Category Archives: OER

Drinking the wisdom of the sage on the stage: the traditional lecture on iTunesU

trueman170x170Over the past two weeks I’ve been making my way through a series of lectures on the Reformation by Carl Trueman of the Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. I understand the lectures form part of a masters’ degree. They are available free through iTunesU.

The first thing I should say about the lectures is that I am enjoying them. They are well presented, full of interesting facts, contain some interesting and sometimes funny stories, and contain a great deal of Trueman’s own scholarly analysis. The course is also very broad covering the reformation from a historical as well as theological perspectives (not that Trueman would suggest the two approaches could be divorced). I’ve listened to the first seven lectures, which have focused not only on the person of Martin Luther himself, but also the geo-political situation of the German states and Holy Roman Empire in the early sixteenth century. Occasionally students ask questions which try to relate Luther’s experience and views to trends and movements in contemporary Christianity. While this may be expected in an evangelical Christian seminary where the students are in or are preparing for ministry, Trueman resists any attempt to draw such parallels and always falls on the side of constraint. Luther himself is a complex individual, his theological and political thought evolves over his lifetime and he lived five centuries ago.

However, I did not start this post with a view to discussing the Reformation, Martin Luther or Carl Trueman, but the nature of the traditional lecture. There are an astonishing 33 lectures in this series, most just under an hour long. I don’t know how the lectures fit into the Seminary’s (orthe accreditor’s) credit system, but 30 hours strikes me as a huge amount of the contact time for one ‘module’. The students ask occasional questions, all of which Trueman thoughtfully answers.

My own practice as tutor on the Postgraduate Certificate course for new lecturers could not be more different from the traditional lecture. My own input is generally short, activities tend to be group and discussion based, and assessments are varied. I’m well aware that some new lecturers would quite like to come to an hour long lecture where they could take notes, not be called upon to discuss as a class or in groups and write an essay and/or a traditional exam for the assessment, but such passivity goes against what I believe about learning.

My own undergraduate study was very lecture-based assessed mainly by unseen two-hour exams at the end of each module. There was some ‘coursework’, but the exams probably made up around 70% of the assessment. Most of those lectures were actually very interesting, but it was the small group tutorials which encouraged me to learn think independently and develop intellectually into the sort of person who could undertake postgraduate study.

Listening to and enjoying Carl Trueman’s lectures has presented me with an intriguing dilemma about teaching in higher education. Trueman lectures are incredibly detailed. Each time I listen to one I look forward to the next. I almost feel I am walking in Luther’s shoes. However, I really need to ask myself whether this is the best way for Trueman’s students to learn? It is tremendous that I can sit in East Sussex listening to fascinating lectures from Pennsylvania, but I will not be taking the exams and writing the essays. If I had to write an essay, a project or exam I would be somewhat overwhelmed that I could possibly produce anything interesting or original. If I taught about the reformation (which I don’t and never will as it’s not my area) I would be very tempted to tell students to listen to these lectures., and use my own time in the classroom differently.

Perhaps it is the enthusiastic amateur (like me in the case of the reformation) who benefits the most from freely available online lectures like these. I listen to ‘sage on the stage’* drinking his wisdom in a way I could not possibly comprehend if he was in my area of expertise. Trueman relates stories of email arguments he’s had the various (named) individual scholars. He tells of how one of his book reviews exposed so many factual errors it led to a whole edition getting pulled.** This is a teacher and colleague to fear!

Note: I’ve picked on Carl Trueman because that is what I’m listening to at the moment. I’m sure my feelings would be the same of a lot of other publically available online content.

*King, Alison. ‘From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side’. College Teaching 41, no. 1 (1 January 1993): 30–35. (Not open access).

**Carl Trueman (2012) You Cannot Judge This Book by its Cover: A Review of Evans, G. R. The Roots of the Reformation: Tradition, Emergence and Rupture. IVP Academic, 2012. The publisher brought out a second edition with corrections.

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My Open Educational Resources

I have put many of my teaching resources in the humbox where anyone is welcome to download and reuse them. They are primarily used as handouts in face-to-face contexts, so most would probably need adapting to turn them into materials suitable for purely online context. Most are available under creative commons licenses, but please check first.

My profile on the humbox

Click on "View all resources" to see a full list of my resources.

The PhD research training collection includes resources on the PhD viva, academic writing, employability, academic writing, doing book reviews and ethnography.

The Head of University language departments collection includes scenario planning exercises, for curriculum change, people management and presenting research.

Further resources I have produced for sharing are on other project websites such as SPEAQ (Relating to quality assurance and enhancement) and Getting the Most Out of Feedback which has resources for students and staff on feedback and student evaluation.

There is also my Statistics for Humanities online book.

I have made a list on Diigo of other people's open educational resources on study skills

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SEDA Fellowship report 2012-2013

Introduction

For the second year running I have opted to put my SEDA Fellowship report on my website (last year's here). Although I am currently working at the LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies at the University of Southampton, I will be joining the Centre for Learning and Teaching at the University of Brighton in September. I was offered the Brighton job back in May so I am very much in a transition frame of mind at present.

Career development

After ten years at the LLAS Centre (counting the centre in its LTSN/ HEA subject centre forms) I felt it was now time to move on and undertook a UK-wide job search. The end result was an offer from the Centre of Learning and Teaching at the University of Brighton. Last week I visited Brighton for the university’s internal teaching and learning conference and heard about a lot of the interesting things about some of the interesting things which are going on there. It was also nice to spend time getting to know some of my new colleagues as well.

Statistics for Humanities

twitter
Tweet referring to the Statistics for Humanities book.

This past year has been mostly project based. My Statistics for Humanities student ‘text-book’ is available in draft form and I am awaiting comments from the British Academy nominated reviewers.  The British Academy agreed that I could put a draft online for a crowd sourced review. This has led to receiving many helpful comments, and one academic in particular has provided some very extensive feedback. I have long been dissatisfied with introductory statistics textbooks. I hope that mine will reach out to students (and academics) who struggled in the past. The examples in the book come from the humanities and I have attempted to write a book which uses a verbal reasoning-based approach which should resonate better with humanities students than some other texts.

EU Quality Assurance project

University of Aveiro, Portugal. Venue for our third project meeting in December 2012.

We are coming to the end of the second year of this 2-year EU-funded project,  Sharing Practice in Assuring and Enhancing Quality (SPEAQ) which follows on from LANQUA (the Language Network for Quality Assurance). I didn’t work on LANQUA and hadn’t worked on an EU-project before. I was quite apprehensive about being involved in the project as I had seen colleagues undergoing the stresses of running a project which involves administrative complications (e.g. currency conversions and daily rates) as well as working alongside colleagues in other countries who work in very difference pedagogic, policy and quality environments.   Fortunately our assistant director (and my line manager) Alison Dickens is an experienced director of EU–projects and our senior administrator Sue Nash has worked on them before, so, fortunately for me, I have been able to concentrate mostly on content issues.

Delegates at SPEAQ workshop, Tallinn
Delegates at SPEAQ workshop, at European Quality Assurance Forum, Tallinn

In the first year of the project we developed a workshop in which staff, students and quality managers can participate together. I played a big role in this aspect of the project producing a dialogue sheet and writing facilitator instructions. Along with our Danish colleague Ole Helmersen from Copenhagen Business School I attended the EQAF Forum in Tallinn, Estonia where we tried out the workshop on a large group of quality professionals from a range of European countries.

As well as running the workshop the EQAF conference was a great staff development opportunity for me. As a QE person rather than QA person it was interesting the meet people who operate in very different QA systems. The UK seems to be fairly in the middle between those countries in which QA is very highly centralised and regulated through to countries where QA is virtually non-existent—at least in the way that I understand it. If there is one thing that all countries seem to have in common it is that QA appears very different from teaching. As one person I met pointed out, a poor teacher is not a quality issue as far as most university structures are concerned. Even at the Senior Manager level there is often a separation of roles between the person in which of QA and the person who in charge of teaching and the curriculum.

For the second part of the project each partner does their own small-scale project which meets a particular institutional need. At Southampton we decided to do a project on feedback, called "Getting the Most Out of Feedback" (GMOOF). The core principle of GMOOF is that everybody, whether a member of teaching staff, a student or a quality manager, is both a provided and recipient of feedback. The principles of good feedback: Relevant, Timely, Meaningful and with Suggestions for improvement (See Race online), apply to all feedback, not just feedback from teacher to student but also student to teacher, student to student, teacher to teacher etc., teacher to quality manager, teacher to professional body etc. etc. GMOOF is a website which focuses on giving good feedback and making the most of feedback from others rather than focusing on different job roles. (The website is under development at present). A workshop based on the project is being developed and will be piloted in Southampton in September – I’ll be in Brighton by then so will not be leading it(!) Additional material for the website includes a card sort (built using the free software nanDECK), a series of feedback videos with reflective questions (built in xtranormal and put up on youtube), videos of interviews about feedback with the project team and other colleagues at Southampton, and online quizzes for staff and students. There is also a section specific on how we at Southampton work to enhance the quality of teaching across the university.

Teaching

My teaching this year has focused in two major areas. I have been contributing to the interdisciplinary Curriculum Innovation module “Sustainability in the Local and Global Environment"). 2012-13 was the first time this module has run and I benefited greatly from working with National Teaching Fellow Simon Kemp. It has been some years since I taught undergraduates and the modules made extensive use of technology (including Twitter, Panopto, Blackboard) and had a variety of assessments including a presentation, conference paper and group film project.

My other teaching responsibility has involved teaching research skills to (mostly Humanities) doctoral students. I have run numerous sessions on everything from putting the thesis together, preparing for the viva, ethnographic methods, critical thinking and applying for funding. Most of my materials are available in the HumBox under a Creative Commons license. Students produce critical reflections on the sessions, which also provide me with feedback.

Other work.

I continue to undertake evaluation for Routes into Languages programme which is funded to increase the uptake of languages in schools. I was recently a keynote speaker at the conference Innovative Language Teaching and Learning at University: Enhancing the Learning Experience through Student Engagement at the University, which was held at the University of Manchester.

I also presented at the LLAS e-learning symposium about my online open access language teaching research website YazikOpen. I have also been preparing materials for the LLAS annual Heads of Department workshop, which is entitled “Thriving for the Public Good”

Future

At Brighton I am expecting to be involved in a variety of academic development activities including working with teaching staff to apply for the HEA Fellowships, blended learning and undertaking research. I will also being going to Plymouth in November to undertake PASS (Peer Assisted Study Session) Supervisor Training.

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New resource: Excel to help with statistics involving pre-decimal UK currency.

Until 1971 the UK used pounds (£), shillings (s) and pence (d).

There were 12 pence in shilling.

20 shillings in a pound

240 pence in a pound.

More about decimalisation can be found on Wikipedia 

If basic arithmetic wasn't enough of a problem, statistics must have been a nightmare. This excel spreadsheet enables the input of up to 300 prices in pounds, shillings and pence and calculates:

  1. The Total sum
  2. Mean average
  3. Standard Deviation
  4. Maximum
  5. Minimum
  6. Upper quartile
  7. Lower Quartile
  8. Median

It also converts all the pounds, shillings and pence data into (today’s) decimal currency. This makes pre-1971 and post-1971 comparisons possible. (Full details of the mathematics behind this are in the Wikipedia article cited above).

Download the spreadsheet (Excel 2010) predecimal excel

The excel side of things is a complicated and probably far more complex than it needs to be. Any improvements welcome.

John Canning, 2013

This is Creative Commons resource, so improvements etc. are welcome.

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Come to 2013 LLAS e-learning symposium (+hear about YazikOpen)

Don't forget to register for the 2013 LLAS e-learning symposium at the University of Southampton.

Keynote speakers

Prof Mike Neary, Dean of Teaching and Learning at the University of Lincoln
Prof Allison Littlejohn, Chair of Learning Technology, Glasgow Caledonian University, Director of the Caledonian Academy
Prof Gráinne Conole, Professor of Learning Innovation, University of Leicester
Nik Peachey, Associate Trainer, Bell Educational Services

Also

Hear more about open access and yazikopen.

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No open learning without open access: a portal for open access research into teaching modern languages.

LLAS logo

My abstract for the LLAS 8thannual elearning symposium next January has been accepted, so all begin well I will be speaking about YazikOpen and broader issues surrounding open access there. The symposium will take place in Southampton on 24-25 January 2013.

Abstract

The effectiveness of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Mass Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can be seriously undermined by lack of open access to original academic research. Copyright restrictions and subscription fees mean that most research is completely unavailable to those who are not staff or students at a university, or who work in institutions or countries where financial resources are very limited. At best, those with limited access to original research are forced to rely on the summaries and interpretations of others.

This presentation showcases YazikOpen.org.uk a portal for open access research into the teaching and learning of modern foreign languages. The portal catalogues language teaching research published in open access journals or on open websites. This research is available to anybody, anywhere in the world with access to the internet without viewing or subscription fees.open access logo

Those teaching on courses relating to language teaching (e.g. TEFL, Applied Linguistics, Teaching Training etc.), whether face-to-face or online, can search YazikOpen to identify course readings which will be available to all students, irrespective of institution, geographical location or access to financial resources. Open access also means that original research is accessible to practitioners such as schoolteachers, Teachers of English as a Second/ Foreign Language, teachers at language clubs and teachers of languages in the community. Bringing down access barriers also means that practitioners and other interested parties can engage in debates and publish their own research with fewer disadvantages.

The presentation will also explore the wider discussions currently taking place about open access from the ethical as well as the financial and organisational perspectives. Open access to research is also crucial in ensuring that MOOCs are genuinely open and inclusive and do not perpetrate the current privileges of students and staff in well-resourced institutions.

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