Education & Student

Today we really enjoyed staging our workshop in Collab 2 (”Engage”) about inquiry based learning as it applies to language and idioms. As one of our participants said, “What this activity shows is that learning idioms and learning language is an IBL activity par excellance”.

We started with a brief introduction about our experiences in learning Japanese idioms, and our thought processes that led us to want to run the session.  Drawing from Japanese idioms to do with body parts as examples, we staged an engaging activity asking everyone to match literal translations with their actual meaning - harder than it sounds! Next, we distributed English idioms such as “shoot yourself in the foot”, and asked everyone to explain the situation you’d use them in without actually saying the idiom for others to guess. It highlighted how complex they can be to explain if you don’t know the foreign equivalent, as well as the involvement with culture and context when learning them yourself - some idioms can appear “Football manager-speak” and so on so you need to be careful how you use them, and there are often similarities with similes. Therefore, we have learned that there is a great need for natural language to be learned through an IBL process of sharing anecdotes, asking questions and being creative.

We received really interesting feedback on how idioms should be classified for a reference system online, but ran out of time at the end, so thanks for your participation everyone and if anyone has any ideas to contribute, please let us know!

ryan and claire

Source: Ryan

The session ran really well, and brought up a lot of key ideas, such as the importance of students being engaged in modules, the value of increased confidence and how staff and students need to be inspired. An issue was raised that I found really interesting - an effective relationship does not necessarily have to involve face-to-face meetings. Students can feel that they are involved in a relationship if they have access to information from their tutors via discussion boards or regualr emails. Another key point was that students must show interest in their own learning, otherwise the best teaching possible could be taking place, but learning might not. Once students show interest and motivation, staff will respond, and in turn demonstrate interest and initiative. The session did go off on a slight tangent at one point, moving away from staff and students collaborating as part of an academic process, to a more personal partnership between staff and students. Two arguments were presented: students might not really want this, as it was felt that some like and rely on the hierarchy of student to lecturer, while other students want to know their personal tutor much better, even if it’s just to get a more personalised and meaningful CV. The thing that really caught peoples attention was the cycle between confidence and involvement, do students need to become more confident before they can get involved, or more involved to gain more confidence? But hopefully, once students do get on this cycle, they can work towards relationships with staff. Really enjoyable session!

Source: hca06tm

Staff - student partnership is the theme of this conference and the keynote really highlighted what we have achieved together already, whilst also showing us the directions and opportunites that collaboration can have.

This is just a quick blog to say thank you to Tim Herrick and Kamal Bhana. We should all be reflecting on what staff-student partnerships are. What is a partnership? Is it a relationship? Where does the power lie? Prehaps the word ‘relationship’ may be more informal, but is it always balanced. What we should be aiming for is a balanced, developing and comfortable partnership. It is important to remember that there is no one way to do this and as they keynote stated, this will not happen over one conversation or module. Instead, a partnership can be formed from constant use and development of staff and student collaboration, preferably on an academic and more individual level.

Thanks again to Tim and Kamal, i hope everyone has a good rest of the day.

Source: SSC2009

First blog of the day so far, and spirits are high. The welcome went well, with a large turn-out…better than expected and up on last year…must be the enticement of free breakfast! No one is in change room at the moment but the first brick has been laid, with ‘tutorial meetings should be more focussed on what they aim to achieve at Sheffield.’ A good idea from Laura one of the new Management Ambassadors. Lots of inquiring, challenging engaging is taking place in all of the rooms. Here’s to a productive day!

Source: gga08hkt

We’ve just presented on Oral History, we felt it went well and had lots of positive feedback. We were particularly impressed that we had encouraged a business school to undertake interviews as a reseach method!
We were pleased that people had found our oral history project as interesting as we have. Oral history offers a fascinating method of inquiry based learning. Everyone has been asking us really insightful questions. Thankyou xxx

Source: SSC2009

A great full round table, Challenge discussion. With both students and staff present.

Ryan, Georgie and Chloe led a discussion starting with the network learning study they are involved in.

Discussions followed around the use of MOLE in communicating with students, building online and offline relationships in and outside departments and how fantastic the music department is! The assumption that all undergraduate students want or like to use technology to communicate was challenged.

The point was made that not all students [especially part time mature students] have the skills to use technology effectively to carry out their studies. Some lecturers do take the time to facilitate this learning in their taught sessions - but this needs to happen more. Staff also don’t always have the skills to use technology.

The final word is - “students and staff must love using technology” - quote from York St. John University student, is this a possibility?

eve

Source: SSC2009

It’s lunchtime and everybody is eating the fancy food provided! I just attended my first IBL Workshop which was named “Small as a cats forehead”, one of the ‘ENGAGE’ sessions based on idioms and natural language learning. I found learning about the different cultural uses of idioms really interesting, even though i have basic language knowledge, other than English of course. The example of Japan was also a good reference as I find the culture and history particularly interesting. I think Ryan and Claire did a very good job of engaging the participants and making it interesting!

Source: ecc07ls

Todays session was hosted by Peter Cogill, Monika Kus and Helen Ullaton. It was a very interesting session which resulted in a debate about how “scary” the concept of IBL can be to students, particularly those who are more mature and have less experience of the technology element of IBL such as discussion boards and th euse of the MOLE site. The session focused on Archeology and IT particularly and unfortunately due to time constraints we didnt hear much of the student perspective but generally there was a feeling that IBL had positively contributed to the modules once the initial teething problems had been sorted out. Overall, I think it was generally a very enjoyable and well recieved presentation.

Source: SSC2009

The session was run by Emma Smith and Nicola Forshaw, dance research assistants from York St John University. As part of their project, they had interviewed two artists involved with Contemporary African Dance with the aim to have an article published.

They identified that by leaving them to their own devices and ideas, the tutor actually allowed them to make their own mistakes and therefore learn from their experiences. They now know that whilst it may be better to conduct interviews with specific areas/questions in mind, sometimes one must start out quite broadly. In this case their interview may have benefited from a few introductory questions, with the artist providing them with details of his background and influences since information about him was scarce.

Opinions arising from this session by participants were:
-Students should be involved in genuine research to advance discipline knowledge
- We need to learn that we make mistakes but must move on from them
-Let students have a go at finding things out for themselves before ’stuffing’ them full of theory

The session, though only having 6 participants, was excellently run. Instead of having small group discussions, we simply shouted out ideas on how they could improve their research. The opportunity to actually partake in some African dance moves was enjoyable. I hope the session has aided both Emma and Nicola in their work.

Source: SSC2009

As you all know, today has been the third Staff-Student Conference on Inquiry-based learning. However, when I arrived this morning I never expected to be partaking in African dancing! In the Engage room, I attended a session called Mapping a New Research Project based on Interview material. It was taken by two dance students from York St John University, who told us about interviews and workshops they had taken part in with visiting well-known dance instructors as part of their Inquiry Based Learning, and then proceeded to teach us some of the dance moves they had been taught during these visits. As well as providing me with ideas for Inquiry Based Learning in my department, it gave the session a brilliant atmosphere and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Source: egc08sc