discourse

Genre-based pedagogy:

Student learning is affected not only by prior subject knowledge and by approaches to learning but also by the ability to deal with text genre (Francis & Hallam, 2000). An understanding of generic conventions increases success at university (Hewings & Hewings, 2001).

It’s important to validate prior knowledge, and many don’t see the purpose in academic discourse. Students sometimes feel it’s “too complex”

Quantitative literacy courses for humanities and law (Vera Frith)

UCT recognise information literacy as being an important graduate attribute

Quantitative information must be addressed in the disciplinary context

The more that content is embedded within a real-world context, the better

Students can be confused between focusing on the context, as opposed to the content e.g. placing emphasis on what they should be learning, with the contextual framework being used

The impact of horizontal integration of 2 foundation modules on first years knowledge, attitudes and skills (Martjie van Heusden and Dr. Alwyn Louw)

Earlier introduction to clinical placements have a significant influence on students professional development, especially in communication

Research assignments for first year med. students at SU:

• Identify conditions
• describe disorder
• use correct referencing
• submit to Turnitin with only 10% similarity allowed

Did knowledge improve? What about attitudes and motivation? Did it transfer to the 2nd year?

Research assignments contributed to improved student attitudes

Saw an improvement in writing and research skills

Assignments promoted self-esteem, increased background knowledge and allowed students to ask informed questions

Foundation matters: issues in a mathematics extended course

Important to be aware that students come into the course with mixed abilities, which affects how they perceive the course

Language support for communication skills of foundation Engineering students at CPUT (Marie-Anne Ogle)

Students ability to study is crippled by their lack of confidence in their ability to speak well

Problems:

• Students don’t speak or hear English often
• School teachers don’t give presentation training
• Student lack self-esteem / confidence
• Students don’t have an understanding of their own problems
• Only 1 language lesson/week in a very crowded timetable

Rules:

• Transparent goals
• Everybody must talk
• Students choose the subjects they want
• Intensive reading programmes to support this
• Students manage their own library
• Students take over the class towards the end
• Fun for self-motivation

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Use of clickers in Engineering teaching (Daniela Gachago and Dr. Mbiya Baudouin)

Useful because:

• Results are anonymous, instant, recorded for later
• helps to increase attention span, keeps students focused
• Every opinion counts, not just the correct one
• Works well with interactive learning and teaching style
• Direct feedback about students conceptual understanding

Good feedback tool for students, identifies misconceptions instantly that can be addressed immediately, students also become aware that others have similar problems i.e. they’re not alone

Important to use equipment to stimulate discussion

Mazur sequence (see also this transcript of Mazur presenting on using technology to engage students, as well as this video presentation).

You can forget facts but you cannot forget understanding

Use of clickers must be must be accompanied by discussion

“The more a lecturer talks, the less a student understands”

Students enjoy the experience of using new tools in class, very positive response, but they do need a short introduction

Challenges:

• System takes time to set up, and technical troubleshooting not always easy
• Can waste time
• Questions need to be changed often
• Type of question asked needs to change
• Can have “clicker fatigue”

Using clickers as a tool in classroom instruction to facilitate student learning (Mark Herbert)

Focus not on what student don’t know, but what they require to develop into successful practitioners of the discourse

Students exposed to how knowledge is constructed, structured and communicated

Lecturers facilitate student learning

Students must prepare for lectures (but do they?)

Constructive feedback given regularly and as soon as possible

Class attendance improved

Student interaction can stimulate learning. Students will often find the correct answer when discussing among themselves, without lecturer involvement

Student confidence increased as a result of using clickers

Innovative pedagogical practices using technology: my personal journey (Ingrid Mostert)

Blended learning model for ACE in mathematics

Bulk SMS (e.g. Frontline)

Off-campus access can be hampered with slow loading times, different to intranet

Someone else has already solved the problems that I have. The more people who know about my problem, the quicker it’ll get solved.

Moodle has a module for mobile access, which allows students to participate in forum discussions through a mobile interface

Can use mobile tech to conduct surveys. Is there a cost for students? Yes, but it’s minimal relative to SMS

Sharing experiences make the load lighter

Exploring the extent to which clickers enable effective student engagement (Somikazi Deyi, Edwine Simon and Amanda Morris)

Use real world events / contexts to make coursework relevant. What is important to students? Use that as a scaffolding for the course content

Planning is important

Students engage more deeply with complex questions. We should challenge them and raise our expectations of what they’re capable of

Difficult to draw conclusions after one session. Need to follow trends over time

Realise that other people have different perspectives and world views

Try group voting as opposed to individual voting

The SAAHE conference has come and gone for the 3rd year running. It’s been an interesting and engaging 3 days, and since I’ve already posted all my notes, these are just a few thoughts on what it’s like having a conference in South Africa. And it’s the last post, I promise.

To get the negative stuff out of the way, there were two things that really disappointed me, and which I’ve mentioned at every conference I’ve been to (in South Africa), and they are:

• A lack of dedicated wireless access, even though internet access is not an issue at tertiary educational issue
• No video or audio coverage of any of the tracks, not even of the keynote speakers (I’m sorry, but uploading presentations just doesn’t cut it)

As a collection of South African health educators who say they to participate in a global, regional and national conversation on these issues, how can you possibly do it if you have no voice? I can’t think of any reason not to provide dedicated access in all conference venues.

Piggy backing on this idea of what we could do with access, I had an interesting conversation with a colleague when we were trying to decide which presentations to attend. We realised that we were trying to situate our own work within the broader context of what was happening at the conference. Where does my work fit in with all the other work that’s being done in my own (or a similar) domain?

It seems to make sense that if all attendees (or a significant proportion) were tweeting, blogging, waving or otherwise engaged in providing their own personal experiences, perceptions, insights, etc., we would have multiple streams within which we would be able to situate our own work. Not that we would necessarily watch the streams while presenting (although that would be an option), but it would be nice to reference the work of others that you’d already seen in the stream. These referrals could be aggregated after the conference to see who’s working on similar ideas (or who should be working on similar ideas) and make it easier to build national networks for collaboration. What topics are most common? Who seems to be involved in the most conversations? Who are the “qualitative” people who can give me the insight I need for my own work?

Unfortunately, this won’t happen anytime soon. It’s not a technical problem (all the infrastructure and technology is there), but rather the complex human component. Besides a resistance to learn new things (“I’m a busy person, I don’t have the time”), most health educators aren’t technically savvy.

Finally, during the last half of the last day, we had a power outage across the campus and we had to continue outside. Interestingly, most people seemed quite amused with the experience. We got to sit outside and enjoy the beautiful weather and have a more informal (if a bit rushed) discussion. It was also refreshing for me having to present my work without a presentation on a computer. I felt a bit more connected with the audience, although being in such close proximity could also be a bit daunting. See below for our “conference venue”.

All in all, it was a great conference, I learned a lot and the organisers should be proud of what they achieved.

Here is my presentation from the SAAHE conference.

Assessment challenges in UG medical education (GG Mokane)

Medical school in Botswana is spiral, integrated, community based and problem-based, but the rest of the university is didactic

Format, content, timing and feedback are important components of assessment

Assessment in this course has an emphasis on 3 types of MCQ’s

1. Matching
2. Single best answer
3. True/false (multiple answer) – study was based on evaluating this specific format

How should these questions be used, and what instructions issued when they are?

Retrospective analysis of students performance in cumulative and non-cumulative formative assessment methods (AA Adebesin)

If students consistently score above 60%, they are exempt from the final summative exam (university rule). This had implicit problems in that students couldn’t graduate with distinction because they scored high enough to not write the summative exam.

Introduced a cumulative assessment process that carried formative assessment marks over from block to block

How do you objectively measure student progress and understanding?

A student portfolio: the golden key to reflective, experiential and evidence-based learning (G Muubuke)

Portfolios are useful evidence of learning and reflective processes

Logbooks are not good indicators of learning

Portfolio content included bio-data, radiological images, critical learning incident, clinical evaluation forms, logbook – with guiding questions to assist reflection

Portfolio assessed formatively and summatively

Found initially that students and teachers had only limited knowledge of portfolios, although training workshops helped in this regard

Stakeholders welcomed the introduction of the tool

Assessment whittled down to 2 items, rather than whole portfolio (1 item selected by student, the other by the teacher)

Students learn and develop by reflecting on experiences

Unfair to judge learning based only on exam marks

Students should see portfolio management as on ongoing practice, and not just a “task” to be completed

The purpose of the portfolio must be defined at the outset (i.e. what is the benefit to the student?), and it should be simple to complete, students should not see it as additional work

It should be aligned with institutional goals and learning activities

There’s a lot of effort and time involved in assessing portfolios, and rubrics may help to assist marking (adds standardisation)

Making assessment matter: does a novel model of the pre-assessment effects of summative assessment on learning also operate in clinical contexts? (F Cilliers)

There is little evidence of what the impact of assessment is on learning, as well as the mechanism of the impact

Validating a model by looking at the following 4 factors:

• Explanatory power
• Generalisability
• Integration
• Utility

Daily exposure to consequences leads to evenly distributed learning in clinical settings, but in theory modules, periodic assessment would lead to “binge learning”. However, the more relaxed nature of the clinical (evenly distributed) model might actually lead to the binge-type learning model of theory blocks.

Relaxed environments allow students to go and follow up on work after the situation, but stressful environments force students to memorise content that they forget immediately afterwards

High risk environments lead to surface cognitive processing strategies, as opposed to supportive and low risk environments leading to deeper cognitive processing

The model is useful for explaining behaviour, is generalisable, and is integrated. Not able to determine if it is useful yet

It’s about personal and academic consequences (and their imminence), not just the act of assessment. When block marks are given to students at the end of a block, that were relevant to a situation that occurred during the block, students are less likely to pay attention to the feedback (in whatever form it takes). Consequences should be immediate and not scary.

Assessors can have a powerful (and potentially negative) influence on learning

Students study more for stressful situations, but they remember less. They study less for relaxed environments, but are more likely to follow up on the situations and remember more

This is the presentation from Professor Debbie Murdoch-Eaton.

What impacts do we have on students life ambitions?

Workers with general / transferable skills are better placed to succeed in a global knowledge economy. The skills need not be specific to the discipline

The attributes are not only about economic drivers i.e. getting a job…they are also about enabling people to be more successful in communities / life

We do need to develop specific skills that are course specific, but also more generic skills like communication and interpersonal skills, higher order reasoning, critical thinking, ability to use tech, etc.

Why do you go to university, if not to train the mind?

There needs to be a social agenda within the institution in terms of implementing generic skills (or graduate attributes, depending on who you’re reading)

Are clinical skills generic? If so, which ones? Maybe; enterprise, management, leadership, probity, altruism

Transferability is a key skill, helps to contextualise practice

Students are coming into UK HE with lower technical and numeracy skills, written presentation, and selecting and utilising information, but increased practice in IT skills, stress management

No change in student’s ability to manage their own learning (working with others, seeking and giving feedback, teamwork, taking responsibility for own learning), presentation skills (verbal communication skills, essay writing), time management and self-organisation

Does any of this matter? Might be course dependent. It has implications for course / curriculum design and student support

Huge gap between UK and SA student generic skills (e.g. email use, managing own learning). Demonstrated how longitudinal studies of student generic skills on entering HE can be used to make decisions about curriculum design for those students.

Is the curriculum additive (additional to the discipline) or transformative?

Generic skills can be developed by being remedial (by identifying students with deficits in skills) or associated (for all students, running alongside normal curriculum but additional and separate), or part of discipline content and process, engagement / participatory

Integrating lifelong learning into the curriculum should develop explicit generic skills that incorporate structured opportunities to practice those skills

Skills can be inferred from behaviour, which is subjective and we need to be aware that the observer (teacher) has a vested interest into what skills are being inferred

“Those who are least able are also least able to self-assess accurately”

Generic skills must be embedded into the discipline’s teaching methods rather than being bolted on

“We cannot teach science that is as yet undiscovered, nor can we forecast it’s future implications”

We have to educate doctors who are capable of adaptation and change