PART TWO: SEMESTER TWO
In semester 2, I began teaching the same cohort of learners in a course entitled ‘Introduction to Specialty Practice’ (ISP). Forewarned by my previous experience with this group, I put a lot of effort into the preparation of engaging and active resources and activities.
The first three class were three-hour sessions, held on three consecutive days. These sessions ran well, with good interest and participation from the students. In the second session I initiated a discussion about class ‘rules’, as one of the students had said in the previous session that the room was too noisy. Several students outlined a set of rules which they had set up at start of year. These included raising one’s hand to signal you want to speak. Although I felt this was perhaps too much like a high school method, I went along with it as the students all seemed happy with the idea. Since then the class environment has been much more conducive to one person speaking at a time with a clear sense of respect is shown for all members of the class.
A few days later at a staff meeting, the Year 1 Co-ordinator mentioned that the students wanted their classmates be quieter in class, and that they wanted the lecturers to manage this. Hand raising to talk was agreed to. I felt quietly satisfied that the refreshing of classroom rules had been a success for others too.
My learning from this was that it is important to establish mutually acceptable class rules at the beginning of a course. I had perhaps assumed that because the cohort had been together since the start of the year, that they would already have this under control. Clearly this was not really the case, and refreshing the rules was good for all concerned and it enabled a more productive learning environment.
By mid-semester, I noticed that students were finding the long sessions rather demanding, even with regular breaks and varied means of presenting information (textual, images, videos). I shifted the focus in the sessions to include group discussions and whole class discussions. This felt like another quantum step upwards – the students were much more at home with oral communication and, being students in Social Services, many were very well informed about social issues and held strong views about these. The discussion also allowed those with more life experience to share this with the younger members of class.
Another session that went very well was a workshop to individually research topics online (I had asked them to bring in their own devices), combine research in small groups and then feed back to the whole class. We ran out of time to fully complete this, so I suggested that further feedback could be posted in the online forum. Not many took up this idea however.
In a subsequent session, we revisited the above workshop from earlier in the semester for half the session. This was good for those who had not completed it previously but a bit repetitive for those who had done it well the first time.
The second half of this session was a group project to research about career issues for people with disability. This topic had been suggested by a couple of the students a few weeks earlier. In the session, they read and made notes on a set of articles I had sourced, then drew up posters and reported back to class. This went down very well and the fact of having to present back gave more incentive for all groups to participate fully. I took photos of their posters and posted these on Moodle so they could all read/see what the other groups had done.
Another interesting aspect of this session is that a fire drill occurred halfway through the first half. Although a disruption, I was impressed with how well the students got back into the process upon returning to the classroom.
When the first assignment was due, a written case-study and analysis, there was a large number of non-submissions. I was concerned about this, thinking it was either a reflection on my teaching or related to the fact that they were to submit the assignment online, rather than handing in hard copies which was the practice for most other courses. However, I have subsequently discovered that the lecturers of the other Year 1 courses have all had the same experience and that the non-submitters were the same group of students.
PART FOUR: REFLECTION and EVALUATION
My learnings from working with this cohort:
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Reinforced the importance of being well prepared
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Illustrated the value of accommodating diverse learning styles (text, images, videos, group work, practical activities)
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I realised the importance of establishing clear, mutually agreed class rules and parameters
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I saw the positive spin-offs in class participation and learning when we shifted the emphasis of class sessions to involve more and longer discussions. Part of what was holding me back from doing this earlier was a concern that the discussion might get out or hand or veer off topic. This was not the case at all.
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Reminded me of the value of having material that matters to the learners and of bring in guest speakers
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Encouraged me to think back to the positive learning experiences and outcomes of the Keys to Leadership Success courses (See Case Study 2) and to put some of these approaches into practice here
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I appreciated more fully the benefits of giving 'control' over to class members and allowing them to drive a session. This need for control was perhaps a hangover from my secondary teaching days and the need to maintain control.
Towards the end of the semester, I received my teaching evaluations from students for this course. These were largely positive but did present some areas for improvement - the latter connected closely with my own observations and learnings as given above.
PART THREE: THE CAREERS EXPO DAY
This session was a day long careers day at which students heard presentations from each of four specialties (majors) and the Bachelor of Social Services programme. This day was the final session for the semester and was designed to help them to finalise their choice of specialty for the following year. Wearing my Career Practitioner's hat, this was a great opportunity for the students to gain information and advice from each of the industries concerned - a vital component of good career decision-making. With my teacher's hat on, this was another good reminder of the importance of having relevant topics (each had a strong need to hear the information) and also a pointer that getting guest speakers in was highly effective. This latter point I was aware of but had not yet arranged with this group as I was keeping to the course plan that had been used in previous years.
Case study 01
Year 1 cohort of the Bachelor of Social Services degree 2015
PART ONE: FIRST MEETING
My first meeting with this group was in mid-June, about 5 weeks after my arrival at Otago Polytechnic. I had been asked to run a one-off session for a course that was not one I teach on. Before the session I familiarised myself with the content and the existing resources (slides and workbook) that had been used in previous years. I felt that the slides looked a bit bland and added images, video clips and a team/group activity. Having done this I felt reasonably confident that I was prepared.
The first part of the session ran off the rails somewhat - the students felt the material was aimed at high school-aged students and the workbooks in particular were simplistic and rather lightweight. With hindsight, I found I agreed to a large extent with their views. Although the resources are very good ones, they were not a good match for this group - the session needed reworking to better suit the age, academic level and life experience of the learners. I was annoyed I hadn’t spotted this during preparation.
The second part of the session was more successful as I had trimmed repetitive material out and as a result the coursebook exercises seemed more relevant. I facilitated more discussions about the material and added an extra humorous video. The team/group activity I left as originally planned and this went very well - the students were engaged, they enjoyed the process and achieved the learning outcomes.
Towards the end of the session, the students also suggested the whole topic would be better at the start of the year – again, I agree with this, given it is about strategies for students to plan and manage their study and career.
Graduate Profile Attributes exemplified in this Case Study
GA 2: advance learning and teaching practice through critical self‐reflection, evaluation and research.
GA 4: practise and continue to develop their own cultural competence (recognise, value, utilise students’ cultural backgrounds to enhance teaching)
GA 5: develop and promote professional, inclusive relationships with all learners in their care, relevant employers and the wider community
GA 6: analyse relevant adult education and cognitive theory and draw on this in practice (e.g. active engagement, experiential, learning styles, blended)
GA 7: design, facilitate and guide learning for each individual’s success, using a wide range of context‐appropriate strategies
GA 8: lead evidence‐based assessment practices for learning in a range of contexts, including APL and work based learning (e.g examples given in Graduate Attribute 8 section).