#FSLT12 Week 3 with Etienne and Bev Wenger-Trayner

We have had what feels like a bit of a pause over the weekend – many UK participants were maybe taking a break for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations. Its not often we get two Bank Holidays in a row, Monday and Tuesday. But people are beginning to drift back now.

(Click on the diagram to see it more clearly)

Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner

The Open Academic Practice thread of Week 3 features Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner,  who will be presenting in the live session on “Theory, pedagogy, and Identity in Higher-Education Teaching.” Wednesday 06 June, 2012, 1500 BST.  I am really looking forward to this session. I have been following Etienne’s work for quite a few years and now that he has married Bev, I will be following Bev too

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Feedback

The First Steps Curriculum this week is covering Feedback, i.e. how to give feedback to students. Research has shown that despite teachers best efforts many students are only concerned with the grade and don’t even read the feedback we give them, i.e. they jump through the necessary hoops to get their qualification, but don’t appear to be interested in learning for its own sake. See for example, this paper

Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C. (2004-05) Conditions Under Which Assessment Supports Students’ Learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, Issue 1.

An internet search will result in finding a PDF of the paper and it is well worth reading.

Of course there are many students who are passionate about learning (and they are such a privilege to work with) – but also many do just need and want that piece of paper. As a teacher, it can be disappointing when this is the case, but never more so than when the student is a PhD student. A question for teachers is whether feedback can be used to engage students (not just PhD students) and leverage higher quality learning. Apostolos Koutropoulos has initiated a discussion about this in the #fslt12 Week 3 Moodle Forum

I interpret Apostolos’ comments as relating to feed forward. I have long felt that unless the student is ‘bone idle’, or clearly on the wrong course (i.e. their strengths simply do not align with course requirements), then if the student fails, the tutor has to carefully question their own failings. As Apostolos writes – ‘feed forward’, i.e. catching the student before they ‘go wrong’, can raise standards and make the learning experience more satisfactory for learners and teachers. Reading University has done some work on feed forward

Activity 2 Collaborative Bibliography

Finally, Activity 2 is due to be completed this week. This collaborative bibliography wiki activity  is beginning to yield some interesting outcomes. The purpose of the activity is to consider the requirements of a literature review and how to critically review a piece of scholarly literature.  There is a link on Oxford Brookes’ own website which is a helpful starting point, but some other helpful resources  have been posted on the Moodle site and I’m sure there are many more out there. It would be useful to gather some together. For example

I like this blog  and The Thesis Whisperer is another great blog for PhD students or those working with PhD students.

And finally another great source of information for PhD students is #phdchat on Twitter

So there’s never a dull moment in FSLT12