Project Title: Educational Egaming to Improve Student Engagement and Promote Inter-disciplinary Learning Project Leader(s): Jamie Pringle, Luke Bracegirdle and Jackie Potter
This e-game will tap into current undergraduate so-called ‘Y’ generation interests in virtual gaming, providing a novel and complementary learning method. A multi-disciplinary approach for site investigations will be employed to deepen student’s understanding of real-world problems and their solutions. The immersive virtual egame will ensure student engagement, enhance subject knowledge and apply skills to a new situation. Project deliverables will have the e-game freely available on the internet for registered users, ability for the programmers to alter for other interested academics to utilise, disseminate results at appropriate conferences and publication of both educational and academic action research articles.
Project Title: Development, Application and Evaluation of Web 2.0 Technology to Enhance the Student Experience - Keele Student Bites Project Leader(s): Russell Crawford, Andrew Morris, William Stockton and Steve Clipstone
This project will produce a series of student-generated video-based guided study resources dedicated to addressing issues impacting on student motivation in higher education. Students from Keele will help us design, create, shoot, edit and evaluate these novel resources, called Keele Student Bites, as part of an existing open-access Web 2.0 resource (Keele Basic Bites). These motivational resources will focus upon relevant issues of seeking help, keeping up with workloads, time management, organisation skills, homesickness and a host of other issues that impact on student learning, and in this way enhance the university experience for all students.
Theme:- Student Response Systems (e.g. TurningPoint, Socrative etc.)
Introduction:- This is your opportunity to post questions for a panel of learning technologists to discuss and hopefully answer. It might be anything from "How do you embed a video inside the KLE?" to “How do I get started with marking online?”. This month’s theme will focus on student response systems, what they are, which ones to use and lots of other useful hints and tips.
Project Title: Study Write - An Interactive Resource for Improving Academic Scholarship Project Leader(s): Dan Harding, Scott McGowan, Emma Surman, Teresa Oultram and Alhajie Saidy-Khan
Study Write is a series of six online videos and interactive quizzes designed to improve students understanding of academic scholarship. It will:
raise awareness of how the various aspects featured on the video underpin academic development,
explain to students the importance of sound academic practice,
provide examples of good practice and encourage the development of a range or related skills in writing and research
provide an authoritative resource for students (and staff) at a distance, especially those on the KMS international programmes, and,
enable students who are coming to the UK to study from overseas to familiarise themselves with scholarship issues at their own pace and prior to arriving at Keele.
It will enable students to:
know the territory of academic scholarship,
identify the different types of information source found there,
read the “map” to find the best route from “reading and assessing” sources to “writing and referencing” (from Study to Write),
equip themselves with the tools to enable them to plan and complete their journey (e.g. searching, reading, note taking, assessing and referencing skills), and, avoid some of the hazards and pitfalls along the way.
Project Title: Chemistry Laboratory Engagement and Assessment of Risk and Safety (CLEARS) Project Leader(s): Katherine Haxton and Laura Hancock
The development of laboratory safety skills and good laboratory citizenship are key subject specific graduate attributes for a Chemistry degree programme. This project will design, implement and evaluate several innovative safety activities including risk awareness activities, safety focussed pre-laboratory exercises designed to test understanding as well as awareness of common safety procedures, student-led safety teams in laboratories and an ‘attitude to risk’ questionnaire to evaluate the change in attitude of students from the start of their degree through to their final year project.
University courses continually emphasise the active approach that students should take in learning; facilitating their own intellectual development rather than relying on passive delivery of material from lecturers (Chilwant, 2012; Rehman, Afzal, & Kamran, 2013). An expeditious method for this is through interactive teaching. Here, students are encouraged to contribute their own thoughts and ideas on the material delivered, and to apply their own experiences and conceptualisations to material they are presented with.
However, this method often works better in theory than in practice. Frequently, a lecturer may find that their suggestions for audience contributions are met with silence, and their postulation of questions are met with a shy shrug. In lectures – where the attendance may run into triple digits – students may feel embarrassed and even intimidated at lecturers efforts to “get them involved”.
Fortunately, there are numerous methods available wherein lecturers can obtain the opinions of their students without causing problems. This article attempts to outline some of these methods.
1) Small group discussion and feedback
Students are placed in small groups, and then provided with a question to discuss. The lecturer can then move around those groups, asking for group feedback
Why it works:
Belonging to a group – even one of a transient and superficial nature such as this – increases self-esteem and confidence in individuals. This reduces the anxiety that speaking aloud can cause (Rudich & Vallacher, 1999).
Students contributions become somewhat anonymised, meaning they are less embarrassed about “wrong” answers.
Potential problems:
Individuals may “coast” on the contributions of the others in their group
Groups may end up discussing other extra-curricular activities!
2) Use technology
Many options exist for students to contribute their ideas via their laptop or mobile phone. At the most basic level, students may email the lecturer in class. The freemium service Poll Everywhere is also a viable means of obtaining feedback, as is Padlet. In both, students can contribute anonymously from most electronic devices. Why it works:
Anonymity is a great facilitator for discussions such as this. By remove the evaluation anxiety, students are free to contribute their ideas (Postmes, Spears, & Lea, 1998)
Potential problems:
Gremlins in the technological works may scupper some attempts at this – always have a back-up plan
Some students may use this opportunity to demonstrate their “wittiness”
3) Writing answers down and handing them in
A low-tech alternative to the above; students simply write their ideas on a piece of paper and pass them to the lecturer. This can be combined with putting them into groups to reduce the number of pages coming in. Why it works:
See above
Potential problems:
Can be time consuming to collect paper from large numbers of students
Not very ecologically friendly
4) Offer incentives for speaking
Students are asked a question, and those that provide an answer are provided with a ticket which absolves them of answering any more questions that class/semester/year. Why it works:
As a simple cost/reward equation, students can recognise the payoff in this small contribution to the lecture
Tickets can be customised to emphasise the “light-hearted” nature of the exercise, which again reduces anxiety
Potential problems:
The lecturer must calculate the number of passes provided per class, to ensure the entire class is not in possession of one before the end of term
Forgeries may be produced by a particularly enterprising class
References
Chilwant, K. S. (2012). Comparison of two teaching methods, structured interactive lectures and conventional lectures. Biomedical Research (0970-938X), 23(3), 363–366.
Postmes, T., Spears, R., & Lea, M. (1998). Breaching or Building Social Boundaries? SIDE-Effects of Computer-Mediated Communication. Communication Research, 25(6), 689–715. http://doi.org/10.1177/009365098025006006
Rehman, R., Afzal, K., & Kamran, A. (2013). Interactive lectures: A perspective of students and leceturers. JPMI: Journal of Postgraduate Medical Institute, 27(2), 152–156.
Rudich, E. A., & Vallacher, R. R. (1999). To belong or to Self-Enhance? Motivational Bases for Choosing Interaction Partners. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(11), 1387– 1404. http://doi.org/10.1177/0146167299259005
Project Title: Using Flip Cameras to Enhance Student Employability Whilst Strengthening Employer Engagement Project Leader(s): Dan Harding, Krys Manifold, Pat Leadbeater and Colin Rigby
Postgraduate students studying MA and MSc programmes were given the opportunity to utilise ultraportable video equipment to enhance their reflective practice whilst on internship placements. The project addressed a student-led demand for specialised equipment, equipping 8 student volunteers with Flip video cameras to record weekly diary entries. They were then privately shared with academic supervisors via YouTube. Previous reflective exercises had been ineffective in capturing student enthusiasm and failed to provide a valuable communicative link between students and their tutors. The success of the pilot led to the equipment being used for other School and University activities. Plans to expand the project are already in place and will form part of future internship programmes. During the session, attendees will see the processes which led to the project’s introduction, view student testimonials and hear from staff who decided to use the equipment. The session is broadly aimed at academic and support staff and will demonstrate how intuitive technology can be utilised without the need for intensive I.T. support.
Project Title: PsyText: Using Mobile Text Messaging to Support Communication, Engagement and Interactive Activities in Psychology Teaching Project Leader(s): Pete Lonsdale, Chris Stiff and Alex Lamont
We intend to use mobile text messaging (SMS) to support three areas of work, to address the issues identified above:
Communication with students: we have identified a need to expand the range of methods available to send information to students, especially information that is last minute or urgent (for example, notification of a workshop that has been rescheduled or has been organised due to demand). We propose to mobile text messaging to send information to students that requires their urgent attention. This can be achieved through the use of web-based tools for easily sending text messages to multiple participants. Students will be asked to submit their mobile contact number to a database which will then be used to setup specific groups that can contacted directly, i.e. without having to send out global messages. This kind of functionality is provided by web-based providers such as TextAnywhere.
Data collection in the field: students already collect field data for use in lab classes, but this collection process is carried out away from the lab and as such students do not receive any prompts or feedback on the data they collect until after it has been collected. We propose to design data collection activities that allow students to receive prompts and information via text messages that can guide and encourage their data collection. Feedback could also be provided about how much data has been collected and the nature of that data. The intention is to provide a more structured experience, giving feedback in situ and then easily building a shared pool of data to which all students have contributed. Prompts sent out to collect data at specific times or during specific situations could also enhance the research process itself, allowing experience sampling or time-based sampling to be easily coordinated. This would give students expanded experience of the range of data collection methods used in Psychology and potentially provide new avenues for them to pursue in their own individual dissertation projects. Mobile text messaging has previously been used in the behavioural sciences to enable data collection (for example Reimers and Stewart, 2009) and we propose to build on this work to produce something that is relevant and useful for teaching at Keele.
Interactive activities: a number of projects have demonstrated the potential for mobile technologies to engage students and provide a means to involve them in interactive learning activities that can take place beyond the classroom (key examples include Facer et al., 2004; Klopfer and Squire, 2008). Text messaging has also been shown as one way of creating these activities (for example Flintham et al., 2007). We propose use mobile text messages to facilitate an interactive activity that students take part by sending and receiving text messages on their own mobile phones. A number of psychological phenomena would lend themselves well to this approach, for example choosing a course of action or specifying a preference after receiving a number of specific cues would allow us to demonstrate the impact of bias and prejudice in decision making.
Project Title: The Use of Video Games in Learning and Teaching Project Leader(s): Mark Featherstone
The aim of this project is to integrate popular video games into the learning experience of students through:
(a) their inclusion in the academic content and assessment regime of particular modules on the Sociology and Media, Communications, and Culture programmes and
(b) the design of a new module appropriate for both Sociology and Media, Communications, and Culture that would consider the history, meaning, and importance of video games to contemporary society.
Funding is sought to employ a Research Assistant working in the field of video games to spend 90 hours in total investigating (a) the copyright issues and cost effectiveness of the use of commercial video games in learning and teaching, (b) the critical literature on the use of video games in module design, and (c) a review of key contemporary video games that should be employed on a module on the meaning of gaming. The Research Assistant will spend 30 hours on each section of project and provide a report at each stage of the project as explained in the timetable (point 9). On the basis of this evidence the principal investigator will complete the assessment and module design elements of the project and produce a final report.
Project Title: Deeper Understanding and Faster Feedback: A Question Bank for Computer Assisted Assessment in Physics
Project Leader(s): Boyd Duffee, Rob Jefferies and Coel Hellier
The National Student Survey (NSS) 2007 highlighted the need for better feedback to students on their work. By giving students regular formative evaluation early and often in the course, their engagement with the course improves. Student response to on-line learning activities is overwhelmingly positive and on-line learning systems can collect data that shows how much a student has engaged with the material. This data can identify students at risk of leaving or failing allowing early intervention.
This project aims to create a question bank of physics problems to pump-prime the use of on-line assessment in Physics in order to improve feedback, promote student engagement and raise retention by identifying at-risk students. We are targeting mathematical skills in physics because difficulties with maths are the primary academic reason for withdrawal from the Physics and Astrophysics courses. Mathematical skills are the bedrock of everything that follows in a linear course like Physics/Astrophysics. Strengthening those skills early in the program will reap benefits in the following years, allowing students to concentrate on the physical concepts being presented, rather than struggling with the mathematical representations.
Project Title: Bringing Real-life Court Cases to the Forensic Classroom: Problem-based Learning Project Leader(s): Catherine Duckett, Craig Adam and Robin Braithwaite
Project Aims:
The aim of this teaching innovation project was to develop Forensic Science teaching materials from real‐ life police investigations and court cases, to be used across a number of modules on the undergraduate programme, in the form of problem‐solving and problem‐based learning sessions.
Project Title: Development of a Digital Field Mapping Techniques with a Student-led E-Learning System Project Leader(s): Stuart Clarke and Stuart Egan
This project will develop a learning and teaching system that familiarises undergraduate geoscience students with digital field mapping techniques, including the hardware and software required for data acquisition, interpretation and processing techniques, as well as the integration and use of digitally acquired field data with other digital datasets to inform the field interpretation. The system will provide the necessary platform and teaching aids with which students can be exposed to modern field-based mapping techniques that require a digital approach and that are therefore not currently addressed satisfactorily within the undergraduate courses at Keele. The project will also address how best to formatively and summatively assess student performance during the various stages of digital mapping as well as how to provide effective feedback.
The use of digital mapping techniques is not new (e.g. McCaffrey et al., 2005). Fairly recent developments in the use of handheld computers and larger-screen tablet PC devices, combined with the use of GPS technology and mapping software, have provided a new and viable way for geoscientists to collect their field data in digital format. This methodology has many advantages; in particular, the field data can be recorded into a configurable database and on to a map simultaneously. It is also possible to merge the digitally collected data with other data sets such as DEMs, satellite imagery and aerial photographs, structural measurements, outcrop scale sketches, digital photographs and rock sample data. Despite these advantages, digital mapping systems have been mainly confined to geological research projects (e.g. Wilson et al., 2005) or for use within commercial geoscience organisations2. To date, there has been little attempt to incorporate the use of these systems as part of the learning experience and mapping training received by geoscience undergraduates. This is a significant omission from the undergraduate teaching curriculum that will increasingly become an obstacle to graduate employability within both commercial companies and governmental geoscience organisations.
A fundamental objective of this project is to develop an affordable digital mapping system with linked learning and teaching resources that can be implemented within the geology/geoscience undergraduate curriculum. The system will bridge the gap, strengthen the bond, and remove the perceived differences between laboratory and field-based learning, thus strengthening not only the student learning experience but also the breadth and scope of the geoscience programmes and the employability of graduates from those programmes.
Project Title: Reflecting on Environment and Sustainability: The Role of Reflective Portfolios for Enhancing Course Development and Student Learning Project Leader(s): Zoe Robinson and Sherilyn Macgregor
This project aims to evaluate the use of reflective portfolios as part of a first year module called ‘Introduction to Environment and Sustainability’, which is a bespoke module within Keele’s new Single Honours BSc course in Environment and Sustainability. The project aims to address three specific questions:
1) To what extent does a reflective portfolio assessment help student learning in a highly interdisciplinary degree course?
2) To what extent can a reflective portfolio assessment contribute to the on-going development of a new and innovative course?
3) What strategies can be adopted to enhance the effectiveness of using a reflective portfolio assessment for student learning across an interdisciplinary course?
Project Title: From Novice to Expert: Enhancing Chemical Science Students' Handling of Spectral Data Project Leader(s): Katherine Haxton and Richard Darton
The MSc in Environmental Sustainability & Green Technology is a one-year interdisciplinary programme spanning science and technology, politics and social science comprising a range of taught modules and a research project.
The students are from a wide range of backgrounds, home countries and career maturity. They have a wealth of academic, personal and professional experiences that have contributed to their skills, knowledge and attitudes to date - and have also (maybe) uncovered a need for further personal development in one or more area(s).
The Keele University Skills Portfolio offered two things to this Programme - a set of useful templates to help students to reflect on their experiences - and a student-friendly ‘KUSP Workbook’ to capture and document these reflections.
The iLM Accreditation was the ‘icing on the cake’ since this gave the students recognition and endorsement, from the nationally recognised Institute of Leadership & Management, for their successfully completed KUSP.
Embedding the KUSP into the Programme was a relatively easy task. We started by introducing the concept of the KUSP in Week 1 of the overall Programme and time was set aside in a related module (Research and Business Skills) to discuss specific iLM themed reflections at the end of existing skills development sessions e.g time management & project planning, and team working & leadership (see diagram below). We then also offered KUSP ‘clinic mornings’, where students could book a half hour slot for some one-to-one coaching on their work. Finally, a message of encouragement (and offer of support) was done through the cohort Facebook page. For consistency during this pilot all portfolios were moderated by the module leader.
The result? An outstanding 47% of the cohort successfully completed their KUSP and received their certificates upon graduation.
Lessons learnt? No matter how much support you offer - there is always the need for more! We will be stepping through the completion process more thoroughly with students in the coming academic year - and ensuring that the first reflection that they do is a formative task that they submit and receive feedback on. The standard of reflections completed last year was variable, and some students did not comply with the KUSP Workbook formatting which made difficult for them to meet the criteria that had been set. Knowledge of the KUSP among personal tutors was variable - so training (via a demonstration) was given on how to access and mark the portfolios.
Project Title: 'Salus on Trent' and E-Learning, Accessible Town for Health (STEALTH) Project Leader(s): Linda Chesterton, Julie Green, Timothy Smale, Jackie Waterfield and Ian Wood
Project Title: Interprofessional Education Year 3 Project Leader(s): Marilyn Andrews
IPE 3 Learning Outcomes:
Professional Role & Self Management
• Operate within their own scope of practice and evaluate the roles of other health and social care professionals when working together to provide optimum care.
• Examine the extent and limits of their knowledge and so work effectively with colleagues in other disciplines.
Problem Solving
• Evaluate collaborative problem solving & decision making processes & judge their impact upon client care
Collaboration & Team working
• Collaborates effectively with other health and/or social care professionals in order to establish and achieve a pre-determined planned outcome
Communication
• Communicate appropriately & effectively as a professional with a range of audiences
Reflection
• Reflect upon the learning process in order to identify personal and professional goals for CPD and lifelong learning
• Effectively utilise personal & group reflection strategies to facilitate interprofessional collaboration
Governance
• Collaborate with colleagues to evaluate and help resolve ethical and professional challenges in practice
• Analyse the advantages and disadvantages of multi-disciplinary healthcare practice
• Discuss the current and likely future role of guidelines in professional practice
• Collaborate with colleagues to evaluate and help resolve complex issues of consent, confidentiality, and professional behaviour
Project Title: Advanced Spectroscopy and Forensic Analysis: Enhancing Student Engagement, Skills and Practical Experience through Project-based Learning Project Leader(s): Falko Drijfhout, Mark Ormerod and Vladimir Zholobenko
The aim of the proposal is three-fold:
The first aim is to explicitly develop the use of project-based learning to enhance student engagement and hence improve student understanding and appreciation of some of the complex analytical methods and the underlying theory taught within the Advanced Analysis and Spectroscopy module. This will ensure that our Forensic Science students become much more confident in and familiar with applying the theory to problems relating to the analysis of unknown (forensic) samples.
This leads on to the second aim. Problem solving in exam and class test questions is a crucial part of the Forensic Science degree at Keele, as well as being a key employability skill, and is a weakness of many students, despite their apparent enjoyment of context, problem-based material. The project aims to enhance students' ability to solve problems, as well as their practical skills, both of which are key employability skills.
The third aim is to make extensive changes to the existing module in order to significantly enhance student practical skills and hands-on experience. Through increased exposure to an interaction with modern state of the art analytical instrumentation housed in our Analytical Laboratory within the Lennard-Jones Laboratories, we want to alter the notion that these instruments are just 'black boxes' which generate data. We want the students to be much more involved in method development, as well as problem solving, to ensure that they are fully trained in the principles applications and capabilities of (modern) instrumentation.
Project Title: SPELLBOUND: Skills Package for English Language Learners Project Leader(s): Russell Clark, Jody Harlowe, Robin Bell and Dan Harding
English language impacts on the student’s whole learning experience and students who struggle with their English language development inevitably struggle with both their studies and their transition into university life. This can affect the retention and progression, as well as the recruitment of future international students. The English Language Unit (ELU) wishes to radically change the way in which Keele provides for its international students. This will involve:
Pre-arrival contact including language self-assessments
Diagnostic profiling on arrival
Delivery of blended learning packages
‘Wish You Were Here’ Virtual Writing Clinics to support students throughout the entire year
To achieve this, the ELU is asking for funds to employ part-time tutors to reduce the number of hours staff will have to teach in the first semester.
Project Title: Modelling in the Environmental Sciences: Enhancing Employability for the Environmental Sector Project Leader(s): Stefan Krause and Zoe Robinson
Project Title: Diversity in the Psychology Curriculum at Keele University: A Collaborative Action Research Project Project Leader(s): Gaby Jacobs
The objectives of the project are twofold: a) to acquire insight into diversity in the content, delivery of and assessment practices within the psychology curriculum at Keele University by conducting a diversity audit; and b) to take action to develop a more inclusive curriculum, building from the strengths within the programme and addressing the weaknesses as defined by staff members and students.
The key questions the project will answer are:
a) To what extent and in what ways is diversity incorporated into the psychology curriculum (including the postgraduate programme in counselling psychology) at Keele University?
b) What are the strengths and weaknesses and what action can be taken to enhance the consideration of diversity issues within the curriculum?
Diversity refers to the multiple and intersectional identities (of gender, ethnicity, race, religion, class, age, disability, sexuality, family constellation, childcare and employment situation, social class) of students that impact upon the HE context (Dicke & Wekker, 2004). An inclusive curriculum is reflected in a commitment to develop teaching practices and forms of organisation that respond positively to student diversity (Ainscow, 1999).
The project will specifically focus on: a) To what extent and in what ways does the psychology curriculum address diversity as a topic; b) To what extent and in what ways does the psychology curriculum cater for diversity (in teaching and assessment methods); and c) The existing knowledge and awareness of diversity, skills and attitudes towards diversity and areas of development as reported by staff members and students.
Project Title: Development of a High-resolution Geoscience Field-derived Dataset for Teaching and Learning Project Leader(s): Jamie Pringle, Nigel Cassidy, Ian Stimpson and Peter Styles
This proposed project will create a fully developed, real world-derived, multi-disciplinary, learning dataset from the Gilpin/Kent Valley area near Grange-over-Sands in the Lake District, UK. This area has been used as a final year student field-area for some years at Keele within their M.Geoscience course, as it has a complex, glaciated buried valley floor that is challenging for students to both recognise and recreate in three dimensions. Some geophysical data from past student activities will be combined with the proposed newly-acquired, multi-technique geophysical data, remote sensing (ArcGIS) and geotechnical boreholes (digitised from published material) to complete a high resolution, near-surface dataset of the field area.
Once created, the dataset will allow students to be set appropriate student level tasks, from year I, II, III and IV. This will significantly enhance the students’ learning experience, and develop quantitative analysis skills that can be applied to real-world problems on graduation (see Hill et al. 2004).
Project Title: Free-text Formative Assessment of Key Features Problems in the School of Medicine Project Leader(s): Adrian Molyneux and Richard Hays
The aim of the project is to offer on-demand formative assessments to medical students. Initially, this will cover year 2 students but will ultimately expand to all years. The focus of these assessments is that they will enable students to give open, free-text responses to questions, and have these marked automatically by computer. The students’ feedback will also include constructive comments to provide assistive pointers where the answer is deemed to be incorrect, and further learning points to stretch those students answering correctly.
Project Title: Heads Up! Piloting a Pre-arrival Course for Mature Students Studying in the Humanities and Social Sciences Project Leader(s): Jenny Smith, Georgina Spencer and Verity Aiken
Project Title: Developing a Diploma in Applied Psychology Project Leader(s): Sue Sherman and Nicky Edelstyn
The main aim of this proposal is to develop a Diploma in Applied Psychology. This would involve a placement year between the 2nd and 3rd undergraduate years during which time students would work in a Psychology related setting, eg., with a clinical psychologist, in a prison, in a school etc. Ultimately if the scheme is successful, we would hope to evolve it into a new 4 year degree course (BSc (Hons) in Applied Psychology). The Diploma is being developed with the support of Dean of Natural Sciences and in discussion with him and Elaine McFarland – Natural Sciences QA Link.
The Diploma represents a major new direction for Psychology. It will help to increase the employability skills of Psychology undergraduates in line with the recent drive by the University (University Learning & Teaching Strategy), in addition to addressing the Curriculum Annual Review Development (November 2007).
This initiative will place a high demand on existing resources such as staff time and administrative costs since in order to develop the Diploma, we need to identify additional placement providers and explore with them and other colleagues the issues that we can pre-empt and deal with. We will then be in a position to roll the Diploma out to the first cohort of students and evaluate their experience.
Current HE students are Generation ‘Y’ generally defined as 1982-2001 birth years (Knight, 2009). Generation Y students are “fundamentally different in outlook and ambition from any group of kids in the past 50 or 60 years… it is clear that they already know they don’t want to live or work the way we do” (Hill, 2002). Generation Y students have been suggested to be “mostly ‘digital natives’ connected 24/7, bored by routine and goal-orientated” (Knight, 2009), and as such, may respond positively to technology-based complementary learning environments as much or if not more so than more traditional HE learning environments. However this is a generalisation as there will be students with different technological abilities, interests and cultural backgrounds and thus the student cohort will be much more diverse and heterogeneous as pointed out by Sternberg (2012). In addition the student cohort will also include more mature students, as well as those who may be visually or auditory impaired, so this may affect educational e-gaming teaching and learning.
Educational e-gaming may therefore be a solution for effective learning in HE (see Squire, 2008). Action Research with Physical Science HE student participants to study the effectiveness of such complementary learning environments has been ongoing at Keele for the past 5 years.
An initial educational egame was developed through Keele University Innovation Awards and Teaching Innovation Project schemes, based on a geotechnical site investigation for a mine shaft (Pringle et al. 2008), the game being accessed via a web-browser interfaces and question and answer responses (see http://www.keele.ac.uk/gge/resourcesforeducation/geoteche-game/). The storyline was multi-threaded to encourage participants to repeat the exercise to continue and reinforce learning. A project to test the effectiveness of this was undertaken as part of JP’s MA in Teaching and Learning in HE and written up in Pringle (2013) which evidences the effectiveness of such an approach.
More advanced educational egames were then developed using xbox technologies with the considerable expertise of the School of Pharmacy’s developmental team of Karl Reid, Tom Pardoe and David Ledsam. Based on a real forensic search case (see Pringle & Jervis, 2010), users then progressive work through the search scenario, completing both a desk study and field investigations through an immersive virtual environment (see http://www.keelesop.co.uk/csinorthwales/). An action research project to test the effectiveness of this educational egame was also undertaken as the final part of JP’s MA in Teaching and Learning in HE.
Clearly educational egames show great potential to act as complementary learning environments to the more traditional learning approaches (Pringle, 2014 discusses this). It is planned to turn the latest egame into a free downloadable ‘app’ but requires funding.
References:
HILL, R.P. (2002) Managing across generations in the 21st Century: important lessons from the ivory trenches. Journal of Management Inquiry, 11 (1), 60-66.
KNIGHT, Y. (2009) Talkin’ ‘bout my generation: a brief introduction to general theory. Higher Education Academy Planet, 21, 13-15.
PRINGLE, J.K. & JERVIS, J.R. (2010) Electrical resistivity survey to search for a recent clandestine burial of a homicide victim, UK. Forensic Science International, 202(1-3), e1-e7.
Pringle, J.K., Stimpson, I.G., Toon, S.M., Caunt, S., Lane, V.S., Husband, C.R., Jones, G.M., Cassidy, N.J. & Styles, P. 2008. Geophysical characterisation of derelict coalmine workings and mineshaft detection: a case study from Shrewsbury, UK. Near Surface Geophysics, 6(3), 185-194.
SQUIRE, K. (2008) Video game-based learning: an emerging paradigm for instruction. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 21 (2), pp. 7-36.
STERNBERG, J. (2012) ‘It’s the end of the university as we know it (and I feel fine)’: the Generation Y student in HE discourse. Higher Education Research & Development, 31 (4), 571-583.
Project Title: A Pilot Study to Evaluate the Effectiveness of a Peer Support Model Project Leader(s): Pauline Walsh, Julie Green, Shelagh Heneghan, Kim Sargeant and Cath Hill
The aim of this project is to evaluate the implementation of a new peer support model in order to establish its effectiveness in supporting professional reflection and development. It will ascertain both strengths and weaknesses of implementing such an approach within a health related school alongside its transferability to non health related areas. The outcomes of the evaluation project will provide recommendations for the future implementation of the peer support model. Through this evaluation, methods for dissemination of best practice and their impact on the student learning experience can be identified and integrated into the school learning and teaching plan.
Project Title: Exploring the Attitude of Geography Students to Information Resources and Journal Literature Project Leader(s): Richard Waller, Peter Adey and Peter Knight
This project aims both to examine the attitudes of Geography students to the use of a variety of information resources and to identify ways in which they can be encouraged to engage with advanced sources of information (especially journal articles) at various stages throughout their degree programme. It will build upon the findings of a current Action Research project that has explored this issue within the context of a single year 2 module. By examining students’ attitudes to journal literature throughout their time at Keele, this project will generate new understandings of the evolvingreasons behind their choices of research material from the time they arrive at Keele until the time they graduate. The project will also evaluate the effectiveness of a range of interventions, some of which stem from the findings of the current project, and others that will be developed through active discussion with the student participants.
Its desired impact is to encourage and enable students to engage with more advanced sources of information as they progress through their degree programmes, through the use of targeted interventions that seek to overcome the barriers they identify at various stages in their careers. We genuinely believe that if students can be encouraged to engage with such sources, it will help them identify what is going on at the “cutting edge” of the discipline, introduce them to the idea of academic progress through active debate, and ultimately help them achieve better results in their assignments.
We believe this proposals is both original and innovative as first and foremost, surprisingly little work has been undertaken on this topic to date, particularly in U.K. Higher Education. An examination of student attitudes to what are considered traditional academic learning resources is particularly urgent as today’s students display a markedly different skill set from those of a five or ten years ago (see section 2). Consequently, encouraging today’s students to engage with information resources to which they are either unfamiliar or resistant, poses a new challenge whose resolution will require the generation of bespoke and innovative interventions.
Project Title: Assessing Employability Skills and PDP through Personal Tutoring Project Leader(s): Glen Hussey
To produce an enhanced tutoring system addressing the following ILOs:
Review and clarification of tutor/tutee expectations of the personal tutorial system presently and under the proposed scheme.
Provide structure and consistency to the tutorial experience and guidance on how to best monitor student progress.
Incorporate PDP formally into the tutoring system introducing students to the underlying themes and allowing progressive student engagement at each level.
Incorporate ES formally into the tutoring system facilitating student introduction to the underlying themes and monitoring engagement.
Formally incorporating these issues into the tutorial scheme will raise their profile in terms of student engagement and thereby:
Offer Schools a practical way to incorporate PDP and ES into their courses.
Provide tailored guidance to tutors enhancing academic understanding of PDP and ES in the student experience.
Provide more detailed notes for student records providing a richer source of information when it comes to writing references.
Project Title: A Rehearsal for Life: Providing Dissertation Students with Access to Clinical Cases to Support Teaching and Learning in Cognitive Neuropsychology Project Leader(s): Nicky Edelstyn
Project Title: Intercalating Art and Science in a Cross-disciplinary Landscape Project Leader(s): Peter Knight
The aim of this project is to embed a practising professional artist within a cross-disciplinary science-based module. This is intended to enhance the student experience by (i) exposing students to a viewpoint and a spectrum of professional practice that stretches beyond the conventional syllabus within the discipline, (ii) facilitating a redevelopment of the syllabus with input from the embedded artist, (iii) finding new ways to communicate science to artists and art to scientists by means of an interdisciplinary collaboration in course design and delivery.
The embedding of the artist will involve the following stages:
Collaborative engagement with course staff in production of artwork that will be used as a starting point for student activities within the module;
Involvement in workshops, seminars and project work with student groups;
Post-course review and collaboration in redevelopment of syllabus to incorporate ideas based on this experiment.
Project Title: Remotely-sensed Imagery Project Leader(s): Richard Waller
Project Aim & Summary
The overall aim of this project was to evaluate the ways in which remotely-sensed imagery can be used to enhance the learning experience of students within Earth Sciences & Geography. Funding has enabled the purchase of high-resolution, digital terrain model (DTM) data for two regions within the U.K. frequently used within teaching in Earth Sciences & Geography. Initial student feedback suggests that derived visualisations are very effective in enabling students to visualise unfamiliar physical landscapes, which is extremely important in field-based learning. However, whilst feedback indicates that the majority of students prefer the greater level of detail offered by this high-resolution data, some students suggest that this can produce unnecessary clutter and therefore impair the clarity of related visualisations. This suggests that the source of DTM data should be selected carefully according to the scale of the area and purpose of the activity and that “more” is not always “better”.
Active learning through field practicals should emphasise deep learning and understanding and will reinforce prior knowledge gained through the various theoretical lectures given. Students should also be able to individually evaluate the different location techniques. Providing student-led, group problem-solving exercises should significantly enhance the students’ learning experience. The relevant key transferable and employability skills learnt will include student critical thinking, team-working, problem-solving, communication skills, active learning in a field-based environment, and importantly, forensic work-related learning. This type of investigation also emphasises the multi-disciplinarily nature of forensic investigations, which has been shown to be really important in the ‘real-world’. Using the field site for student research purposes will also allow feedback of results back into the undergraduate degree programme, showing the students the importance of this link for their studies.
‘Clickerless Clickers’
Socrative is a student response system, much like TurningPoint. However, Socrative’s main USP is that no institutionally-bought devices or accounts are required to use it. Students respond to questions using their mobile devices. They simply need an internet browser to access.
For staff, a ‘teacher’ account is completely free with an educational email address. The software is web-based (found atwww.socrative.com) and intuitive to use. A brief summary of its features from a teacher/lecturer/facilitator perspective is:
You create your own room. Students simply go towww.socrative.com and log into your room. Mine, for example, is imaginatively called ChrisRoom. This log-in process means that facilitating learners to use this software is quicker and simpler than the TurningPoint clicker devices, particularly for large groups.
You can create polling quizzes containing multiple choice, true/false and short answer/open text responses to questions. Creating these quizzes is incredibly simply and you can drag and drop questions into different orders. Quizzes can also be student or teacher paced.
You can pre-enter automated responses to questions to elaborate on the question after students have answered.
Additionally you can create quick polling questions whilst teaching. You could write the question on the board then simply choose a true or false question on Socrative and see the polling results on the screen. This could allow you to change your teaching strategy mid class.
Socrative also allows you to share these quizzes with colleagues via a share code that they simply enter in their Socrative ‘dashboard’ and it copies the quiz directly across.
You can download your quizzes as polished, slick-looking pdf copies for students to use the paper-format.
Quizzes can be created so that learners remain anonymous or have to enter their name first.
Socrative will produce an Excel, or Google Doc, spreadsheet containing the data from the session which would open it up to many possible uses- gathering data for research, module evaluations, etc.
For students, Socrative is easy to use and offers an attractive user interface. When quizzes are teacher-paced, you control when students have the questions sent to their phones. The following screenshots show the Socrative interface for learners whilst waiting for a question and when responding:
The above screenshots show what the student sees when they are waiting for you to ’send’ a question, and when it appears. The interface is simple and easy to interact with for both staff and students and has been well received.
The following video sums up how to use Socrative fairly succinctly:
Why use it?
Student response systems (SRS), such as Socrative or TurningPoint Clickers, have been found to be useful, and offer significant opportunities to demonstrate understanding, provide immediate feedback for both learners and lecturers and have been seen to be positively associated with exam scores (Trees & Jackson, 2007). Heaslip et al (2014) also found that students became more engaged when clickers were used in lectures than when they were not present. Additionally, they found that students appreciated how ‘fun’ using clickers can be, and the anonymity they can afford.
However, these effects have not been without confounding variables. The implementation of SRS has been found to be indicative of wider attempts to engage students in formative questioning in weekly activities, as well as taught sessions (Poirier & Feldman, 2007). Additionally, Morling et al (2008) found that the impact of clickers could be confounded by the presentation of questions. For Morling et al, the presentation of questions is what spurs further learning and highlights gaps in knowledge to learners, not necessarily the use of clickers. Anthis (2011) study suggests that, in fact there is no statistical link between clicker use and exam scores, and further pedagogical investigation is required in order to understand the true impact of clickers.
For many lecturers, clickers et al provide a platform for immediate feedback, recapping learning and providing an insight into how your teaching is ‘going’. For us at least, Socrative has provided a platform to engage lots of users in a quick and effective way. Even with the patchiest of wi-fi connections (particularly in CBC rooms) Socrative still worked. Additionally, we have seen students seem a little ‘bored’ by TurningPoint and this does the same thing but in a fresher way.
TurningPoint is great and definitely still has uses. It’s integration with PowerPoint is particularly useful. However, colleagues have reported problems with TurningPoint interacting in difficult ways with their remote presenter devices, not installing correctly on machines and other problems. Additionally, both the Student Learning team and colleagues who have tried Socrative, have found that the fact it does not integrate with PowerPoint is actually a positive. For me it stops me relying on my slides and can often lead to students feeling they are driving the direction of the class. Colleagues have found the same: that not relying on PowerPoint slides frees them up to respond to the class more and almost form a user-led free-form class. This is obviously not applicable to every class, all of the time, but a nice option to have.
How we use it?
Example teaching strategies we have used it in are:
Recap quiz - In order to ascertain understanding of lectured material in a session for the Management School we have deployed Socrative as a means of testing how much material students remember at the end of the session. Additionally we have used it in in Criminology sessions as a way of recapping referencing systems in the run up to an assignment, this allowed us to flush out issues that Level 4 students had with referencing before the assignment.
Self-Audit Free-Form Class - In order to facilitate a self-audit activity, we have used Socrative to not only direct a free for, class responding to the feedback of the group, but this also allowed us to highlight the existing knowledge, or lack thereof, about our central services.
Student feedback, specifically around the Socrative parts of our sessions have been positive. As with clickers, students have found the interactivity and possible anonymity to be positive:
‘It made me realise others were struggling too’ Y1 Social Work student
‘Learning that there is additional help available via socrative’ Y1 MAN10018 student
‘Very interactive and fun’ Y1 MAN10018 student
It is not, however, bulletproof and dependant on the university's wi-fi strength, which is not always foolproof, as indicated by student comments indicating what would improve the sessions including Socrative:
'A stronger internet connection’ Y1 Social Work student
‘Phone would not work in socrative section’ Y1 Criminology student
Despite the above, for us it has been hugely successful in highlighting how well our central services have been promoted and advertised, as well as flushing out transitional issues and opportunities for support. Using it as a ‘taking stock’ self-audit strategy has been extremely effective. Given its capacity to produce a report there could be potential in completing module/ teaching evaluations through it. Additionally, while the website advises that Socrative is designed for 50 students, we have had significant success with groups up to 100.
Socrative continually works as a way of engaging groups of varying sizes as well as encouraging me to ditch the PowerPoint slides from time to time, forcing me to think on my feet and respond to each individual group in front of me. If you are interested in learning more, please feel free to get in touch. Additionally, Dervan (2014) offers a comprehensive review of use of Socrative as well as a thorough walk-through of the features of Socrative: well worth a read.
References
Anthis, K. (2011). “Is it the clicker, or is it the question? Untangling the effects of students response system use”. Teaching of Psychology. 38 (3): 189-193.
Dervan, P. (2014) "Increasing in-class student engagement using Socrative (an online Student Response System)." AISHE-J: The All Ireland Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. 6 (3).
Heaslip, G., Donovan, P. & Cullen, J. G. (2014) “Student response systems and learner engagement in large classes”. Active Learning in Higher Education. 15 (1): 11-24.
Morling, B. McAuliffe, M., Cohne, L. & Di Lorenzo, T. M. (2008) “Efficacy of personal response systems (“Clickers”) in large, introductory psychology classes”. Teaching of Psychology. 35 (1): 45-50.
Poirer, C. R. & Feldmann, R. S. (2007) “Promoting active learning using individual response technology in large introductory psychology classes”. Teaching of Psychology. 34 (3): 194-196.
Trees, A. R. & Jackson, M. H. (2007). “The learning environment in clicker classrooms: Student processes of learning and involvement in large university-level courses using student-response systems”. Learning, Media & Technology. 32 (1): 21-40.
Project Title: Peer E-Mentoring Project Leader(s): Claire Fox
The main objective of the scheme is to provide all first year students with informal support and advice from a more experienced second year student. Hopefully, this will help with the transition to university life, with benefits in terms of improved student retention. It gives first year students someone else to turn to for advice and support; it may be that students find it easier to raise concerns and / or seek help from a fellow student, rather than a member of staff. It also provides students with training on and experience of mentoring. They can use their university experience to benefit others, promoting a sense of ‘giving something back’. The mentoring does not take up too much of their time, but is a useful addition to their CVs. The mentors are awarded with a certificate of participation at the end of the year. Additional benefits for mentors include: the development of key transferable skills and opportunities to meet other like minded students.
