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Sept–Nov 2007

Journal

This edition of the Teaching Fellows Journal has been restored from an archived online edition, hence the simplified form.

Edinburgh Napier University is a registered Scottish charity. Reg. No. SC018373

ISSN 2050-9995 (Online)

Please note - Some links and content within this document may now be out of date.

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EditorialThe CeLLS Development Process

Authoring and developing online materials

CeLLS project leader Sally Jorjani, School of Life Sciences, describes the aims, evolution, development and outcomes of the CeLLS project — Collaborative e-learning in Life Sciences

Introduction

CeLLS (Collaborative e-learning in Life Sciences) was established as a collaboration between the Scottish Colleges Biotechnology Consortium (SCBC - Forth Valley, Adam Smith, Bell, Dundee and James Watt Colleges), Napier University, The University of Dundee, The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and The Interactive University Ltd (IU), a not-for-profit commercial company. CeLLS was one of six projects funded by the Scottish Funding Council under its e-learning transformation programme. The value of the project is £1.2m.

The major aim is to create and share core online materials for early-years (Scottish Credit and Qualification Framework (SCQF) Levels 7 & 8) learning and teaching in Life Sciences to facilitate transformation to a more student-centred approach to learning and a blended approach to teaching.

Facilitating collaboration

The range and geographical distribution of CeLLS stakeholders provided a management challenge. Each team member was given a well-defined role or roles, eg operational team leader, lead author, author, sometimes combinations of these. The use of multiple roles created a bridge between the different development and management groups within the overall project framework. The CeLLS portal provided a central and visible repository for both management and development activities and outputs. The key to building successful relationships was in a regular series of face-to-face meetings, hosted by each partner in turn, at which colleagues could get to know each other personally:

• Author Team. Approximately, 20 authors received initial training from IU staff. Cross-institutional Author Teams were identified for specific subject areas, and team members communicated largely by phone or email, but also met when needed.

Contents2 Editorial

5 Eureka!

7 Reports

11 Review corner

13 Web spotlight

Edition Editors

Angela BenziesSenior Teaching Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Academic Practice

Coordinator of the Teaching Fellowship Scheme

Margaret Nairntfj Web Editor and Publications Officer

Educational Development, Bevan Villa,Craighouse Campus, Edinburgh

Current enquiries to:Office of the Vice Principal (Academic)Sighthill Campus, Sighthill Court,Edinburgh EH11 4BN

Email: tfj@napier.ac.uk

http://www.url.napier.ac.uk/tf

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Developer — author relationship

In a project such as this, a high-risk factor is the inability of specialists in completely different disciplines to communicate effectively– our biologists were not learning technologists and the learning technologists were not biologists. There was a need to work hard to develop and use a common language and understanding. The Operational Team meetings provided the forum in which most issues could be addressed face to face, and communication improved as the working relationship developed over time. The process and personal awareness was helped by developing a best practice guide called CeLLS Collaborative Content Development that examined issues around communication.

At first, authors had little concept of the time it took learning technologists to convert storyboards into online content, and so the first topics developed were over-endowed with interactivities that were very time-consuming to produce. Development times reduced as the developer–author understanding grew, a more realistic appreciation of the art of the possible emerged, and strategies for re-use of templates for interactivities and graphics evolved.

Managing content

All partner authors used an online, Upload Area to deliver final versions of topics to the learning technologists. The site tracked each item uploaded and collected a core of metadata (eg author, date, topic title) to which keywords were added by the author. The next step in the process was to log and source safe a baseline of all of the files for further development. A version control system offered an audit trail of development and protection from human error.

The educational narrative was automatically translated from Microsoft®Word format into XML, which after some manual intervention, adheres to a standard DTD. A set of bespoke XSLT and other utilities that underpin the automated publishing suite are used to transform the XML and linked assets into .jsp pages that form a preview site used by learning technologists, authors and reviewers for the online QA process. Changes from reviews are made to source documents, which are version controlled and re-processed to create the new website.

The CeLLS materials will include assets that have been created during the course of the project plus assets that are owned by a third party. It was important, therefore, to have a clear policy on rights

• Operational Team. Project Team Leaders from each partner and the Project Manager formed the Operational Team. The team met fortnightly to review progress, identify problems and seek solutions. These meetings were crucial for the day-to-day management of the project.

• Management Team. Project Directors from each partner and the Operational Team formed the Management Team. The team met each month to oversee progress across development strands. The Management Team took ownership of strategic decisions made as the project evolved.

Process overview

The CeLLS Development Process began by comparing module descriptors across degree streams and Higher National courses in order to identify a common, shared core curriculum in cellular and molecular biology. In parallel, an effective collaborative working community was established and formed the team that created the development process and interfaced with Learning Technologists.

Quality assurance

CeLLS’ vehicle for transformation towards a more student-centred learning experience is through the creation and use of high-quality, online content. Quality Assurance (QA) was central to the development process and occurred at significant stages in the process prior to a major version being published. The QA review was carried out by subject experts in each college or university, followed a standard template and each review was independent of each other. The feedback was collated by a lead author and passed to the topic author who made changes. Contentious feedback went to a second review for arbitration and final verdict. The reviews of the early paper versions provided essential and early corrective guidance to authors on the narrative and later, online reviews focused on the usability, correctness and applicability on online activities.

Subject authors

The subject authors worked according to subject expertise in cross-institutional teams. Initial training and awareness was given in writing for online delivery with the emphasis on supporting learning objectives with activities. A CeLLS Author Guide and pack of support material was distributed to authors and available from the portal. This publication evolved with feedback from authors and as issues were addressed in the Operational Team meetings.

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management and to understand the obligations and good practice around seeking permission to use third-party assets. The provenance of all assets was recorded and tracked. Permission was sought and obtained for re-use of third-party materials using a standard letter and license. The default position is that the project will create all assets and only seek permission when there is significant educational value and an alternative example is not available. Each academic partner opted for a different approach based on their view of risk, ie either seek permission to re-use for our intended purposes or to create assets within the project only. A robust audit trail was maintained for all assets and signed off by each academic partner before the final version of the learning object was published.

Engagement of institutional staff

The success of a project aimed towards transformation of the student learning experience is dependent upon the engagement of institutional staff with the process throughout. To that end, subject specialist academic staff from each partner have been able to influence the content of topics from the outset, have been able via the iterative review process to ensure that quality assurance thresholds for all objects are exceeded, and have been able to see and use pilot objects in their teaching as soon as they have become available. Institutional dissemination activities (eg at learning and teaching committees) have informed staff not actively participating in the CeLLS projects of the scope and potential of the outputs from the project.

Learning objects

The joint publication Learning Model for CeLLS online materials, defined the pedagogical basis on which to structure the learning object. The wide range of learning opportunities meant that the objects needed to have a generic design, which allowed the pedagogy to be defined by the lecturer. The objects have a standard, internal structure that contained prerequisite and formative assessments, online and offline activities that supported the learning objectives, summary and further resources.

The objects could in theory be used in associative, constructivist (individual and social) and situational learning. The learning technologists created a set of standard usability guidelines and approaches to developing Macromedia® Flash interactivities. This facillitated re-use and improved quality as each interactivity was reviewed against a set of heuristics

before being released to authors. Standard templates were not used because of the wide variety of required functionality.

Learning technologists visited partners at the beginning of the project to discover which VLEs were being used and to guage the maturity of e-learning adoption across the consortium. We wanted to create materials that could be uploaded and used by as many people as possible. The IMS Common Cartridge initiative will help this quest in the future; VLE providers have pledged to support a common set of standards in commercial VLEs. CeLLS objects are available to registered users of JORUM.

• CeLLS learning object standards

• Content Packages • SCORM v 1.2

• Question and Test Interoperability

• v 1.1

• Metadata • UK LOM Core

• Accessibility• Double-A of W3C Web

Content

• Accessibility Guidelines • v1.0

• Page mark-up• W3C standard for

xHTML and CSS

Scalability of production

The main challenge with this large-scale production process was the coordination of the authored material in parallel with online development, which invariably lags behind subject authoring. The quantity and timing of supply needs to be carefully managed to optimise resources and to limit the bunching of activity toward the end of the project. The physical and structural format of the content was standardised as much as possible by designing and using Microsoft®Word templates for topics and activity specifications that prompted for descriptions and metadata.

Usability (including accessibility) standards, QA processes and a standard look-and-feel meant that CeLLS materials have a consistent design and delivery throughout the hundreds of pages.

Facilitating change in the future

In the early days of the project, there was understandable nervousness that the partners could be forced into a one-size-fits-all curriculum in cellular and molecular biology; if that were the case, we would certainly meet resistance from some of our colleagues. We have done our very best to allay those fears by developing curricular content that can be used in a

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flexible manner according to the individual need and ethos of each institution.

We have not attempted to group together topics to form complete modules, because that would almost certainly prevent the materials being embedded into institutional curricula in a sustainable way. The topics that we have developed are currently distributed as component parts of many different types of institutional modules designed to fulfil local academic criteria – we do not all have identical modular structure and content. There is thus a need for any institution to be able to use the objects in a way that is best fit for local purpose, and our objects allow just that. Institutions can decide into which modules/courses CeLLS objects are best deployed, and deployment is then under the control of the module/course leader. It is then up to institutions to make their own strategic decisions about changing module/course structures. At one extreme, objects could be grouped together to form VLE-based, e-learning modules in which formal lectures do not feature at all. On the other hand, if an institution chose to incorporate the objects into a more mixed economy of blended learning, that is perfectly acceptable too.

Part of the project allows institutions to use their own institutional-specific materials (ISMs) to add

to the core topics to help embed (contextualise) the core materials into local curricula. Most of the contextualising material already exists in institutions as the material that failed to make the cut as core. The project also allows for development of new ISMs. In this way, institutions can add interactivities, study exercises, formative assessments etc for their own specific needs.

Summary

The most important aspect of the project which we have all been working towards is the use of the materials by our ultimate customer – the student. Feedback from student pilots conducted across the partners have been positive. The main areas where students like the CeLLS material are flexibility of access, diagrams and interactives to reinforce learning, and self-assessment. Students indicated that they wish more of this new and innovative material, which opens the door for future development.

Student quote:You actually got to see how well you know the subject which indicates if you need additional help — ie lecture, discussing it in more detail. •

Eureka!It’s all about confidence!

Andy Moffat, Lecturer and Teaching Fellow, School of Accounting, Economics & Statistics, offers us ten ways to build new student confidence during induction and early teaching weeks.

1. Be sure they meet a pal

The ultimate fear of new students is that no-one will ever chat to them and they’ll be the loner who sits in the front row of the lecture theatre for the next four years.

Within ten minutes of the first induction day, we host an icebreaker where each student has 30 seconds to introduce the student sitting next to them. They must include in their talk who the student is, where they are from, their leisure interests, the last book they read (sadly the answer is often ‘can’t remember’ because it was so long ago…but maybe that’s accounting students for you!) and their favourite football team.

So within one hour of their university careers the students have gained a little confidence from making a short public speech to around sixty strangers and gained huge confidence from discovering that they are not the only Queen of the South supporter on the planet!

2. Be sure they can find their way around the campus

Being unsure ‘where to go’ causes stress and anxiety to students.

During the first induction morning we hold a campus treasure hunt sending the students off in groups of six (they’ve now met more friends) asking them to answer ten questions. These fun, not-too-serious questions require the students to find the library, the student shop, the canteen, the main teaching rooms, their guidance tutor’s office, their programme noticeboard and even the nearest toilets...all important destinations for their student campus life.

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By the end of this, the students have gained a lot of confidence about their new environment.

3. Be sure they have a friendly staff contact and not just a ‘faceless’ named guidance tutor

Students will have a variety of concerns over the first few weeks and they will probably not wish to discuss all of them in public. They need someone they can turn to if everything goes ‘pear-shaped’.

Our three-day induction programme is run by the programme leader and me, as the year 1 guidance tutor; both of us are heavily involved in teaching modules taken by the students in the first few weeks of the programme. Having hopefully bonded with the students during the induction period, the students are then much more confident about raising issues with us once the teaching has started.

4. Don’t bombard them with programme information

Information overload during induction is another issue likely to have students hitting the panic button. It’s not really important on day one for the students to know which staff members sit on the programme exam board or twenty ways to breach the university’s rules or the difference between a programme aim and a module learning outcome. Keep things simple and don’t preach to them. Encourage the students to find out meaningful information for themselves.

We run a programme quiz on the first afternoon where the students in groups (they’ve now met even more friends) have to answer twenty basic questions from the programme handbook. By doing this, students are finding out for themselves about modules, assessments, programme structures etc. Getting this basic understanding about how their programme will work, in the fun environment of a group quiz, gives the students the confidence to look forward to the start of the teaching.

5. Introduce this year’s students to the previous year’s students

Students aren’t daft. They don’t just want to hear what the academic staff are keen to tell them. They want the truth. And where does this truth come from? Past students of course.

We run a ‘Question Time’ session with a panel made up of four students who are progressing to the

next stage of the programme. Staff leave the room and the ‘Question Time’ session involves the panel answering, as honestly as possible, questions asked from the audience. By the time the staff return the new students usually know what the hardest module is, whose lectures are a waste of time, where best to park their car and how to get a date!

Honest answers breed confidence.

6. Increase student awareness of academic and pastoral support

Despite hopefully having had a fun, lively, interactive induction session students still have a feeling that once the teaching starts then ‘they are on their own’.

It’s important therefore to stress to them during induction, the range of academic and pastoral support available to them on a regular basis throughout the semester. We make a point of telling our students about the weekly Maths Plus classes, the role of the Faculty Academic Support Adviser, WebCT support, careers advice, programme administrators, student disability co-ordinators as well as their guidance tutor.

Hopefully they can then approach their studies in the confidence that they have a team of ‘supporters’ behind them.

7. Get to know your students

I know some staff members have a different opinion on this but I think it’s really helpful to know who your students are. Greeting a student in the front foyer with ‘hello Kathy’ rather than ‘hello’ will have Kathy feeling a lot better about herself, confident in the knowledge that someone has taken the time and effort to know who she is.

8. Hold an early module assessment

Students are scared of the unknown and the biggest unknown to them is often ‘how well am I doing’, particularly true, I think, for mature students. So let’s tell them at the earliest opportunity how well they are doing. Try to hold an assessment for your module in the first three or four weeks of the trimester and get early feedback to the student. Just knowing that they scored 7 out of 10 in a small objective test can give the student encouragement and confidence to build on that knowledge for the future.

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9. Take tutorial attendance…and don’t be scared to chase them up

I have always taken attendance in tutorials and I’ve always emailed students who are missing. This is not for any punitive reasons but simply to let the students know the work we covered in the tutorial and what they’re expected to prepare for the following week’s tutorial. The student’s reaction to the email is invariably positive. They will apologise profusely for missing the class and will promise faithfully to attend the following week…which they usually do. Why? I suspect that secretly they were rather pleased that you knew they hadn’t been there and that you’d taken the time to get in touch with them – more evidence perhaps that staff do treat students as individuals and not just a sea of bodies in a classroom. That attention

can encourage the wayward student to get back on track in the confidence that they have your individual support behind them.

10. Make things fun

If we can create a relaxed, informal and fun environment for the students, I believe they are much more likely to participate in the programme and enjoy their studying. Host some programme social events where possible (we’ve done the cheese and wines, the pop quizzes, the staff v student five-a-side football matches, out and about events on or off campus or in Edinburgh) to help build up your programme identity. The happy student becomes the contented student who becomes the knowledgeable student and who finally becomes the confident student. •

Reports

Daphne Loads , Academic Support Adviser and Teaching Fellow, School of Nursing, Midwifery & Social Care, reports on the Higher Education Colloquium conference on Research-teaching linkages

Karen Thomson, Lecturer in Higher Education, EdDev, reports on two conferences in Australia – ISSOTL and HERDSA

Shirley Earl, Head of Learning & Teaching Development, provides an outline of Napier’s RTL debate held in early September

Daphne Loads reports on the Higher Education Colloquium conference

The Higher Education Colloquium on Research-teaching linkages – one of the Scottish Enhancement themes for this year – took place on 18 June 2007. Hosted by the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Assessment at Edinburgh University, the colloquium provided an opportunity to consider the following questions:

• What is the nature of research in different disciplines and how can students’ involvement in research be strengthened?

• How do students perceive the value of studying in a

‘research-intensive’ environment?

• What do academics at ‘research-intensive’ institutions mean by ‘research’ and how do they conceptualise the relationship between teaching and research?

• How does inquiry-based learning contribute to establishing stronger links between teaching, learning and research?

• What are the areas where strong teaching-research linkages can be observed already and where might we do better? (Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment, 2007)

Despite the clear bias towards traditional universities, the papers and discussions were all relevant to what is happening in universities such as our own.

Angela Brew, University of Sydney, Australia, invited us to re-think our taken-for-granted assumptions about what students, lecturers and researchers do at university. She moved beyond the research-teaching divide and introduced the concept of an inclusive, scholarly, knowledge-building community. By softening the distinctions between academics, undergraduates, postgraduates and others she seemed to raise the possibility of a more democratic approach in which all members of the university community can contribute to the construction, development and sharing of knowledge and understanding. She pointed out, however, that this can be achieved not by

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ignoring differences in status and power, but rather by acknowledging and addressing them. It struck me that this model might be easier to attain in a teaching-rich institution such as Napier, particularly in those discipline areas where our research identity is still being formed, than in those traditional settings where there is less space for negotiation of roles.

Brad Wuetherick, University of Alberta, Nancy Turner, University of the Arts, London, and Mick Healey, University of Gloucestershire, reported on their investigation into student perceptions of awareness and engagement in research. Their study included both research- and teaching-intensive environments in the UK and in Canada. They suggested that improved teaching-research links were in line with developing ‘graduate attributes’ and ‘employability’ and found that students in both types of institution valued the opportunity to be involved in research activities. However, students weren’t always fully aware of what research was being carried out by staff in their departments, or of how it was impacting on their experience and development. The researchers found that there was a need for the links between research and teaching to be made more explicit.

Philippa Levy, University of Sheffield provided examples of how Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) has been used to strengthen the research-teaching relationship across a number of disciplines. By conducting ‘real’ research on open-ended topics, as well as case study work and problem-based learning, students are able to develop both research skills and research-mindedness. She reported one first-year student’s definition of learning as ‘being able to make a useful contribution’ to her subject while an academic stated that ‘the projects [students] produce for assessment are not just further tasks but are enjoyable processes of self-discovery, growing knowledge and skills, and the end-product sources of pride’. These refreshing comments recalled for me Angela Brew’s vision of a community of practice in which students can take a valued place as co-constructors of knowledge and meaning.

By contrast, Jan Elen, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, spoke of one of his research respondents for whom a key advantage of having research-active lecturers is that students come to understand that they are not always at the centre of things. For example, if their lecturer fails to turn up, they become aware that s/he has other, more important things to do that day!

The papers were interspersed with lively discussions that focused on a number of issues:

• different levels of student involvement in research, from presenting research findings in lectures, through involving students in data-collection in large-scale studies, to shifting the underpinning philosophy of programmes

• the value of ‘real’ as opposed to ‘simulated’ research in developing research skills and understanding

• the impact of disciplinary differences – for example students carrying out real research on open-ended topics seems more feasible in low-consensus disciplines such as sociology than in high-consensus disciplines such as chemistry.

This stimulating day concluded with a panel of speakers addressing the following statement:

Studying at a research-led institution can add value to the student learning experience when/if…

Perhaps a more pertinent question for Napier is how we can integrate our research and teaching in such a way as to achieve Angela Brew’s vision of an inclusive, scholarly, knowledge-building community.

Reference Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment, University of Edinburgh (2007) Higher Education Colloquium: Research-Teaching Linkages available from: tla.ed.ac.uk/events/Colloquium2007.htm [last accessed June 2007]

Karen Thomson reports on ISSOTL and HERDSA

At the beginning of July 2007 an interesting juxtaposition of two conferences took place in Australia. The International Society for Scholarship in Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) conference (website at www.indiana.edu/~issotl07/) took place in Sydney and the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) conference (website at conference.herdsa.org.au/2007/) took place in Adelaide – both conferences timed to follow one after the other (with a discount if you registered for both!). Apart from having a couple of refereed papers accepted, what better reason could there be to travel to the other side of the world!

The theme for the ISSOTL conference was Locating Learning: integrative dimensions of the scholarship of teaching and learning and HERDSA chose Enhancing Higher Education, Theory and Scholarship. To some extent there was an overlap in content and attendees between the two conferences and ideas were

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triangulated, debated, became polarised, merged into each other and were generally given a good airing in a refreshingly ego-free academic way. The conferences were, however quite distinct in their identity.

ISSOTL (www.issotl.org/index.html) membership is mainly from North America and it’s a relatively young organisation – this was only its fourth conference and the first to be held outside North America. The keynote speakers reflected this background with Carl Wieman (the 2001 joint Physics Nobel Laureate) describing the use of simulations to teach physics (examples of this can be found at phet.colorado.edu/new/index.php). Inevitably he was asked about the relative value of practical work and experimentation to support learning and I was left wondering just what it was about simulations which led to the positive attitudinal data gathered from the students who had used it. Allan Luke provided a markedly contrasting keynote by talking from a more philosophical point of view, challenging us to step back from ‘performance indicators’ and instead develop a set of ideals and open a discussion on what ‘education’ should be. He suggested there is a lack of normative vision of what an ‘educated person’ should be. In this twist to the ‘graduate attributes’ debate he suggested that our curricular imperatives should deal with both large-scale social exclusion and be able to reconcile the debate on cultural and spiritual values. Aside from the keynote presentations, the other papers I attended showed practitioners committed to improving the learning environment for their students and using this forum to share the experience with their peers as part of an iterative process.

HERDSA (www.herdsa.org.au/), as its name suggests, is mainly populated by Australasians and has been established for much longer, this being its 30th conference. The sub-themes of the conference were:

• theoretical frameworks of learning and teaching in higher education

• the scholarship of learning and teaching

• how theory and scholarship translate into a meaningful student experience.

Some of the papers were thought-provoking (eg Trust and openness in risk averse universities) and many others covered areas which we all deal with daily. The papers I was there to present were received in a tremendous spirit of collegial support with searching questions and discussion, which sometimes carried on sporadically for the duration of the conference. The first paper was the result of the QAA ‘First Year

Experience’ project in which a number of us from Napier are involved (Fran Alston, Lesley Gourlay, Ros Sutherland and Emily Alder). This paper examined a number of approaches to working with students to embed scholarly practices. What was particularly interesting was that out of an audience of forty a relatively small number (no more than ten) felt that this was being done in their institution, and of those, only two felt that the work was consistent with an ‘academic literacies’ approach. The second paper was the result of the HEA-funded literature review on Innovative Assessment across the Disciplines carried out cross-institutionally with Mark Huxham also involved on the Napier side. Along with Nancy Falchikov the areas of the literature concerning ‘student involvement in assessment’ and ‘the use of new technology in assessment’ were compared and contrasted. The questions and discussions which followed were supportive and considered artefacts of data which can be created by the choice of methodology. Geoff Crisp from the University of Adelaide and co-chair of the conference chaired this session as he has a particular interest in electronic assessment having just published The e-Assessment Handbook – in fact Geoff will be coming to Napier on 29 August to talk about e-assessment.

Next year ISSOTL will be held on 16–18 October 2008 in Edmonton, Canada (information available from www.indiana.edu/~issotl08/) and HERDSA from 1–4 July 2008 in Rotorua, New Zealand (information available from www.herdsa.org.au/conferences.php). This year’s programmes and copies of the two papers I presented at HERDSA are available by contacting me.

Editor’s note: The e-Assessment Handbook by Geoffrey Crisp (2007) has now been published by Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd: ISBN 978-0826496287: £34.99

Shirley Earl provides an outline of the Napier Research/Teaching Linkage (RTL) debate which took place at Craiglockhart’s Riady Lecture Theatre on 4 September 2007

Motion: That this house believes the link between research and teaching should be an integral part of every Napier student’s experience

In the chair: Mr Nicholas Grier Speaking for the motion: Professor Alistair McCleery, Dr Alistair Duff, Professor Vicki Stone Speaking against the motion: Professor Jon Kerridge, Ms Daphne Loads, Mr Scott Raeburn

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Timekeeper and bell ringer: Dr Karen Thomson In attendance: 82 further staff and students

The team speaking for the motion argued that:

• • RTL principles should underlie all teaching

• intergenerational relay of information is dead teaching and no longer applicable

• teaching should instead be infused with new knowledge derived from research

• RTL enthuses students

• with [mere] scholarship you see the best, with research you are participating

• such participation is reflected in a Q of life for Napier students

• we have no right to deny our students something we ourselves value

• research is performance-based, practice-based and lively

• RTL encourages students to share this, RTL is our duty

• all students should experience research

• further, HEA studies reveal that ‘students value learning and research’

• our duty is to teach ideas and vision and to future-proof, not just to relay practicalities

• as research is a means of getting below the surface it should inform L&T alike

• analysis, synthesis and evaluation are research skills

• veritably, one of the purposes of research is to inform and enhance teaching

• the research and teaching experiences are joined

• as a result of research experiences international career success and profile can result

• alumni recruit Napier graduates because they know they have research-informed skills

• up-to-date knowledge acquired through RTL gives Napier students a cutting-edge advantage

• RTL inculcates the transferable and life skills of interaction, critical analysis, data analysis and writing.

The team speaking against the motion argued that:

• the wording of the motion is pivotal to the debate

• the practicalities of ‘link’, ‘integral part’ and ‘every student’s experience’ have to be considered

• the current spread of research within Napier renders the ideal of the motion impractical

• the current structures for research and teaching within Napier also render the ideal impractical

• regrettably, students are receiving/will receive uneven exposure to RTL

• 1/3 Napier produces 2/3 research income, research output is falling and at risk

• uneven exposure to RTL follows, therefore principles of fairness and equity mean the motion must fall

• the redefined HoS role diminishes HoS academic leadership and overloads HoS administratively

• consequently, HoS own research is limited and an RTL driver L&T in schools absent

• therefore the principle of ‘should’ and the practicalities of the motion do not align

• additionally, the motion is predicated upon a false assumption that research and teaching are separate entities

• a more practical approach would be to consciously evolve a community where knowledge is created within and between people

• within such a community staff and students would together create meaning where research and teaching were indivisible

• unfortunately some disciplines see research as something which should not be contaminated

• we are not therefore at the indivisible stage yet

• the motion is motherhood and apple pie

• it is unclear what type of RTL the motion is about, other than academic comfort

• the RAE [and debates on RTL] distract university staff into comparatively worthless publication

• staff and students instead should be developing enquiry-based learning and the type of community suggested.

When the motion was put to the vote the house

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supported the motion as follows:

76 For

5 Against

1 Abstention

After the debate itself Aran Simm, NSA President endorsed the majority view and Vice Principals Peter Easy and Peter Strike presented £100 book token awards for the most robust RTL case study from each Faculty as judged by a panel consisting of Associate Deans from each Faculty and EdDev staff.

Faculty of Health and Life Sciences: Dr Jeni Harden (School of Health and Social Sciences), case study entitled Using research to teach qualitative research –

taught to 2nd year students.

Napier University Business School: Dr Robert Raeside (School of Accounting, Economics and Statistics), case study entitled Consultation Skills – taught to honours-level and postgraduate study.

Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Creative Industries: Dr Hazel Hall (School of Computing), case study entitled Honours students and the research literature: means of motivating engagement through the integration of private study, tutorial and assessment activities taught to 4th year students.

Discussion continued happily over canapés and drinks in the foyer. •

Review corner

Naren Gupta , Senior Lecturer and Teaching Fellow, School of Engineering and Built Environment, reviews Rethinking Assessment in Higher Education: Learning for the longer term edited by David Boud and Nancy Falchikov (2007)

Abingdon: Routledge ISBN 978-0-415-39779-7 224pp £23.99

This book has contributions from a number of well-known authors on the subject of assessment in higher education. Currently, assessment focuses little on processes of learning and how students will learn after their graduation. The book suggests a rethinking in higher education assessment, and emphasises that assessment should not be just a means of providing evidence of knowledge to satisfy the current educational targets, but should be designed with the aim of preparing students for longer-term learning. It is important to realise that designing assessment for lifelong learning is an educational innovation, and only good teaching and learning can make assessment significant and productive.

The book consists of four parts. Part 1 is on the general theme of how assessment contributes to learning in the longer term. Part 2 recognises that summative assessment can have an important role to play in student learning. Also, experience of assessment prior to entering higher education can

have a significant influence on how students respond to assessment in higher education.

Part 3 has a number of themes, namely the link between assessment and teaching and learning; the role of assessment for certification; the contradictions that occur in assessment today; feedback in assessment processes; self- and peer-assessment; and finally assessment and emotions. Part 4 argues that the students show they can make appropriate professional choices by using the kind of practical reasoning that is particularly valued in professions. Finally this part suggests how to design an assessment scheme that explicitly promotes the formation of judgement across subjects and levels. It proposes a framework of tasks that can be utilised across the curriculum and integrates a number of innovations in assessment practice.

The contents of all four parts have been very appropriately sequenced to provide a useful and interesting read. This book will certainly be an inspiration to those wanting to try new methods of assessment for lifelong learning; there is ample opportunity for continued research in this area.

The guiding principle in all aspects of assessment should be to inform judgements, ie to improve judgements of both assessors and learners. The question is, if judgement is to be informed what language should be used to inform? The current language of marks and grades has meaning only in

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the comparison with other students within the same context. The language of judgement needs to be more transparent and more varied than the language of current practice. Portfolios and qualitative descriptors of outcomes may be a sound alternative to be considered.

Longer term learning outcomes refer to outcomes that are durable, flexible, functional, generalisable and application-oriented. Such learning is characterised by increasing self-directedness and self-assessment and is more discovery oriented, using authentic problems or cases. Traditional modes of assessment, such as multiple-choice examinations, lead to surface approaches to learning whereas new modes of assessment (such as working with more authentic tasks) lead to deeper approaches. Ideally, teachers need to bridge the gap between new developments in assessment culture and daily educational and assessment practice, including summative and vocational assessments.

Summative assessments, in general, have received a lot of criticism. They classify students arbitrarily, limit their educational development and impair their own sense of themselves. If summative assessment can be seen as an educational site in which students can become themselves, then summative assessment may be redeemed as having formative educational potential.

In vocational assessments, teachers’ interest is in students’ personal development and confidence over subject knowledge; cognitive skills manifest themselves in strongly directive formative feedback. This helps students to achieve higher grades and overcome any negative images of learning they may have developed at school.

Providing timely and useful feedback to students on their assessment is crucial for effective learning, yet it is rarely seen by academics as something to be carried out with due diligence. The quality of feedback frequently goes unevaluated in module questionnaires, unmonitored in course and programme reviews, and unscrutinised by external examiners.

Self- and peer-assessments have been well researched and found to be helpful. However, they should be used with caution. When self-assessment is limited to the teacher’s expertise in teacher-driven self-

assessment, the focus is on students to please their teachers. Whereas, when self-assessment is tailored to meet the needs of the programme in programme-driven self-assessment, there is a risk that students tend to learn only for the purpose of completing the programme. In future-driven self-assessment, students utilise the programme of study to develop sustainable self-assessment ability. Future learning depends on individuals developing self-assessment skills and autonomous learners making their own judgements. Peer involvement in assessment during formal education has the potential to encourage learning and develop assessment skills that will last a lifetime. Self- and peer-assessments work well in practical-based or group-work assessments.

A well-designed, practical-based assessment can play an important part in how lecturers change the way students think about themselves as professionals while they are still at university and, in the process, prepare them for their future learning in the workplace. Writing about practice can provide a valuable strategy for ensuring that students possess the practical reasoning skills needed for professional learning in the long term.

Emotional aspects of assessments have received little attention. While extreme anxiety disables learning, some degree of anxiety is necessary for learning.

Finally, the last chapter lists and describes a scheme for developing assessment skills for future learning, the elements of which are:

• identifying self as an active learner

• identifying own level of knowledge and the gaps in this; finding ways of moving from what is known to what is desirable to know

• practising testing and judging

• developing judgement skills over time

• embodying reflexivity and commitment.

In my concluding remarks I would say that this is an excellent book which takes the reader through all aspects of assessment and provides ideas for further research in a number of areas. Academics who are serious about assessment and their profession will definitely find it enjoyable and useful. My sincere thanks and congratulations to all the contributors to the book! •

tfj Sept – Nov 2007 13

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