Category Archives: teaching

A critical examination of proofreading (from latest edition of Studies in Higher Education)

June 21, 2011assessment, learning, teachingjohn

I find proofreading difficult, especially proofreading my own work. I’ve long taken the view that proofreading my own work is beyond my abilities, particularly when a manuscript has gone through multiple drafts. Friends and colleagues generally concur; “You’re too close the text” they sometimes say. I’m always grateful for the professionals who perform this service on my journal articles.

Joan Turner’s critical examination of the nature of proofreading in the most recent edition of Studies in Higher Education is the first treatment of the subject I have come across (not that I have especially been looking out for an article like this, but it caught my attention when the e-mail alert from the journal came into my inbox). Student support centres which provide guidance on writing often emphasise that they are NOT a proofreading service. She writes:

Such services offer some analysis of issues of style, grammar or rhetorical organisation that students should be aware of and attempt to resolve in their own writing, but they do not provide a 'clean' copy or 'proof' that the student can immediately submit for assessment (p. 427).

The article engages the question of proofreading from different angles. For example:

Is proofreading is a skill which all students should acquire— particularly students whose first language is not English? Is it part of learning to write well?
There is an ambiguity between teaching writing skills and proofreading.
There is a moral question about whether getting someone to read an assessed paper is unfair. And is there an ethical difference between asking a friend to read your work and paying a professional (or non-professional) proof-reader?
Will a proof-reader ‘just’ improve the writing or will they also improve the content of the text? At what point does using a proof-reader become cheating? What is being accessed—the writing or the content? Is it possible to even separate writing style from content?
Does use/ overreliance on a proof-reader lead to lower standards? Does it prevent the students from learning how to write well?

Article reference

Joan Turner, “Rewriting writing in higher education: the contested spaces of proofreading,” Studies in Higher Education 36, no. 4 (2011): 427-440.

Area Studies: plus ça change?

June 16, 2011area studies, Canada, languages, LLAS, research, teaching, Uncategorizedarea studiesjohn

Liz Lightfoot’s recent article “The value of area studies” in British Academy Review succinctly outlines the difficulties and challenges facing departments of area studies. In the eight plus years I have held the area studies remit for the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, discussions about area studies invariably focus on the identity of the field–for example in 2004 LLAS ran a workshop entitled the Disciplinary Identity of Area Studies. In 2005, I attended a workshop entitled The Future of Interdisciplinary Area Studies run by the University of Oxford. In many respects the British Academy event The role of Area Studies in Higher Education in November 2010 was a revisiting of the Oxford conference. I even had the opportunity to reacquaint myself with many of the same people.

When I joined LLAS in 2003 my primary role was to run the Area Studies Project. A key aim of that project was build up an area studies community. There have been some successes. Driven by the project and in particular the vision of Dick Ellis, the then chair of the Area Studies Specialist Advisory Group the UK Council for Area Studies Associations (UKCASA) was formed in November 2003. It is pleasing to see that UKCASA is providing a strong voice for area studies in both teaching and research. Moreover, it has helped to bridge the gap between Anglophone and non-Anglophone area studies. The funding for the Language-based area studies centres was also an encouraging sign.

However, the questions raised when area studies is mentioned seem to be the same as they were eight years ago. And they are probably much the same as they were twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago. Department closures, the apparent rewarding of disciplinarily specialisation by the RAE and REF, the reliance of area studies programmes on ‘donor’ departments and questions of whether interdisciplinarity (more breath) inevitably means less depth leading to the suggestion that interdisciplinary courses might be a bit light, intellectually speaking. Naturally the latter is denied more area studies proponents who see the demands of area studies as more rather than less challenging.

Lightfoot’s article opens with the newsroom cry “Find someone who knows about Egypt!” in response the protests taking place there and elsewhere in the Middle East. Quoted in the article Tim Wright says “The problem with providing a national resource is that no one knows where the next area of concern will come from? Will it be a need for Kurdish specialists, or people with a deep knowledge of Afghanistan, Egypt or Pakistan?”

Or Canada maybe? Well probably not, but from a government perspective a key rationale for area studies is based on the national interest, the next protest or the next war. Talk is afoot of another referendum in Quebec, but whether that referendum, whatever its outcome, will generate much interest in the UK is unclear. The rationales for area studies tend focus on the need to understand the different, the unknown, the economically important and the dangerous. Perhaps the real worry is that we will never seek to understand those societies which we see as similar, known, economically unimportant and safe.

Reference: Lightfoot, L. (2011) The Value of Area Studies, British Academy Review 17, pp. 48-51

What is innovation in higher education?

June 8, 2011e-learning, learning, teachinginnovationjohn

I enjoyed Karen Smith's article in Teaching in Higher Education exploring innovation in higher education. Smith addresses innovation in a university-wide context as well as the individual context. She draws on Kanter's metaphor of innovation being like flowers. Of course some of those flowers turn out to be weeds.

Karen Smith, “Cultivating innovative learning and teaching cultures: a question of garden design,” Teaching in Higher Education 16, no. 4 (2011): 427-348

“We are learning slowly as we teach over the years": Teaching the Green Humanities

May 27, 2011languages, learning, Sustainable development, teachingESD, learning, sustainable development, teachingjohn

“We are learning slowly as we teach over the years” is the last thing I wrote in my notebook at the “Teaching the Green Humanities” workshop on Wednesday. I can’t remember exactly who said it or even whether I wrote it down exactly as it was expressed, but it was said during the final panel with the workshop speakers. The second last thing I wrote down was “Slowness as virtue”. Six years after taking on the Education for Sustainable Development brief for LLAS I am still learning and still learning very slowly.

I’m not able to do justice to the ground which was covered during the event, but a few things will stick in my mind. Arran Stibbe’s reminder (or was it a revelation) that “more sustainable” planet is still unsustainable will stick with me. I need to ponder Greg Garrard’s suggestion that the philosophy of ecology might be a good potential bridge between humanities and the sciences—sometimes it really does “just depend” and the ‘unlaw like’ nature of philosophy may allow this possibility (I hope I'm not mis-representing Greg here in any way). Jessica Frye’s discussion of engaging EFL students (mainly scientists and engineers in her case) through reading eco-poetry demonstrates the potential to teach about environmental issues in a context where many would not think it possible.

Still learning, very slowly.

Should support staff teach students in higher education?

May 23, 2011non-academic staff, research, teachingjohn

I feel that Smith and Rust’s contribution in the latest edition of the Innovations in Education and Teaching International deserves the attention of everyone involved directly or indirectly in teaching in higher education. The article begins with a discussion about the links between teaching and research in the university as well as a discussion of Wegner’s ‘communities of practice’. Smith and Rust helpfully summarise Wenger’s work (‘communities of practice’ I fear is becoming a unscrutinised catchphrase in some sections of higher education and I found their paragraph on Wenger useful):

According to Wenger (1998, pp. 72-85) a community of practice has three key dimensions: it is a 'joint enterprise' involving the 'mutual engagement' of its members, who are bound together as a 'social entity' with a shared repertoire of communal resources (routines, sensibilities, artefacts, vocabulary, styles, etc.) that they have developed over time. These key requirements of joint enterprise, mutual engagement and social entity all seriously beg the question, who do we see as being members of the community. All too often, the concept 'academic community' is used in exclusive ways referring solely to the academic staff of the university. My emphasis (p. 116)

Later in the article Smith and Rust turn their attention to the work of ‘support staff’ in the university.

There have been significant increases in the numbers of staff in central support units (and therefore even further distanced from the academic community than those in academic departments) – e.g. librarians, computer technicians, counsellors, those in human resources, the registry, estates, and corporate services. There is now a need for these roles, too, to be brought into the academic mainstream instead of looking in from the outside. Members of human resources could teach in business studies or public administration, for example: counsellors could teach in psychology; librarians in publishing; computer technicians in maths, stats and computing; estates staff in land management; and corporate services in business and marketing. All of these individuals have vital and important skills and experience they can bring to academic teaching and research and to the tutoring and development of students (p. 120)

Now this is challenging bit, but the more radical proposal is to come. They continue:

In the genuine research-based academic community it is the role of support staff which needs to see the greatest changes. Indeed the demarcation between support staff and researchers and teachers should vanish with job descriptions which combine administrative and technical work with tutoring, small group teaching, and research assistance. There are, of course, at least two groups of support staff who, as well as increasing their own academic role, will also need to be centrally involved in gradually implementing the suggestions we are proposing. First, Human Resources units will have to identify the nature and extent of changes in the job descriptions of posts and develop policies and practices to recruit the ‘new breed’ of candidates to fill support staff positions. Second, Learning and Teaching units will have to develop training schemes to enhance the abilities of support staff to contribute to the research based education of students. It is in these ways that support staff can be integrated fully as equal members of the academic community and thus lose their second-class citizenship. (p.120)

At first reading Smith and Rust appear to be seeking to break down the divisions between academic staff and other staff. However the language used here seems to maintain the dichotomy between ‘support’ staff and academic staff. Perhaps the problem is in the term ‘support staff’. Whether educational developers (‘non-academic’ in some institutions), librarians, counsellors, estates staff etc., there is an underlying suggestion that support staff are not players in the ‘main game’ of higher education and are useful, but not essential to the main game. Nothing could be further from the truth of course.

Overall this article makes radical proposals and raises questions for further in-depth discussion. Can we create a true community of practice across our universities?

Reference

Pete Smith and Chris Rust, “The potential of research-based learning for the creation of truly inclusive academic communities of practice,” Innovations in Education and Teaching International 48, no. 2 (2011): 115-125. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2011.564005

Words I don't like 1: Training

April 27, 2011research, teaching, training, Words I don't liketeaching, trainingjohn

There are quite a few words I don’t like when talking about educational development. ‘Training’ is among these words. Why do lecturers ‘teach’, but educational developers ‘train’? Why is somebody who teaches students a lecturer or a teacher, but anyone who teaches lecturers is deemed to be training rather than teaching?

The difference may seem insignificant to some but I passionately believe that higher education is a valid and legitimate field of study and there is no difference between those who teach and research about higher education and the things that go on in universities and those who teach and research about sociology, physics and nursing. This is why I like to see educational developers have job titles which indicate this (Lecturer/ Senior Lecturer. Professor etc.)

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)

John Canning

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