Seeds for Solutions, How does the past inform the future? Innovation projects from 2008/09 #KATS2015

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.

Advanced Spectroscopy - Presentation Slides

Advanced Spectroscopy and Forensic Analysis: Enhancing Student Engagement, Skills and Practical Experience through Project-based Learning by Falko Drijfhout, Mark Ormerod and Vladimir Zholobenko, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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.

SPELLBOUND - Presentation Slides

SPELLBOUND: Skills Package for English Language Learners by Russell Clark, Jody Harlowe, Robin Bell and Dan Harding, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Seeds for Solutions, How does the past inform the future? Innovation projects from 2008/09 #KATS2015

Project Title: Modelling in the Environmental Sciences: Enhancing Employability for the Environmental Sector
Project Leader(s): Stefan Krause and Zoe Robinson

Modelling in the Environmental Sciences - Presentation Slides

Modelling in the Environmental Sciences: Enhancing Employability for the Environmental Sector by Stefan krause and Zoe Robinson, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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.‌

Diversity in the Psychology Curriculum - Presentation Slides

Diversity in the Psychology Curriculum at Keele University: A Collaborative Action Research Project by Gaby Jacobs, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Seeds for Solutions, How does the past inform the future? Innovation projects from 2008/09 #KATS2015

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).

Development of a High-resolution Geoscience Field-derived Dataset - Presentation

Development of a High-resolution Geoscience Field-derived Dataset for Teaching and Learning by Jamie Pringle, Nigel Cassidy, Ian Stimpson and Peter Styles, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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.

Free-text Formative Assessment of Key Feature Problems - Presentation Slides

Free-text Formative Assessment of Key Features Problems in the School of Medicine by Adrian Molyneux and Richard Hays, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Seeds for Solutions, How does the past inform the future? Innovation projects from 2008/09 #KATS2015

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

Heads Up! - Presentation Slides


Heads Up! Piloting a Pre-arrival Course for Mature Students Studying in the Humanities and Social Sciences by Jenny Smith, Georgina Spencer and Verity Aiken, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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.

Developing a Diploma in Applied Psychology - Presentation Slides


Developing a Diploma in Applied Psychology by Sue Sherman and Nicky Edelstyn, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Educational e-gaming, by Dr. Jamie Pringle and Dr. Luke Bracegirdle

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. (2014). Educational egaming: the future for geoscience virtual learners? Geology Today, 30(4), 145-148. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gto.12058/abstract

PRINGLE, J.K. (2013) Educational environmental geoscience e-gaming to provide stimulating and effective learning. Higher Education Academy Planet 27(1), 21-28. http://journals.heacademy.ac.uk/doi/abs/10.11120/plan.2013.27010021

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.

Seeds for Solutions, How does the past inform the future? Innovation projects from 2008/09 #KATS2015

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.

A Pilot Study to Evaluate the Effectiveness of a Peer Support Model - Report

A Pilot Study to Evaluate the Effectiveness of a Peer Support Model - Presentation

A Pilot Study to Evaluate the Effectiveness of a Peer Support Model by Pauline Walsh, Julie Green, Shelagh Heneghan, Kim Sargeant and Cath Hill, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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.

Exploring the Attitude of Geography Students - Final Report

Exploring the Attitude of Geography Students - Presentation Slides

Exploring the Attitude of Geography Students to Information Resources and Journal Literature by Richard Waller, Peter Adey and Peter Knight, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.