New year, new cohort, big Chinese contingent

My beloved MKT3017 module has grown this year. I have gone from around 60 students of mixed nationality to around 120, approximately 80 of whom are Chinese. The remainder are international

http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/internationalisation/ISL_Lecturing

Learning from Mrs Sharma

Freya my 7 year old daughter has had a supply teacher (Mrs Sharma) for the last two weeks as her regular teacher is in hospital. They don't like Mrs Sharma. She is strict and 'shouty'.

On Wednesday Freya came home and was very excited to tell me about some praise she had received for a design she had done on the computer. She doesn't normally speak much about her work without prompting... but this time it was special - the praise had come from Mrs Sharma... and "she is REALLY hard to impress".

Today she had a sticker for a poem she had written. Mrs Sharma had given it to her. "And she is REALLY hard to impress, you know!!!"

Praise from Mrs Sharma, it seems is worth a lot more than praise from her usual teacher, because it is so hard won... the kids are not stupid.

So where does this leave the feedback loop? Is it advantageous to let students think you are 'hard to impress'? Does it make them try harder... or will it make some of them give up. I'm going to see if I can find anything about it in the texts.

Making the grade

I seem to have been grading solidly for about a month now so I guess it's about time I reflected upon the process. First observation is that since I haven't been blogging it's a clear indication that it's nothing I'm very excited about. Hard to get excited about the grades...but it's also a culmination of the work of the academic year so it's like an indictment or validation of the teaching.

Group research project

I was reasonably happy with this grading, but rather disappointed with the research produced. There is no one piece of work that I felt happy to send to the client. There is a candidate but I'd want some amendments.

The main frustration with the grading itself was around the groups that did not work well together, where I knew very well that some members had been passengers. There was a personal reflection element which I gave a value of 20% - this tended to make a half grade variance across the group.

I know there's a problem with students not picking up feedback at this time of year so I've offered to email the feedback sheets to them upon request - in addition to being available to collect hard copy. Let's see how many ask for it.

MKT1001 Exams

What a revelation. I helped to grade Grant's exam papers - did 50 and moderated another pile. By doing this I realised what an effective form of assessment this is. Grant did some helpful guidelines about what idea answers should include. Once I had marked a few it became really easy to sort the students who knew what they were talking about from the wafflers and inventors. No plagiarism or random internet sourced nonsense to worry about. It was also very time effective - 50 scripts in about 3 hours, and no expectation of individual feedback from the students. I can see why it's used on the big modules. Not a great learning experience for the students though I suppose. All for the convenience of the assessors.

Dissertations

Am less confident about the grading of these. The first one I looked at had some really complex data analysis which I didn't understand. It seemed really good. The student had been supervised by Kathy who is very experienced - it made me feel inferior as a dissertation supervisor. Most of my students ran out of supervision before they got to the data analysis stage anyway but even if they had, I wouldn't have been telling them to do T-tests or rotational analysis.

I feel quite responsible for the quality of the work my students did. Then I did a couple that were not so good - felt relieved!

Once I had second marked all of Kathy's, I marked the one of mine that I expected to be worst. This student had barely engaged and early drafts had been very poor - full of religious doctrine and personal opinion. I was pleasantly surprised - it still had major flaws but I think it's a pass. Also I noted that she had used sources and terminology that made it sound like she knew what she was talking about. Realised it's not all up to me.

Now I see my reflection...

...is a bit rubbish!

1. I have just marked 90 level 5 portfolios which included weekly reflection and an final 500 word reflection. I noticed that frequently they were unstructured, uncritical and ... unreflective. Often didn't deal with thoughts or feelings, usually no actions arising.
2. We had a PGCTHE session yesterday and Rachel Fitzgerald was talking about becoming a reflective practitioner.

The net result is that I realise this blog has moments of reflection, but most of the time is like a journal. I can see that it has value - some times I am introspective. It has the benefit, now that I've been doing it over 6 months, of giving me something of a longitudinal view which I would not have had if I had not started it. However, it falls short it terms of a true reflective blog.

I notice that I tend to blog about things that go well, or interest me. In the last few months I have had fewer 'critical incidents'. This in itself concerns me - as my confidence increases, I must not grow complacent. I will make an effort to seek out and document difficulties as well as successes.

I also make no reference to educational theory... because I don't know it. This needs to change. I have devised a reading schedule.

So am I going to change my blog? Well... I have decided that the main (only) beneficiary of this blog is me. I will not do it unless I enjoy it. But to extract maximum value I need to be a reflective practitioner.... so in summary... yes but only a little bit.

Students in their PJs and other delights...

Today Sally and I started grading a new item of assessment for MKT2020. This piece is described as a10 minute 'electronic presentation' of the student - something akin to an elevator pitch which we have worked on a lot in this module. We encouraged the students to use a range of media - prezis, video, websites etc.

We had a bit of a Goldilocks experience with the first three submissions.

The first one didn't have enough in... a dull and uninspiring prezi with a link at the end which frustratingly lead to a beautiful web portfolio (not part of the submission)

The second one had too much in it - a huge archive of everything the student had ever done, at length! Even the video section included out-takes.

I'd like to say the third one was just right, but it memorably included a video clip which the student had failed to edit. It ended "and I am extremely professional" at which point she pulled a face and said to herself "I have no idea why I said that", and got up to turn the video camera off, revealing that in true Newsreader style, below her smart shirt and jumper she had pyjama bottoms on. Priceless. This will give us material for years to come!

Having viewed this, I got a bit of a crisis of confidence about the piece of assessment - had the technology swallowed up the learning objectives? Sally's experience paid off - too early to judge, we should stick to our guns. Then, to my immense relief, a beautiful piece of work from Aneta. A 3 minute video which served as a fantastic advert for her skills and potential. Buoyed up by this, the marking continues...

L&T Conference....Transnational, International, Global...

Went to the L&T Conference today, which was enjoyable.

So glad I carry crayons

Loads of ideas about working with international students... a brain dump:

• Need to create early opportunities for international students to make friends with British students

• They would really value field trips

• The extent of alienation international students feel is on every level - homesick, language, culture, society, study methods

• Confucian constructs DO have criticism but it's internal - we have external criticism - remember they do not even have freedom of speech!

• I really want to teach MKT3017 next year - I could do a lot more with them and the module now I understand their profile (recommendations already put into module review document)

Other highlights..

Also I spoke to Caroline Stainton about continuing research, found out there is a journal I can get an article into, also she will help me to work on a proposal for an HEA bid to further NILE.

URB@N: Charlotte did her poster presentation. Bit of a shambles as there wasn't enough space, but she seemed to be buzzing and did a good job.

Saw a thinly veiled sales pitch from QuestionMark - online testing software. I may have been a bit harsh. Software looks great, but since we don't have it and it's not free... but he did make a compelling argument for testing as a method of learning. I'd like to do it.

The Panda in the Room

Language differences...