It ain't Rocket Science!

Ah, well, this week's title may be misleading as this concept can actually be used in Rocket Science.  More specifically in the teaching of Rocket Science.

PICTURE BY PABLO GUERRERO AT UNSPLASH

The concept is "Constructive Alignment" or, in the words of a TV Ad "It does what it says on the tin".

The recipe is quite simple:

• Take an Intended Learning Outcome (ILO)
• Announce the ILO to students before any learning activity starts
• Design an interesting assessment that tests whether students have achieved the ILO
• Create opportunities for students to explore the issues surrounding the assessment
• Administer the assessment
• Benchmark against agreed and communicated criteria (i.e. mark)
• Provide feedback on the students' performance against the agreed criteria
• Reward yourself with a glass of scotch in the warm glow of satisfaction that your students have developed useful lifelong skills.

So, how do folks get it wrong so often?

• The ILO is written and communicated via the module specification linked to the VLE that students rarely enter.
• The exam is written (more likely cut and pasted from previous exams in the subject)
• The essay questions, so skillfully crafted, test rote learning, memory, and handwriting
• The lectures take place where the knowledge of the Professor almost gets transmitted to the students
• The students revise (which assumes that they have "vised" in the first place) and "sit" the exam
• Marks are awarded on the basis of "I know a first when I see one"
• Feedback is only available after students complain
• The scotch bottle is already empty.

Quod latine sonat bonum (It sounds good in Latin)

Academia is great at coming up with grand-sounding names for quite ordinary things.  It is even better and more mysterious if the word or phrase can be expressed in that wonderful (but dead) language LATIN.

I've recently helped to create a Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP) for Student Engagement.

What?

VCoP - a group of teaching-focused academics from UK and Australia happy to share experiences and collaborate over a video-conferencing system.

UNKNOWN AUTHOR BUT REAL SIGN - JUST WHAT WERE THE PRINTERS THINKING?

Latin Translation for Virtual Community of Practice: Practice of Rectum Community (thanks Google).

P.S: This celebrates the 150th post in this blog.  Unless I hear from my reader to the contrary I'll continue to post..

Share that Jimmy!

Spending a couple of days in Glasgow without seeing or experiencing a Glasgow Kiss (how lovely) is quite a feat - even better if you can spend it in the company of hundreds of like-minded academics willing to learn, share, encourage and elevate the discussion of teaching in Business Schools to the highest level.

 A WEE DRAM, BEST ENJOYED NORTH OF THE BORDER BY ME.

The annual Chartered Association of Business Schools Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Conference (CABS#LTSE) was held in Glasgow this year.  It attracted record attendance.

The conference had its origins in the era of Subject Centres - Business, Management, Accounting, and Finance (BMAF) and, in my opinion, has retained that friendly, sharing atmosphere that BMAF created.

For those who shared - well done.  You have entered into the spirit and ethos of the exercise.

For others, whose ambitions run to higher things such as promotion, publishing in pedagogic journals and even getting teaching recognised as a core activity in their own institution's strategy...  Bad luck, you are bound to be frustrated.

Just have a wee dram.

Exam Season and Fox Hunting

PICTURE BY JASON WOOLF AT UNSPLASH

Oscar Wilde described fox hunting as: “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable!” 

And, there is still a fox hunting season - November to March according to Countryfile Magazine  in the article "15 things you (probably) didn't (want to)* know about fox hunting".

In Higher Education there is an Exam season (almost upon us).  Oscar Wilde might have said:

"The unprepared in pursuit of the unacceptable!"

I wonder just how many of the following 10 things you did not know about exams?**

1. The use of exams to assess students dates back 2000-3000BC and originated in Assyria and ancient Egypt.
2. The first use of exams specifically used to assess English students was in the late 1600s. It developed into its more recognisable modern form during the late 18th century.
3. The exam season traditionally runs from May to June.
4. According to Diane Abbott, in 2004, MPs voted by a majority of 356,531,986 to 1 to ban the use of exams in Higher Education. The law came into effect in 2005. Exams were banned in Scotland in 2002. 
5. Countries that permit the use of exams in Higher Education include the US, Russia, Germany and everywhere else.
6. Traditionally, you could identify students taking an exam by the number of buttons on their cape – 5 buttons for a PhD, 4 buttons for a Master and 3 buttons for an undergraduate.
7. Coursework assessment has replaced exams in some areas. It involves the provision of developmental feedback to students in a timely manner.
8. The Keith Inquiry, set up in 1999 to assess the impact of exams and the consequences of a ban, identified that between 60,000 and 80,000 full-time jobs depend on exams in the UK.
9. Research by Ronald McDonald at Oxford University's Fast Food Research Unit suggests that the average duration of an exam – from when a klaxon is sounded to when students trudge forlornly back to their part-time jobs – is 67 minutes.
10. Exams have been shown to be very good tests of memory, rote learning and speed writing - all aptitudes highly prized by employers (not).

* my italics       
 ** only some of these things are actually true.

Another flipping change to my practice...when will it end?

Well, it won't end soon...

We don't all have to stand on our heads or engineer Flipped Classrooms but we do need to consider the different and changing needs of today's students.

YOUR BLOGGER IN ACTION PICTURE BY PHIL

Actually, I hear you say, today's students are no different to generations who have gone before, we just stress more about them because they have gained a degree of power and influence through such mechanisms as:

• The National Student Survey and its inclusion as a reliable metric in League tables, Subject level "Excellence" awards etc.
• The empowerment of students through Quality Assurance systems (and the knee-jerk reactions of the random VC who "gets down with the kidz" and wants action on every minor moan).
• The promise/threat of technology.  Expectations are high for Millenials.  This is the 21st Century after all...
• The utter contempt in which many Universities hold their staff who are, naturally, exchangeable for recent PhD graduates with no experience or interest in teaching - a position that is not lost on the student body.

NONE of which changes the basic fact that engaged students learn better.  So, standing on your head or jumping through hoops, learning communication methods that students actually use and maintaining a focus on THEM, not YOU should underpin your Continuing Professional Development...

CPD? I hear you say, what on earth is that?
 

Count Dracula, kissing Frogs and force-fed Parrots

According to The brothers' Grimm (1812), there have long existed folklore tales involving kissing a number of frogs, one of which turns into a handsome prince.  The moral of the phrase was also summed up almost a century later:  “We learn from failure, not from success!”  ― Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897).

So, why do we try our best, as academics, to protect learners from failure?

PICTURE BY KEITH IN HIS BACK GARDEN.COM

Let us look at the risk-free, spoon-fed journey that a typical UK student might encounter:

Level	Typical age at first attempt	Number of retakes allowed	Tutor feedback before submission of work
GCSE	16	unlimited	YES
A level	18	unlimited	YES
Undergraduate Degree	21	Two*	NO

*Unless you have genuine mitigation

Typically, there is no time to retake GCSEs endlessly and fewer years to retake A Levels before University admissions tutors begin to ask why a 40-year-old unemployed person is presenting for the first time for admission.  The vast majority of students intending to progress to University do. of course, pass their exams at the first attempt but the knowledge of being able to improve grades and the availability of tutor feedback creates a safety net in the minds of the young.

If Higher Education, for whatever reason, (revenue, retention metrics &c) begins to provide the safety net that secondary schools and colleges do, will we see an end to Learning as we know it?

What we will have is a generation of memorisers and force-fed Parrots.

So, what is needed?

Well, as ever, a balance between the risk of failure and the benefit of learning.  Allow students to fail in formative tasks, to barely pass in summative ones and the gap between their actual and protected performance will become apparent to them.  Ensure that learning outcomes are key drivers for course design and that course delivery and assessment are integrated into the learning process.

Dumbing down and lowering boundaries does nobody any good.

Educational Case Studies: Writing#2

......CONTINUED FROM CASE STUDY WRITING#1

Having decided on your learning outcomes, type of case, level of information given and overall structure - and whether the case is to be used for classroom discussion, an assignment, or an examination.  At different levels of study (undergraduate, Masters, Executive Education) you will have to make a judgement about how accessible the case is to students.

But once you have got all of that sorted out all you need to do is to decide what to write about.

So...write about what you know.

In a Business School faculty members are divided into FOUR types, according to AACSB and as noted in an earlier BLOG entry:

S = SCHOLARLY; I = INSTRUCTIONAL; A = ACADEMIC; P = PRACTITIONER

Practitioners will have a number of war stories, anecdotes, networks of folks still in industry who have stories and issues that can be anonymised (if necessary) to illustrate a case.  Academics will have research projects and collaborations that illustrate real business issues (one would hope).

So, all they need is a spark of imagination, the motivation to engage students and the comfort (for those that need it) that not every waking hour needs to be spent pursuing research to do your job fully.

Get writing!