Student as Producer – sue watling

SoTL, WATTLE and action research

Sue Watling / March 13, 2015March 13, 2015 / MATLHE, PhD, Student as Producer, Teacher Education, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Professor Patrick Crookes, Wollongong Academy for Tertiary Teaching and Learning Excellence (WATTLE), spoke at a Colloquium event this week about teaching scholarship i.e. ‘taking teaching seriously’. Conversation on the difference between Scholarly Teaching and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) was useful. For me, they align with being research informed and research engaged. Both are the language of Student as Producer and EDEU’s new MA in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (MATLHE) which goes for validation on 20th March. These are interesting times for scholarly debate.

To be research informed, or engage in scholarly teaching, is to be aware of pedagogical research, theory and literature, to evidence reflection on practice as an individual and in response to feedback, and be involved in the production of knowledge at a local level. The Scholarship of teaching and learning is about being research engaged, actively involved in the production of new pedagogical knowledge which is peer reviewed and publically disseminated. SoTL might not involve teaching and this brings the theory-practice divide to mind.

My research is positioned in the gap between e-learning theory and the reality of e-teaching. Theory might join the dots and suggest conclusions but unless it emerges from practice, it will do little to sustain links between the student and their VLE. It will always be harder to log on and engage than walk into a timetabled lecture or other learning experience. Five Step Models and Conversational Frameworks look hopeful on the page but initiating and sustaining virtual interaction remains a challenge. You could say the SoTL with regard to VLE has been responsible for some of what Feenberg calls the failure of e-learning*.

At the Colloquium we talked about Boyer’s definition of scholarship which referred to teaching and not learning. How we teach and how we learn are the pedagogical yin and yang. They belong together, are two halves of a whole. This is why Action Research is so relevant. It links teaching and learning, involves collaborative inquiry and represents a pedagogy of partnership.

Yet taking an action research approach to a doctorate, means addressing the research community’s concerns it will not be replicable, generalisable, robust or valid. My practice is an integral part of my research. Not only am I becoming a better online teacher. I’m discovering how students prefer to be taught in virtual spaces. The research has already generated guidance, been presented at conference and had its first peer reviewed publication. Action research is a powerful tool, not least because it involves reflective critique, one of the hallmarks of SoTL. But as insider research, it’s status is tarnished.

Different decades see different themes. It used to be widening participation, then enhancing the quality of teaching and learning with technology, and now it’s student engagement. Who knows what the next theme will be. What is clear is the need for more bridges between theory and practice. SoTL could be a useful opportunity to encourage and support research into the real world places where teaching and learning happens.

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Feenburg, A. (2011) Agency and Citizenship in a Technological Society http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/copen5-1.pdf

Think of the wheel; think of Student as Producer at Lincoln #SasP15

Sue Watling / March 7, 2015 / conference, EDEU, Student as Producer

Think of the Wheel. Think of Student as Producer being co-constructed for present and future cohorts at the University of Lincoln. Think of the new Educational Development and Enhancement Unit. If you missed EDEU’s first cross university event on Friday 6th March you can still contribute to the conversation about taking Student as Producer into a new phase – Beyond the University. Just email edeu@lincoln.ac.uk or fill in the form below and get involved. [contact-form to=’swatling@lincoln.ac.uk’ subject=’Student as Producer: Beyond the University ‘][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]

The Wheel contains the key elements of Student as Producer. It has four quarters; Collaboration, Discovery, Engagement, Production, and eight directions; Assessment, Citizenship, Employability, Resources, Pedagogy/Curriculum, Skills, Space, Technology. The Plenary Session of the event involved working in table teams to explore linkages between these component parts. Padlet was used to collate comments which were projected on screens for dissemination and further discussion. The future doesn’t exist in a vacuum but is always a product of past and present. Events like Student as Producer: Beyond the University are opportunities to explore where we’ve been and where we are going.

Student as Producer will always be about student engagement in their higher education experience and the merging of teaching and research. It will always have multiple layers of interpretation ranging from active involvement in learning like giving presentations, taking part in peer review or providing support for learning through schemes like PASS (Peer Assisted Study Scheme). It’s about developing students as partners in the university, not only in real-world research activities, exemplified through UROS but also as Recruiters, Reviewers and Students Consulting on Teaching (SCOTs). Student as Producer has the flexibility to work across subject disciplines and be applied to individual, teaching team or school interests but fundamentally it’s a single message – come to Lincoln for opportunities to get more than a degree. The range of potential transferable skills available is huge and not restricted to student life on-campus but also beyond in the wider community. As with all University of Lincoln initiatives, the future of Student as Producer is is being co-constructed. Everyone has an opportunity to be heard and this week’s event was part of the conversation.

Points of Power…Student as Producer Conference Day Two

Sue Watling / June 28, 2013January 18, 2014 / Teacher Education, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Conferences highlight the value of shared time and place. Mike Neary opened Day Two of the Student as Producer Conference. Disrupting traditional keynote presentation style, sitting behind a table with a hand written notebook, Mike talked about the layers of Student as Producer. It’s been three years. In that time, the eloquence of Student as Producer has become refined. There is strength in layers and Student as Producer has multiple levels of engagement. It’s also startlingly simple. Involve students in their education. Invite academics to rethink their teaching. Discover how the relationship between teaching and research can be made less dysfunctional.

The thinking needs to be critical. Critical as political, as well as personal. Political thinking takes time. I’m not sure I’m political enough. Engaging with change isn’t easy. Not because changing practice is difficult – it’s the other, often invisible, requirements. Time. Motivation. Confidence. Change is resource heavy. We resist less through dissensus over new practice principles, but the weight of workloads, bureaucracy, administration. We rarely live in isolation and our others might not acknowledge the social and institutional crisis or ways to protect, defend and reinvent the idea of the university as a radical political project.

I’m a pragmatist. I want to make a difference – who wouldn’t – but I’ve stopped trying to change the world. These days I focus on my little part of it, using education to raise awareness of digital divides and social necessity for digitally inclusive practice. I’m not a revolutionary Marxist, but the social impact of the internet drives me to challenge digital discrimination as a road to social justice.

Digital scholarship is a strand of Student as Producer. The University is developing a Digital Education Strategy. Mike talked about the Reinvention Centre at Warwick; its absence of chairs and tables designed to destabilize expectations of an educational environment. There was no power point. Mike says the teacher is the point of power. Today, an internet connection is the point of power. Re-imagining scholarship for 21st century also requires attention to the digital aspects of education, in particular the parameters of access, exclusion and use. Maybe we’re not talking about this aspect of Student as Producer as much as we could.

Student as Producer and OER: enhancing learning through digital scholarship

Sue Watling / June 27, 2013January 18, 2014 / conference, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

With hindsight I should have done a workshop. There were more questions than time to ask them. I halved the session; planning 15 minutes to raise issues and 15 minutes to talk about them. On reflection I should have done a pecha-kucha; a mini presentations of 20 PowerPoint Slides with 20 seconds each to talk about them (6.40 minutes in total). A PK would probably work with Prezi. Once, back in 2009, I saw Prezi used well – but never since. Prezi is a classic example of the technology leading practice. It has potential but too often the effect is sea sickness – not what you want to be remembered for.

My presentation suggested Boyer’s strands of scholarship; Discovery, Application, Teaching and Integration now required a layer of digital literacies – only then can we talk about digital scholarship – one of the strands of Student as Producer. I showed how Embedding OER Practice http://oer.lincoln.ac.uk had created the time and space to talk digital, share digital practice, create enthusiasm for creative commons, for the reuse and repurposing of content, and now the project is over, how I’m trying to preserve some of the energy and enthusiasm for digital ways of working with TELEDA – the new Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age short course 30 M Level CATS – delivered and assessed entirely online.

Maybe my ending should have been my beginning (apologies TS Eliot); the challenge of student use of technology, in particular social media and mobile devices in seminars and lectures. I always try to fit too much in – but there is too much to talk about.

#SasPConf – Student as Producer Conference – 26-27 June 2013

Sue Watling / June 27, 2013January 18, 2014 / conference

Student as Producer from University of Lincoln on Vimeo.

It’s been three years since the start of Student as Producer; now the organizing principle of the University of Lincoln. The Student as Producer Conference (26/27 June 2013) marks the end of the funded phase of Student as Producer. Opening the conference, Mike Neary, Dean of Teaching and Learning, described the layers of Student as Producer philosophy and practice.

The classroom layer where Student as Producer has influenced the curriculum and its delivery, changing the ways new knowledge is created.

The institution layer where Student as Producer challenges and critiques the purposes of the institution in order to develop and progress an alternative vision of what a university should be.

The broader layer where Student as Producer is a political movement, protecting and defending the university as for the public good; Student as Producer is an act of resistance to students as consumers and the pedagogy of debt.

As Day Two of the conference begins it can be followed on Twitter #saspconf or via the live conference blog http://saspconf13.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/live-blog/

Using Technology to Enhance Learning Day 2

Sue Watling / November 19, 2011November 19, 2011 / conference, digital literacies, social impact of the Internet, Teacher Education

Keynote Two, with Jane Hughes from Wolverhampton University, addressed the role of technology in teacher education programmes, suggesting there is not enough support for acquiring the digital literacies essential for learning in a digital age. In an echo from the first keynote, Jane reiterated the requirement for educating citizens of the future. We need to be equipping students for living and working in a digital society.

Inevitably this vision of adopting brave new digital worlds is countered by the risks involved in making changes in the current ‘risk-averse’ climate. Also raised was the lack of time and institutional support for moving to new digital ways of working. It’s something of a conundrum because on the one hand there are the advantages of digital engagement but on the other there is the short supply of ‘technologists of the learning kind’ and an even shorter supply of funding for development. Teacher education programmes may need to incorporate digital learning but teaching staff also need an informed basis for adopting new digital ways of working.

The challenge of Web 2.0 tools can be a steep learning curve. Not only do you need to learn through personal application which takes time, it also requires the paradigm shift from students as consumers to students as creators and collaborators in their own learning experiences. It was interesting to hear several references to ‘Student as Producer’ t the conference where the phrase was being aligned with those digital ways of learning which support student participation in the learning process.

The phrase Blended Learning Advisor was popular as were calls for an approach which begins with existing practices; looking at how technology can enhance through the language of ‘as well as’ rather than ‘instead of’. A clear message was for staff educators who are the users of technology to take the lead, rather than the tied and dyed technologists who may not have the necessary pedagogical frameworks. There were lots of examples of technology being raised and praised but not always in a scholarly way. This is where teacher education programmes can make a real difference and again ‘Student as Producer’ comes to mind with its ‘Digital Scholarship’ strand.

Overall was the recognised need for an infrastructure which supports the training and developing of digital literacies. These would include the confidence and competence with using and applying a range of Web 2.0 tools and selecting them appropriately to support digital modes of inquiry, collaboration and authorship. I liked Jane Hughes analogy of a jigsaw approach to learning because this I how using Web 2.0 tools can appear. A workshop led by Sue Buckingham and David Walker looked at social media for developing a professional learning network. It demonstrated the value of digital ways of working alongside the fear this can evoke in the uninitiated. The sheer number and variety of tools can be an insurmountable barrier. I’ve been dabbling for some time but hadn’t come across a Twitter Fountain or Drigo, Quora, Nefsis , VoiceThread or Peerwise. It’s this proliferation of content which is paradoxically inviting and threatening at the same time. However, engagement is often initiated in unexpected ways. It was in this workshop I heard the best advice. Some one said they didn’t want to use Twitter to talk about breakfast but having gained some funding, and something to talk about, they were experiencing the value of the networking tweeting can offer. It’s this experiential approach which can be the most useful key to unlocking some of the cognitive barriers.

Social media can be like finding a tree in a forest. Where do you begin? There are so many possibilities. As a result, digital divides on campus are inevitably widening. There is a real need for more bridges and teacher education programmes, where the lines between staff and students become blurred – as the collaborative and creative possibilities of social media already blur distinctions between teacher and learner – may be one of the more appropriate places to start building.

Festival of Learning 31 March 2011

Sue Watling / April 1, 2011 / Uncategorized

Student as Producer Festival of Learning took place on 31 March 2011. A mixture of student led events took place across all Faculties with a closing Keynote by Dr Monica McLean. In the Science Building, I met students Sam, Kirby, Francesca, Kathryn and Emma, was fingerprinted, had my cells stained with Methylene Blue dye, visited the Blood-Spatter room and Lancelot the skeleton.

Up Steep Hill at Chad Varah, with my colleague Andy Hagyard, we met students on the Conservation and Restoration course including Robin, Georgina, Josh, Caitlin, Jess and Benedict who between them were working on a fascinating mixture of objects including an 18th century military helmet, a fragile early 19th century Japanese doll, an early paper map of Saffron Walden, a lacquer and mother of pearl cupboard door and a 1930’s King from a nativity scene at All Saints Church on Monks Road in Lincoln. I also encountered a fully restored 18th century statue of St Dunstan from Goldsmiths Hall London and saw how a wall sized covering from the Beaumont Chapel Hotel in Windsor was being conserved an repainted and mustn’t forget the nearly completed Victorian model boat which will be on display at the student exhibition on 21st May.

Finally, Andy and I called into Thomas Parker House where we met Emily, Mike, Jack and Sam, Creative Advertising Students, and sat in on a Sonic Sound Spaces session with students from Graphic Design. Thanks to Chris Robinson at Chad Varah and to Gyles Linguard and Tim Fabian at Thomas Parker House for making us feel so welcome and taking the time to introduce the students with all their brilliantly creative work and ideas.

To see all the photos from Conservation and Restoration at ChadVarah, Creative Advertising and Graphic Design at Thomas Parker House and Forensic Science and Bio-Medical Science in the Science Building visit the Student as Producer website http://studentasproducer.lincoln.ac.uk/events/

Student Rep Conference meets Student as Producer

Sue Watling / March 3, 2011March 3, 2011 / Blackboard, conference

The Student Rep’s Conference (2nd March) provided space for students and staff to talk to each other. I hope there’ll be lots of dissemination in online/offline student/staff publications because it was worth it. It’s not that students and staff don’t talk to each other – they do – in lots of different ways – but this event raised the quality of those conversations.

In the afternoon students talked about Student as Producer; the Lincoln led, cross-institutional, project which looks to redesign the curriculum along the lines of research engaged teaching. It’s like UROS has become infectious and spread across the university. Under Student as Producer, the opportunity to apply for a bursary to undertake a UROS project has been reintroduced (closing date 11 March see http://studentasproducer.lincoln.ac.uk/funding for details) but the real value lies in plans for restructuring teaching and learning. This is less radical than the language used to describe it. Teaching informed by and engaged with research is not new. The only difference is Student as Producer raises its profile and emphasises research as the primary organising principle of practice.

I’m reminded of a parallel movement across the sector a decade ago; the push for embedding virtual learning environments. It reminds me because Student as Producer can appear on first encounter as something new and radical, almost verging on unsafe because of the revolutionary language it inspires. But looking back over the history of technology in education, you see a similar mixture of adoption of new ways of working. Before Dearing, people were already engaging with digital environments, in the way that teaching already engages with research. What’s needed is time. Adoption of innovation is often less about changing practice and more a shift in emphasis on what people are already doing.

Using Roger’s model of diffusions of innovation, Student As Producer is currently with the innovators and early adopters. As it spreads out across the university via events like the Student Reps Conference, and the Festival of Learning planned for the end of March (details here http://studentasproducer.lincoln.ac.uk/events) it will pick up more interest from whose practice already aligns with its organising principles. It’s ‘stickiness’ will increase until the tipping point is reached. You can see this with technology enhanced learning. At Lincoln, the push towards adopting the institutional VLE has finally got there. Recent surveys conducted by the Student Union and CERD suggest a high level of embedding of Blackboard into daily practice. This has taken time but the shift has happened. Student as Producer is in its early days but given time it will become as ubiquitous as Blackboard has done alongside all its potential opportunities for enhancing the experience of teaching and learning across the whole institution.