Year Two Study Day on 13 November--Evaluations

These are the results of the evaluation exercise on Saturday. Please note that the write-in comments have been paraphrased and grouped as seemed appropriate.

Evaluation 131110

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Since 40+% of you indicated that you might try the text wall, the link is http://www.xlearn.co.uk/sms.htm

Many thanks to everyone who contributed!

Report on Graduation with video

Click on the link to read a brief report on the Graduation last week in Milton Keynes.

Study Day Evaluation 2 Oct 10

Sorry for the delay; here are the results of the evaluation survey based on a rahter disappointing 160 responses, probably about a 66% response rate. The raw data is available on request for people who want to break it down by centre and discipline.

Evaluation Results

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"The Low-Down" from the first Study Day

Many thanks to everyone who put so much effort into the Lowdown; here's a presentation based on photos of it:

Low down

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Course introduction presentation from Saturday

Course

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Here's the presentation (annotated) from the Course Intro. stop on the carousel. More to come! This has also been posted on the www.bedspce.org.uk homepage.

Study Day; 2 October 10

Thanks to everyone who attended and contributed to the Study Day today; particularly to the support staff at the university who made a very complex schedule work so seamlessly. With so many people and so many actitvities to manage in such a tight schedule, you did a terrific job--and that was not only important in its own right, but it also "sent a message" to people engaging for the first time with the university, that it is an outfit in which you can have confidence, and which adheres to the highest standards of educational practice.

We shall post a more detailed evaluation report on this blog in a few days when we have processed the questionnaires, so keep reading--thanks also to everyone who completed the survey.

Guidance and resources for teaching referencing

It's the time of the year to do that again!

Some useful tools for those of you starting the course

The link is to a post on another blog about some useful free (or at least cheap) on-line tools.

Odd links...

Just some things I have recently come across:

• Here's another nail in the coffin of all that egregious "Brain Gym" and "Accelerated learning" nonsense. Brain lateralisation doesn't have anything to do with "creativity"--http://mindhacks.com/2010/09/12/the-death-of-right-brain-thinking/
  
• Tips on how to write less badly

Welcome back!

Welcome to the course or to the new academic year! Do look back over previous posts for an orientation about what has come up before and to check out BREO.

Sound material on neuroscience and learning

See my post on my other blog; http://recentreflection.blogspot.com/2010/07/on-neuromyths.html

Sorry it's late for Unit 2!

Teaching numeracy/maths

The link is to Dan Meyer's excellent blog on teaching maths. I'm posting this talk because it links to threshold concepts in maths and how to address them, without actually using the terminology.

Ofsted verdict

From Peter--

Following an intense week of inspection by Ofsted, Post-Compulsory Education scored '2', 'Good' in all areas of its provision.

We are particularly pleased with this result as under the new inspection framework for Teacher Training the 'bar' for standards and quality has been raised significantly.

Inspectors were complimentary about the quality of teaching, learning and assessment and the strength of the Post-Compulsory partnership through the College Network of centres. The lead inspector for PCE described the provision as being "in the Premier League".

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to this result, not only directly by being observed or taking part in focus groups or providing files for inspectors to read, but also through your participation in the general on-going life of the programme which has led Ofsted to recognise its quality.

Learning Resources created in Interest Groups

One of you has requested photos of the Learning Resources from the Study Day on 24 April; the file proved to be too big to email directly, but it also occurred to me that others might like it to add their group's contribution to their Unit 4 files, so I have up-loaded it to SlideShare as usual. On this occasion it is available to download, too.

Learning resources

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Video from last Study Day (24 April)

Now available at the above address. Higher quality DVDs may be available to Centres.

Latest from Frank Coffield

Yes, but what has Semmelweis to do with my professional development as a tutor?

"This report asks the poignant question of teaching professionals - 'What changes do I need to make to those aspects of my professional thinking and practice which I suspect are doing more harm than good?' This was the central question posed by Ignaz Semmelweis, a young Hungarian doctor who, as a result of painstaking research, reduced mortality rates in childbed fever to less than 1% by challenging the practices of his contemporaries in 19th century Vienna. Now, more than 150 years later, Professor Frank Coffield, Emeritus Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, examines how we can use this remarkable story to challenge and improve some current professional practices in teaching and learning." (From the publisher's blurb)

Free download (pdf) from the Learning and Skills Network

Results from 24 April 2nd Year 1 Study Day evaluation

These results are based on 150 completed questionnaires. I have processed the write-in questions through Wordle, to give some impression of the priorities attached to some of the comments and requests (there is no significance to any of the arrangement other than the relative size of the words).

Evaluation results from 24 April

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Presentation on Threshold Concepts from Study Day 24 April 2010

Here is an annotated version of the Study Day presentation, without the bells and whistles!

But the video can be seen embedded in here (part of a series of pages on TCs, coming at them from different angles--if you didn't get the idea at the Study Day itself, we hope they will help).

The video of the presentation, including the part after the break, will be around soon--we'll notify you via this blog.

The evaluation report should be available by the end of the week, but no guarantees. Introducing Threshold Concepts

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And I'm kicking myself--I refrained from mentioning a very important TC indeed. I didn't put it in the first part because I hoped one of you would come up with it, but no-one did and I forgot. It's the evolution of species by means of natural selection (Darwin 1859, and of course Wallace 1858), the threshold concept which revolutionised and underpins modern biology. And it is still being argued about!

A couple of people asked about the references; the major TC publications are;

• Meyer J H F and Land R (eds.) (2006) Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge London; Routledge.
  
  
• Land R, Meyer J H F and Smith, J. (eds) (2008) Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines Rotterdam; Sense Publishers

and I also referred to;

• Hattie, J (2009) Visible Learning; a synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement London; Routledge.

The pages on the Doceo site also includes links to further reading beyond the site.

Many thanks to everyone for their contributions to a really good day.

Briefing for Second Year One Study Day

Click on the heading to download the Briefing Paper for the next Study Day on 24 April.

Newsnight special education iissue

Peter has asked me to draw your attention to Wednesday's special edition of Newsnight (BBC2); the BBC site says;

A special programme dedicated to education. Newsnight politics editor Michael Crick examines why education - not a make or break issue for parties in recent elections - is set to be a key battleground in the weeks to come.

We look back at Labour's education legacy. Have they delivered on Tony Blair's famous 'education, education, education' pledge?

Justin Rowlatt asks what is education for, and we'll also be examining choice and cutbacks.

Jeremy is joined in the studio by Ed Balls, Michael Gove and David Laws, as well as people from the teaching profession, a businessman and a former children's Laureate to debate the big issues.

 Click on the heading link to watch it again on i-Player for the next week.

From the Year two Study Day 6 March

Thanks to everyone for their contributions to the Study Day on Saturday!

Here are the processed results from the group-based exercise; I must apologise for the fact that some of the charts I showed at the plenary were wrong, for technical reasons (i.e. I cocked up). I have re-processed them, and I'm confident with these.

Given my personal prejudices, I am delighted to see that the cumulative cynicism about ICT comes out tops for the "win-win" scenario (although I must confess that the wording of that item was not entirely neutral), but it seems to be the only case in which there is real synergy between the two criteria.

Having It Both Ways

And here are stats from the evaluation, although they don't actually show as much as they may appear to. The response rate was only one-third, so unsurprisingly the views of the more local centres are over-represented (and there was only one from Grantham and apparently none from Tresham, for some reason.) What kind of bias this represents, I don't know...

Basic Stats From Evaluation Of 2nd Study Day

And for those of you who wondered about the cool, non-PowerPoint introduction to the presentation, check out http://prezi.com (although if everyone gets in on the act it will soon become as routine as .ppt)

New address for Unit 2 blog (for the University cohort)

Sorry! I did promise to put a link to the new url here a couple of weeks ago when the blog migrated but I forgot--so apologies to anyone who hasn't found it. And thanks to Jill for reminding me.

Guidance on Academic Writing

You may well find the linked blog post, and its follow-up at http://www.autonoblogger.com/cooltools/academic-writing-part-2/ useful both in informing your own practice as an academic writer on the course, and perhaps with supporting your students. The fact that the author is in the specialised position of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) at a Japanese university does not actually make his points specialised.

Note too the links to useful sites, particularly--if you don't have time to read Autonoblogger's post and follow up yourself--the link to Andy Gillett's very useful site on Using English for Academic Purposes.

Sue Cowley's session, 18 November 09

The video of Sue's session is now accessible through BREO. Go to the "Study Days" tab and the link appears as item 1. You will need RealPlayer on your machine to view it, and it is approximately 100 mins. All Centre Leaders have a better quality copy on DVD.

Free mind-mapping software

The ComputerActive "Ultimate Guide to Free Computing" Jan 2010 (£5.99, but why don't several people buy it between them?) has a CD of full software including MindGenius Home 2, which is a perfectly competent mind-mapping package. It's also got useful guides in the mag to OpenOffice etc. as well as cloud computing tools.

You can download free time-limited trials here, but the magazine version is an unrestricted version of an earlier release.