Odds and Ends from Tutorials

These are fairly random links and thoughts arising from today’s tutorials; I’ll contact you by email with anything only likely to be of interest to you.

Admin issues

If you didn’t manage to fit in a tutorial today, let me know and we’ll see about next week.

Fairly common point; the “collaborative working” outcome is most clearly evidenced by the Reading Groups.

I currently have the Certificates of Attendance from the Study Days; I’ll return them to Peter H shortly, so do remember to pick up yours if you haven’t already done so.

All the outcomes need to be addressed, but not all the assessment criteria; it is almost impossible to produce a decent piece of work by focusing on that level of detail.

Layout of your submissions

Peter W and I have picked up some confusion among you about how to lay out your submissions. You will of course include your outcomes sheets with your submitted work (won’t you? Download them from http://www.bedspce.org.uk/downloads/), but it really helps the marker to identify where in your submission you have principally addressed each outcome. “Principally” because any part of your submission may well hit several outcomes.
There are two easy ways of doing this;

• use the template from the downloads page (scroll down to the bottom); it’s fairly self-explanatory, or
• simply put the number of the outcomes in parentheses at the end of the relevant paragraph [e.g. (2.2, 2.3)] You do not have to do that for every paragraph.

It just helps signpost where you think you have covered the outcome–and the more easily we can identify that, the more inclined we are to recognise it for credit!

Points of interest from individual discussions:

There is information on how to set up your own VLE from a Study Day to be found here: http://bedspce.blogspot.com/2011/03/teaching-with-technology-from-study-day.html

In terms of developing practice suited to the demands of particular subjects and disciplines, Shulman’s idea of signature pedagogies is useful. Here is one of the most accessible ways of getting at it: http://hub.mspnet.org/index.cfm/11172 Note that of course you can’t just apply it directly, of course; you need to look for the principles he talks about and then ask, “how might these apply to my own discipline?”

One approach we did not really discuss in class is Problem-Based Learning (PBL) or Enquiry-Based Learning. More about it here: http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/pbl.htm

Scaffolding was mentioned several times. More about it here: http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/advance_organisers.htm#Scaffolding%20and%20the%20ZPD

…and Vygotsky: http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/constructivism.htm#Vygotsky

A couple of you posed questions about education and training, and I suggested this way of looking at them:

(as argued in Experience and Education, 1938. See here for more on Dewey.)

It’s possible to see these as two sides of the same coin.

The business of moving from exposition and discussion and opening-up in a session, to getting concrete closure at the end can be quite tricky, especially if you are trying to work in a humanistic way. (Some thoughts here–particularly the figure at the end–sorry about the overlap…)

Have a good Easter break if I don’t see you before then!