Teaching and Learning in History

“Thriving in difficult times”  was the title of the 13th annual Teaching and Learning in History conference – poignant, as this will be the last arranged and funded by the History Subject Centre (one of the more proactive centres, run effectively for many years at Warwick by Sarah Richardson and team) after the news that the HEA will close the regional centres and provide subject support from a reduced central team in York.

The Oxford Dodos contemplate the past and future.

The conference focuses on teaching and learning issues within History teaching, and (based on my previous visit in 2009) is a fabulous, discursive conference with student needs and a passion for teaching History at its heart. This one proved to be no different, with the added feel of impending loss and yet a collective belief that these issues, and the community surrounding them, should continue and grow.

Held in the beautifully situated Lady Margaret Hall at the University of Oxford, the conference opened with a discussion and workshop in which we proactively discussed the key activities of the subject centre, and how these might continue within – and in addition to – the new, cut-down, structure. The four key features were support for new teachers (the Centre’s most impressive work to date, with plans to link together a number of disparate schemes into a UK-wide network of training and support for new lecturers and postgraduates), community (a proposal to take this online and augment a continuing annual conference), publication (the proposal for a new journal to fill the current gap in T&L for History) and regional support (opinion was split on whether the new stringent times will allow for regional support to continue, or whether the three areas above should provide national support with local search/theme options).

The rest of the two-day conference covered some fascinating themes, all surrounded by lengthy post-presentation discussion. Highlights included:

• The use of the Big Society as a theme to frame historical discussions around, by George Campbell Gosling (Oxford Brookes) – this was paired with my session on the Great History Conundrum and contextual training, and led to an interesting discussion around the use of modern/familiar contexts as a basis to work in related historical aspects and skills, with equal thinking around ways to counter the negative reception political hot potatoes (in George’s case) and games (in mine) get within higher education.
• A heated discussion around the use of final essays for testing learning outcomes,  and rubrics around these. This merged into discussion around effective feedback (the It’s Good to Talk project based at DeMontfort University and presented by Sam McGinty –and one which an upcoming project on audio feedback at the University of Leicester will link in to) and work-based learning(Harvey Woolf and Richard Hawkins from Wolverhampton) – all of which opened up debate around the alignment of assessment and feedback to real activity, and useful outcomes for the student. A case study in personalised, peer-assisted feedback was given by Chris Szejnmann (Loughborough) who described his use of simple Flip cameras to provide reflection and feedback on student presentations.
• A fascinating study around international and regional effects on student work and transition in first year undergraduate courses (Melodee Beals, from the report International Students in History)

Augmented by lengthy coffee-breaks and a chance to reflect on each topic with colleagues, all of the participants took something away which would impact on their own practice in one way or another. For me, five days on, my head is still buzzing with some of the ideas around assessment and feedback – but also, reflecting on the way that communities of practice can form and flourish around issues invoking such a keen interest as student learning in a subject close to one’s heart. I doubt very much if this will be the last time these participants will be gathered together and discussing the latest issues affecting students of History in higher education. Thank goodness.

Games at the Forum

At the latest meeting of our monthly DL Forum (which gathers together any staff involved in the design, delivery and support of distance learning at the University) we spent part of the session split into teams, and playing a new board game which aims to introduce players to the issues involved in designing and running an effective, efficient DL course.

Alex has written a description of the game and a brief report of the session on his blog:

• Board of Blinkered Course Design

CDE10: Research in Distance Education – impact on practice

This latest in an occasional series of conferences from the Centre for Distance Education at the University of London focussed on latest research and research themes in DE/DL.

The University’s Vice-Chancellor, Geoffrey Crossick, opened the day with his institution’s take on the recent Browne report and spending review, adding his weight to the general feeling that Distance Education will be the way forward for many Universities in solving local student funding and quota issues. Josie Taylor, from the Open University’s Institute for Educational Technology, followed with a keynote discussing the use of, and research around, open educational resources (OERs). As well as providing a useful overview of research in the field, and a discussion of narrative approaches to learning (based on her published works with Laurillard), Josie also emphasised the OU’s belief that in order to be useful, OERs need to be adapted and amended to local contexts and needs by specific learning communities before they are useful.

Later in the day, Hilary Perraton delivered a wider-ranging review of all recent research in DE (drawing on Zawacki & Richter’s study, 2009); revealing the stark absence of much at what he described as the ‘macro’ level: institutional, economic, quality/quanitity issues; and solidly supported educational theory in subjects such as higher-order learning. A call to arms.

The grand interior of Senate House, designed by Charles Holden 1932

The middle section of the day (intersperced with delicious cakes and lunch) was taken up with three parallel strands:  Design for Learning, Supporting Teaching and Learning, and Assessment. I joined the first and last strands, and found the format extremely condusive to detailed discussion and sharing of ideas/best practice – with 25 minutes set aside after every two papers for this. Topics which resonated particularly:

• Tim Neumann (London Knowledge Lab) presented an overview of virtual classrooms (or Synchronous Audiographic Conferencing, SAC), including some brief case studies of use in DE environments. The range of applications which were presented and came out during the following discussion revealed the flexibility of this approach:
  – lecture recording system (inc. slides and audience audio)
  – live lectures/keynotes etc. (with front or backchannel)
  – virtual meetings, inc. breakout rooms
  – connect between two centres/communities/people
  – marketing (broadcast open days/events etc)
  – remote supervision/feedback
  – student group work
  – virtual conference
• Gwynneth Hughes (Institute of Education) and Megan Crawford (Oxford Brookes) presented a fascinating ‘thought piece’ on ipsative assessment (from ipsa, the latin for ‘self’) – a method where students receive marks and feedback based on their own improvement, rather than on the criteria-referencing approach used almost universally in Higher Education. In simple terms, ipsative assessment would see students receive at least a portion of their mark for their performance in responding to feedback from the previous piece of work. The paper, and subsequent lengthy and fascinating discussion, centred around  a potential increase in personalisation and connection for distance learners; the potential clash of such an approach with the QA moves towards autonomous marking; and potential load on tutors compared with student benefit.

The open, discursive format, range of attendees (from researchers and strategic directors through to course tutors and educational designers) and fascinating papers made for an altogether stimulating and rewarding day out: congratulations to the CDE and University of London.

Brave New Worlds – The Ethics of Education in Popular Digital Technologies

This seminar which was held at Glasgow Caledonian University on the 27^th of October 2010 incorporated presentations and discussions on the role of ethics in the research of and practice of digital technologies in teaching and learning.

Specifically, issues and topics covered included the ethical dilemmas and decision-making difficulties encountered in the conduct of certain kinds of qualitative research studies and in the facilitation and administration of post-human pedagogies and assessment.

Fran Tracey from Liverpool John Moores University described the approach taken in a project that used a participatory research methodology where the nature of the ethical issues changed as the project progressed. In this regard, the team made ethics a point of focus in the research and created codes of practice, which were used as bases for discussions during meetings. These codes of conduct were created to deal with ethical issues such as teacher-student relationships, risk to participants, IPR issues, confidentiality and anonymity, and the long-term storage of data. One of the experiential findings from the project was that getting approval for the “ethics of research” from institutional bodies is quite different from “doing research ethically.”

Sian Bayne from the University of Edinburgh talked about the issue of ethics in posthuman pedagogies and assessment. Her presentation focused on the ethical implications of using Web 2.0 technologies in teaching and particularly assessment. In this regard, she talked about the issues she encountered in assessing students in an MSc in eLearning course project that entailed students creating automated lifestreams. Difficulties sometimes encountered despite having thought through assessment criteria from the outset included determining whether it was the students’ understandings that were being assessed or just their creativities and aptness with the technologies.

John Traxler from the University of Wolverhampton talked about the role of ethics in the use of mobile technologies particularly with respect to communities that have been made possible by such technologies. Issues under consideration included the clash between laws, statutes, and institutional regulations and the ethics governing the right to use, what is socially or culturally acceptable, and what is private or not private.

The conclusions from the panel discussions and other presentations included the need for new ethics frameworks that would guide institutional ethics bodies as they deal with research approvals that involve Web 2.0 and other digital technologies, and the need to ensure that such frameworks also inform practitioners involved in using these technologies in various teaching and learning environments.

We Must Go the Distance

The following opinion piece by Helen Lentell was published in the Times Higher Education on 21st January:

• We Must Go the Distance