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A few weeks ago I was asked to give a 5 minute presentation on ‘The Office’. I have re-recorded here. Whether you are new to The Office or have followed the posts religiously I hope that this will be a great starting/ending point for you.
If you want to learn more about The Office there are a whopping 11 episodes with roughly 15,000 words and loads of pictures and videos. The full list of available episodes is given below:
“I’m
just sitting here, I ain’t saying much I just think
And my eyes don’t move left or right they just
blink”
I
thought I’d start my 11th and final episode of the blog series with
a Dizzee Rascal quote, because as I was reflecting on the day, whilst grabbing
some lunch, these words came to mind.
Today, this instant, this very moment, is the last office session. At 5pm, 10 groups will hand in 10 reports and the unit will be over for the year. I am hoping for some help whilst I shift all the furniture that I have begged, borrowed and stolen back around the building and then hopefully it’s off to the pub for a swift celebratory beer for a job well done.
The
reason Dizzee’s words came to me is that every week the office has been a busy,
noisy, buzzing space, but today is different. Everyone is working hard. Really
hard. Because it’s deadline day. And I still have a few questions to answer,
but mostly people know what they are doing and where they are going they just
need to get there. And so I am, for the first time all year, able to sit in
‘The Office’ and write my blog post. I don’t intend on being overly long but I
thought I might reflect back on the 10 weeks.
As I
mentioned last week, after each session I write a short reflection on the day
as I take the train back home to Bath. Re-reading these reflections now a few
things strike me:
Firstly
attendance. Attendance has been outstanding. Every week everyone has come for
most of the day. Occasionally a few people are late in. And there were a few
times when people were ill or had other commitments. But overall the attendance
on this unit has been better than any I can ever remember running.
Space.
The space has worked well. Students would like even more desk space, but other
than that, this dreary flatbed lecture room is weekly transformed into a
buzzing office (see the video), with people working hard and discussing timber
engineering. Asking each other sensible questions.
Team.
I selected the groups for this unit and so they were pushed into groups with
people they hadn’t worked with before. This isn’t a new thing for our students,
but most years I have at least a few complaints about teams. This year there
have been none. And as I look around I can see diverse groups of students, some
of whom are studying on different degree programmes, and who, for the most part
have never worked together, collaborating to create something great.
Sound.
One of the most striking things about ‘The Office’ is how much it sounds like
an office. Every week in my reflections I’ve noted it. That busy bustling
sound. Even without the pictures on the wall, and the breakout space, and the
boards to hide the lectern and extra seats, and the plants by the entrance, and
the tea point! Even without any of these other features that differentiate this
space from any other flatbed teaching space, it sounds like an office. It
doesn’t sound like a lecture theatre, which is both quieter when I’m speaking
and much noisier when I’m not. Neither does it sound like a work space where
students are all working on their own. Instead it has that unmistakable hubbub
of people collaborating and working together. I took a very short snippet of
this, and you can hear the sound of ‘The Office’ for yourself.
Speakers.
Every week we have had an external speaker come and give a lunch time talk.
These are not lectures, they are designed instead to replicate the weekly
lunchtime talks my old business’s organised when I worked in industry. They
have covered a wide selection of different areas of timber engineering and have
been well attended and well received by the students. My only thought for next
year was to ensure a higher proportion of female speakers, the unit was taken
by more than 40% female students and so it would be good to have 3-4 of the 7
speakers as female, rather than the one we had this year.
Cake. Cake for my birthday was a real highlight (for me at least). My wife and son made it. So next year I need to move the office day to a Saturday so it coincides with my birthday again.
Jokes.
So the last point was a joke (about teaching on Saturday – my Saturdays are
already busy, what with running, coffee, taking my son to rugby, watching Bath
rugby, cooking Saturday night tea, watching Strictly, there is no way I could
squeeze the office in as well!) As was the below that I found on one of my
architecture magazines. A joke I very much enjoyed, and I hope you do to.
And I just discovered why it is so quiet in the office today, most groups have moved up the corridor to one of our new group work teaching spaces where there are large touchscreen computers, ideal for the final edit of the report as the group collaborate and agree content and presentation together. Another new teaching space being put to good use by our students.
So in conclusion, I have really enjoyed teaching this unit in a
different way. I hope that my students have found it just as beneficial (I suspect
only time will tell on that front) and I am looking forward to delivering the
unit in the same way again next year (but hopefully with all the books I have
written to make it happen published and in the library).
So until next time goodbye and thank you for reading my weekly blog,
it’s been great fun sharing all my different thoughts on teaching and I really
hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.
So this is the penultimate episode of The Office! As we draw towards the seasons finale I want to examine a hot topic – work/life balance. And I want to look at it from two perspectives – the students (employees) and my own (the boss!).
Employees
Right back in Episode 1 I outlined 7 aims of ‘The Office’ project. They are summarised below as I don’t imagine you can remember them:
Learning
1.
Students to take ownership of their own learning
2.
Students to more directly input what they are learning into what they are doing
3.
Students to take ownership of feedback
Professional
4.
Students to work sensible (office) hours and not work more hours than necessary
5.
That both learning and assessment will be integrated so students co-learn and
co-create
6.
That students produce outstanding projects which totally blow me away. Projects
which look amazing, have clearly used the problems/constraints of timber to
lead to a solution and can articulate this.
7.
That students will be able to speak to their experience in a professional
context such as an interview and that it would add value for them in this
situation
Note item 4, “students to work sensible (office) hours”. The idea was to
create a unit where time is boundaried. Where people come to work, they work
hard, and then they go home and leave their work behind them (and possibly go
for a cheeky post work drink, although without the boss!) Enabling them to
focus on the other challenges that are before them over the course of a week.
Office hours are 9-5 with setup occurring between 9-9.30 and set down
between 4.30-5. All students are encouraged to take an hours break at some
point during the day – this could be a longer lunch break or a shorter lunch
break with a couple of coffee breaks. There are also the lunchtime talks 1-2
which break the day up. And students have other commitments, lectures, project
meetings, interviews etc.
Employees are encouraged to leave all their work at work. This is
facilitated by every group having a large box which contains all of their
resources, from pens to calc pads. From books to notes. And their A3 and A4
folders which contain their work. Every week these boxes are put away in a
store room which is locked up. Employees can, of course, take work away with
them – I haven’t yet started a stop and search policy on bags – but I have
gently encouraged them not to.
As part of my own practice I have taken a 15 minute pause at the end of
every session to reflect on the day’s events whilst heading back to Bath on the
train. About week 4 I started to note that students were raising concerns about
how much there was to do and they started suggesting they would take work home
with them. I tried to tackle this in part by discussing where they felt the
pressure was and adjusting their expectations for the work in hand, something
that I will do more of when I run the unit again next year.
In week 7 I noticed one student stuffing their work folders in their bag
– something I hadn’t noticed previously, and I offered one extra session of
four hours during reading week (week 8) – which two groups utilised.
There have been a few disgruntled rumbles about the early start from
some of the more sporty of my employees (all staff are asked to be at work from
9 as the first task of the day is to agree workload) who have extra curricula
activities on a Wednesday night (I wouldn’t know about that, at Uni I wasn’t in
any sporting teams and I tried to avoid going out on a Wednesday night – preferring
instead Thursday nights when the clubs would stay open later and I could spend
the night bouncing around to Drum and Bass – as an original Junglist).
Last week I handed out a survey to my students (as part of my pedagogy
project) and asked them “How much time did you spend on this unit compared to
other fourth year engineering units?” Of the 28 students who replied only two
said less or the same whilst 15 said a bit more and 11 said a lot more. Whilst
I need to spend time fully reviewing the reasons it would appear that whilst
quite a few students noted they only worked during office hours, many noted
they worked a lot less than a day a week on other units. It was also
interesting to note that much of their motivation to work came from not wanting
to let other members of their group down, a perspective that I hadn’t
considered when preparing the unit.
It is worth holding the above in tension with comments from last year’s
Timber Engineering unit (which I ran as a standard two hour weekly lecture). Students
suggested they were spending approximately 10 hours a week on the unit. So,
whilst the office hasn’t significantly reduced the number of hours they spend
on the unit, I don’t think it has increased it either. What it has done is move
it from an informal environment to a more formal one. My challenge for next
year is then how to help students to do a little bit less on the unit.
Boss
Whilst considering the work/life balance of employees (students) is very
important, to ensure that the method of delivery is sustainable it is also
important to consider my own work/life balance. I have for a while now been
wrestling with the idea that I want to care enough that my teaching is good
(not perfect, just good) whilst also wanting it to be sustainable. It’s no good
being great, if two years from now I have to leave and find another job! This
came to the fore for me two years ago when I found myself in hospital with
chest pains. Whilst at the time my results were inconclusive I have since come
to realise that I was suffering from anxiety. Over the last two years I have
both been to counselling (through the University) and spent six months on a
coaching course (through my church). Neither came easily to me, despite regularly
recommending students attend counselling, it took a year for me to attend my
first session, but they have both been highly beneficial.
All of that being said, I am still wrestling with work life balance. I
try and work a 40 hour week (confessing this feels very vulnerable as I know
that this is a struggle for so many), I very rarely work weekends, and I am
trying to tackle my obsessive checking of email outside of work time and wonder
how much is down to me just wanting the dopamine fix our electronic devices
provide when a new massage comes in?
I say all of this as I think it’s helpful context to my own reflections.
Working the office has been different. Not better, not worse, but different. To
enable it to happen I have had to block book a day a week. I also block book a
day a week for pedagogy – which is how I manage to write a blog post every
week, without doing it over coffee on a Saturday morning. The advantage of this
approach is that those days are dedicated, focussed and productive. The
downside is that my other three days can feel relentless. With meetings
starting at 9 and finishing at 5. However, I am trying to always have a lunch
break and I know that for every full on busy day or two there is a day drinking
amazing coffee whilst working on pedagogy – and this is a choice I have made.
The other thing is that as I am the Boss (and not the teacher) I work
when I am at the office. I can’t do big jobs (or confidential jobs) but I can
reply to emails, check things, do those little admin jobs. I do also, from time
to time, nip out for a short meeting. And I invite people to the office for
meetings. Generally this works well. Some weeks it works very well. One week I
packed too much seeing:
One member of the timetabling team
Two separate students to discuss their research projects
Three visitors from BILT
Four students in a group to discuss their design project (a 40 credit final year assessment mentioned in earlier blogs but not part of this unit)
Five first years keen to build a house somewhere out of straw
Six, there was no six, five was more than enough.
That evening I reflected I had packed in too much. Partly because it was
my Birthday and I wanted everyone to share in the cake goodness. So going
forward I have tried to pack in less.
Of course the real proof in the pudding will be how I feel as ‘the
office’ comes round again next year, or the year after, or the year after that.
I am all too aware that what can feel exciting and energizing at first can
become wearying in the end. But I also know that every year if someone asked me
to lecture on concrete I would jump at the chance, because I love it.
I am sorry- I am not sure I have any answers here. Has the office been OK in terms of work/life balance is hard to say. Partly because it takes time to reflect, partly because so much has changed, this year I have become School Education Director – a new role which I am learning to adapt to, last year I was Programme Director, an old role which I knew well. And therefore it is hard to know what of my current sense of busyness is due to my new role, what is due to my new method of teaching delivery, and what is due to my new level of self awareness (I now try and take 10 minutes each morning of quiet contemplation before I start the day).
I do know that I leave for work at 6.15am (I only do this on office
days, but actually it is not because of the office, but this was the best time
for my weekly coaching phone call, and the fact it has coincided with the
office has been helpful) looking forward to the day ahead. That I look around
at different points in my day and just drink in the atmosphere. That as I sit
on the train I feel weary but not dissatisfied. And that I have enough energy
to go again the next day, and the next week.
So as this year comes to an end, I suspect I will miss my office, but I
will also be glad for the break. I will be replete. A feeling I know well,
maybe it’s the feeling of a job well done.
Which brings us to the conclusion of our penultimate post. Next week, a final fair well to ‘The Office’ Season 1.
So before we go any further, a serious health warning, if you are the sort of person who feels the need to reach for the sick bucket whenever you hear self-congratulation then you may prefer to skip this episode all together, because over the next few paragraphs there is going to be A LOT of trumpet blowing. I am not kidding.
You have been warned.
Our students are amazing. I mean my students, my Civil Engineering
students[1].
Incredible. Just this year Amy won the regional heats of the Women in Property Student
Awards and Grace won the regional heats of the ICE (Institute of Civil
Engineers) Emerging Engineers award and was runner-up in the final against two
graduates who had been working for a few years (and she was a finalist in
another award, along with yet another of our students). And neither of them
have graduated.
If you think this is a blip, you’re wrong, our graduates had such an
amazing run of winning the NCE graduate of the year award[2]
that I fear that subsequent, also just-as-amazing, graduates may have been
overlooked.
But it’s not just the odd student, it’s all of them. Bristol Civil
Engineering graduates are amazing. I know this because I have a long list of
employers who tell me. One was recently telling me how impressed they were by
the recent Bristol Graduate they had employed and how seamlessly they had moved
into the role of graduate engineer, successfully taking on jobs he would expect
an engineer with a few years’ experience to do.
And this has nothing to do with ‘The Office’- not a sausage- because all
of these things have already happened. They happened before I started The Office
project.
I was having a really interesting conversation with Stuart (who is the
Director of Careers Services), and it struck me how I had presented The Office
as something different, maybe even something special. That it was possible to
read all the blog posts and think that it exists in isolation. It was possible
to think it worked because of my hard work and enthusiasm and not realise
everyone else in my department (and school) is similarly hard-working and
enthusiastic. That when my students enter The Office, they are ready. They have
learnt to work in teams. They have become self-motivated and self-actuated
learners. They know what it means to take on a wicked problem, to consider
options, to put their new found learning into a context.
A few months ago, I emailed a graduate and asked them to finish the
following sentence as part of updating our website.
“In my current job…”
Their response is very telling…
“In my current job… as a structural engineer, I have been feeling no
difference than working on design project in the university but in more detail.”
That their work in industry, at a professional practice, where they are
being employed, feels like a continuation of working on the final design
project on their Civil Engineering degree. A project that has been running for
years, involves numerous industrial supervisors, and is a credit to our staff
and students.
In Jenni Case’s “Education Theories on Learning: an informal guide for
the engineering education scholar” tool 4 is all about ‘communities of
practice’[3].
Communities of practice started off as an education theory where educators and
older students are at the centre of the community and that newer students are
at the edge but they are moving into the community. Jenni Case argues that in
an engineering sense industry and ‘practice’ is at the centre and students are
at the edge. That there is a language, a set of behaviours, a series of tools[4],
and that as students learn, they become more able to access the community, that
they are better prepared for practice.
I really like this idea. And I think that we have been embedding this
practice in our teaching in Civil Engineering for years. Whether in our
surveying field trip, or our professional practice unit, or our labs, or our
different design-focussed units, or our two programme-level assessments – one
that draws all that students have learnt and challenges them to go much deeper,
by carrying out a research project, presenting at a conference and writing a
journal paper[5] –
the other that draws on all that students have learnt and challenges them to
work in mutli-disciplinary teams to take large and complex problems and solve
them both creatively and safely (this is the traditional engineering bit) – with
the projects mostly taken from engineering practices.
I also think that to try and teach, sorry, I mean lecture, on the
things students need to know to become more engaged with the community of
practice, is the wrong approach, that it’s by embedding this information into
our other teaching that it comes alive. That by looking at what we already
teach and reimagining the delivery, without changing the ‘knowledge’ content,
we can add so much more to the student’s experience.
So when Toby and Marnie (BILT Student Fellows) came to visit my students
in The Office and asked them about the experience[6],
my students were slightly non-plussed by their questions, because far from
feeling like a different approach to learning, working in groups on projects
felt very much like a natural continuation of everything that they had done
before.
That we, the department of Civil Engineering, have worked hard to create
a course which develops ‘Emerging Engineers’. That when our students arrive,
normally from school but not always, they often don’t know what a noggin[7]
is, or what units to use on a drawing, or that when we ask them to submit a
coursework with a specific file name we mean it. But as they develop, as they
draw into the engineering community, they become engineers.
However, it is important to note two things. Firstly, that I use the
phrase ‘emerging’ engineer because it takes the duration of our four-year
course for our students to transition from school pupils to engineers. This
requires careful planning and looking across the whole programme to find
opportunities for learning the skills required to be an engineer.
Secondly it is very much a team effort. That our department is a
community of practice. We talk together, support each other, make suggestions
and work collaboratively to make this happen. This point is really quite
important because if we were to deliver a unit in the style of the office
without all this collaboration and development of students I suspect the
outcome would be very different. That trying to embed authentic learning is not
something that can be done at unit level but needs to be considered and mapped
across the degree and that we appreciate the development of our engineers and
match our expectations accordingly.
I appreciate that I have barely mentioned the role of ‘The Office’ in
this post. I hope that it will play a small part in helping our engineers to
emerge. But really, I wanted everyone to be able to see the bigger picture. The
hard work of my colleagues. The breadth of considered pedagogy. That actually,
without The Office, I really think that we would still be helping them to
emerge as engineers, no wait, that’s not quite right, that we have already helped
hundreds and hundreds of students emerge as engineers. Engineers who are
working around the world right now, taking on big complex challenges and who
are thriving in what they are doing.
Next week is the penultimate episode – and we are not shying away from
exciting topics with a look at work-life balance.
PS, last week was my birthday so my amazing wife and son cooked cake which I brought in for all my employees. It was much appreciated by everyone!
[1] Please
note that 2 months ago I became School Education Director. I have no doubt that
the students and staff in my school are all equally brilliant and I hope, over
the coming years to blow many trumpets for all of them, but as I am new to this
role I mostly know about the students and staff in Civil Engineering and hence
I am focussing on them for this blog.
[2] From
2012 to 2017 our students won three times and were runners up, commended or a
finalist a further three times!
[3] Jenni Case’s ‘Education Theories on Learning: an
informal guide for the engineering education scholar’ Tool 4: Community of
practice (Higher Education Academy, 2008)
[7] You may be interested
to know that a noggin is a small piece of timber placed between floor joists to
stop them rotating, the term has become popularised by the phrase ‘use your
noggin’ because not including them can lead to the floor collapsing
Depending on when you are reading this it is either reading week, or it
is the Friday before reading week. Either way happy reading week*.
Now I don’t know what your plans are for reading week but I really hope
you will spend at least some of it, you know, reading. So below are four random
thoughts on reading for reading week.
Luke Kennard ‘Cain’
(Printed
in the Margins, London, 2016)
Now you may have thought that ‘The Office’ blog series was inspired by some sitcom from a few years back, but you’d be wrong. No no no, the office was really inspired by Luke Kennard’s ‘Cain’ where he takes Genesis Chapter 4 verses 9 to 12 from the Bible and he pulls the words apart, literally reducing them to 355 letters. He then takes those 355 letters and counts how many occurrences there are of each before reconstructing them into 32 ‘episodes’. Each episode containing the 355 letters. A mega anagram. My engineering brain boggles at this concept. I have read and re-read those poems. They are bizarre, abstract, peculiar. But Luke Kennard does not stop hear. Around each poem, literally around them, in tiny red letters there is a narrative deconstructing each ‘episode’ often leaving me more baffled than I was before. But I love this book. I love it’s audacious creativity. I love that he doesn’t stop at 2 or 3 anagrams like any normal person does, but instead he creates 32. THIRTY TWO! I can’t begin to imagine the amount of time and effort that would go into making one let alone 32.
What has this got to do with the office you might be wondering. Well I think ‘The Office’ and actually a lot of teaching is much like Luke Kennard’s series of poems. You may have noticed that every week I write about the same thing, over and over again. But each week I shake it and look from another perspective (if you are of a certain age maybe the game Boggle might help the mental image here). Like Luke Kennard we take the same thing and see it from different perspectives. I think teaching works in much the same way more generally. If we are only interested in the knowledge we pass on, or the skills we provide, or the portfolio piece that students create, or the professional qualifications that students are working towards, if we are only thinking of our teaching as achieving one of these things we miss all sorts of opportunities. Luke Kennard saw those four verses from a story right at the beginning of the Bible and he reimagined them in a very literal sense. I love to think about teaching at a unit level, a year level and a Programme level by looking at it from all these different perspectives. Trying to find opportunities and searching for gaps.
Oh and if anyone can explain to me what Luke Kennard is trying to say
over a coffee I would be most grateful.
For years, I have enjoyed independent and unusual magazines but find it
hard to know which ones to try, there are magazines shops popping up with too
many to choose from. So, six months ago I decided to take a subscription with
Stack magazines who send out a different magazine every month – they do the
difficult choosing for me. Septembers issue was gal-dem ‘a publication
committed to sharing perspectives from women and non-binary people of colour’.
I picked the magazine up with trepidation. I am a white, middle age, Christian,
father, husband, man. I wasn’t sure that me and gal-dem were going to get on.
In fact, for a brief moment I found myself thinking ‘I might just give this one
a miss’. But them it hit me. It hit me that as a white middle age man I have
the choice to not read about the perspectives from women and non-binary people
of colour. In fact, if I wanted to, I could probably spend the rest of my life
choosing to not read anything by women and non-binary people of colour. And
then the penny really dropped. Because if I was a women or non-binary person of
colour the same would not be true. I would have to read about the perspective
of white, middle age, Christian, father, husband, man every – single – day.
And I found myself shocked by this revelation. Maybe you have had a
similar revelation.
So I did what I should have done from the start. I read the magazine
cover to cover. I read about life, and grief, and stories of struggle, and I
found much to enjoy. But more importantly I found much of the human experience
that connects us. That as a white, middle age, Christian, father, husband, man
my perspective overlaps with women and non-binary people of colour all over the
place. And so I will continue to read as widely as possible.
The Pharcyde – Ya
Mama (from Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, Delicious Vinyl, 1992)
I was driving my son home from some activity when for some very ill
advised reason I mentioned the song ‘Ya Mama’ by hip hop group The Pharcyde
(pronounced ‘far side’ for the uninitiated). It’s what’s known as a ‘dis track’.
And it has some killer lines (if you like juvenile dis tracks about ‘Ya Mama’).
I suggested we put it on for us all to listen to, but I couldn’t find it on my
phone. So instead I encouraged him to google it to find the lyrics – parenting
note – when you start to hear the words ‘why don’t you just google the lyrics
of this 1990’s dis track and read them out to us all allowed’ coming from your
mouth, stop. Change the subject, now may be a good moment to discuss the
meaning of different swear words or sex or something similarly innocuous. So, obediently,
he started to read the words out to us all in the car. Luckily my son is much,
much more sensible than me. He started to sensor certain words, but then he
stumbled across a racial swear word. Eeeeeeek. Now if I had stopped and thought
about it I would have realised that reading lyrics from 1990s hip hop from a
group coming out of South Central Los Angeles was never going to be a good idea
(look no further than the introduction to NWAs Straight Outta Compton for
evidence).
Now, a few months ago I was at a meeting to discuss my community. The idea was to capture the communities needs as part of a regeneration project. But the meeting was not a success. The developer had employed a facilitator who had prepared a series of statements about our council estate. All of them were true. But they didn’t begin to describe our estate. They missed the vitality, the community, the joy that we, as residents feel, living here. They didn’t mention that many residents have chosen to live on our estate for decades and decades because they like it. Yes we could do with better broadband. And it would be nice if the bus service was better. And there isn’t much for young people to do. But I love it. I like my neighbours. I like walking the streets. I like knowing many of the residents. I feel safe.
So here is my dilemma. Much music (and books and you tube videos) from
communities much like mine have words in them that are not OK. They have ideas
that are not OK. But if I don’t allow my children to hear them, much like the
people who came to my estate, they will assume that they are all bad. They will
miss the shear, ‘hairs standing up on the back of your neck’ visceral emotion
that comes through on ‘Straight Out Of Compton’, the political unrest in tracks
like ‘Sound of the Police’ they will be led to believe that there is only bad
and miss all the good, just like those facilitators who came to my estate. I’ll
be honest, I haven’t played my 13 year old son either of those songs…yet. But
one day I hope I will, and I hope he will be able to hold the tension of the
good with the bad. That he will find the joy in amongst the rage.
A final thought
To wrap up this reading week special (which has little to nothing to do
with ‘the office’) can I make a small suggestion. For the last three years
every time I read a book, magazine, zine, pamphlet, poetry anthology, photo
portfolio, comic or dictionary I take a photo of it. Each year I collect these
images as a visual record of what I have read. I find it helpful. And it makes
it easy to share with others what I have been reading. The photo Montage up the
top is a selection of my reading in 2019. I would love to chat about any of
them with any of you.
So next week – back to ‘The Office’ and I will try and tackle the topic of Communities of Practice.
Oh and by the way – I have never, in all my life, read a dictionary
cover to cover, that was just a joke.
* It has come to my attention that whilst it is reading week in the Faculty of Engineering other faculties have reading week at other times, so if it isn’t reading week, or you don’t have a reading week, apologies, and hopefully you can enjoy the post anyway (and make some time for reading!)
This week in my blog I would like to talk about funding. How have I
funded my office project? Now, before we go any further, I would like to be honest;
I have very little experience in funding. I have never applied for a research
grant (although I have been a collaborator on one small proposal) and have had
a relatively unsuccessful run of applying for teaching grants. What I have done
is successfully apply for a teaching fellowship, and successfully applied for
£3k from my school. That’s it.
So, this week’s blog will be short and sweet.
But first a short bit of backstory…
In 2000, I graduated from Nottingham as a Civil Engineer and joined a company called ‘Whitby Bird’ where I designed buildings for three years. In 2003, I came to Bristol as an RA and worked on a research project for three years (whilst also gaining my PhD). In the first year of my contract I supported a member of staff as they taught how to design buildings out of steel and concrete. In the second year I taught the steel component. In the third year- well in the third year I wrote my PhD (which was super tough, especially as my second son was born just months before the final hand-in). In 2006/7, I was employed 2 days a week to teach both steel and concrete and spent my other three days designing buildings. From 2007-2014, I worked roughly 4 days a week in industry and 1 day a week teaching initially steel and concrete design. Then I added another unit on sustainable materials. Then I added another unit on architecture, all on a single day a week.
Just under five years ago I stopped designing buildings (something I
really loved) to go full time into teaching, something I loved even more.
So, although I am now in my forties and I have become School Education
Director, I have not actually been full time at the University for very long.
Most of my career I have been a practising engineer. But more than that, I gave
up something I loved to do something I love even more- teach!
Now you understand the background you will hopefully understand the
following comment, I have struggled to apply for funding for teaching because
as far as I could tell the main item I could get funding for was for my time.
As a teaching only member of staff most of my time is spent teaching. So, if my
time is bought out that would surely mean less teaching. But I don’t want to
teach less, if anything, until recently, I have always wanted to teach more
(only a few days ago I was told off for volunteering to teach something)!
So, I have applied two of three times for funding from the University
because it seemed like the right thing to do, but I never had any success,
partly because I am really quite rubbish at writing applications. And partly
because I didn’t really have anything I actually wanted the money for (I often
wondered if I could just apply for a large supply of chocolate to give out to
flagging staff and students on a Friday afternoon). It just seemed a good idea
to apply for funding.
This all changed about 18 months ago when I saw the advert for BILT Fellowships.
Working in a team with other academics from across the University appealed much
more than applying for a simple buyout from my teaching, so I went for it. I
updated my CV, filled in a form, went for an interview and got the post. Which
was fantastic. I am now a BILT Fellow for 30% of my time until the end of this
academic year.
However, what I discovered was that my teaching load didn’t go down, in
fact it went up! This wasn’t by design- a member of staff went on long term
sick leave and I covered for them at short notice. But, and this a really big
BUT, having the Fellowship did mean that I had a day and a week when I could
say I was working on my pedagogy. I was able to block book my calendar, turn
down meetings, and sit in coffee shops:-
Plotting.
And reflecting.
And reading papers.
And drawing large diagrams on A3 spotty paper.
And writing endless blogs.
And visiting other universities (where I also sat in coffee shops).
And in this time and space I was able to dream up the office. I think
the important thing, which I had not realised until then, was that what I
needed was not buyout from teaching, but permission to block book a day a week
where I could focus on something else. To buy-in to some quality thinking and
reading time.
As part of this time and space dreaming about the project I did then
write a funding proposal. It was only to my school and it was for £3,000. It’s
not a lot of money, but it really has helped. I have used it to buy calculation
pads with my made-up company logo. I have used it to buy books for all the
groups. I have used it to buy stationary and folders and boxes to store
everything in. And most importantly I have used it to buy everyone their own
mug so we can have teas and coffees in the office. I don’t think my application
was any better than in previous years, but as this was only school level I
suspect that there were a lot less applicants – and so my bid was successful.
And so, my takeaway from this project (and my time as a BILT Fellow
especially), is that the most beneficial thing is not the buyout that you get
from other things (whether teaching, admin or research) but the buy in that I
got for having a day where I can concentrate on pedagogy and developing ideas. That
when I stopped focussing on what I didn’t want (to give up teaching) and
started to focus on what I did want (to have time to think and read and write)
I was more successful. But let’s not get carried away, maybe I was less
successful and more content with what I was achieving.
Next week’s episode… is a reading week special. Until then have a good
week.
A few months ago, I was sat in a conference when I got an email from one of the heads of department asking me if I was around. Without thinking, I replied that I was working but not in the office. The subsequent email asked me, in broken English, whether I could purchase £500 in Amazon vouchers and send them back to them. My suspicions were raised so I checked the email address – and, lo and behold, it had come from a scammer.
I spent the rest of the conference not thinking about the topics of discussion but how the scammer could improve the scam – how they might increase their chances of catching me out – and the feedback I should give them. I can’t help it. I love feedback (although I have learnt to keep feedback on the precise science of loading a dishwasher to a minimum over the years).
In today’s episode, I want to talk about feedback. It’s amazing. For me, it is one of the biggest reasons I am in education – to give kind, constructive, thought-provoking and applicable feedback. If you want a great lecture on concrete I am sure there are thousands of YouTube videos just waiting to be discovered (or maybe not) but getting personal feedback really is gold. Being able to present your design to an engineer who can gently ask questions and help a student to realise both what works and what maybe doesn’t is really important.
So when I design a unit ‘feedback’ is one of the items I really focus on.
How can students get feedback? From whom? How can they apply it in the future
on other units? And more importantly how will they apply it when they go into
industry and act as a professional engineer?
Feedback mapping
I love to draw. And so rather than list the types of feedback I will use, I map them. For ‘Timber 4’ the feedback map looks like this:
So, what on earth is going on here? Well I have tried to show also sorts of different ‘feedback’ mechanisms.
Feed-in and
Feed-out
On the left we have the ‘feed-in’ what have they learnt previously – and
what feedback did the students receive which will help them on this unit.
On the right we have the ‘feed-out’ what happens to the feedback I give
the students after the unit – this looks forward both to other units (which at
this point in their degree is quite limited as they only have one term to go
after this unit) but it also looks beyond this – to their life as a practising
engineer – and the skills they will need and the experiences they will have.
The feedback on the final project is designed to support them in another
project – their 40 credit Masters design project. I use the same marking pro
forma and will provide feedback so that they can learn for this next project.
Different Types
of Feedback
In the middle is all the formative feedback which occurs within the
unit. We might call this feed forward or feedback cycles, I’m not sure what the
exact pedagogic term is, but in my mind, it is where much of the learning occurs.
And it’s where I can bring real value to the students by being involved. I have
tried to build in a number of different mechanisms.
Firstly, I sit in the office and discuss questions that students might have. Some people call this feedback, I actually don’t like this term… I prefer ‘conversation’ or just plain old ‘teaching’! I think it’s useful to differentiate the two, feedback should be focused and specific not just a conversation. This of course doesn’t mean that these conversations are not important, they really are, it’s just I think that if we call them feedback its confusing.
Secondly, students are required to review each other’s work. Every group has a checking log which records the feedback students have produced, every calculation page has a checking box – which should only be signed once the page is checked, and every drawing has the same box. The aim is to get students to support each other’s learning whilst also learning from each other.
Next, students are required to submit their drawings from the first project and these are reviewed both by me (who will provide some generic feedback) and much more importantly, by a timber fabricator who will attempt to cost the students designs based on the information they have provided.
Finally, there is a ‘Quality Assurance Review’. This will involve sitting together with each team and reviewing their progress on all four projects. Three should be complete, and one will be in progress. The three complete projects will be reviewed to ascertain whether they can competently design a number of key components. It will also ensure they have checked each other’s work (a checking log is provided to students beforehand so they can clearly see what they need to do). Once we have reviewed the three projects we will then discuss project 4 (the Quality Assurance Review). This is the summative project which they will be about a third of the way through. The aim of the review is to give some technical feedback (based on projects 1-3) but also provide some feedforward on the project they are working on. This review is not credit bearing, but if I am not convinced that they are competent in certain areas of design I will ask for them to include these again within their final project submission.
Formative
feedback – Myth busting
I don’t remember how many times people have said to me – ‘if the
assessment is formative students won’t do it’ – but it’s a lot. I don’t agree.
I think it is much more complex than this. Take the week 3 project for example.
The assessment is formative – but ten out of ten groups submitted drawings.
That’s 100%. Or everyone. So maybe they will do it if they have a good reason?
I like to think that there are lots of good reasons for doing formative
assessment including (but not limited to) it’s fun, it’s interesting, it will
help build a portfolio of work I can show other people, it will help me develop
as I work towards my summative assessment, it helps me to know what I do and
don’t know (although I appreciate it’s rarely that simple). Much of this is
described in detail in ‘Formative
assessment and self-regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good
feedback practice’.
Feedback on the unit
So finally I thought I’d let you know how the unit is going. I don’t
have any formal feedback, yet. But I am writing a reflective diary every week
so I don’t forget anything. Highlights to date have included:
Some really interesting
external talks – including one on timber gridshells by Jonathan Roynon of
BuroHappold and one on timber architecture by Fergus Feilden who’s Yorkshire
Sculpture Park project was shortlisted for the Stirling prize – the highest
honour in British architecture.
Taking the students to
the Old Vic for a tour – this had two purposes – the Old Vic have agreed to be
the client and they had a brand new entrance built from timber I wanted the
students to see – I loved hearing their conversations as they noticed specific
details.
The buzz of the office
– every week it’s busy – people come and go – but there are always more people
in than out (lot’s of students have other commitments through the day) and the
conversation reminds me of when I used to work in industry – a mix of what you
did the day before and technical discussion.
Students turning up in
work attire (for the most part) every week.
Students not taking
work out the office to continue working on it in their own time (as far as I am
aware) – some students started to raise concerns that they might need to do
this – but rather than pursue that option we reviewed what they were doing and
why they had concerns.
And so at this midpoint in the project (and blog series) it seems to be
going well.
Next week – funding and the student BILT fellows will be coming to visit!
Note 1: I decided – for ethical reasons – not to give feedback to the
scammer in the end.
Note 2: My son recently discovered a TED talk by James Veitch on
replying to scammers which we all watched and laughed to – a lot – If you have
ten minutes and need a good laugh I can recommend – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4Uc-cztsJo.
Note 3: I just made up the phrase feed-in and feed-out. I was trying to
think of fun names for the episode and I was trying different variants and they
seem to make sense to me. If you have seen them used before please let me know
so I can reference them in future.
Note 4: Full reference is Nicol, D. J., & Macfarlane-Dick, D., Formative
assessment and self-regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good
feedback practice. Studies in higher
education, 31, 2006.
Note
5: Timber gridshells are incredible structures – Jonathan spoke about the Savill
Building – for which he was the engineer – and you can find more information
here: https://www.burohappold.com/projects/savill-building/
So, this week I want to talk about Authentic Learning. Hopefully you had a chance to look at the paper I mentioned by Marilyn M. Lombardi on ‘Authentic Learning for the 21st Century: An Overview’ (Educase 2007) which provides a really nice, simple and clear framework for what authentic learning is. It breaks it down into ten key components:
For ‘Timber Engineering 4’- as I have noted previously- (see Episode 3) we used flipped teaching and a series of real-world projects to enable the students to learn. I also noted (in Episode 2) that we have provided a library of information which provides different information (sometimes conflicting) that students need to make sense of. In this episode I want to quickly and simply break down how I have attempted to provide all ten of these principles across the unit and specifically the four projects that the students are working on. I don’t intend to spend too long on each one – but instead provide a few practical examples that people might be able to replicate.
1. Real World
Relevance
In one sense, all engineering should have real world relevance. But on
this unit, I have tried to make this explicit. There are four projects and all
four projects are designing buildings. One is a real building that was built,
one is a real building that requires repair and two are made up, but could be
real. To enhance this sense of real buildings every project includes a project information
sheet and a job number. This is a simple summary of all the information
provided and all the information required. This is supported with drawings,
photos and further information.
2. Ill-defined
problem/ 3. Sustained investigation/10. Multiple interpretations and outcomes
There are four projects that the students are working on. Two are what
we call detailed design. The building size, shape and structure is already
known – but the final sizes of elements needs to be confirmed. These two
projects are designed to teach students the basic principles of timber design.
The other two projects are less well defined. One is an existing building that
needs strengthening. There are many options for strengthening a floor and
students need to develop some different strategies and confirm which one the
client should proceed with. The other is a portable theatre. This project is
the one that students will be assessed on. It has a real client (Dave from the
Old Vic presented to the students on Thursday and we are off to look round
their building this Thursday) who has provided an open-ended brief for the
students to propose their own solution to.
All four projects are non-trivial and require students to work on them
for a number of days and weeks. The final assessed project (the portable theatre)
was launched back in week 2 and students have until week 10 to provide a
solution.
Finally I am looking forward to seeing the output of the final project
and expect a diverse selection of solutions. Of course, I won’t know if I have
been successful until I receive the students final reports.
4. Multiple
sources and perspectives
As noted earlier students are provided with a library of information –
not one definitive set of notes, however this is not enough to really achieve
this aspect of authentic learning, as students should find the information
themselves! Whilst they are presented with a large library of information they
are not provided with everything. When designing a building there are a large
swathe of codes and standards they should be looking at. There is also an even
larger body of inspiration that they can use to inform their own design. So, as
with other items, the first three projects the students predominantly have
everything they need to complete the task but for the fourth project they will
need to go beyond this information.
I have been running Timber 4 for a few years now and one of the most
gratifying moments was when my tutees explained to me that unlike other
projects they had worked on they had been forced to work together and
collaborate right through their Timber Design project. I was delighted, as this
is such a key skill for real life, however I am aware of other projects which
are approached as ‘cut and shut’ where students all work independently and then
stick their work together into one report. The design of the projects on this
unit is such that working independently is just not possible. Every decision
impacts on everything else. And hence the best way to work on the project is to
sit together in a room and work collaboratively – in an office like environment.
“Timber Engineering was the first time I felt as though I was doing
‘engineering’. This is a module that cultivated everything I’d learnt in my
previous 3 years; communication, team-work, problem-solving, creativity and
innovation. For a person who has never had the opportunity to work at an
engineering company as an intern, this was the first real insight and
experience I had as a structural engineer.”
Making the project interdisciplinary is more difficult. The unit is
after all just 10 credits, and the students are all designing in timber. They
are required to think about architecture, acoustics, lighting, space. But
ultimately, they are all acting as timber engineers. I would argue that on this
point we are unable to fulfil the requirements of authentic learning. But fortunately,
Civil Engineering students are also working on a much larger, more complex
design project at the same time, where they must apply a much wider set of
multidisciplinary skills.
8. Integrated
Assessment
The design of a theatre – the final project which students are marked on
– is integrated right through the unit, being launched in week 2 and running
until the end of week 10. The other projects are designed to both teach
students and give them the skills to complete this project. There are a number
of feedback (feedforward) mechanisms built into the unit – more of which will
be discussed next week.
9. Polished
Product
One of my aims when writing this unit was that students would produce a
portfolio piece. Something that they can take to interview and be proud of. As
a result the output is a report with drawings and calculations. The report is
linked to the RIBA stages (which are used in industry). And students in
previous years have found that the output has been very helpful in interview.
“In regards to recruitment, I would not have gotten my graduate
job if it wasn’t for Timber Engineering. When I went in for my interview, the
interviewers were amazed by the standards and level of detail that was
undertaken in the design of the building. It was physical evidence that showed
the recruiters that I had the skills, enthusiasm and ability to undertake
responsibilities at their firm.”
6. Reflection
Which leaves reflection. How do we integrate reflection into this
process. I have to be honest, I find reflection hard, or to be more precise I
find the articulation of reflection hard. I think, if there was one area that I
would like to improve it is reflection. I will talk next week about feedback –
and I hope that this will in part lead to reflection. But I know that there is
more to it than just reflecting on feedback. One of the challenges is creating
space for reflection, and as I sit here writing this I am thinking ‘how can I
add some reflective practice into tomorrow?” After all last week, the students
completed a project, and this week they start a new one, this feels like the
ideal time to pause and reflect on their achievements to date, what they have
learnt, and how they want to proceed. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Note: Quotes taken from an email a student sent me – used with
permission
At some point in Spring 2018 I went for an interview to be a BILT Fellow
in Assessment and Feedback. All went well and I was offered a two-year Fellowship.
But on reflection, I wasn’t sure if I really should be doing Assessment and
Feedback – not because I don’t think it’s important, I do – but because I
realised that having worked on a number of university projects as a practising
engineer I was probably more suited to the other BILT theme, ‘Rethinking Spaces’.
And so, I switched.
Last year, I spent my BILT time digging through literature on space
(alongside all sorts of other things) and dreamt up some fun projects about it.
And from this, ‘The Office’ was born. But it turns out that when you change
space you change a whole load of other things as well. In simple terms, when I
moved from thinking about teaching as lectures and considered it as coming to
work, this raised so many more questions: questions about teaching delivery;
identity; community; authenticity- not just space.
As a result, whilst my main topic is ‘space’, it has taken until Episode
4 to really talk about the physical space because, in short, I had so many
other things to talk about. But this week I want to focus on the actual
physical space.
Over the course of the last 6 months there were a number of questions to
be answered. Boring, practical questions.
Where
could I base my office?
How
was it going to fit into the timetable?
How
would the space look like anything other than a class room with tables grouped
together?
To answer the first two questions, I reached out to a variety of different
staff across the university, I visited different buildings, reviewed different
options, but in the end the solution to both came from Engineering Timetabling
– without whom this project could never have happened. We discussed pragmatic
solutions, like allowing students to be present for core hours – but being able
to go and do other things (like lectures, supervisor meetings or design project
meetings) outside of these. Above all else we started the conversation early in
the year, enabling options to be reviewed and timetabled early in the cycle –
long before official deadlines.
To answer the third question, we started by looking at actual office
spaces across the university campus, but nothing quite worked. And so, we went
back to the old flatbed teaching room, as beloved by engineering (a quick walk
around Queens building will show you just how much we love our flatbed teaching
rooms).
The room was agreed before the summer break, enabling me to plan the space,
have a trial run and work out the different furniture I needed to beg, steal or
borrow. I made plans. The original plan is outlined below under week 1. There were
a number of key features:
Entrance – To make the space feel more like an office and less like a classroom the first step was to create a different entrance. This was achieved very simply by putting a company sign by the office door, and placing plants either side of the entrance.
Entrance to the ‘Just Timber’ Office.
Working Space – The working space is laid out as desks in groups. Much like my old companies – tables are in lines – but unlike my old companies where everyone has a computer and at least a table each, here to fit in the number of students we placed groups of 4 students around two tables and there are no computers.
Students working in the office.
Huddle Space – When working
in industry we used to have a Monday morning huddle – where we would plan the
week ahead – this space would also be the location for lunch time talks. I
created a large space where students could bring their chairs for the huddle.
Breakout Space – In addition to more formal working spaces, I wanted to create a breakout space which students could use to have a pause, discuss ideas, drink a cup of tea, read architecture magazines and generally refresh before cracking on with the next task at hand. It has 4 low chairs – taken from my own office (which now looks very sad) and a low coffee table. There is a couple of magazine racks with the latest issue of engineering and architecture magazines.
Students taking a break
Directors’ Tables – When in industry I have always worked in companies where the directors are in the same open plan office space as everyone else, no fancy corner offices with large leather sofas. The theory is that this flattens the hierarchy (which is does) but I also imagine the financial saving from space and furniture is quite attractive. To start with the Directors tables (where a PhD student and myself sit) were located by the huddle space for the simple reason that the tables could be quickly moved making more room to huddle in.
Directors’ Table
Storage – Finally to keep the illusion alive that this was an office and not a classroom a screen is set up (which students are invited to cover with inspirational images) and behind this all the excess chairs and tables are stored along with the lectern (nothing says lecture more than a lectern) and the giant projector screen. As the screen cannot be used a large TV is now wheeled in for all presentations.
Floorplan of the ‘Just Timber’ office.
Changes and
reflection following the first week
Following the first week of delivery there was some immediate feedback
from the students, most notably that there was not enough desk space. In
addition, my plan to huddle did not materialize. Maybe because students were on
heavy static seats rather than seats with wheels which can quickly be moved to
other locations. As a result, the layout in week 2 was revised. More tables
were put out, so groups now had 3 tables each rather than 2. The huddle space
was removed.
There were some further consequences to this change in the use of the
space in that there was now less furniture to store (all the tables in the room
were being utilized) and as a result the breakout space became much bigger. In
the first week I didn’t notice any groups sit in the comfy chairs, but in week
2 the space was used by a number of different groups during the day. This of
course may be due to the students becoming more familiar with the space and the
fact that one of their projects is much more open ended and so inspiration from
different sources is required. But I also believe the space is now more
welcoming.
We also opted to move the directors table to a more central position, so
we were more in the mix. This didn’t change the number of enquiries during the
day, but I was able to get a better feel for what was happening in the room and
the conversations that were taking place – being in the ‘thick of it’.
Following the end of week 2 students confirmed that they were much
happier with the space. One student requested that we use the large screen as
the TV was harder to see, but I am reluctant to do this as there is still space
for students to move closer if they wish and we would be back to just a flat
bed teaching room if we have a lectern and large screen.
I also wonder if, by moving groups apart (there is a clear gap between
each group now), whether there is a reduced sharing of information across
groups and the groups become more insular, something I am very keen to avoid as
the aim is that all students learn as much as possible. I will monitor in the
weeks ahead. My feeling was, certainly in the first week, that when I shared
some key information with one group – this was being quickly fed to other
groups. For example one of the questions was whether all floor joists should be
the same depth? Once explaining the different arguments to one group I found as
I talked to other groups they presented back to me the same reasoning I had
given, acknowledging that this seemed to be the consensus among others.
So next week as we continue to consider pedagogy and ‘the office’ we
will look at authentic learning. In the spirit of the project if you would like
some pre-reading I would recommend you read ‘Authentic
Learning for the 21st Century: An Overview’ By Marilyn M. Lombardi (Educase 2007).
I love lecturing. It’s awesome. I get that nervous excitement beforehand,
like an actor or musician about to perform – it fires up my imagination – I
think of new ways to say the same old thing. And then there is the lecture
itself. The whoops of joy as I derive the equation for timber design – the
ohhhs and ahhhs as it looks like my worked example has gone horribly wrong only
for me to save it at the last minute with a daring leap of engineering logic
(change the initial assumptions and post rationalising). And then there is the
cheering – the standing ovation – as 2 hours later we come in to land. Everyone
having been on an emotional rollercoaster.
Now I know what you are thinking, you think I am joking, but I am not
(in fact I very rarely joke as I have a below average sense of humour – as my
children like to regularly remind me). I am exaggerating – of course – but in
my mind the above is how a perfect timber lecture would go.
And so, when I say “I am not lecturing on my timber unit this year”, it
is with a heavy heart – and it’s important that you know that this was a hard
decision for me to make, a costly one.
But I have another agenda, a more important one, I really want my
students to learn about timber. I believe that the world needs more people who
can design not just with steel and concrete – that we need engineers who can do
more than just replicate the designs of the past – we need engineers fit for
the future who can design with more materials. And however much I love
lecturing I believe that by flipping the teaching my students will learn more[1].
Now let’s be clear. There is nothing new about flipped teaching. Back in
1997 when I was a green haired undergraduate studying Civil Engineering I
decided to take an option on the philosophy of science. Every week we were
required to read a book. And every week we would come not for a lecture but for
a debate. Facilitated and led by our ‘lecturer’. The whole thing worked really
well. Every week the chapter of the book would convince me that this was indeed
the ‘philosophy of science’ only for this philosophical viewpoint to be slowly
ripped to shreds over the course of an hours discussion and leaving me
wondering why I had been so foolish to believe it in the first place? I would
then read the next chapter, the next idea, which would respond to all the
arguments from the discussion we had in class, only for that approach to be
similarly reduced to rubble in the next discussion. Flipped teaching goes back
way further than my own education. And yet in engineering it happens very
rarely. We love to lecture.
But lectures are not the best way for people to learn. And so, this year,
in ‘the office’ there are no lectures. No derivations. Instead I have gone for
a different approach. But before I break this down maybe it would be helpful
for me to describe my old approach. It goes like this:
Part 1– Context
Talk about some projects that relate to the topic for this week for
about 20 minutes. This achieves a number of things: It gives the learning some
context – students can see why they are doing it. It also gives me, as their
teacher, credibility – I have done it. Finally it gives them some technical
language and understanding of why we do what we do – it helps them join the
‘community of practice[2]’.
Part 2 – Theory
Next I reach for the notes. Personally I don’t like to use powerpoint
for this I proffer to use a stack of paper, a pencil, and a visualiser and I
will explain the theory of what we are doing – effectively teaching them what
is already written in the notes. This will typically take place as two blocks
of 20 minutes.
Part 3 – Example
Once the technical content has been delivered I will talk through a real
example by doing it on the board. This will normally last about 20 minutes. I
generally make these up on the spot – asking students for numbers. This way I
have to think about what I am doing and as a result I find it easier to explain
my thought process to students as I go through the example – it also slows me
down (a good thing). But this also has a negative effect, for I find writing
things down hard. I will say one thing and my hand will write something
different. It used to make maths exams tricky as I would regularly think the
right process but write down the wrong number, similarly for students my
mistakes can be confusing.
Part 4 –
Application and conversation
Students are set a number of problems to work through where they build
up and extend their understanding of the course materials: – This occurs both
in example classes, where I am able to answer questions and discuss the content
with them. But also outside of the taught time as students work on their own.
This year I have used the same model in many regards but rather than
deliver parts 1-3 in a lecture with part 4 predominantly happening elsewhere I
have flipped it (hence the term
flipped teaching) so part 4 happens in my teaching environment with parts 2 and
3 occurring elsewhere.
So this is how it (hopefully) works:
Part 1 – Context
I no longer give a 20 minute talk on projects at the start of each week.
Instead I have done a few different things:
I
have covered the walls with pictures of real projects – to give them a sense of
what they are working towards
I
have included case studies and inspiring photos of projects in the course notes
I
have invited a number of practioners in to give lunch time talks (we used to do
these when I was a practicing engineer) on real projects
Finally
I have authored books on timber, which I hope gives me credibility without having
to talk about my projects
Part 2 – Theory
As
mentioned in episode 2[3]
I have slowly built up a set of notes which are highly detailed over the last 8
years. So now, rather than effectively read them to the students (and anyone
who has witnessed me reading a bedtime story will know that that is a lot more
engaging than it sounds – see my BoB lecture for evidence[4])
I let them read them to themselves. It’s that simple.
Every
week I have a list of pre-reading which has been there since before the course
began so that student can read it in their own time for the whole course.
Part 3 – Example
So
the biggest change for me this year has been that I have created a series of
worked example videos. These go through the core concepts for each week. There
are many advantages to this approach (rather than doing it live in class)
students can pause – rewind – re-watch – jump ahead to where they are stuck.
And more importantly I don’t make mistakes! The casual feedback from students
has been very positive. The down side is that each 15 minute example takes
about 1-2 hours to produce. And I need to find a silent location with no
interruptions to make them in.
Part 4 – Application and conversation
Which
brings us to the purpose of all of this. By enabling students to learn about
the subject for each week before they arrive at ‘the office’, we can use the working
day to apply the information. I have created 4 projects which they will work on
over the course of 10 weeks. Each designed to challenge them in a different
way. Each designed to build up their engineering understanding. I have also
provided a map to show how everything links together.
Having
run the office for two weeks it really seems to be going well. Students come
ready to learn. As I sit and work on my own projects I listen to the buzz in
the room. The hum of conversation. And much of it is around the technical
details of timber design. The students are discussing their work together. Working
together. And I do get a good and steady stream of questions – but good
questions. No one yet has asked me to give a mini lecture. So whilst there is
still a long way to go (8 weeks) at this stage it feels like it is working.
Why don’t we all do it
So
the obvious question is, why doesn’t everyone do this? The honest answer is for
me that it is so much more work. I can see that in the long run, once it is up
and running, it will be less work. But if you are time strapped now it is so
hard to invest in the future – despite the reward.
I
also fear it is more work for students. Not that they will spend longer working
– but that it feels harder. That lectures seem easy – information being
delivered in accessible bite size chunks and that somehow this is more
challenging. And coupled with this, I fear that they won’t love it as much as
they love my lectures – that my ratings will drop!
Another
challenge is space. Physical space. Working in collaborative groups – with easy
circulation and easy access for students and staff to ask question – takes up
more space than lines of desks all looking towards the screen. I have been
lucky in that I have got a small enough group (36) where it works. But I also
understand just how big the space challenge is.
Plus
a little bit of me is missing the excitement of standing up and giving a
lecture!
[2] See Jenni Case’s ‘Education
Theories on Learning: an informal guide for the engineering education scholar’
Tool 4: Community of practice (Higher Education Academy, 2008)
