Category: News

News

An introduction from Tansy Jessop, our Visiting Professor

BILT

Tansy

Here I am in my Christmas jumper, looking slightly silly #dachshundthroughthesnow, and telling you a bit about myself. First things first, I do have a twelve year old black and tan sausage dog whose origins are close to Bristol. So call my stint at BILT a bit of a return on behalf of my hound! I am absolutely thrilled and honoured to be a Visiting Professor at BILT for the year. My undergraduate years were spent at the University of Cape Town, not dissimilar in size and feel to Bristol but a campus university rather than a city one. From my four years in the fraught 1980s at UCT, I remember feeling both adrift and excited; mystified, enthralled and slightly confused at the relevance of T S Eliot and Catullus. My studies seemed slightly irrelevant in a context of tear gas and angry fists thrust in the air.  As I look back I now know I was experiencing what many students feel but cannot name in relation to their studies. Sarah Mann has written the best work on student alienation and as I read it, I know for myself that this is the root of much of student disengagement in higher education. Particularly for first generation students.  

My interest in alienation and in engaging students is a huge spur to my work in learning and teaching. In leading the ‘Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment’ (TESTA) research and change process for nearly ten years, and working with students and staff in many UK universities, I have encountered alienation in many guises. The defining feature of alienation is an absence of meaning or connection with something expected to bring meaning.  In the context of assessment, it is students disgruntled with the treadmill of repetitive assessments; overloaded with content; finding that their curiosity is not ignited by assessment; that they have little in the way of pedagogic relationship with their tutors in feedback, for example.  Students often experience their modular curriculum as fragmented and knowledge on one unit seems unrelated to another one. TESTA exposes some of the structural flaws in compartmentalised modular curricula. It calls to a much more programmatic and joined up approach to teaching and learning. 

But alienation is not all bad. It is part of what higher education is about as students wrestle with multiple perspectives and try to pick their way through different ways of understanding their disciplines. The soupy sea of ambivalence that higher education invites students to swim in is bound to be a bit unsettling. However, there are wonderful pedagogic ways of lighting beacons along the way for students. Through TESTA, I have seen academics embrace new ways of doing formative assessment, engaging students in challenging, playful and exciting learning which prepares them for summative tasks. I have seen academics stand back and see the whole programme for the first time. This new way of seeing is often a catalyst for programme teams drawing back from content-heavy, facts first approaches, and inviting them to partner with their students in slow learning. The ‘slow professor’ approach to teaching, learning and assessment is all about creating spaces for students to engage, integrate and apply their learning.  I hope over the coming months to share some of these ideas and engage various programmes in the TESTA process. I am really looking forward to getting to know the community at the University of Bristol, with or without my dog.  Definitely without my Christmas jumper.  

 

Berg, M. and Seeber, B. 2016. The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy. Toronto. University of Toronto Press. 

Mann, S. 2001.  Alternative Perspectives on the Student Experience: alienation and engagement. Studies in Higher Education. 26 (1). 

 

 

News

Should all assessments be inclusive?

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The following post was written by Emilie Poletto-Lawson, an Educational Developer and BILT Fellow. 

I am a BILT fellow based in Academic Staff Development where I work as an Educational Developer. I have been working on the BILT theme of assessment – focusing on inclusive assessment since February 2018. I am undertaking a literature review with a view to making recommendations around inclusive assessment principles that we can embed into our units and programs at the University of Bristol to work alongside our institutional principles on Assessment and Feedback.

From my reading to date the  main take away is that inclusivity is predominantly discussed as a means for supporting students with disabilities. It is very much viewed as a deficit approach to considering assessment, however, I strongly believe it is far more than that, we want to be inclusive of all learners and for inclusive assessment to actually be more inclusive.

As part of my BILT fellow role I recently attended an event at the University of Leicester called “Making IT* Happen: from strategy to action (*Inclusive Teaching)’, led by Pete Quinn and Mike Wray (blog available here). The focus was very much on supporting disabled students in our institutions and ensuring universities are legally compliant with the Equality Act. In preparation for the event, the experts highlighted good practice in the work we do at Bristol, for example we received positive feedback on our institution website regarding inclusivity (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/disability-services/study-support/reasonable-adjustments/) and in particular videos created by Louise Howson from Academic Staff Development (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/staffdevelopment/academic/resources/learning-and-teaching-resources/learning-and-teaching-videos/ ).

Regarding the literature review I am working on, when researching the key words “inclusive” “assessment” in “higher education”, I obtained 9596 results in ERIC and yet, going through the abstracts not that many articles encompass all three parameters. It appears there might be a gap in the literature here despite inclusivity being key to university strategies in the UK and beyond for a number of years now. So far, the key emerging themes from my searching can be seen below.

Inclusive Assessment in Higher Education map created by Emilie Poletto-Lawson
Created with Mindmeister 21.09.2018

In the US literature the Inclusive aspects of articles relates to the idea of an inclusive campus and looks at inclusivity from the selection process (access) to the students completing their degree (success). In the UK, the literature shows there is an acknowledged need for policies, strategies and processes as well as professional development to bring about inclusive practices.

Initial readings suggest there is a rhetoric of inclusivity as a given good, but it is difficult to identify concrete examples, especially when it comes to assessment. The literature review is the first step to articulate a clear definition before focusing on what inclusive assessment means for us at the University of Bristol.

If you are interested in this topic why not read “Against being Inclusive” by Jeffrey Carlson, interim provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Dominican University? I appreciate it might be an odd recommendation since this post advocates that all assessments should be inclusive, but I think this article, published in 2016, does offer food for thought and reinforces the need to clearly define what we mean by “inclusivity” before we move to making recommendations at Bristol.

News

Update on the ‘Rethinking Spaces’ theme

BILT

Since the launch of the ‘Rethinking Spaces’ theme in June 2018, several things are going on.

The ‘Teaching Space Principles’ were formally signed off in October and are now available to be used as a guide when refurbishing or building new teaching spaces.  The ‘Teaching Space Principles’ are as follows, though you can read a fuller version via this blog post.

  1. Teaching spaces will allow all students to actively engage with content through appropriate design and technologies that support multiple modes of teaching[1]. The learning that takes place in these spaces will be accessible to all students
  2. . The University will foster a welcoming environment for students beyond timetabled teaching activities, to include social, learning and recreational spaces so that students’ experience of time spent at the University is coherent and integrated and supports their well-being.
  3. Teaching and learning environments will encourage active collaborative interactions between students.  Peer learning, multi-disciplinarity, in large or small groups, through and with technology, will be key to supporting students to create, develop and extend their own understandings and learning activities.  Teaching spaces should therefore be designed to an appropriate size to allow for meaningful and comfortable interaction.
  4. Our teaching and learning spaces will allow interaction between teachers, students and others, and will thereby encourage the active facilitation of student learning.  This learning environment will be flexible, incorporate appropriate technologies, and have space to move around in by staff and students.
  5. Teaching and learning spaces should be designed using the best current evidence-based practice and flexible enough to allow for emerging and future pedagogies.

Two of our BILT Fellows are focusing on teaching space. James Norman, a senior teaching fellow in Engineering and Christian Spielmann, a Reader in Economics, are both exploring the relationship between space and learning, though from different slants – James is looking at physical space design and Christian is looking at Bristol Futures and how his open unit uses digital space. Both have published blog posts, which can be found here. We have also appointed a student fellow, Lisa Howarth to explore this theme – her introductory blog post can be found here.

We are working on the links between pedagogies, physical and digital space.  To this end we are developing strategic plans to work with interested schools wishing to move to more active styles of teaching, learning and assessment and the link to the design of classrooms.  This brings together members of BILT, Digital Education Office (DEO), and AQPO. A pilot workshop was help with member of the School of Management and more are planned.

The inaugural meeting of the Learning Environment Committee (LEC) has been held.  This committee will take strategic oversight for advising the University on teaching and learning space.

News

Time for a new approach to our generational differences?

BILT

The following post was written by Fabienne Vailes, the Language Director for French and holder of a University Teaching Fellowship. 

There were the Millennials (Generation Y – born in the 1980s and 1990s), children of Baby Boomers and now Generation Z or Gen Z. Gen Z  have been the source of a lot of debate in the media with Psychology professor and author Jean Twenge calling them iGen or Generation M and Stein ‘the Me Me Me Generation’ in his 2013 article.

At the end of October, Jeremy Vine sparked an online debate after posting a video on his Twitter account stating that baby boomers are the real snowflakes and that they ‘should get off youngsters – 20 something’s back’.

Whether we agree or not with the above, younger people clearly generate a lot of discussions amongst parents, educators and society in general. And our students seem to struggle to ‘get us’.

What if instead of talking about ‘generational differences’, we used a different approach?

The issue with a focus on generational differences

The danger with the constant analysis of behavioural differences between generations, between baby boomers and ‘millennials’ in this instance is that it can lead us to ‘other’ as defined by Merriam Webster dictionary ‘to treat or consider ‘young people’ as alien to oneself or one’s group (because of different racial, sexual, or cultural characteristics). It creates a divide and a notion of ‘them’ and ‘us’.

We seem to apply this ‘othering’ to Gen Z and Gen Z to us. ‘The other’ becomes misunderstood which is brought about by a lack of effective communication. Poor communication and understanding meaning that ‘the other’ feels ‘we do not get them’. This leads to an inability to understand ‘others’ from their perspective.

Nirmala (2013:1)[i] explains that in general the “other” is anyone who is separate from one’s self. The existence of the others is crucial in defining what is “normal” and in locating one’s own place in the world. The other is perceived as lacking the essential characteristics possessed by a group and hence is considered to be a lesser or inferior being and therefore is treated accordingly.

But when we act this way, this is likely to affect our relationships with ‘the other’ and to create a separation. This might in turn create a sense of loneliness and social isolation.

Loneliness is often divided into two elements according to the theories of Weiss (1973): emotional loneliness, which is caused by a lack of close and intimate social relations, and social loneliness, which is caused by a lack of wider social contacts[ii] .

Social isolation is generally agreed in the literature to be more objective than loneliness and relates to the extent to which an individual is isolated from social contacts including friends, family members, neighbours or the wider community.[iii]

Whether it is loneliness or social isolation, both have been linked with numerous physical health problems such as depression (Wang et al, 2018)[iv], dementia (Holwerda et al 2014)[v], suicidal ideation (Stickley et al 2016)[vi] and an overall increased risk of dying earlier[vii]

But what if there was a different and more positive approach to this?

Young people as ‘a new evolving culture’

Herbig[viii] said that culture can be defined as the sum of a way of life, including expected behaviour, beliefs, values, language and living practices shared by members of a society. It consists of both explicit and implicit rules through which experience is interpreted”. Hofstede refers to culture as a “programming of the mind”[ix].

Isn’t it this specific concept of culture that the media is referring to when they look how young people behave differently from their parents and grandparents?

What would happen if instead of using generational differences we were inspired by Intercultural Communication and started looking at our children and students as ‘a new evolving culture’? We could adopt the approach that culturally agile expats take when encountering a ‘foreign culture’ which shares different rules or views from theirs. They observe their natural reaction to thee foreigners’ thoughts, feelings or behaviours, particularly if they are extremely different from their own.

They also become more tolerant and understanding towards them. They even are a bit curious and start wondering what beliefs the foreign culture holds to behave in that specific way.

I believe we could try to use and develop these same skills or what Deardoff[x] calls intercultural competence or the ability to develop over time the targeted knowledge, skills and attitudes that lead to visible behaviour and communication that are both effective and appropriate in intercultural interactions. These skills adapted from Byram[xi] (1997)’s work on Intercultural competence include “Knowledge of others; knowledge of self; skills to interpret and relate; skills to discover and/or to interact; valuing others’ values, beliefs, and behaviours; and relativizing one’s self.

This intercultural expertise is relevant to everyone.

Of course, all actors in education (learners, staff and parents) are concerned by this notion of intercultural competence and we could all benefit from improving the aptitudes advocated by experts.

So, next time any of us (Gen Z or older) is tempted to use words that encourage ‘othering’ and ‘generational comparisons’, why not pause, consider this concept of a new evolving culture and become much more curious about the recipients’ ‘programming of the mind’? This is likely to lead to far less ‘separation’ and far more ‘attempts at ‘understanding’ and a development of ‘empathy’ which decades of work[xii] suggest fosters and maintains close relationships in particular. This is of significant importance as supportive relationships buffer people from stress and its detrimental effects on health by providing positive affect, a sense of predictability and stability in one’s situation, and a recognition of self-worth (1985:311).[xiii]. The opposite results of loneliness and social isolation in fact!!!!

[i] Nirmala, S  The idea of othering in J.M Coetzee’s waiting for the Barbarian New Academia (Print ISSN 2277-3967) (Online ISSN 2347-2073) Vol. II Issue IV, Oct. 2013

[ii] iii De Jong Gierveld and Van Tilburg (2006) ‘A 6-Item Scale for Overall, Emotional, and Social Loneliness’ Research on Aging 28 (5) pp. 582-598; Victor, Scambler and Bond (2009) (p.584)

[iii] Victor, Christina, Bowling, Ann, Bond, John and Scambler, Sasha (2003) ‘Loneliness, Social Isolation and Living Alone in Later Life’ Research Findings: 17 from the Growing Older Programme

[iv] Wang J, Mann F, Lloyd-Evans B, Ma R, Johnson S (2018) Associations between loneliness and perceived social support and outcomes of mental health problems: a systematic review. BMC Psychiatry. 29;18(1):156. doi: 10.1186/s12888-018-1736-5.

[v] Holwerda TJ, Deeg DJ, Beekman AT, van Tilburg TG, Stek ML, Jonker C, Schoevers RA (2014) Feelings of loneliness, but not social isolation, predict dementia onset: results from the Amsterdam Study of the Elderly (AMSTEL).Journal of Neurology Neurosurgy and Psychiatry. Feb;85(2):135-42. doi: 10.1136/jnnp-2012-302755.

[vi] Stickley A, Koyanagi A (2016) Loneliness, common mental disorders and suicidal behavior: Findings from a general population survey. Journal of Affective Disorder. 197:81-7. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2016.02.054.

[vii] Perissinotto, Carla, Cenzer, Irena Stijacic and Covinsky, Kenneth (2012) ‘Loneliness in Older Persons: A Predictor of Functional Decline and Death’ Archive of Internal Medicine 172 (14) pp. 1078-1083 lv Perissinotto, Cenzer and Covinsky (2012) (as above) p. 1081 lvi Berkman, Lisa, Melchior, Maria, Chastang, Jean-François, Niedhammer, Isabelle, Lecierc, Annette and Goldberg, Marcel (2004) ‘Social Integration and Mortality: A Prospective Study of French Employees of Electricity of France – Gas of France’ American Journal of Epidemiology 159 (2) pp. 167-174

[viii] Herbig, P. (1998) Handbook of Cross-Cultural Marketing, New York: The Haworth Press

[ix] Hofstede, G. (2001) Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values, London: Sage

[x] Deardorff, D. K. (2006), The Identification and Assessment of Intercultural Competence as a Student Outcome of Internationalization at Institutions of Higher Education in the United States, Journal of Studies in International Education 10:241-266

[xi] Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters

[xii] Davis, MH, Oathout HA (1987) Maintenance of satisfaction in romantic relationships: Empathy and relational competence. Journal of Personality Social Psychology: 53(2):397-410

Morelli, SA, Lieberman MD, Zaki J (2015) The emerging study of positive empathy. Soc Personal Psychol Compass 9:57-68.

[xii] Cohen, S, Wills TA (1985) Stress, social support and the buffering hypothesis. Psychol Bulletin 98: 310-357

 

News

The A-Ha Moment

BILT

The following blog was written by James Norman, a Senior Lecturer in Engineering and a BILT Fellow. 

I am sure we have all been there, it’s the Monday before the start of term and as we do the final preparation and look at the time table for next week we notice that we don’t recognise the room number where we are teaching. As a matter of fact, we don’t recognise the building either. As an engineer I have taught in most buildings from the arts faculty to Maths to biomedical sciences. Every building has its own character (I particularly enjoy walking past jars full of animal parts and large skeletons, I feel like I am at the Natural History museum), and its own set of distinctive teaching spaces. Standing up to lecture for the first time there is an A-Ha moment. If I had known a few months ago I was teaching in here I would have done this differently. Of course, I could have checked the space out before hand (I always do, as well as sweet talking the porters of the building into accepting large bowed of my printed notes) but something about the moment you stand up to teach brings all the senses alive and makes you think, could I have done this differently.

As a practicing engineer I have spent many years thinking about buildings, drawing them, carrying out calculations. Even now I can describe in intimate detail every aspect of the new building at Oxford Brooks University which I worked on for 5 years. But I can’t imagine what it would be like to stand up and deliver a lecture there. And yet we often expect lecturers and other members of staff to look at the plans of buildings and do exactly that. Or even worse we give them 100’s of pages long technical specifications and expect them to make sense of them and imagine they are teaching in that space.

I would like to explore recreating the A-Ha moment as a tool for helping lectures think about the space they are going to be teaching in and more importantly critique it before it has been constructed. I would like to go one step further and explore whether we can use different virtual spaces to explore teaching and learning and the opportunity for innovation in rethinking space.

Finally, I was recently at a workshop on simulating living on Mars. At this workshop, organised by Professor Lucy Berthoud and Ella and Nicki, two artists who plan to live in a mars simulator for six months, we were discussing sensory deprivation. Many of us in the room assumed that if you wear a VR headset you can fool the body into thinking it is in a large field of corn not a tiny space capsule. However, Dr Ute Leonards pointed out that current research in embodied cognition is looking into whether the body needs full sensory immersion to believe it is somewhere else, that visual simulation is not enough. I am therefore interested whether my idea to create the A-Ha moment to test teaching space will be further enhanced by the smell of new carpet and the babble of excited students looking forward to a whole term of lectures on concrete. Whether the A-Ha moment is enhanced if you really think that you are about to stand up and teach?

For more information on the Mars project see http://www.ellaandnicki.com

If you are interested in helping to create a series of virtual environments or have expertise in the immersive experience please contact James at james.norman@bristol.ac.uk

 

 

 

 

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What exactly is Bristol Futures and what does BILT have to do with it?

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The following post was written by BILT’s Academic Director, Alvin Birdi.  

adaptable, confident, knowledgeable, cognitively and practically resilient and innovative, and aware of their social responsibilities as citizens of contemporary, globalized societies”.

That was how the ambition of Bristol Futures was articulated in 2016 when it was adopted as a central initiative by the University, a way of reimagining its education. Bristol Futures meant building skills and a reflective approach through our programmes, providing opportunities for multidisciplinary and challenge-led learning, engagement with the community and employers and study abroad. These ambitions remain unabated in Bristol Futures which has recently moved to a new phase of activity.

To date, study skills provision and personal development planning (PDP) have been established to support the Bristol Skills Framework; there are freely available online courses on the three broad Bristol Futures themes of sustainable futures, innovation and enterprise and global citizenship; provision for professional and community engagement has been enhanced and some optional credit-bearing units have been created. But Bristol Futures does not end there.

The next phase of Bristol Futures is tasked with embedding the vision above into the core of our assessment, teaching and curriculum in all our programmes. This ambitious work comprises aligning all aspects of a degree programme so that they realise the student outcomes described above in an integrated and developmental way over the programme. That means programme level assessment and an active and challenge-led pedagogy as well as opportunities for working and studying with organisations outside the University.

What has BILT to do with any of this? We have supported and will continue to work with the University in furthering its ambitions with Bristol Futures, particularly around programme level assessment, new and innovative pedagogies that emphasise active and challenge-led learning and the reform of curricula to become more inclusive and receptive to the Bristol Futures themes.

To this end, we now have three BILT Bristol Futures Academic Fellows who will take a lead on the intellectual development of the three Bristol Futures themes. They are Chris Priest, who will lead the theme of sustainable futures; Madhu Krishnan who leads the global citizenship theme; and Dave Jarman who is leading on innovation and enterprise. These leads will be working with BILT student fellows to develop and provide resources to help colleagues conceptualise the themes and to embed them into our programmes of study. Websites on each them are currently under development.

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“Why is my curriculum white?” Towards imagining what our curriculum might look like were it researched, taught, and learned from Black Queer-Trans perspectives

BILT

The following post was written by Omari G. Hutchinson, a PhD student at Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Education, Birmingham, UK, who attended an event hosted by BILT and the Centre for Black Humanities as part of the ‘Why is my curriculum white?’ series. 

“Why is my curriculum white?” Towards imagining what our curriculum might look like were it researched, taught, and learned from Black Queer-Trans perspectives”. Here are my thoughts after attending the above. On boarding the train from Birmingham’s New Street station, I was already increasingly excited about Dorothea Smartt’s talk. The pre-talk literature really engaged and intrigued me. Dorothea’s metaphorical bridge invited participants to enter a crossing, somewhere between the personal self and the local context when considering the national diasporic picture. Dorothea’s poetic writings filled me with anticipation and joy. She took me on an imaginative journey to Barbados and straight into the living room of two Black women, passionately in love, but who also caused me to consider (imagine) the many mothers’ who have practiced, queer erotic love, self-love and love of the Divine. This left me musing over the untold woman-to-woman love stories of Black Caribbean women. Like others at the talk, I too want to know how we go about unmasking the rich heritage of same-gender love, which might have been colonised.

Like me, those in attendance were able to stretch their thinking by attempting to decolonise, for ourselves, the ‘whitewashing’ of a generation of diasporic lesbians and queers. I was personally touched by thoughts of the queer diasporic web.

Then we were encouraged to cross another bridge – connecting the rich history of Black, feminist, gay poets and activists here in Britain. For me, this is when it really got personal! I was suddenly transported back-in-time, to the feelings I had in that packed room, when Essex Hemphill read his own poetry on a visit to Britain. To say that the room was free from tension would be a miss representation. There was resistance expressed towards terms that might be deemed derogatory in one context, taken as a slur on efforts to queer the curriculum; but in this decolonizing learning space, it was liberating to suggest that we can reclaim terms that add meaning to the context in which we enter a given space.  This was an interactive conversation offering opportunities for self-conscious articulations of the hybrid identities of Black Queer-Trans perspectives.  Decolonising, queer love suggests Coleman, necessitates practice and commitment.

This was a really inspiring event. Thank you to Dorothea Smartt,
Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, and those staff and students involved in promoting such a stimulating exploration of the Black-Queer-Trans perspectives. I came away with a vision for how the curriculum might be reconfigured like were it researched, taught, and learned from Black Queer-Trans perspectives. The session marked an important milestone in my own development within this new and exciting field of inquiry.

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Tensions with Programme-Level Assessment

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The following post was written by Helen Heath, a reader in Physics and BILT Fellow. 

I am a reader in the School of Physics at Bristol and currently 1st year coordinator and head of the newly formed Physics Education Group (PEG), which is a group for the pathway 3 staff within the School of Physics. I’ve been a BILT fellow since September 2017 with a focus on programme level assessment and this has been renewed for the next academic year.

While looking into programme level assessment I have felt that there are significant tensions. The move to more formative and less summative assessment should help student development but fewer summative assessments inevitably means that these assessments are higher stakes. Devising good innovative assessment methods that are targeted at testing the learning outcomes is desirable but too many different types of assessment can be confusing to students.

As part of the University move towards programme level assessment several Schools took part in assessment labs and have been working on moving their assessment to a more programme level approach. I am in the process of interviewing those involved with these pilot projects. I would like to understand the challenges they have faced in the programme design and the institutional changes, e.g. to regulations, that need to be made to enable the implementation of the revised assessment schemes they have proposed. I am also interested in how the perceptions of what programme level assessment is vary across the University.

Although the content of courses varies, the principles of good assessment design should be applicable to all programmes however it seems clear to me, from the first interviews, that there are structural differences between programmes that can hinder or help the adoption this approach. Joint honours programmes, for example, can pose a challenge. The programme level approach can offer the chance of an assessment which brings together the strands in these types of programmes, but this then requires clarity in the management of a joint assessment. Schools that have very many different joint honours programmes need to avoid a confusing range of different assessments.

Schools piloting programme level assessment are also in very different points in their curriculum review cycle. Adopting a programme level approach where a review is underway anyway is much more natural than making large changes to assessment when results of a previous review are still working their way through programmes.

As a second strand of my work I have been thinking about what programme level assessment might look like in my own School. We have joint programmes with Schools in our own Faculty and outside as well as several “Physics with” programmes but we have a well-defined Core in all programmes which could be assessed at year level. The “straw person” proposal for a way forward is submitted to our next Teaching Committee. Hopefully it promotes a lively discussion.

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The Gap Between Pedagogy and Design

BILT

The following blog was written by James Norman, a Senior Teaching Fellow and a BILT Fellow since September 2018. 

For centuries universities have taught in lecture theatres. But the lecture theatre may well soon be a thing of the past. The new lecture theatre is the flat-bed teaching room. Or classroom to anyone who has been to school. The flat-bed teaching room offers many advantages over the lecture theatre. It is flexible. People can re-arrange furniture and work in groups. It removes some of the hierarchy between the teacher and the learner. But are flat bed teaching rooms really the solution to all our problems? Do flat bed teaching spaces really make pedagogical sense?

“Pedagogy needs to be explored through the thinking and practice of those educators who look to accompany learners; care for and about them; and bring learning into life.”

(Mark K. Smith, 2012)

Pedagogy is not about teaching. It is about learning. It is about understanding how people learn and by extension where people learn. I have been learning about pedagogy by reading in a coffee shop. Not in a flat-bed teaching room. I learnt to drive in a car, not in a flat-bed teaching room. We teach dentists the practical skills they need in a mock dentist’s surgery, not in a flat-bed teaching room. But what about lawyers and economists. Archeologists and historians. Where do they learn and how do we design spaces that work for them? So much learning occurs not in the lecture theatre OR the flat bed teaching space. So how do we approach the design of learning spaces and how do we keep pedagogy at the center of this process?

Is the solution rows and rows of flat-bed teaching rooms with movable partitions as suggested by the “Learning Space Rating System” (2017) or is it the use of metaphor to imagine our learning spaces as trees or gardens as advocated by The UK Higher Education Learning Space Toolkit? Professor Wright from the University of Bath would acknowledge both of these approaches as design strategies in the design of architectural space. But these are just 2 of 14 approaches. And Professor Wright’s approach is just one of many available design methodologies that can be utilized. So the question becomes how can we best combine pedagogy and design methodology to understand how to enhance the learning of our students. I don’t yet know the answers but I am looking forward to learning in unexpected places to try and find a new perspective on placing pedagogy at the heart of designing space.

Mark K. Smith, What is Pedagogy? (2012), http://infed.org/mobi/what-is-pedagogy/ accessed 14/11/18

Malcom Brown et al, Learning Space Rating System, Learning Space Rating System initiative, EDUCAUSE, 2017.

Gill Ferrell, The UK Higher Education Learning Space Toolkit, Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association.

Alexander Wright, Critical method: A pedagogy for design education, Design Principles and Practices, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 109-122, 2011.

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‘Using Games in Teaching’ – 26/10/2018

BILT

The first ‘Using Games in Teaching’ event, organised by Chrysanthi Tseloudi and Suzi Wells from the Digital Education Office, saw 25 colleagues from across the University come together to discuss their experiences, hopes and ideas for gamifying learning. A wide range of staff attended the event, with both Professional Services and Academic staff represented, and with a wealth of experience among them.

Staff sat at a table at the using games in teaching event

The event started with an introduction from each member of the group, a summary of their experience with games and explanation as to why they had attended the session. It was clear that the understanding and experience of types of games varied vastly, from computer games to card games, everyone had a different perspective on what ‘using games in teaching’ meant.

The main part of the event looked at ‘Decisions and Disruptions‘, a decision-making game using Lego models and cards originally developed at Lancaster University and now being developed further by Ben Shreeve from the School of Computer Science. The game was created to try to understand how organisations have made their investment decisions in the hope to understand how cyber security failures occur. Players work as a team to advise their company what they should buy (items are on the cards), then once these decisions have been made players suffer various cyber-attacks and participants see how their decisions have impacted the organisation. They play the game through four rounds, attempting to secure the organisation over time with a finite budget and multiple consequences. The game is beneficial as it allows staff to work as a team with both technical and non-technical staff, with the Lego working as a visual aid to help the players relate to their own workplace. The tactile element of the Lego also helps embed the learning (a point which was seconded by a number of others around the room).

IMG-0710
Ben Shreeve and his Lego/ card decision making game (pictured here making a paper aeroplane!).

We concluded the event with a small and simple game to play. We were asked how often we would like the ‘Using Games in Teaching’ events to take place in future, ranging from once a teaching block to once a month, with a physical scale being shown from one end of the room to the other. The ‘game’ element came when we were asked to show our answers using a paper aeroplane we had just created launched across the room. This simple yet amusing activity lifted the session and was something which could easily be done in the classroom to add a little fun and make the session more memorable.

Please contact Chrysanthi Tseloudi or Suzi Wells if you’d like to come along to the next one.