Steering Group - More thoughts

Colleagues at our inaugural Steering Group meeting offered support, encouragement and (quite rightly) probing - I thought I would post some of the observations and thoughts here too.

A few 'things' that resonated with me from the discussions -

1 the NSEE vs. NSS
2 taking my (our) own agenda to the Schools
3 Making due consideration to all items of the plan
4 Ambition – making sure that we are not being overly ambitious.
5 Drawing on projects that have already engaged in similar-ish activity


1. I have flirted with the NSSE / or seen pointers to it (the NSSE) on my USA conference travels and it something that I would like to explore further. Clearly we will have to balance the institutional requirements of 'success' in the NSS and so this will need to stay on our radar too. I would like us to focus on learning and seeing how that aligns with the NSS.
i.e. not wanting to be NSS driven.

2. David Nicol asked what agenda we will be taking to the Schools - i.e. in addition to working with the agendas of the Schools. Great question! I have thought long-and-hard about this after the meeting - I am aware of David' self regulation agenda for instance. Most of my work has been about trying to develop a personalised experience for the students. That is not to trample over the benefits of collaboration, community centeredness or seeing that socialisation is important but I am keen to see students as individuals in the current mass HE system. In some sense this is in part response to one of the 14 grand challenges raised by the National Academy of Engineering. I think Personlised Learning / seing students as individuals will resonate with us here since we can quite rightly draw on David's work, promote the benefits of community centeredness but also remind ourselves that we are dealing with individuals. We are a large University and losing contact with our students (as individuals) will be of concern to many of us here.

3. Our project plan was details in some areas but less so in others - we need to balance our endeavors and show commitment to all aspects of the project and its stages. Lisa Gray raised similar observations when she asked for more specificity.

4. We write in our project plan about transformative and sustained change. I don't wish to retreat from these aims but the Steering encouraged a close look at the size of the 'ambition'.

5. I am aware of the FAST and SENLEF projects and also the Engaging Students with Assessment Feedback project. Actually now I come to write about those and other A&F related projects (SPRINTA etc) that Chris Rust and I were involved with at the University of Essex, its kind of bonkers that there are still so many issues with some of the basics of assessment and feedback practice.
I will make sure that we revisit those projects and use what the others have already found. I will also draw on the experiences and expertise of Malcolm Ryan and the Learner Experience projects. Learner Experience is also part of this project

Hmm. Lots to do - but it was just great to get the input from colleagues. I have every confidence that our project will benefit from the experience and expertise of our Steering Group - Great input - thank you!

Mark

First Meeting of the Steering Group

Last Thursday we had our first meeting of the steering group, we had an excellent turnout. It was good to see Malcolm Ryan again - our critical friend from JISC and fellow VW owner and to meet Prof. Margaret Price - from Oxford Brookes University. In addition Prof. David Nicol from the University of Strathclyde joined us via elluminate along with Prof. Peter Bullen head of BLU at UH.

We used a very large plasma screen to display the elluminate interface and Mark managed to solve some technical hitches prior to the start of the meeting so the sound was excellent.

The steering group were very supportive of what we had achieved so far and were in agreement with our approach as detailed in the draft project plan - which was approved. They were able to offer advice on areas where they felt their experience was relevant. It is good to know that we are backed up in our endeavours by such a depth and breadth of experience. The steering group’s guidance and advice will be invaluable to helping make the project a success.

Some things that I got from the meeting:

• look at the student perspective of assessment & compare with the lecturer view
  
• think about how teaching & learning staff development for new (and existing) staff can support the sustainability of the project
  
• create hard data for analysis
  
• what are the staff and student drivers here
  
• students will always want more feedback - we need to encourage and facilitate self regulated learners
  
• look at the national survey of student engagement
  
• think about the context of the change we are trying to achieve - make sure that senior champions are on side
  
• the challenge of using general principles of good assessment practice - of which there are a number of schools of thought - and turning them into actual an assessment regime for a particular subject module.
  

One of the main themes that I picked up on is how much work is being done in similar areas to our own and how we need to be aware of it. One of the discussions that Mark and I have had is his feeling that we need to have a good idea of what is out there - perhaps by carrying out a survey exercise.