questing VoLE*

BREO update

2012-01-11T10:49:00.000Z

From Peter W:

I have received the email below regarding the problems that BREO has been experiencing (and hence Turnitin). As you can see it is still not fixed and the University is waiting for someone in Amsterdam to sort out the problem.

Hopefully it will be sorted before the deadline but if there is a problem please stress to students that they should hand in the hard copies of their work on Friday as normal and that if they are experiencing problems with Turnitin/BREO and can't put it through this week then they will not be penalised.

From BREO Support:

Yesterday Subject Communities in Blackboard unexpectedly disappeared from your Communities box. Immediately we noticed this problem we contacted our technical support team in Amsterdam and asked them to urgently resolve the problem. We can see that the Communities have not been deleted, rather have become unavailable. Their availability is controlled by a data process and it is a fault with that process that needs to be resolved. We will continue to press the Amsterdam support team (our system is hosted there) for an urgent resolution today and will update you as soon as we have more definitive information.

For immediate information, follow BREO at University of Bedfordshire on Facebook

BREO problem

2012-01-10T13:05:00.000Z

In case you have come here because you can't access BREO, here's a note from Peter Wolstencroft:

Hello Everyone

Some students today have been struggling to access the PCE BREO site. I have chased this problem and received the response below. Please advise students to submit through Turnitin tomorrow if they experience a problem today.

If the worst comes to the worst and this is not resolved before the deadline then please accept the hard copy in the first instance.

[...]

Hello Peter

It seems this was caused by recent changes in the way BREO handles enrolment data, it looks like student enrolment was coming from a data file which is no longer used, so they have been blocked from accessing the site. Now that we've identified the issue we've asked Blackboard to fix it as soon as possible.

Hopefully their access to PCE will be restored by the end of the day.

Regards

Guide to referencing

2011-11-24T16:04:00.000Z

I've just written this up for the blog for the Polhill cohort, and thought it might be of more general interest. It's all been posted before, but I imagine most of you have better things to do than trawl through the blog archives.

Here is the presentation I used yesterday evening, with accompanying podcast: Basic Author Date (Harvard) Referencing

As well as the guidance from the university library incorporated in the Handbook, you might also find the following links useful:

Here are the pages on problems from the American Psychological Association style website:

However, I also noted that I do have some reservations about the obsession with referencing (not to the extent, however, of letting you get away with it!) I've written about it here, here, here, and here.

SWOT charts from Interest Groups for Year 2 Study Day

2011-11-19T15:36:00.000Z

The task for the Interest Groups on 12 November was to creat a SWOT chart for their discipline or area of practice in the context Frank Coffield outlined in the morning.

Here is what you produced: I can see all kinds of ways in which it will be an interesting resource for Unit 7:

Swot reports from disciplinary interest groups

Evaluation of first Year 2 Study Day on 12 November

2011-11-18T17:15:00.000Z

Evaluation of first Year 2 Study Day on 12 November

Points from Mentor Training on 12 November (Study Day)

2011-11-18T11:44:00.003Z

First--many thanks to the more than forty of you who came. It was the biggest turnout we've had for a mentor event!

Second--a special thanks to those of you who have been mentors before, and who came anyway. You had a wealth of information and insight into how it all works out on the ground, and we got some useful ideas about how we might improve our communication and make the whole business even better--more on that later.

However, I'm sorry we didn't get round to the exercise of all observing the same session on video, and discussing it. On the other hand, we could only have got there at the cost of passing up on your questions and comments--I think we did the right trade. Some of you did ask whether we could copy the DVD and circulate to Centres so that you could borrow it and do the exercise yourselves. I've checked, and I'm afraid that copyright restrictions apply, as I suspected. However, I'm pretty sure that all Centres have some equivalent material, and it doesn't really matter whether you watch the same stuff--it's the discussion which matters, so we'll notify Centre Leaders that you may be approaching them, and asking them to have something ready. I'll also prepare a list of questions to help structure the discussion (it'll be up to you whether you use them, of course).

Some more specific points:

Learning Styles

Coffield et al's 2004 review can still be downloaded from here. My page with links (some straight, some more contentious) is here. As I noted, the network is not dogmatic about orthodoxy in taught material, but this is egregious rubbish. Coffield (2008) notes:

The most worrying aspect of this movement is that it appears impervious to evidence-based criticism. Our detailed and systematic review found that ‘... there is no evidence that the model is either a desirable basis for learning or the best use of investment, teacher time, initial teacher
education and professional development’ (Coffield et al. 2004a: 35).
Put simply, it doesn’t work.

Yet the VAKT approach persists. For example, From theory to practice: using differentiation to raise levels of attainment by Cheryl Jones (2006), part of LSN’s 14–19 Vocational Learning Support Programme – so no straw man and part of the officially-funded advice to the sector – still blithely maintains in the face of the evidence we presented that ‘this does not mean that it is no longer relevant to consider learning styles’ (Jones 2006: 7).

How more explicit could we have been? Let me try harder this time. There is no scientific justification for teaching or learning strategies based on VAKT and tutors should stop using learning style instruments based on them. There is no theory of VAKT from which to draw any implications for practice. It should be a dead parrot. It should have ceased to function.

Even the most detailed suggestions for practice drawn from VAKT are based on over-simplifications of a misunderstood and discredited theory. Learning styles, like fish oils or brain gym, are part of what HL Mencken in an inspired phrase called the ‘pseudo-psychological rumble-bumble’ that infests education (1926: 177). It’s time to move on. Why do we expect to capture the full complex humanity of learners by dividing them into four categories which are so simple as to be patronising, if not downright insulting?

(Emphasis in original, available here (pdf) accessed 17 November 11)

Peer Observations

There did appear to be some variable practice on peer observations; the formal requirement is:

6. Two reports of peer observations; your reports of your observation of course colleagues, signed by them. If you would like to include copies of their observations of you, that‘s fine, but we don‘t insist. (p.42 or thereabouts in the course handbook--pagination varies from Centre to Centre.)

and the guidance; (diagrams omitted);

You should observe at least two of your colleagues on each year of the Course, which will of course involve being observed yourself.

You should start to arrange the visits as soon as possible: it can take time.

While simple pairings are obviously the easiest way of arranging visits, you may well get more from arranging a chain: it spreads the knowledge around, puts you in contact with more people, and avoids the gruesome twosome or mutual admiration society pitfalls. In a chain of six:

Round 1:
Anita observes Bert
Carole observes Debbie
Eric observes Farouk

Round 2:
Bert observes Carole
Debbie observes Eric
Farouk observes Anita

The chain then dissolves and re-constitutes with other group members for the next set of observations.

On completion of your observation, you will need to write a short report (around 500 words/a page of A4 or so), to be included in the portfolio. This should be signed by both of you. The report may be in any format which seems useful to you (and probably to the person you are observing). It does not have to use the Course's Observation Protocol, and even if it does, it is expected that you will also make a more general report. (about p.60 of the Handbook)

Mentoring Diploma

Several people expressed an interest in the University Diploma in Mentoring, which is offered at Barnfield, Bedford, Grantham, Leicester, Oxford and Cherwell Valley, South Notts., and Tresham Colleges; contact the colleges directly for more information and to register.

Email contact

Those of you who were at the meeting provided your email addresses; we shall shortly be getting in touch with you to notify you of an email group we are setting up. You will need to confirm that you wish to join the group, if you do, so don't worry--we are not planning to spam you!

From our end it will enable us to contact you occasionally (probably only about twice a term) with information about students' assessment deadlines, mentor meetings and study days and to consult you about any changes to the programme. More important, it will also enable you to discuss mentoring issues among yourselves, and share ideas and advice.

If you are a mentor, tutor or student and were not at the meeting but would like to join, please email mentor@bedspce.org.uk, with "Mentor Email Group" or similar in the subject line. No further message is needed.

Evaluation of first Year 1 Study Day on 1 October.

2011-10-23T20:28:00.000+01:00

Here is the summary presentation from the Study Day on 1 October--sorry it has taken rather longer than usual to publish. However, I think this has been a candidate for the most successful Study Day ever--many thanks for everyone's sterling efforts!

Evaluation of year 1 study day

Follow-up from technology session on Saturday

2011-10-03T17:05:00.000+01:00

The link from the heading is to a useful short article from the Chronicle of Higher Education's (US) Faculty Focus column which makes some similar points to Mark's on Saturday and suggests some others. I particularly like the idea of a "just for fun" area of a bebsire or wiki...

Any further suggestions welcome, via comments.

Tech. resources to make study (and teaching) easier

2011-09-30T13:23:00.004+01:00

This is a post to support the session Mark Tinney and I did at the first Year 1 Study Day on 1 October. The heading link is to the page we used as a portal, but all those links and more are accessible from this post.

The first techie thing is to back everything up. One brilliant way of doing that without ever having to think about it is to store all your files in on the net or "in the cloud". You can either do everything in Google docs, which of course require that you be on-line, or you can use Dropbox. This is an excellent free facility, which you can use on-line or you can download to any machine you have access to. All it does is create a new sub-folder in your Documents folder, which you use to keep any kind of file, just like a normal folder on your hard drive. Indeed it is a normal folder, but with a plus. When you go on-line, any changes you have made to the contents of that folder will automatically be synchronised with all your other Dropbox folders. So you can go to your laptop, your desktop at home or at work, and find the latest versions of any file you want to work on, without you having to do anything other than save in that folder. (Of course, you'll want to take care about security.) And you can go online in the library, log in to the Dropbox site in your browser, and find all your files there, too.

As mentioned, Google Docs does require you to be on-line but as Mark pointed out, that makes it very useful for collaborative work, including overseeing your students' work as they are doing it. And it includes a good survey creator (Create>Form) which makes use of being on-line to contact respondents directly. So in some respects it exceeds the functionality of Microsoft Office (TM, etc. blah). In any case, you do not need to pay for an Office-compatible suite; OpenOffice and LibreOffice seem to me to be identical, but they are both heavy-duty packages, and completely free.

A reference manager is a very useful tool--simply a way of keeping track of what you have been reading, all in one place, and organised so you can retrieve it. If you are a non-techie person there is nothing to beat 6x4 index cards, of course, but since this is a technology oriented session, try Zotero. There is a two-part article introducing it here and here. Its major selling point (although actually it is free), is the way in which it automates collecting material; click on the button in your browser and Zotero grabs the page you're on.

Zotero also has a "groups" feature, which is a good way of sharing material and references with other people. I know you can do that through BREO, but a VLE is restricted to other people on this course, and you may want to go wider and include your mentor or other colleagues.

Speaking of which, you are part of a much wider community of people on other courses, with lots of ideas and questions for each other. Sharon Abbott, a very public-spirited lecturer in prison education, set up a network site about post-compulsory education in 2005 called PCET.net, on the basis that it was just the kind of network she felt a need for when she was doing her own Cert. Ed. Such a site relies very much on its members to create a critical mass and a buzz, and so please join it and use it; Sharon is making a big push to re-launch it at the start of a new academic year.

Part of the requirement for the course is that you keep a reflective professional journal. Why not do it via a blog? You might not be quite as outspoken as this one, but it serves as a useful example of how it can be done. You don't have to make it public, of course, or you can restrict readership to friends, fellow-students or your mentor, and you can have multiple authors if you are working collaboratively... You can set one up in five minutes or less and there are numerous free platforms out there, such as Wordpress, which is probably the most sophisticated, Blogger which is probably the best known, and Posterous Spaces, which is probably the simplest to use if you're not a geek, or want to use your mobile to post.

I use a blog to write up the "minutes" of a class, with embedded links, photos of whiteboards and even the presentations, via SlideShare. Mark pointed out that it is not always necessary to re-invent the wheel--you can search SlideShare for existing presentations on a topic, and then (often) download them and edit them for your own purposes.

C-map tools is not a particularly pretty application, but it is free and very powerful once you get to grips with it. It draws concept maps, which are not quite the same as mind-maps, but more flexible and informative. If you do want to draw mind-maps themselves, there are several free options, although many are simply trial versions. You can use concept maps (hand-drawn) as a useful in-class exercise. Introduce a topic and get the students to draw concept maps of their understanding of it; simply look over their shoulders to get an immediate impression of who has got it and who has not--the number of nodes and complexity of links is a great guide. (And tearing up efforts and starting again is usually good news!)

Consider E-draw Mind Map, which produces jazzy Buzan-style maps, or FreeMind which is much more staid but handles more complex topics and sub-topics.If you are prepared to work on-line on your mapping, and particularly if you want to collaborate, try SpiderScribe.

Incidentally, if you are looking for connections between ideas, and the topics appear in Wikipedia, you can enter the topics into C-Links in your browser, which will draw a map of the connections for you, which you can export into C-map tools. There's an example here.

Of course, while we are on Wikipedia, it is notorious in academic circles because the source material for many articles is not cited; it's a work in progress, but look at the Full Wiki site, where sources are revealed when you roll over any highlighted text, so you can cite them properly.

For presentation purposes, there is an alternative to PowerPoint--and I don't just mean the free clone at OpenOffice.org--but a much more radical approach to presentations at Prezi.

And more adventurously, see this post for some excellent contributions from fellow-students to a Study Day on how they have been using technology to support their own teaching.

And do your bit to save us all from drowning under an email tsunami.

As we went along, Mark thought of other resources:

Sporcle is a site with many addictive on-line games, but where one can also create one's own--most obviously quizzes and tests which can be taken on-line and also scored there. Great for enlivening necessary "learning by heart" but also addictive...
PollEverywhere is a site which lets you set up surveys and polls to which people can respond by text message, and will display results in real time.
TED (Technology, Education, Design) is one of the glories of the web! Hundred of polished, twenty-minute or shorter, addresses on pretty well anything, by experts for intelligent lay people. Not directed purely at education, but who cares?

And it was through TED that Mark discovered Gapminder, a wonderful resource for the visualisation of historical and statistical data.

We ran out of time, of course! but if you have favourites, send them to us via the comments facility.

Referencing (sorry! But worth a read.)

2011-09-15T23:50:00.003+01:00

Referencing is the great bug-bear of new students, and a serious distraction from what matters, which is content rather than form.

However. We refer to the accepted style as "Harvard" referencing. Even library guidance material does that. But that is just a label (which bemuses Harvard University, which has no connection with it.) for what is known across the pond--much more sensibly--as the "author/date" system. I'm not going to go into the details of this--it is all too easy to get sucked into them--but just to point out that it has two components:

How to refer to your source within the text, and
How to cite it within the bibliography.

#2 is the complicated bit. For those who care, the standard we adopt is "APA" (American Psychological Association). So (this is the bit which matters) they have a brilliantly helpful website:

http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/09/best-of-the-apa-style-blog-fall-2011-edition.html

I have reservations about the amount of energy students are called upon to divert to this nowadays, but do learn to play the game, because it saves a lot of hassle down the line!

Evidence-based Study Tips

2011-08-10T11:12:00.002+01:00

Useful at a number of levels--for your students and even yourselves--and with links to follow up to sources.

A new network for PCE colleagues--please join.

2011-08-04T23:17:00.000+01:00

Go look at and register with http://www.pcet.net/. It's a brilliant non-profit voluntary initiative to get us all exchanging ideas. Web 2.0/social networking for the PCE community--and of course the more you put in, the more you get out.

More on classroom management from TES

2011-06-08T19:31:00.000+01:00

Including Sue Cowley. The linked articles are of course school-focused, but good ideas are good ideas.

Government response to the Wolf Report

2011-05-14T20:20:00.000+01:00

Just getting down to work on your submission?

2011-05-14T16:03:00.000+01:00

You might be interested in this new tool I review on my own blog here: http://recentreflection.blogspot.com/2011/05/on-next-step-beyond-wikipedia.html

Useful tools

2011-05-04T15:17:00.000+01:00

For once, I have posted something potentially useful on my other blog (follow heading link)--it may particularly be of interest to those of you thinking of preparing your submissions. On the other hand, it may lead to hours of time-wasting...

A different take on resource design

2011-04-11T18:39:00.000+01:00

This is the other side of the coin (although from a different angle) from this post.

Do you make your handouts and slides clearly legible and easy to read? This article argues (inclusivity considerations aside) that you may be doing your students a disservice.

Up to a point, perhaps... But it's always interesting to entertain a counter-intuitive angle.

Evaluation reports from Study Days in March

2011-03-29T12:54:00.000+01:00

Thanks to all those who contributed in whatever way to the Study Days.

Evaluation 0500311

Evaluation 260311

View more presentations from James Atherton.

More information for the Year 1 Study Day 26 March

2011-03-15T16:58:00.000Z

The schedule for the Study Day is available to download here.

As a reminder, the activity from the first Study Day is here.

Format for presentations at next year 1 Study Day

2011-03-12T01:06:00.001Z

The heading links to a PowerPoint file for download.

At the Study Day, one of the Interest Group tasks (you may remember), is to report back to the rest of the group on the work you started in those groups at the first Study Day.

There is no obligation to do so via PowerPoint: but we know from experience how difficult it is to contain such presentations, if you do choose to use it. So if you do use PowerPoint, we have set up a template for you to use.*

It will help you to produce a five-minute presentation, based on 15 slides, each showing for 20 seconds and progressing automatically, which means that you will need to rehearse and practise the presentation. Download and save it, and then open it and run it as a slideshow, and all will become clear!

* It's not actually a template file, for reasons of flexibility, but you can use it as such. Just open it, delete the existing content, and replace with your own.

Graduation 2011

2011-03-07T11:53:00.001Z

We can now confirm that Graduation will take place on 27 October this year, at the ecumenical Church of Christ the Cornerstone in Milton Keynes. You should get letters of invitation in August and two tickets per person.

No news yet of which ceremony (there are generally at least two) you will be graduating at, but you can book the date now, and pass it on.

From Kathryn Ecclestone

2011-03-07T11:50:00.000Z

To everyone who attended Kathryn's session on Saturday--the link is to a brief article in the Times from last year which summarises her position.

Teaching with technology: from the Study Day on 5 March 11

2011-03-06T22:29:00.000Z

Many thanks to Carole, Jon, Ian, Gary and Simon for their brilliant contributions to this half-plenary session! I promised to post the links and/or sources...

Carole's offering was based on Moodle; the system itself is free, but of course Castle's implementation of it and content based on it is protected, so I can't pass it on.

Jon's work is based on using the under-used interactive potential of PowerPoint (tm, blah) but we can't guarantee that the macros will work just as downloaded.

He recommended http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resources/ as a general resource,but go here and you will find his own material.

For the music-- http://www.televisiontunes.com/ is a good starting point.

And go to http://www.wordle.net/ to create word maps of any body of text.

Incidentally, Jon is leaving the Royal Navy at the end of the year and is hoping to take his skills to a college or university environment. To contact him with any queries, translate jongarthwaite510 (at) hotmail.com into a valid email address.

Ian's use of clickers in numeracy work with prisoners is set out here:

Matthews personal response systems

Gary's short but intensive presentation on the range of collaborative tools available, the support from expert communities, and ways in which well-established web tools such as Twitter can be harnessed for educational purposes:

Bedford

...and Simon brought it all together showing how free tools can be enlisted to create a DIY VLE;

Diy vle

Just in case the link to the demo does not work directly, it is here; http://diyvle.wikispaces.com

Parity established between QTLS and QTS

2011-03-04T20:08:00.000Z

Something to brighten up gloomy late winter days. The Wolf Report on 14-19 vocational education includes among many other welcome recommendations, one that QTLS be accepted as a full qualification for teaching in schools, just as QTS is accepted in FE. Not only that but the recommendation has been accepted immediately; as the press release indicates:

Mr Gove said Prof Wolf’s report was "brilliant and ground-breaking”. He immediately accepted four recommendations:
To allow qualified further education lecturers to teach in school classrooms on the same basis as qualified school teachers....

Second Year Study Day 5 March

2011-02-11T12:06:00.000Z

This post is to give you some advance notice about arrangements for the afternoon on 5 March and to enlist your help if possible.

The plan for the day as a whole is that Prof. Kathryn Ecclestone will lead the morning plenary on The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education (you might like to read her co-authored book, or at least the PCE chapter of it, in advance if you can: Ecclestone K and Hayes P (2008) The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education London; Routledge)

After lunch the Interest Groups meet to follow up on their discussions and report back on what you have implemented at work following Vivienne's session at the first Study Day this year, and then...

The rest of the day will be a cox and box split session:

Half of you will start with a session on Where next? looking at opportunities for further learning and development, including the IfL, CPD, the university's Diploma and MA programmes, while the other half will be looking at Enhancing learning with technology, and then you will swap over.

The technology session will probably involve a further split into two self-selected groups, "beginners" and "advanced", given that there is a wide range of knowledge and expertise represented in the whole group.

We hope that the Advanced group will largely be led by yourselves; it will be an opportunity to showcase ways in which you have made use of technology in your teaching, including social networking, blogs, wikis, twitter, and more specific tools such as Prezi or VoiceThread or even SecondLife (although I gather that is now a little passe).

There is not going to be very much time, so if you are interested in sharing your experience and demonstrating your practice, please get in touch with James Atherton as soon as possible and let me know your intentions. We'll review the offers we get, select those which offer a good range of ideas and are likely to appeal to a wide range of colleagues, and let you know if we invite you to present.

Similarly, if you are planning to join the Beginners' group we should like to hear from you about packages and techniques you would like to hear about from tutors (or indeed yourselves). These may be academic tools such as Zotero, presentation packages such as Prezi, blogging tools, cloud based facilities such as Google docs and the invaluable Dropbox.

Do get in touch so we can focus on what you want!

Watch this space for more information.

Year Two Study Day on 13 November--Evaluations

2010-11-18T11:38:00.000Z

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

View more presentations from James Atherton.

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

2010-11-02T15:13:00.000Z

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

Study Day Evaluation 2 Oct 10

2010-10-13T17:50:00.001+01:00

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

View more presentations from James Atherton.

"The Low-Down" from the first Study Day

2010-10-11T16:12:00.000+01:00

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

Low down

View more presentations from James Atherton.

Course introduction presentation from Saturday

2010-10-03T20:27:00.000+01:00

Course

View more presentations from James Atherton.

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

2010-10-02T23:47:00.000+01:00

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

2010-09-27T14:11:00.000+01:00

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

Some useful tools for those of you starting the course

2010-09-20T20:24:00.000+01:00

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

Odd links...

2010-09-13T18:51:00.001+01:00

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!

2010-09-11T20:53:00.000+01:00

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

2010-07-18T14:53:00.000+01:00

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

2010-05-18T10:55:00.000+01:00

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

2010-05-14T14:20:00.000+01:00

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

2010-05-13T11:07:00.000+01:00

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

View more presentations from James Atherton.

Video from last Study Day (24 April)

2010-05-09T22:29:00.000+01:00

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

Latest from Frank Coffield

2010-05-05T13:03:00.000+01:00

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

2010-04-27T20:53:00.000+01:00

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

View more presentations from James Atherton.

Presentation on Threshold Concepts from Study Day 24 April 2010

2010-04-26T16:09:00.000+01:00

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

View more presentations from James Atherton.

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

2010-03-25T13:06:00.000Z

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

Newsnight special education iissue

2010-03-11T17:44:00.000Z

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

2010-03-08T18:11:00.000Z

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)

2010-03-08T15:49:00.000Z

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

2010-02-01T16:09:00.000Z

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

2010-01-25T10:34:00.000Z

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

2010-01-23T18:54:00.000Z

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.

Results from 28 November Study Day Evaluations

2009-11-30T16:44:00.003Z

Basic Stats From Study Day Evaluation 281109

View more presentations from James Atherton.

I don't think these results will come as any surprise to the almost three hundred of you who were there (the figures are based on 209 responses). There was a real buzz about the day, which was only to be expected after Sue Cowley kicked it off so energetically and constructively.

So, on behalf of Peter Hadfield and the entire team across the network, many thanks for your contributions on Saturday, and please use the comment facility to discuss your reactions, or use BREO

Ofsted overload

2009-11-25T11:57:00.000Z

The heading link is to Frank Coffield's latest dispassionate analysis of Ofsted's "Common Inspection Framework". Thanks to Peter for finding it. Enjoy!

Evaluation results

2009-11-18T13:18:00.000Z

Basic Stats From Study Day Evaluation

View more presentations from James Atherton.

Comments welcome

Peter's Presentation

2009-11-18T10:49:00.000Z

Challenges Facing Pce Study Day 14 Nov 09 For Web

View more presentations from James Atherton.

Video version coming shortly

Year 2--first Study Day

2009-11-17T19:58:00.000Z

The first Study Day of the year took place last Saturday. Thanks to everyone who put in so much effort to ensure that everyone could take something useful away.

The Interest Groups spent the morning concluding the work started on Threshold Concepts at the second Study Day of last year, and illustrated some of their work through posters which could be viewed and discussed over the lunch break. There were some fascinating visualisations: click on the picture below to go to the web album.

Study day 141109

On the evidence of the posters, and also of participants' own views as reflected in the evaluations, there was quite a lot of variation in how people approached, understood and valued TCs. (Based on 105 returns only, 26.7% rated the work done on them "Very Useful", 55.2% "Quite Useful", and 15.2% "Not Useful at all".)

As you know, TCs are themselves TCs, so we didn't expect everyone would get them at once (or even after a while). But assessing TCs is an interesting task in its own right, so;

Looking at the posters, which of the groups do you think really got the idea? And how can you tell?

Feel free to post your reactions and comments, via BREO if you prefer. This is not intended to pass judgement on any group or individual--the task is not a summative assessment. But it may help me and anyone else who is interested to evaluate whether there are any links perhaps between disciplines or areas of practice, and the usefulness or nature of TCs. For example the Special Needs group in photo 9 draws attention to the fact that the "irreversibility" criterion just does not work for people with learning disabilities (pretty well by definition). One of their major problems is that learning does not "stick". But in photo 25, another Special Needs group takes a very specific bit of learning (the concept of "knife") and shows how it leads on into other areas...

Neither is right or wrong, better or worse, but both are ways into the discussion, and everyone has contributed to that. Long may it continue.

I'll post more from processing the evaluations and from Peter's presentation as soon as I can.

Wrestling with writing?

2009-11-06T11:32:00.000Z

If academic writing is a new game for you, how about making use of this facility? :-)

Graduation 2009

2009-10-29T11:50:00.003Z

Congratulations to all of you who graduated yesterday, whether you were at the ceremonies in person or not. Very well done, and we hope your learning continues to bear fruit even after the course.

The Programme put on a terrific showing at the Bedford Graduation Ceremonies. There were far too many of you for us to get a shot of you all, but after some lobbying this was the first year that your tutors from the college centres as well as the university have joined the platform party, so I thought you might like to see some of us in our academic finery.

Unfortunately, Peter H contrived to hide himself at the back. Typical! (Jane, if your pics came out better, please let me have them and I'll update this post.)

Study Day information now downloadable from here

2009-10-29T11:39:00.000Z

The programmes and briefing papers for both the Year 1 (28 November) and Year 2 (14 November) Study Days can now be downloaded from http://www.bedspce.org.uk/downloads/index.htm#Programmes as well as from BREO.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Avoiding plagiarism

2009-10-14T16:41:00.000+01:00

Arising from the preceding post on referencing, some people have asked me for succinct guidance on avoiding plagiarism in general. The link from the heading is to a 7-minute video by Jude Carroll of Oxford Brookes University, probably the foremost expert on detecting and avoiding plagiarism anywhere, who offers practical guidance on making sure that your work is original. (The full transcript of the video is further down the same page.)

Basic Author Date (Harvard) Referencing

2009-10-13T16:17:00.002+01:00

Here is a slidecast of the presentation on Harvard referencing. Note it needs some amendment--see if you can sport the deliberate mistakes!

Basic Author Date (Harvard) Referencing

View more presentations from James Atherton.

Up-date; I've fixed the more obvious ones but there may well be others!

A parallel reflection

2009-09-23T22:36:00.000+01:00

The link is to a blog from a student on a similar course to yours (but, from external evidence, not this one).

Is his (inferred gender) experience similar to yours?
Would you have written it up in the same way?
What can you learn about the process of reflection (and of action on reflection) from his contribution?

Do get back to him using the comment facility on his blog. And do try the same thing yourself. If you want a plug on this blog (last readership count was ????) email me. (Yes I know there are other ways--why is there not a PCE FaceBook/MySpace/Ning/SecondLife presence? Because some among you are the experts, not me. But use this hub as a way of setting things up...)

And does it make any difference to his experience of the course and the literature that he is an engineer? (Absolutely no disrespect to engineers; but does the discipline from which you approach the task of teaching affect your perspective on it and the talk surrounding it?)

Keep up to date!

2009-09-23T20:42:00.004+01:00

Peter and I were discussing over coffee this morning the article by Peter Wilby in the Education Guardian yesterday on David Hargreaves, and his radical ideas for the education system. (Who? Where?)

We thought this was the kind of material which should be discussed on every teacher education programme, including of course PCE programmes, and especially ours. I said I would post a link on this blog, but then it occurred to me that it would make more sense to include a permanent link in the blog side-bar, so you could easily access the Education Guardian (and the Times Ed, and the Timer Higher, and the Independent Education...) from one place. No excuse!

So look to the left of this post and you will find links to those places. We may add more, particularly if you suggest them. And I may (no promises) post here about particularly useful news resources as they come up.

The important thing is that you need only to bookmark this page—the one you are currently looking at—to have direct links to all this material. Go on! You know it makes sense!

(Oh, and of course you can easily find the Hargreaves article linked from the bottom right of the Guardian page.)

AND! Special bonus back-to-school offer, never to be repeated! (etc.) The learningandteaching.info sites have been revised and up-dated for the start of the new academic year.

Coffield's latest

2009-08-06T14:35:00.000+01:00

Frank Coffield has done it again. All you ever wanted to know about learning and teaching but were too cool to ask is a counterpart to Just Suppose Teaching and Learning became the First Priority. As before it is available as a free download from Learning and Skills Network Publications. While the former pamphlet was addressed to college managers, this one is aimed at actual students, and based on conversations with a range of them on courses in further education.

It's arrived too late to go into the essential reading section of our course handbook, but we shall plug it hard.

"Professor Coffield writes in a personal capacity"

2009-08-03T15:38:00.002+01:00

From last week's Times Educational Supplement, in case you missed it, Frank Coffield is following up on "Just Suppose Teaching and Learning became the First Priority" (2008), which is required reading for the course.

Incidentally, if this blog is correct, it looks as if he has won one victory; the DfES (remember when we had a ministry with "education" in the title?) appears to have withdrawn its booklet on learning styles.

Latest working papers now up-loaded

2009-07-15T15:05:00.000+01:00

The latest versions of the working papers, the 2009-2010 handbook and mentor briefing materials are now available at the link above. Please let us know of any hitches you encounter with them.

We do it slightly differently...

2009-06-08T21:03:00.001+01:00

... but there are some useful observations here!

Beyond threshold topics to magic?

2009-04-03T18:26:00.001+01:00

Penn (of and Teller) makes a great point while illustrating the threshold topics label.

Threshold topics in mathematics

2009-04-01T09:47:00.002+01:00

Fascinating Horizon programme on BBC2 last night, in which Marcus du Sautoy tried to introduce Alan Davies to the joys of maths (while interestingly demonstrating that for a professor of maths, he's not that good at mental arithmetic). Of course, threshold concepts or topics were never mentioned, but that was what this was about, as it opened up a host of new perspectives on the world for Davies. The heading link is to the BBC iPlayer; watch it now before it disappears!

Year 1 Study Day 28 March 09

2009-03-31T13:53:00.004+01:00

Thanks to everyone who attended and contributed to the second Year 1 Study Day last Saturday. Sharing the campus with another event made it rather crowded, so thanks for your forebearance, and especial appreciation to the catering staff for their sterling efforts to make sure we were all fed and watered.

The plenary session on this occasion was home-grown. It does not look as though we shall be producing the video as we had expected; the strange arrangement of the twin lecture theatres was not conducive to keeping Peter and myself in view! However, here is the presentation, annotated for the benefit of those who weren't there to hear it.

How To Cheat At Teaching

View more presentations from James Atherton.

The introductory paper for the afternoon discussions on Threshold Topics has been added to the Bedspce site here. It fills out some of the ideas illustrated on the slides, with particular reference to the broadening of the notion of threshold "concepts", to "topics", which may be psychomotor skills or knacks, or affective perspectives. They all continue to work in the same way, however, and of course they overlap.

Is this expansion legitimate? Please comment and discuss.

Study Day on 7 March

2009-03-09T14:01:00.002Z

Thanks to everyone who made Saturday's Study Day such a success, chiefly to those of you who participated as members of Interest Groups --there was general agreement that some great resources had been shared, and the discussion of them was constructive and helpful. There was also a consensus that Frank Coffield has his finger on the pulse of the PCE sector, with some trenchant comments and some great ideas; like Principals actually doing some teaching!

Briefing for Study Day 7 March

2009-03-02T11:44:00.001Z

Click on the heading to download the briefing paper for the second-year Study Day on Saturday (first years on 28 March). We're looking forward to seeing you; it promises to be every bit as interesting as the first one, although rather different in style.

Useful resource for ESOL teachers

2009-01-03T16:05:00.002Z

If you have not come across this on-line journal, I can commend it; as well as being well-rooted in experience, the papers tend to be reflective while retaining a serious academic perspective. A useful model for some of your own work. Incidentally, the current issue is focused on India; it is also interesting to read the distinctive voice of some contributors and to reflect on their different starting points.

Oh! And Happy New Year! I'm sure you're desperate to get back to work and the course after all the irritating distraction of the past couple of weeks...

Automatic bibliographies!

2008-11-25T12:06:00.003Z

It had to happen! You can now get automatic bibliographies generated for you on-line, from information as minimal as a book's ISBN number. Try it!

Two words of caution, though;

It does not set up the in-text flags for you, such as Jarvis (2006), and
Its default format is MLA (Modern Languages Association) while like most social "science" disciplines, we use APA (American Psychological Association); in order to get that, you have to take out a subscription, but that is only $7.99 (just over £5.00) for a year.

Pass the word!

Study Days are under way

2008-11-17T00:30:00.002Z

We didn't really need the evidence of the evaluation questionnaires to testify to the reaction to the first of this year's study days; Sue Cowley's presentation in particular went down a bomb. She's coming back for the first year's (or "first years'" if the reference is to students rather than structure...) day on Saturday 29 November, so be prepared!

Study Days are here again!

2008-11-10T14:29:00.001Z

The first Study Day for Year 2 folks is next Saturday; the link is to the briefing paper. You can download that and the programme for printing, but there is no real need to, since they will both be in your delegate packs. This information is also on BREO.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

It can work out!

2008-10-29T19:24:00.003Z

We are half-way through the first term, which some people find a daunting stage of the course, where its demands begin to bite. But it is also graduation ceremony time! This year, there were so many people graduating from the programme that the university had to lay on a special ceremony, just for PCE graduates. The photo is testimony that some people actually managed it--we couldn't cover all the centres because there were too many. Sorry about the pink bags, courtesy of the alumni office...

You will be here ere too long!

Coffield diagnoses the ills of the sector

2008-10-21T20:25:00.001+01:00

This blog is becoming the Frank Coffield fan club! I can't link to the article because it is not on-line, but if you are a member of the University and Colleges Union (UCU), you will have received a copy of the October magazine; do read "When the solution is the problem..." (pp.9-10) and copy it for your fellow course members.

It's a bit early in the year, but...

2008-10-21T20:15:00.001+01:00

Concrete suggestions on how to get stuff written!

Useful article and links on technology in the classroom

2008-10-02T14:06:00.001+01:00

Very practical, with plenty of links to resources. It is a little US-centric, though.

New on the parallel blog

2008-09-28T16:45:00.002+01:00

Stuff on this blog tends to be directly PCE programme related, so this is simply a reminder of the parallel blog (link in the heading to this post), which includes some new stuff on e-learning and nature/nurture today and is up-dated fairly regularly during term-time.

Best wishes for the new year, both as tutors and participants!

Have you heard about clickers?

2008-09-22T17:00:00.001+01:00

FE is often equipped with more sophisticated technology than any other sector. Smart board are now being supplemented by clickers (although they may not be all that useful with small classes); the link is to a useful briefing on their use and effectiveness. It also explains what they are!

Conference papers

2008-09-12T15:15:00.002+01:00

You can now download two papers based in part on work with the Programme, and delivered at two international conferences this summer, from the above link. Do feel free to comment via this blog.

All the best for the new academic year, both as tutors/lecturers/teachers and as students!

Useful link for (new) Module 7

2008-08-14T14:52:00.002+01:00

For anyone interested in approaches to PCE elsewhere in the world, the US system of "Community Colleges" is well worth looking at. They vary a lot, of course, but many combine vocational and technical education with offering the first two years of a traditional four-year bachelor's degree, thereby contributing a lot to what we would call the "widening participation" agenda. They offer most courses part-time, too. This article from USA Today is a very useful introduction.

Essential Reading

2008-08-04T15:40:00.002+01:00

Please go to my other blog (link in heading) to read about and access Coffield F (2008) Just suppose teaching and learning became the first priority... London; Learning and Skills Network.

"Can't Read, Can't Write"

2008-08-02T20:10:00.003+01:00

For those of you following up issues from these programmes, there are now some notes here.

Research paper from the Study Days

2008-07-11T16:39:00.002+01:00

You may remember that Peter Hadfield and I, in collaboration with a US colleague, were intending to present a paper based on the Study Days at a conference in Canada last month. Unfortunately Peter could not make it, but Renee and I presented, and we have now written it up in an expanded format, linked to from the title of this post (in Acrobat format).

There was far more material in your reports and conversations than we could utilise in this paper, but we thought you might find some of the ideas interesting. Do feel free to comment, of course, via this blog or on BREO.

Threshold Concepts Symposium

2008-06-22T02:36:00.002+01:00

The second international symposium on TCs concluded yesterday in Kingston, Ontario. The link from the heading is to some of my initial musings on my other blog. The paper to which you contributed in one way or another was in the very first slot of the conference, so I hope it contributed to setting the tone; the written version will be made available via this site in a week or two.

Are we talking threshold concepts?

2008-05-03T19:58:00.002+01:00

OK, this is a little esoteric, perhaps. But you don't have to be familiar with the detail to engage with the principle. Are these sentences critical (if they so be) to the works of literature because they are threshold concepts or for other reasons?

Briefing for Study Day 10 May

2008-04-28T17:01:00.002+01:00

The briefing paper for 10 May is now available to download as an Acrobat file; click on the heading to this post to open or download it.

Study Day 10 May

2008-04-27T21:41:00.002+01:00

The second Study Day for first-year students will take place on the Polhill Campus on Saturday 10 May: the briefing paper will be available via this site, via BREO and your Centre in the course of the coming week.

This is to remind you to be ready to report on how you have used Threshold Concepts in your teaching since the first Study Day, and to check out on BREO how things have progressed within your Interest Group.

And---having established that Interest Group---we are inviting your suggestions as to how you might best use the Study Day opportunities next year. At your next meeting we shall be inviting you to make suggestions and to plan together for the next two meetings. Give it some thought and share your ideas on BREO so that you are prepared when you meet!

Fancy a smartboard for $50?

2008-04-11T16:19:00.003+01:00

Interactive whiteboards ("Smartboard" is a trade name) are popular, but also pricey. Watch this to find out how to make one for $50—notionally £25, but I'm sure more than that in practice. 80% of the functionality for around 1% of the price, the inventor claims. (Laptop and projector not included.)

And go to the link in the header of this post for more of Johnny Lee's inventions, including a steadycam mount for $14 (£7)

Education is often hijacked by suppliers who foist "must-have" electronic gizmos on us (like interactive whiteboard) soaking up resources which could be spent better on much less glamorous items, like books (heard of them?) It's a delight to find the spirit of improvisation is not dead, and that even an under-funded community project can have the latest stuff.

A couple of links for Basic Skills teachers

2008-03-12T17:52:00.002Z

A correspondent who teaches ESOL in Minnesota strongly recommends this linked paper (you can download it, but it is big).

And as testimony to the site's usefulness, the "related links" feature takes you to The Impact of "Skills for Life" on Adult Basic Skills in England: How Should We Interpret Trends in Participation and Achievement? You can't get that directly from the site, but even the abstract is interesting.

ERIC is back!

2008-03-12T17:40:00.002Z

I may be late getting this news, but ERIC is back.

Who he? Educational Resources Information Center is the largest largely open-access database of educational research in the world, courtesy of the US Department of Education. A few years ago they pulled the plug on the funding. A couple of sites struggled on, providing access to the database but not adding anything to it, but now it appears to be back in rude health, with over 3200 new resources added in the past month, and new search facilities.

Note that it can't always provide the full-text resources for free, but sometimes it can, and the ERIC "digests" provide superb overviews of selected topics. Bookmark it!

An aside

2008-03-02T00:26:00.002Z

This may not be about threshold concepts, but if you want a masterclass in how to give an entertaining lecture, as well as some really thought-provoking ideas, then there is no better way to spend twenty minutes.

Question! If you are not teaching in the "arts", what does Ken have to say to your practice?

Did you watch "Lewis" this evening?

2008-02-24T23:03:00.002Z

As befits the topic, the obvious link tells you nothing!

But did you spot the threshold concept? [Yes, "how sad can you get?" notwithstanding..] The Haydn Gwynne character, maths lecturer, sets a probability problem for her class early in the story. It is about darts, and the odds of player A or player B getting to zero first...

Part of the information she supplies concerns the previous form of both players. I think that is totally irrelevant. The probabilities of the present situation are quite independent of previous success; this is counter-intuitive, hence troublesome knowledge, and possibly a threshold concept.

But is this the case? The probability of success on the basis of previous form is (presumably) a measure of skill, since darts is not a random game...

I have no idea of the answer, of course. I don't even know if there is one.

Study Day Evaluations

2008-02-20T19:56:00.002Z

Here are the basic evaluations of the first three Study Days, in chart form.*

If;

you would like the original data to work on, or
you have additional comments to make (existing write-in comments have been noted)

--please comment on this blog.

Thanks

For geeks only:

*It's an Adobe Flash file, which is by far the most compact way of making PowerPoint available on the web. You sacrifice some of the animation and interactivity, but it is small and just one file. You can't export as Flash from Powerpoint, of course. However, just download (completely free--not even any ads) OpenOffice from http://www.openoffice.org/ I say "just" download--it will take a while because OpenOffice is a serious competitor to Microsoft Office, on all fronts. It is fully compatible with MS Office in all but a few esoteric respects (like custom animations), but improves on it in various ways;

it is FREE
it can save directly to Acrobat (.pdf) files
and if appropriate to Flash...

I'm a fan, obviously; but not merely because of the above. For those of you teaching introductory ICT; why are you teaching MS Office? I know it is installed on all the college machines, but there is nothing to stop them installing OpenOffice alongside it. It is FREE, after all. And it is not flaky; it is the non-commercial version of Sun Microsystems office suite, StarOffice, which is the standard package for the German government... And you could legally and legitimately give it to your learners on a CD; saving them at least £120 (you might have to charge them 20p for the disc, of course).

Come to think of it, why Windows? OpenOffice is originally a Linux package...

Are fractions really threshold concepts?

2008-02-11T12:03:00.000Z

The linked story concerns a maths professor who thinks that fractions can and should be abandoned (along with long division and some other topics) in early maths learning. They might be re-introduced after calculus, he believes.

I have argued that learning basic arithmetic consists of a series of obligatory threshold concepts, but I stopped at division. Fractions usually come next in the traditional school curriculum, and they too are regarded as a threshold concept; this mathematician obviously thinks they are not. Discuss.

A major threshold concept

2008-01-30T16:02:00.000Z

Over coffee this morning, Peter, Juliet and I were discussing last night's TV; so of course we talked about Horizon on gravity. Peter pointed out that "spacetime" (clearly all one word and sometimes referred to as "the spacetime"), is clearly a threshold concept—and troublesome knowledge—for understanding post-Newtonian physics.

How did the programme do in getting over this critical idea? Do respond!

You can watch the whole programme again for the next six days, or download it and keep it for a month, from the link.

Schadenfreude

2008-01-27T19:04:00.000Z

Or "hoist with one's own petard"? Dear Chris Woodhead's department at the U of Buckingham has been inspected by Ofsted (hardly worth the effort, with three students...) and got a grade 3!

"Schadenfreude"

(The opposite is "Erfolgstraurigkeit"!)

The Periodic Table as a threshold concept

2008-01-27T15:59:00.000Z

Having had a discussion last week about the periodic table as a threshold concept in chemistry--which I am sure it must be... Well, that's a lame excuse for publishing this link to an animated version of Tom Lehrer's marvellous setting of "The Elements" (which I will also note on one of my least-visited pages). You will need your speakers on.