Cluster Meeting

We have just returned from our latest CAMEL meeting with our three cluster partners - The Universities of Bristol, Exeter and Westminster. The meeting was hosted by the team from Westminster at their New Cavendish Street site, and as usual was held over two days. One of the most important aspects of these meetings is the chance to meet colleagues and to share our experiences of how our projects are going.

The first day consisted of a couple of really informative session on change management followed by a computer simulation exercise which involved guiding a change management through to completion. Needles to say it started to get quite competitive with teams eager to claim victory. The simulation was in many respects quite realistic and mirrored some of the issues that arise in the ESCAPE project.

The evening was spent catching up with the experiences of the other teams and mapping out the coming year. Plans for the joint JISC Curriculum D&D Programme Meeting in October were discussed over a very pleasant evening meal with the other teams.

On the second day we were asked to give a short presentation on the progress we have made - specifically looking at pedagogical tools that we had developed.The University of Bristol team demonstrated their eBiolabs project . They have developed an interactive online laboratory manual that is designed to prepare and support students through their practical work. The resource being developed is an excellent one and builds on previous work done by the chemists at Bristol, who had a similar project.The link to eBiolabs is http://www.bristol.ac.uk/ebiolabs/ and is well worth a look.

We were able to talk about our experiences at Hertfordshire and the kinds of approaches that we have taken. We outlined the progress made and mapped out how we saw the next six months as the new assessment landscape is bedded in.

Due to building work being carried out at Exeter we will be hosting the next CAMEL meeting which is scheduled for around April 2010.

Now the hard work really starts!

At present I am in the process of meeting with the module co-coordinators to flesh out their plans for re-engineering their assessment regime. This picks up from the work done in July in the assessment re-engineering workshops that we ran. This was a chance for the module teams to reflect on their current practice and to start to apply some of the Appreciative Inquiry techniques that we have been looking at. This includes using reflective interviews to tease out what works well on the module and use this as a basis for the review of the assessments.We are also using "Fish bone Analysis" as a tool to get the teams to see what needs to occur for the re-engineering to happen.

Rachel Harris from Inspire Research has worked with the project team over the last year on the AI approach - acting in a consultancy role. Rachel lead a couple of the sessions at our two day event and writes about her experience in her blog http://www.inspire-research.co.uk/blog.html

I have just finished the draft interim report for the project. This is a good chance for us to reflect on the progress made over the last year with the project. It is quite sobering to think that we are halfway through the life of the project - now we are at the really exciting stage where we can really start to influence the assessment practice in the schools.

Mud moving in Africa

A few weeks a go we ran a 2 day workshop for ESCAPE module leaders and some of their team members. It was really useful to consider the modules in details. The module leaders used a fishbone analysis to identify areas for improvement and the actions required. The activities were then transfered to a time line. With the support of the ESCAPE team it will be really exciting to see the changes occurring.


Much of the discussions involved consideration of the use of technologies to improve effectiveness whilst ensuring efficiency. We talked about the use of video with students, using Camtasia and Cam studio, podcasts, an assessment managment/marking tool, WATS, online submission, tablet PCs ... all sorts of options that we are lucky enough to have access to.

I have just returned from visiting friends who are doing voluntary work in Ghana. It was a very humbling trip. I took a tour around a technical college (16-19yr) (Cape Tech- see video) and Cape Coast University. The lack of faciltites shocked me and trying to teach practical subjects e.g. buidling techniques, biology, optometry and physics, with little, if any, equipment must be incredibly difficult.

My friends, Vicky and Steve Ager are teaching at HE and FE, respectively. These are their first teaching roles so it was fun to sit with them and to think about how then can encorporate active learning and collaborative activities within their sessions and how to improvise practical classes with basic and cheap alternatives to the equipment we are accustomed too (e.g. using drinking straws to simulate scaffolding). The basis for our discussions were Chickering and Gamson's (1987) Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. My friends soon started identifying where they could meet the priniples within different activitites.

'Encouraging contact between students and lecturers' and 'Developing reciprocity and cooperation among students' will be achieved when students gain valuable work experience within community projects e.g working in the local eye clinic. The students from the technical college will literally do some mud moving when they help with the construction of a mother's union building.

Visiting Ghana reminded me that we don't always need the latest technologies or equipment to ensure a valuable learning experience. Our intention is always to focus on the learning primarily and then to consider how we can use technologies which are fit for purpose and enhance efficiency. I am incredibly grateful that we live in a country where we have access to the equipment and resources we need.

A picture is worth a thousand words

last week I attended the Greenwich e-Learning conference. It was really good to see so many colleges there from the He and FE sector. It was also a chance to catch up with Malcolm Ryan one of the co - organisers and our projects critical Friend. The Conference is always informative and enjoyable - this year was no exception.

Interestingly there were also presentations from secondary schools - who it seems are really starting to use e-learning in innovative ways. A particularly interesting example was that of a school using reflective blogs with pupils, to capture their developmental journey over a year. Looking at the honesty and sophistication of the some of the later postings the pupils made and comparing them with the initial ones really showed how the students had matured in their use of reflection as a tool in personal development.

The Keynote speaker was Professor Jonathan Drori a former BBC producer. His personal insights into what made a good learning experience really opened the minds of the audience. He spoke passionately about how learning is a personal thing and was able to illustrate some of the many misconceptions people have about what constitutes a good learning experience. It was interesting to hear him relate his experiences of life as a broadcaster and the opportunities he has had to challenge peoples ideas on education. The pictures at the top of the post are from his presentation. It is of an art gallery in York that invited people to write on a wall what the pictures meant to them. The idea of being able to interact in this way - individually but also collaboratively had resonances with what we were trying to achieve.

It was good to be able to take so many of the Cable3.0 team with me to the conference. We have been working very hard for a year on developing virtual groups of students to work across the four FE colleges in Hertfordshire. And it was an excellent opportunity for them to get an idea what others were doing in the sector.

We are now in full preparation mode for the major re-engineering event planned for the 21st and 22nd July. This will involve 8 of the 9 modules we are working with. The first day will be spent reflecting on the current practice and looking at some possible solutions. This is followed by a day of re-engineering, working with the module coordinators to start to put into place the assessment for learning tasks that should add value to the student experience.

As an interesting aside we were able to travel to Greenwich on a mix of travel modes: Car, train , TUBE ,DLR and by boat along the Thames - a truly blended approach to travel !

Railway Journey

Yesterday I attended the "Engaging and Responding to Learners" workshop run by JISC 'in Birmingham. It was an extremely valuable day - both in terms of the workshop content and as a forum to network and engage with colleagues on other projects.

I took the train from Euston. The different types bright shiny new rolling stock that seemed to appear briefly and then whizz past the window provided an interesting distraction during the journey. It struck me that when there was just British Rail operating the railways, there was a one size fits all policy - such that often trains would depart having four, eight or eleven nearly empty carriages.

The situation on the railways has a parallel with education - we are investing heavily in technological solutions for the students educational journeys. There is much more willingness to look at bespoke solutions and to embrace new ways of thinking than stay with the one size fits all delivery mechanisms of the past. The result? - faster smoother journeys for all!

For those interested - on my journey the train was hauled by a EWS Class 90 and I returned to Euston on a Virgin Pendolino

Casting Bread On The Water.................

Yesterday afternoon we went live with the student assessment survey. We emailed all students registered on the nine modules that we are working with, to invite them to fill in the survey. The university exam period only ended last Friday . We were unsure when students would log on again to pick up their university emails after their post exam celebrations and the consequent recuperation period ! When I checked this morning there were 51 responses already! many students have given quite detailed feedback on their assessment experience , filling out the optional parts of the survey with their thoughts and suggestions. Lets hope that this level of response continues.This data is really important - along with the module case studies, it will provide us with the information to ensure the assessment benchmarking exercise is as comprehensive as it can be.

Regarding our two day event - one of our module teams is having difficulty making the dates - 21 and 22 July, so we are looking to have a separate event . This module is the most complex in terms of the delivery and assessment modes and has the largest module team. It is a Bio Science double credit module that encompasses three different areas of science.

It's a Two Day Event

Things are starting to pick up speed with the project. We are planning a two day off site event at the university conference venue - the Fielder Centre. The likely date is towards the end of July - once all the exam boards are out of the way. The aim of the event is to give the nine module teams that we are working with the time and space to critically examine their assessment and feedback practices. And also then to start the reengineering process. We are planing ( at this early stage)the two days to be a mixture of presentations , facilitated workshops and module team meetings. The module teams will be able to call on the resources of BLU and the LTI to examine the particular pedagogical and technological aspects of possible assessment scenarios. In particular we are calling on our experts in curriculum design and change management.

By the end of this week all the module coordinators will have had appreciative enquiry reflective interviews in order to build up case studies of how the module is delivered and assessed . These case studies along with data from the student assessment surveys that we are carrying out, will give us a really clear picture of the issues surrounding each particular module. They will become the jumpimg off point for the reengineering process .