Monday 5 December 2016

Induction week. Welcome on board! Peter G Knight, School of Geography, Geology and Environment, Keele University

It seems appropriate that my first blog entry for Solutions, which I intended to submit for the start of the academic year and which was supposed to be about teaching time management to newly arrived students, should have been delayed by two months because I have been overwhelmed by - amongst other things - teaching time management to newly arrived students.

Most academics think about the start of October in the way that other people think about the start of January: a new year, big hopes, good resolutions, a fresh start. The new academic year brings with it a fresh crop of the bright young intellects that, changing every year, help to keep our own ideas fresh and constantly renewed. It is an exciting, promising time. I have had nearly forty new years now as a university lecturer or student: enough academic fresh starts to fill two of the lifetimes of my average undergraduate. I’ve done this before, and for me it is not scary. But for you, dear student, this is the first time. We see this academic induction, this welcome week, this fresh start, from very different perspectives. And I need to remember that.

We can try to serve as good examples to our students, but we don’t always have to be models of perfection. The fact that I have time-management problems of my own does not undermine my position in teaching time-management skills to students. It strengthens it. I am teaching from the front line of right now, not from long-remembered experiences of “when I was in your position”. I can face a problem on Monday, figure out a workaround on Tuesday, and teach it to my tutorial group on Wednesday. In my mid fifties I can’t pretend to put myself in my new students’ teenage shoes or claim to be facing the same struggles that they are facing as they settle into University. But I can share with them my equivalent struggles, and show them that fighting battles, finding coping strategies, and dealing with everyday academic problems are normal things that we are all learning to do. If a student sees that I am still learning, and still struggling, perhaps the student will feel less inadequate about their own struggles and their own early setbacks. It’s OK to find University difficult. These challenges are supposed to be here.

And here, for me, is the challenge of induction week. We want to be positive, supportive, and encouraging, but we also have to be honest, realistic and pragmatic. We want to say well done for scoring those A-level grades, but we also have to point out that much of what was covered at A-level was fundamentally flawed. Many of my students begin their degrees hoping for clear answers and reliable certainties. I have to tell them that there are no clear answers and that study at University will introduce them to a whole new set of uncertainties. Welcome on board, but hold on tight.

One of my Welcome-week activities that seems to help students feel at home is the start-of-course diagnostic assessment. Students seem accustomed to having lots of tests and quizzes at school, so having a 15-minute short-answer test included alongside the many unfamiliar experiences of induction week seems to steady the ship for some of them. I tell them that the idea of the test is to help me work out the correct level to pitch material in the early sections of the course, and that it will also give them a broad indication of how far their pre-University work has prepared them for this new stage in their academic journey. They do the test, I let them mark their own or their neighbour’s paper straight away while I talk them through the answers, and as I take in their marked papers I give them a handout with all the questions and all the correct answers on it for them to take away. A couple of days later I see the students again, and tell them that in fact the first test was just a rehearsal, and the real diagnostic assessment is today. I tell them to put away any notes or devices, and I hand out the new, real diagnostic assessment. It is, to their surprise, identical to the one they did before. And here I deliver the first big lesson of the week. I was never interested in whether they knew the answers to the questions on the test. It doesn’t matter: they are only at the start of their learning journey. What I am interested in, and what I want to bring into the students’ line of sight, is what they did when they were presented with a body of information - answers - to take away. Usually, none of the students, or certainly very few, have done anything with the handout from the first test or followed up topics that they were unsure about. The marks for the second test are usually no better than the marks for the first. And here is the teachable moment: the students can see that they totally blew their opportunity to do well on the second test by not following up the feedback on the first test; and they see that what I care about is not their factual knowledge but their approach to learning and their engagement with course materials. If there is a “mark” for the diagnostic assessment, it is the difference in scores between test one and test two. Most important of all is what you chose to do after test one. Or perhaps it is what you will do after test two. Welcome to the programme. Welcome to university.

Generally, this two-stage diagnostic assessment works well, but one potential downside is that I am in a small way tricking or misleading the students, and I don’t like to mess with their trust too much early on. It is important that the students see the key lesson from that exercise (why I had to trick them with that first test), and it is important to (re)establish trust quickly through other activities. One small way that I try to do that is by joining in with the students on further in-class exercises that they do. If I ask a tutorial group to take 60 seconds out and try to write a one-sentence answer to a sample question, I take that same 60 seconds and try to come up with a sentence of my own. Not one that I prepared earlier, but one made in the same time that the students are making theirs. I can then be much more believable if I agree (or disagree) with their argument that 60 seconds was not long enough, and they can even sympathise with me a little if, when I read out my own attempt, there is some comical error in it. If the students can then suggest improvements to my attempt, just as I suggest improvements to theirs, then we are (as a happy by product) well on the way towards addressing issues that surround the new NSS question about whether students feel part of a learning community. Of course they do - they are teaching me at the same time that I am trying to teach them. We are all in this together, even if we are looking at it from different perspectives of experience. And that is one of the most important lessons to incorporate into induction week. Even if it means that the time management exercise has to wait until next time!

More about Peter 

Peter G Knight is a Reader in Geography in the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment at Keele University. He studied Geography at the Universities of Oxford (BA Hons, 1980-1983) and
Aberdeen (PhD, 1984-1987) before coming to Keele as a lecturer in 1987. He is currently Head of Geography Programmes, and Course Director for Physical Geography. He has previously served as Director of Learning and Teaching for the School, Chair of the University Academic Appeals Committee, and Chair of several Internal Quality Audits.

Peter has won Keele’s “Individual Award for Excellence in Learning and Teaching” and several Teaching Innovation Awards, and was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship by the Higher Education Academy in 2008. Peter’s promotion to Reader was one of the first at Keele to be based on “outstanding distinction and achievement in the conduct, outcome, scholarship and dissemination of learning and teaching”. Peter is the author of more than 50 research papers in glaciology and geomorphology, and has published textbooks both in glaciology and in undergraduate study skills. His most recent book is the 3rd edition of the widely used “How to do your dissertation in Geography and related disciplines” (Routledge, 2015). Peter has recently been working with both the Geographical Association and the Royal Geographical Society to develop learning resources for students at A-level and in transition between A-level and University study. The Geography module “Inspirational Landscapes” (GEG-30014), which Peter developed and leads, was featured by Geographical Magazine as “one of the UK’s most interesting and unique geography modules”.

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Induction week. Welcome on board! by Peter G Knight, School of Geography, Geology and Environment, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Friday 2 December 2016

Keele University Annual Teaching Symposium June 2016 (Part 1) Creativity in Higher Education

Creativity in Higher Education

#KeeleTS16

The Learning and Professional Development Centre held their 14th Annual Learning and TeachingSymposium, offering staff and students the opportunity to exchange ideas and share innovative and inspirational practice with colleagues and peers from across the University.
This year the event focus was on "Creativity in Higher Education" and welcomed two external keynotes from Professor Paul Kleiman, Ciel Associates, and Dr Sarah Dyer, Exeter University.
A recording was made of the event and can be seen below
Information on the presentations and the schedule of the day is available in the Teaching Symposium Programme of Events 2016.




Keynote: Building Appreciative Partnerships, Sarah Dyer (University of Exeter)

I developed the notion of appreciative partnership as a way of building and sustaining creative and collaborative teaching and learning. An appreciative partnership is informed by the principles of appreciative inquiry, that flourishing and productive change are created by valuing each person’s idea of what works and what is important. I will be discussing the process of designing and using resources to support appreciate partnership in higher education. I will reflect on what I have learnt about how and why to nurture creativity.


Dancing to a different tune: creativity in assessment, Katie Maddock (Keele University, School of Pharmacy)

The first year of the MPharm degree course is a single 120-credit module integrating science and practice. At the end of the year all first year students are required to undertake a synoptic assessment, allowing students to demonstrate that they have formed the desired key linkages and integration of knowledge. Students form self- selected groups of four and choose a drug to work upon. The assessment comprises two elements: a report and a group viva voce examination. The report can be submitted in any format – students are encouraged to be creative and imaginative. The submission must comprehensively address: the production of the drug entity; pharmacology; clinical uses in humans. The viva voce is used to examine each student’s contribution

to the task and their deeper understanding of the subject matter and is a pass/fail assessment. The assessment occurs at the end of formal teaching with a two week period in which to complete the work. In 2010/11 it was evaluated using a questionnaire comprising six statements (rated using a five-point Likert scale) and two free text questions.

Since the inception of the synoptic assessment submissions have been extremely varied and have included: a filmed dramatic saga, a crime report, and a Star Wars spoof. 88 students completed the questionnaire, a response rate of 95%. There was strong agreement that there was sufficient time to complete the task (mean Likert score = 4.1) and that the task allowed them to consolidate their learning (mean Likert score = 3.8). The students were also asked to state what they liked most and least about the task. The students liked working as a group, expressing their knowledge creatively/ imaginatively, learning about a new drug in depth, and linking different areas of knowledge together. They disliked the viva voce as they found it stressful

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Personal development planning for International Postgraduate Students (PIPS), Kate Baker (Keele University School of Life Sciences) 

Personal Development Planning (PDP) is a process whereby students are encouraged to reflect on aspects of their own learning and to plan for personal, educational and career development, i.e. to learn self-analysis and transferable skills which will be advantageous in their future employability. Whilst there has recently been considerable focus on PDP for undergraduate and research postgraduate students, very little research has been undertaken addressing the PDP and development needs of taught postgraduate students (Baker et al., 2014). These are a varied set of students of different ages, backgrounds and cultures, and around half of them are from outside the UK. These differences highlight the necessity to present a programme of PDP which is highly tailored to these students, to allow them to achieve their goals and realise the benefits of PDP. After considerable research (Baker, 2010a; Baker, 2010b) into taught postgraduate students’ and their teachers’ perceptions of PDP, resources targeted to this group were developed, and are currently in use throughout Scotland. The session aims to present an overview of the ‘PDP for International Postgraduate Students’ (PIPS) project research and outcomes, the learning from this project, and to showcase the developed taught postgraduate PDP resources.



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Personal development planning for International Postgraduate Students (PIPS) by Kate Baker (Keele University School of Life Sciences) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


Using virtual reality headsets and immersive, point-of- view videos to enhance nursing students’ awareness of children’s perceptions of hospital admissions, Pete Lonsdale (Keele University, School of Nursing and Midwifery)

There has been considerable interest in the potential use of virtual reality headsets for education following the introduction of several low-cost development kits from Google, Sony, Oculus Rift, and others. Seeking to build on work focused on the creation of a “virtual ward” in the KAVE virtual environment based at the School of Pharmacy, we purchased (via a Teaching Innovation award) five Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets and set about exploring how we could use these to move the Virtual Ward out of the physical KAVE environment and make this simulation more widely available to more groups of students. We found that that there were significant technical and resourcing barriers that led to slow progress on this work, and so we began exploring other ways in which we could use the virtual reality headsets to support innovative, engaging learning activities. Most recently, we have seen significant interest in the use of immersive, point-of-view, and 360˚ videos to provide rich, semi-interactive experiences.

We have been exploring the potential educational affordances of these video-based activities through a series of discussions with teaching and clinical staff, and we are developing new resources that will be made available through the Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets. We will report on the development of an immersive, “point-of-view” video that puts Nursing students in the place of a child who is being admitted into hospital. This resource features first-person, immersive video that shows the child’s point of view as they lie in a fixed position on a hospital bed and are moved between different areas. Our aims are to highlight aspects of good and bad practice and to raise students’ awareness of what it is like for children to be brought in to unfamiliar surroundings in a stressful situation



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Using virtual reality headsets and immersive, point-of- view videos to enhance nursing students’ awareness of children’s perceptions of hospital admissions by Pete Lonsdale (Keele University, School of Nursing and Midwifery) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


Keynote: Creativity: choices, challenges (and a bit of chaos), Paul Klieman (Ciel Associates)

Creativity in higher education is a seriously funny business. On the one hand we expect our students to conform to the formalities of the university and yet – often – we secretly hope they will practise wild, if subtle rebellion. We require them to be versed in inherited theoretical vocabularies, but we also need them to energise us with some previously unseen thing. This keynote will explore some of the choices that need to be made and the challenges that need to be confronted if there is a genuine commitment to enabling and enhancing creativity in the curriculum





Away from somewhere and towards somewhere else, Rob Stannard (Keele University, School of Social Science and Public Policy)

Martin Heidegger described poeisis, (the act of making) as a 'bringing-forth', using this term in its widest sense. Heidegger talked of the creative act as a ‘threshold occasion’: a moment of ecstasis when something moves away from its standing as one thing to become another. The teaching and development of writing in the academy, however, so often focusses on functional aspects of writing and especially on its products, on final outcomes, and on writing as assessment. Because of this, there is an emphasis on genre and form, and on the surface features and conventions of writing. Little attention is given to the process of writing or to the notion of developing thought through it

or to the role of the imagination in academic work. In this presentation, I will argue that the writer, and the writing itself, is always in media res, in the middle of things, in the process of becoming. Drawing on the ideas of Pope (2004), who sees every invention is an intervention, an incursion into what already exists that changes it in

some way, Czikszentmihalyi (1996) who sees creativity as ‘flow’ and Bohm (1998) who sees creativity as ‘dialogue’ and ‘participation,’ I will seek to illustrate how poetic and narrative writing activities can be used to raise consciousness of the writing process itself and how imaginative writing can be used to facilitate and develop ideas.

In particular, I will be drawing on practical work with students on PGCE, MRes, and undergraduate courses, using Craft’s (2001) three types of creative activity:

• Combinational – new ways with old ideas

• Exploratory – creativity within the rules Transformational – changes to the rules of the conceptual space and Turner’s (1998) notion of ‘narrative imagining’, which relies extensively on "parable," our capacity to project one story onto another, to organize the story of a life in terms of the story of a journey


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All the wards a stage - how can theatre enhance medical education, Beth McMahon (Keele University, School of Medicine - student)

This talk will be based on my SSC, exploring how theatre may enhance medical

education, and put forward a case for more integration of performing arts into medicine by outlining the key advantages found, with the limitations found in my literature review. Theatre training can provide a student with a host of transferrable skills that could have a potential use in the role of medical education. To investigate what ways performance skills can be used, a literature review was carried out to review the reliability of the papers and weigh up the evidence available. The results of this study indicated a number of advantages in the use of drama. Participatory theatre workshops were shown as an especially effective medium in educating practitioners about

the treatment of marginalised and minority groups in society. A study by Sheffield University indicated high levels of experience in theatre is associated with an increased first time Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) score, probably correlated to an easing of ‘performance anxiety’ with exposure. Training in ‘stagecraft’, the skills actors use on stage to aid presentation, increased self-efficacy in students in regards to case presentation. Finally, use of an adaptation of Beat Analysis (a script analysis technique) in the observation of consultations may increase a student’s response to empathy, aiding their communication skills, and hence lead to a building of rapport with the patient. These results will only be referred to as ‘indications’, however, as the consistently small sample sizes, lack of replicated studies, and effects of report bias are too large to consider the results as evidence.


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Enabling personalised digital enhanced practical skills development, Adam Winterton & Tim Smale (Keele University, School of Health and Rehabilitation)

A responsive web based video repository was designed for use in health education

for aiding students’ learning, revision and development of practical based skills. The development of effective handling skills is essential in physiotherapy education however adequate tutor supervision to enable this remains a key challenge. The video repository offers a solution and was trialled with 27 students using school iPads. The session was evaluated with an online survey with a 93% response rate (n=25). Student feedback

was positive with 92% finding the iPads supported their learning in the session, with only 2 students reported that they had difficulty using the iPads. 60% of students expressed that embracing a new technology was either ‘not important’ or ‘irrelevant’ to their learning but that the visualisation of practical skills was ‘very important’ (80%) and ‘important’ (20%) as the main benefit. Another key finding was that the iPads allowed for independent study which was reported by 48% of students to be ‘very important’ and 32% as ‘important’ within a practical session. Additional anecdotal staff feedback suggested that the quality of the skills demonstrated in the practical room was also far more focussed and accurate than without the use of the repository as it meant that those students with genuine difficulties and poor technique could be easily identified and targeted with additional tutor support. Consequently this meant that skills were practised by all students for longer, with greater repetition of more complex and technical sections, although some difficulties were observed due to the iPads not having a case or stand this has now been resolved through the use of wall mounted stands. With the expansion of the video repository and feedback received the iPad’s are now used across all years of teaching

White water writers: a novel way to engage students, Yvonne Skipper (Keele University, School of Psychology)

White Water Writers gives groups of aspiring authors the chance to write and publish their own full length novel in a week. The participants plan, write and proofread their novel as a team. By the end of the week the book is placed for sale on Amazon.

We also host a book signing event where authors are presented with professionally printed copies of their novels at a book signing event attended by friends and family. The project has demonstrable effects on literacy, soft skills such as team work and on psychological variables such as self-esteem. The project has been running at Keele for nearly two years. In that time, Keele students have written a novel as part of the project. This was a challenging but exciting experience for them. They developed a variety of new skills and being a published author was a strong addition to their CVs.

In addition to this I have trained students to deliver the project themselves. They have facilitated eleven diverse groups of young people (looked after children, primary, secondary, children with SEND) to write their own novels. The students have found this a rewarding experience, building their experience of working in schools, actively leading groups of young people and confidence in taking on leadership roles. Many have now gone on to careers in teaching, counselling or further study. In this presentation I will discuss how the project has developed over time and the impact it has had on student learning and aspiration.



Knitted narratives: arts-based method in the classroom? Mariangela Palladino (Keele University, School of Humanities)

This presentation is concerned with Knitted Narratives, a project I realised over several months (2014-15) with a group of migrant women. A patchwork of pieces from knitted wool and printed fabric sewn together on cloth, Knitted Narratives is a

representation of different stories, customs, languages, cultures and experiences; it is a visual manifestation of untold histories and unheard voices. The project used knitting and fabric printing as a mode of creative, participatory and inclusive engagement; it brought together women with diverse experiences and pasts. Overcoming language and cultural barriers through active participation in the project, the women involved were able to contribute creatively to the process of artistic production and channel their energies and skills towards a positive task. Knitted Narratives allowed each participant to have a goal, something to look for, a space to be an active maker and creator, to share worries and laughter. Horizontal and collaborative processes allowed sharing of skills, knowledge and customs through knitting. As project’s facilitator, I acted as a participant and as a fellow inexperienced knitter, not as an instructor. This atmosphere of mutual exchange, teaching and learning, empowered women and re- shaped power relations. Knitted Narratives was designed as an arts and crafts-based mode of engagement and has been deployed as a research method to engage with vulnerable individuals and to overcome barriers posed by language, culture, trauma.

How can this model be brought to the classroom? What lessons could be learnt from this pedagogical approach? Can Knitted Narratives be re-framed as a transferable method for engagement in teaching? The paper poses questions and seeks to stimulate a debate on the ways research methods can influence pedagogy for teaching.



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Physical sciences educational e-gaming to provide innovative, effective and flexible learning environments, Jamie Pringle (Keele University, School of Physical and Geographical Sciences)

Current HE undergraduates have mostly grown up with computer technologies and gaming Pringle et al. (2014). As such, computer game learning resources might provide an effective complementary learning environment. This presentation briefly details currently utilized physical science e-games in undergraduate teaching, using external as well as Keele-developed egames. Users are immersed in various virtual gaming environments, from being virtual miners in gold placers game, being graduate geophysicists looking for mineshafts in domestic properties and doing virtual Police searches for locating potential burial sites. Project evaluation by Keele UG/PGR students and staff evidence it as an effective complementary learning environment, allowing increased understanding of difficult concepts, rapid learning of new knowledge, appreciation of real-world problems and statistically improved knowledge of forensic search post-gaming. E-games work through internet front-ends allowing consistent experiences, 24/7 access and for users who may not have the opportunity/ equipment availability otherwise



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Physical sciences educational e-gaming to provide innovative, effective and flexible learning environments by Jamie Pringle (Keele University, School of Physical and Geographical Sciences) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The comorbidity conundrum: a mobile application, Claire Rushton (Keele University, School of Nursing and Midwifery)

The Comorbidity Conundrum is an innovative project that responds to a contemporary and significant gap in international health education curricula. Comorbidity, the experience of living with one or more additional conditions with an index condition,is a global healthcare priority fuelled by the changing population demographic, which presents distinct challenges for the delivery of health education. To meet these challenges, health education requires radical redesign to ensure graduates are equipped with the appropriate skills to face the challenges presented by the comorbid population (OECD, 2011). Current health education models focus on single conditions – evidence suggests that this should now shift in focus to improve the care of those with multiple long term conditions. Inclusion of comorbidity in healthcare curricula requires an integrated approach, embedded within the curriculum pedagogy. The School of Nursing and Midwifery at Keele University has led the development of an ‘International Comorbidity Education Framework’ (ICEF) to facilitate the inclusion of comorbidity concepts into the current curriculum.

The ICEF was developed using current evidence (American Expert Panel 2012), a large scale international survey of nursing, medical and pharmacy students and workshops with academic representatives and heads of School from Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in England (Keele), Sweden (Linkoping) (Rushton et al, 2015), Italy (Sienna) and India (Public Health Foundation of India). A mobile application has been developed that provides an aid memoire for students to think about the ICEF comorbidity concepts and for transferring their learning from the educational to the clinical practice setting.  The ICEF can be applied to cases that focus on a specific health problem and the app provides an excellent method for students to consider how to plan and deliver care to comorbid patients within a safe environment. Our lightning presentation will showcase the development of the mobile application to date and will feature an opportunity to download the application to explore what it offers health education students across a range of disciplines.

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Creating a united front: the benefits of ‘us’ in planning and delivering academic practices within the curriculum, Clare Foster and Anglea Rhead ( Keele University, Keele Management School and Student Support and Development Services)

We look forward to presenting an account of how a lecturer and a learning developer collaborated on a project to embed academic practice development in the curriculum and increase student engagement with academic journals; an evaluation of its first iteration; and finally, an overview of lessons learned and plans afoot. An initial discussion to explore threshold concepts (continuing ‘sticky issues’ that challenged students generally) which might be addressed on-programme revealed a key academic ‘skill’, which, despite apparently good guidance and support in Y1, was proving to be a persistent area of academic weakness for students on the BA Marketing and BA Management Y2 core module ‘Understanding the Consumer’: sourcing, reading and critically engaging with academic journals. As an alternative to previous iterations, where a learning developer would deliver a large ‘one-off’ academic practices session with an introduction from the academic lead, we planned a series of five tutorials that would deliver the underpinning academic skills of literature selection and critical analysis, incrementally, embedded in the context of the module concepts and theories, co-taught by ourselves and others on our teams and in partnership with the students themselves through cyclical self-assessment and evaluation. Wingate (2006) outlines a continuing concern in HE regarding the separation of the academic discipline and the academic ‘skills’ in terms of its learning effectiveness (the term skill objected to because of its tendency to ignore the complexity of academic practices at play within discipline knowledge and the diversity of potential outcomes), arguing also that the inherent deficit model of this separation is problematic for notions of inclusion. In planning and evaluating our suite of tutorials, we have been guided by Hill and Tinker’s (2006) seven principles emerging from their research on integrating learning development into the curriculum, which advocates planning and delivery which is: collaborative, holistic, inclusive, reflective, interactive, relevant and timely. We will outline our wins and losses, sharing our thoughts for further developments of the model, but also, the benefits of a collaborative model: a United Front.


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Creating a united front: the benefits of ‘us’ in planning and delivering academic practices within the curriculum, by Clare Foster and Anglea Rhead ( Keele University, Keele Management School and Student Support and Development Services) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Using mind maps to enhance story writing creativity, (Keele University, School of Psychology - student)

My final year psychology project investigated the differences in story creativity between adults with and without dyslexia. Previous research has suggested individuals with dyslexia possess greater creativity compared to individuals without dyslexia (Bigozzi, Tarchi, Pinto, & Donfrancesco, 2016; Kapoula et al., 2016). Thus my project used a story writing task to investigate differences in creativity. There is also research suggesting Mind Maps increase creativity and are particularly beneficial for students (Rosciano, 2015, Noonan, 2013; Spencer, Anderson & Ellis 2013). My study also used Mind Mapping and traditional note taking as the two different strategies for use in story planning. This was to see if Mind Maps enhanced story creativity compared to regular note taking. Additionally there is some evidence to suggest Mind Maps are more useful for individuals with dyslexia (Colledge & Hargreaves, 2008; Burton, Barlow, & Barker, 2010). This is because most students with dyslexia have shown to prefer a visual learning style and Mind Maps are visual tools that incorporate visual elements (e.g. colours, pictures, keywords, etc.) which may prove beneficial to individuals with dyslexia and those with a visual learning style. Mind Maps have been suggested for use as an innovative and fun strategy for note taking compared to linear note taking in an educational setting to promote active learning (Siwczuk, 2005). My research findings suggest Mind Maps should be promoted as an alternative note taking strategy for higher education students. More over Mind Maps should be promoted for use in the creative writing subject domains where it may prove beneficial in further enhancing creativity on tasks which require it.

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