All posts by john

Modifying the Discover American Studies CD

April 5, 2011American Studies, youtubejohn

It was always the intention that the Discover American Studies CD could be modified. Academics and others involved in student recuitment could add in their own slides, delete slides, add logos etc. in order to promote their own American Studies courses.

However, in practice you do need to be able to find the files in the first place to be able to modify them. Today I set up a youtube account and made a video using BB Flashback Express recorder (a screen recorder which is available for free download) in order to show how to access the powerpoint files so they can be modified.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEg3YUQrJz4&hl=en&fs=1]

Was the 2011 census piloted?

April 1, 20112011 UK Census, questionnaire design2011 censusjohn

One-year old Elijah refused to give a coherent answer to the national identity question. He was also vague about his religious beliefs. I put him down as speaking English even though he does not say very much. Noting this on my facebook page, I discovered that other parents had similar problems. To the question "Where were you living twelve months ago" one friend claimed to have written, on behalf of his six month old son, "In my mother's womb".

Why write book reviews?

March 25, 2011book reviews, Canadabook reviewsjohn

For three years running now I have run a session for our postgraduates on writing book reviews. I have written quite a few for the British Journal of Canadian Studies and am about to begin to write my first one for Innovations in Education and Teaching International. When I started to think about how I might approach the session with the postgraduates I was surprised at how little discussion there is on how to write good book reviews, or if indeed we should even spend our time doing them.

As the status of publications go a book review is pretty insignificant. I don’t list them on my CV or on this website. I make it clear to postgraduates that book reviews are not perceived to be as ‘good’ as peer-reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters etc. Over on the Chronicle of Higher Education forums there are those who regard the appearance of book reviews on a CV as ‘padding’, even for more junior members of the academic community. In their view claiming a book review as an actual publication is along the lines of listing blog posts, tweets and postings to internet fora on your CV.

So, why do I do book reviews?

1. Keeping up with Canada. These days all my research is in the field of higher education teaching and learning, but by writing book reviews I can motivate myself to keep my interests in Canadian matters going.

2. The challenge of summarising. Summarising and evaluating a book in 500 words is a challenge. I have just submitted a review of Quebec and the Heritage of Franco-America, which contains six essays plus an introduction from one of the editors. In this case I have just about managed to address each chapter individually, but books with 10, 15 or more contributors are much harder to write about in 500 words.

3. A sense of providing a service to the academic community. I would like to think people actually read my reviews and find them helpful, but in all honesty no-one has ever mentioned anything I’ve written in a book review.

4. To increase the size of my book collection! I like having lots of books. My wife is less keen though. We have two big bookcases in our front room and many of the shelves contain two rows of books. My Canadian book collection takes up a couple of shelves and it is nice (for me) to add to this section.
If you are teaching a session on book my materials are available for open sharing in Humbox.

Other sources I have found online include:

Roger Shiner (adapted from Susan Swan), ‘Nine ways of looking at a critic’, Toronto Globe and Mail 30th November 1996. E23)

How to write a book review (Los Angeles Valley College)

National Student Survey

March 22, 2011languages, LLAS, National Student SurveyNational Student Surveyjohn

I have written a short article about using the National Student Survey (NSS) for the latest edition of the LLAS magazine Liaison.

I am also overseeing some projects on the NSS. I have developed an A0 dialogue sheet which can be downloaded from my humbox page.

Speak to the future- what I want for my children

March 8, 2011languageslanguagesjohn

I don't know what my two sons will go onto to do when they grow up, but whatever it is languages will always be useful to them. Therefore I not only back the Speak to the Future campaign in my professional capacity, but also as a parent. I want my sons not only to study languages, but to have sufficient competence to be able to work in at least one language other than English.

My own school languages experiences ended at GCSE. Although I enjoyed studying French and Russian up to the age of 16, I decided to take other subjects at A-level. I could go on forever about my belief that the English education system narrows too much after the age of 16, but as a postgraduate student I picked up my French again at the University of Bristol's School of Continuing Education. Although I made substantial progress, I am aware that I am well short of being able to describe myself as 'fluent'. Nevertheless I have been pleased that I have been able to hold conservations with French-speakers- being complimented by a shop assistant when shopping in Paris is amongst the highlights.

For my own children I want more- in fact I demand more. By the age of 16 I want them to be able to do more than ask directions, book a hotel room or express opinions about the advantages and disadvantages of hitch-hiking. The Speak to the future campaign is one which has ambitions of all our young people. It is languages and other subjects, not languages verses other subjects.

The five key aims of the campaign are:

Every language valued as an asset
This will encourage policy makers and citizens to recognise that the many languages used in the homes of UK citizens are a valuable resource for social cohesion and economic success.

A coherent experience of languages for all children in primary school
This will introduce the learning of other languages and cultures as well as develop a better understanding of how the child’s own languages work.

A basic working knowledge of at least two languages including English for every child leaving secondary school
This will equip every school leaver to live and work in a global society where confidence in learning and using other languages is a major advantage.

Every graduate qualified in a second language
This will prepare future leaders in business, the professions, voluntary organisations, education and research to thrive and communicate confidently in complex global societies.

An increase in the number of highly qualified linguists
This will fulfil the growing need for language professionals, especially English speaking interpreters and translators, and for teachers and researchers specialising in languages and cultures.

Speak to the Future

Life after subject centres

February 14, 2011HEA, subject centresHEA, subject centresjohn

I have an unstated objective to write something for my blog at least once a week. Preferably that something should be fairly interesting. Now I realise that two weeks has past since I wrote anything at all.

Not that nothing is happening. In subject centres there is a lot happening. We face an uncertain future as the HEA withdraws our funding. Whatever I am doing on 1 August 2011 won’t be what I am doing now.

In 2010 I had an article published in the Points for Departure section of Teaching in Higher Education. The Invisible Developers: Academic Coordinators in the UK Subject Centre Network sought to draw attention to what I saw as the neglect of subject centre staff in narratives about educational development in the UK. With the impending closure of subject centres the whole point of the article is largely redundant. Even when I wrote that article at the end of 2009 I had imagined a bright future for subject centres, a (relatively) inexpensive alternative to sporadic rounds of short term project funding.

What next? I don’t know, but in a few years time some report or other will recommend a UK-wide network of discipline-based centres to support teaching and learning on a national basis.

What is different about pedagogic research? Perhaps nothing.

January 31, 2011researchresearchjohn

Just read Bruce Macfalane's article in the latest edition of Teaching in Higher Education. His opening paragraph gets to the heart of his argument, so I will quote it in full:

There is an increasing tendency for research to be divided into two types: ‘subjectbased’ research and ‘pedagogic’ research. Subject-based research is serious, scholarly and well-respected stuff. It is published in prestigious subject-based journals. This kind of research is what counts in the assessment of research quality in countries like the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Then there is ‘pedagogic’ research. This is where academics from various disciplines do research about their own teaching, that of others or focus on the way students learn. Sometimes, ‘research about learning and teaching’ is the phrase used to distinguish this type of scholarly endeavour from everything else in academic life. But apparently, unlike subject-based research, ‘pedagogic’ research is not ‘proper’ research (p.127).

I liked this article and can't really find anything to disagree with. I have long wondered what makes Boyer's Scholarship of Teaching and Learning a somewhat different type of scholarship to his other three scholarships --moreover why have so many pedagogic researcher accepted this? Why is pedagogic research seen as somehow second rate? Why is it seen as easier? Like most people who have done pedagogic research I have also done non-pedagogic research (or 'proper' research) as some might call it. Both use social science research methods. Neither is intrinsically more difficult or more scholarly than the other.

Reference

Bruce Macfarlane, “Prizes, pedagogic research and teaching professors: lowering the status of teaching and learning through bifurcation,” Teaching in Higher Education 16, no. 1 (2011): 127-130

Teaching quantitative methods

January 18, 2011quantitative methods, research, teachingjohn

Part of my job in teaching the the LLAS research methods workshops is to teach the sections on questionnaire design and quantitative methods. As the workshop is taught over just two days it is difficult to know what exactly to teach and how to present it. If I was teaching such a course in a regular classroom setting over the course of a semester I would probably do a short lecture followed by a two hour 'lab' exercise.

I feel I have quite a strange relationship with quantitative methods. I wasn't great at maths at school, but statistics were to become an inevitable part of my A-levels subjects (business studies in particular) and my undergraduate and master's studies in geography. Few of my fellow students seemed to enjoy these courses, but I quite enjoyed them. I even gained something of reputation for “liking stats”. If my memory serves me correctly my multiple regression model of UK population change was awarded a higher mark than anything else I studied on my master's course.

I remember Tony Moyes, the geography lecturer who taught statistics at Aberystwyth saying that the stats course may turn out to be the most useful thing we ever learn in a geography degree (I'm sure he said it something like that anyway!). Despite using qualitative methods in my PhD thesis, it has turned out to be a very useful skill, especially working a humanities department where few colleagues have experience of questionnaire design or statistical analysis packages. My teacher at the University of Bristol was the late Les Hepple. It was only in a tribute to him that I learnt that Les's A-level background was actually in arts type subjects. However, he not only become an expert user of statistics, but he also contributed to the theory of spatial statistics.

In all honesty, I still find stats quite hard and like everything else in life there is always more to learn. However, I have managed to find some good resources from the US which have given me lots of ideas about the best way to teach quantitative methods. If you would allow me to generalise the broader curriculum in the US means that teaching non-specialists is a normal part of the teacher's job. A couple of years ago whilst browsing my (Canadian) sister-in-law's bookshelves I found an old edition of David Moore's Statistics: Concept and Controversies which struck me as a book which was written for the exact audience I intended it for. His verbal reasoning approach to statistics seemed to be perfect for the humanities audience. Today I came across the lectures of Dan Judge on YouTube. So far I have only watched the first three parts of lecture 1, but I love the approach he takes. It's a lecture by a guy writing on a white board but he makes it so engaging using language to which his audience can relate. I will definitely be recommending these to our workshops participants.

The higher education classroom: a private space? 2

January 13, 2011research, teachingteachingjohn

I enjoyed Tuesday’s session on the classroom as a private space. One of the key mantras of talking about education is that “it varies by discipline”, something which those of us who work for subject centres constantly remind each other, but are nevertheless apt to forget. In medicine, I learnt, is quite common to have to have a number of teachers with different medical and non-medical specialisms in the classroom together, so teaching is widely observed by peers as well as students. However, I enjoyed Laurie Taylor’s take on teaching observations:

Targett also denounced the HEA suggestion that university teachers should have their teaching observed "more than once". He believed that this proposal not only constituted an "invasion of privacy" but might also prove "seriously inhibiting" to the several hundred totally untrained and seriously underpaid postgraduate students who currently carried out the bulk of the university's teaching functions.

(Times Higher Education, 6^th January)

The higher education classroom: a private space?

January 7, 2011researchjohn

Along with my colleague Kate Borthwick I will be presenting at the University of Southampton Higher Education Research Group on Tuesday.

Despite quality assurance and enhancement activities the act of classroom teaching and the assessment of student learning remains an essentially private endeavour, hidden from our academic colleagues outside the institution and to a large extent from our own colleagues locally. The resources used in teaching (e.g. slides, handouts, diagrams) and the outputs of students' learning (e.g. essays) are seldom shared outside the institution and are often only seen and used by the actual classroom teacher. We will report on two activities which disrupt this privacy - the Humbox, an online repository for sharing humanities teaching resources and Début, a reviewed academic journal for undergraduate students of languages and related studies.

John Canning

Thoughts on higher education, academic development, sustainability, languages, statistics, humanities, free software, e-learning and more