Stretch goal added: integrating movement into online teaching

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June 3, 2020
stuff to check out, Uncategorized
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elastigirl

My trusty Elastigirl mug

Like Elastigirl on one of my The Incredibles mugs (yes, I have more than one, I teach on an Animation course, they were basically a work expense!), I feel like I am ‘Stretched to my Limits!’ at the moment. Global pandemic, quick pivot to teaching online, learning to use a new virtual learning environment (we seem to be now moving to MS Teams), preparing for more online delivery for next academic year (and possibly beyond), on top of normal marking and grade admin… there is a lot going on. And, ironically, at the same time I (and possibly you, too) am just not stretching enough.

This hit home when a colleague of mine posted a time-lapse video of him working through a morning, where he really didn’t move around enough. So I asked myself, what am I doing? And what can I do more to form better habits of working from home? And – maybe most importantly – how can we as lecturers foster good habits in working from home (and working on a computer) for our students?

Flashback to the online session I facilitated the previous week, which I thought would take about 45 minutes, but that ended up taking more like 2 hours. (…what can I say, they kept me talking…) Where I didn’t schedule a break. Where I didn’t really move around, and didn’t encourage the students to either. Of course they might have, most of them didn’t have their camera on, but to be honest, I doubt it. A horrifying scenario, now that I come to think of it!

Weirdly, when I used to work at/from home before, my habits were quite good (I think, at least). I usually don’t work all day at the computer. I usually follow the basics of the Pomodoro technique, working in 25 minute focused chunks with 5 minute breaks in-between and a longer break after 4. During those breaks I move around, getting more water or making a hot drink. When I have a lot of typing to do, I often work on a standing desk, or at least standing up with my laptop on a box on top of my desk. But none of this had transferred to my teaching, probably because I was so stretched that I focused too much on content, rather than stop and think of mode of delivery.

Of course this is a big issue to tackle and I’m making headway little by little (at least I hope so). But it was time to add a little ‘stretch goal’ by finding a way to include breaks, movement and particularly stretches into scheduled teaching (and hoping it rubs off and allows them to build good habits for the future). Luckily, I knew exactly who to call for advice, as my friend Marina is behind SittingDuck.co which is all about ergonomics when working from home. A real-life Mrs Incredible to the rescue!

Once I told Marina about my idea to somehow get stretches into teaching sessions, she made me three backgrounds that I could use as video chat backgrounds (you can add your own in Teams, or at least unless you’re on a Mac as a colleague informs me), but would that be too distracting? Maybe, I thought, it would make more sense to add them as slides into the deck I wanted to cover for my session – one for before the session starts, one for the break, and one for the end of the session?

And that is what I tried out today: Marina made me three slides

  • a sort of ‘holding screen’ welcoming students to the session, telling them when it would
    start, encouraging them to sit or stand comfortably and have a drink nearby, and suggesting a stretch before we started
  • a break slide that suggested another stretch, as well as encouraging students to move
    around and top up their drink
  • a Goodbye slide that suggested another stretch

After building them into my slide presentation, I realised that sharing the screen at the beginning with the whole presentation didn’t really work for me, so I instead shared just the image. (After starting the meeting really early, to make sure no student would be there before me…) Just sharing the image also allowed me to continue working in other windows on my computer.

The break image came in the middle of my presentation, which was well-timed. I turned my camera off and muted my mic, but at least one student left their camera on and at some point did move around. They didn’t do the stretches the slide suggested exactly (or not that I saw, I was at some point also away from the computer moving around and topping up my glass of water), but even if they didn’t, they were moving around, and I hope others were too!

The Goodbye slide, I have to admit, I messed up. After covering the content I needed to get through I came out of the presentation to answer questions and mop up concerns the students might have, and then we just said goodbye to one another, without me remembering that there was another stretch I wanted to suggest.

So, a little try-out today, and I have to say that I am really happy with it. The idea, I think is a great one which I definitely want to keep and get my colleagues to also include into their teaching for next term. I’ve sent a call out to my students to see if any of them would be up for helping to custom-make us some stretch images or even animations (as we borrowed images from the internet for the prototype). The how to integrate this logistically (and logically) into the sessions itself, with swapping from application to application and screenshare to on camera is something I’ll still have to work out.

What do you think, worth developing further?

…and if you want to check out Marina’s work, you can find out more here: sittingduck.co (the tag line is ‘For duck’s sake, don’t forget to stretch’ – how hilarious is that?)

Looking back at the inaugural Academic Afternoon Tea

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May 12, 2019
Workshops
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Last Friday was finally the day – I got to try out the Academic Afternoon Tea format with some brave adventurers (or maybe just afternoon tea lovers). I’m still working through the feedback, but thought I would post some initial thoughts and feedback before too much time passes.

We met at LEAF Manchester, a cafe that I had selected for their excellent afternoon tea and cosy atmosphere. And they did not disappoint, the staff was super lovely and helpful and food and beverages were delicious. (If I am bringing the Academic Afternoon Tea back to this venue I will have more time for people to engage with their wonderful menu of teas, which we didn’t really have time for this time around.) What slightly put a dampener on spirits (quite literally) was that a lot of people got caught in a heavy rain shower on their way in. Luckily I didn’t so the materials I brought remained dry.

Over the next three hours we made our own nametags, reflected on the role and agency of students and how that matches up to the learning activities we put on (or doesn’t) by making a volvelle (or pinwheel), we wrote Calls to Adventure for our students to follow, drew maps of the Unknown world we invite them into, thought about the people and ‘devices’ they meet – and how those might help and hinder them – and turned these into storydice, and ended by writting ourselves and each other messages to seal into a little bottle to take home with us.

And in between we had declicious food and drink and the opportunity to chat to each other, exchange stories and get inspired by other points of view. We were lucky in that we could use a different space to eat than to make because the cafe was not busy – this worked out really well and I would definitely make this a feature next time. Because the one thing we really needed was a bit more table space for the making – another thing to keep in mind for the future.

Another opportunity that came with moving between different spaces was that it encouraged mingling and re-mingling, which gave people the opportunity to meet more people. In a way this made up for us not doing a round of introductions at the beginning (which I avoided because in my experience that can get really out of hand and eat into the scheduled time), however, the people with dietary requirements remained seated together because of where their food was, which is something to consider in future.

I collected feedback via questionnaires and feedback bunting, here some of my favourite comments:

  • make your own name tags – Great for pre-sessional teacher induction
  • In times of trouble… turn to TEA
  • The pin-wheel was an eye opener. I’ve always thought of activty first – putting students first, not activity is really obvious!! But we don’t think like that!
  • Map as a reflective journal – great for students
  • Turn a problem into a challenge
  • feedback bunting – So much better than post-its
  • These activities would be excellent in PGCert Teacher Training!
  • Excellent ideas to take back to work & change teaching practice
  • I really enjoyed the process of doing short bursts of activity interspersed with getting to know other people + eating 🙂
  • As challenging as I anticipated. So much to learn. So much learning taking place. Well done!
  • Relaxed + friendly space to develop and remember our creativity
  • Freedom to opt in + that there was no ‘right’ way
  • Fascinated at the possibilities for how the hero’s journey can map on to the student experience & how this might change dependent on level & moduel etc. Would like to now see how my students might interpret this…
  • Lots of great ideas that I look forward to adpating and using. Thanks
  • Thank you so much for this! I had a beautiful time and feel inspired!
  • I was active & interactive, not passive!!
  • I usually hate this kind of thing but I actually really enjoyed it. So thank you
  • This has been delicious and fun and interesting! I am leaving inspired amd with tangible plans and ideas. Thank you

But I think my absolutely favourite comment was the questionnaire answer to the question of what was their favourite bit that stated “adjusting my thinking about ‘experience’ and ‘student experience’ away from facilities & buildings!” In a way this is exactly what the afternoon was meant to be about, thinking about how to put the students at the heart of their own individual journeys, to reflect on how challenging and transformative that can be – and trying to find ways to facilitate that through experience design, rather than fitting it into an existing context that might not (or only partly) be fit for purpose.

So all in all a successful try-out of the format! I will get on planning some more for the future – is there a particular topic you would want to explore in an event like this? Let me know as a comment!

What ‘lubricates’ your teaching?

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April 29, 2019
Alternative Presentations, Experience Design, Workshops
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With less than 2 weeks to go until the inaugural Academic Afternoon Tea, I thought I would share the preparatory (but also completely optional) task I set the people who have signed up, maybe one of you out there who won’t be able to join us would like to join in with this?

(One of the principles of Experience Design as taught by the College of Extraordinary Experiences is Co-Creation, the idea that ‘the group’ contributes to a shared knowledge base and design. This is, of course, also something that has become more and more important in Learning and Teaching, the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, for example, as well as inviting the Student Voice into the classroom by making students co-creators.)

As we are meeting for afternoon tea, I have asked participants to think about what aspects ‘lubricate’ our teaching and learning?

In the best regenring tradition, let us try and explain and share these concepts as ‘tasting notes’ of tea blends – the brief descriptions of what a tea tastes like, what its properties are and even how to prepare it.

This probably makes more sense when looking at some examples, so here are two that I came up with:

Whimsicalitea

An often unexpected taste, this is best served in small portions (especially at the beginning, after which it might develop into an acquired taste by the drinkers and could therefore be used more frequently and in larger doses). Very useful to introduce a sense of wonder and playfulness into sessions, it can open up the imagination and the exploring of opportunities.

Insanitea

A strong blend that is related in taste profile to Whimsicalitea, but much more intense. As this is almost hallucination inducing it is imperative to use this in only small doses. However, it is sometimes needed to get people’s thinking off the beaten track.

As you can see, the link to ‘tea’ works quite well if you get hold of a term that in conventional spelling ends in -ty, but you could equally make up a more fancy name for your tea blends, maybe inspired by blends that are out there. Really, I think the most important thing is to reflect on some aspects of teaching and learning that make it special – and have a bit of fun with this.

AAC tea menu photo

The ‘menu’ I made for the Academic Afternoon Tea – including some of the submitted tea tasting notes

Here are some that were suggested by participants:

Jovialitea

A fresh taste of cheerfulness that tempts the taste buds and lifts the spirits. (Kath Houston)

Acceptabilitea

An essential, everyday brew that shows willingness to work inclusively and to recognise worth in all students. Best served with an open mind, a kind eye, and a pinch of salt! (Christy Anna Evans)

Joie-de-vivre-tea

A lively brew, made with an attitude that combines passion for your subject, love of your work and a joyous approach to life! (Christy Anna Evans)

Creativitea

Our blending muses know that whilst mood and motivation change throughout the day, a bold wake up cuppa can put the first bounce into the creative leaps and bounds we make later in the day. Whatever blend of creativitea you choose, the taste can be adjusted to creative state with the addition of milk and/or sugar. In need of a creative hit first thing, then go easy on the milk but sprinkle that sugar liberally. Feel your creative juices flow as you drink a cup of liquid toast and honey. Feel sweet enough already? Then forgo the sugar and milk and enjoy an unadulterated cup of warming inspiration. Creativitea: the best start to your day. (Sandie Donnelly)

Pragmatisane

For those moments when it just isn’t happening for you, turn to pragmatisane. Step away from the computer, let the battle go, and fill your cup with zesty lemon, sharp enough to zap any lethargy, blended with warming spicy ginger to comfort and ease any emerging anxiety. Find a chair with a view, put your feet up and sip on pragmatisane. As the ginger relaxes you, the sharp lemon cuts a path through any blockages. You’ll be rested and refreshed in no time. Pragmatisane, because paralysing creative blocks aren’t worth it … (Sandie Donnelly) 

My aim is to collect a whole menu full of teaching inspired ‘teas’ and to share this at the Academic Afternoon Tea (and also here on the blog).

If this sounds like fun, please add your own as a comment!

The One Day Board Game Workshop

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March 17, 2019
Alternative Presentations, Workshops
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I had so much fun creating the game that I couldn’t put down the marker eventually politely took it off me 🙂 The facilitation of the workshop was excellent. Thank you & and all others for this inspiring day! ()

After our workshop on making a Sociological Research Board Game had been so well received at last year’s Undisciplining conference, The Sociological Review asked Katy and myself to do another one – but this time we had the luxury of a full day!

detail from the handout

The venue was another art gallery, this time The Lowry at Salford Quays, and based on feedback from the conference at The Baltic, we had also set some time aside to go on a short tour of the permanent exhibition about Lowry himself during the lunch break.

The bag of board games I brought in

As we had so much more time (the first workshop was 90 minutes long, now we had almost seven hours to play with), we decided to start the day by getting our participants to play some board games. The Games and Visual Effects department at Staffordshire University that I work in has a board game library, so I had easy access to a whole (quite overwhelming) array of different games, of which I selected four more or less at random. Plus I brought in one of my own, the Boardgame Blueprint, as I wanted to then use that as an example when talking about the game design later on.

Boardgame Blueprint

After playing for about 45 minutes, we had a chat about all the games in turn, with the people who had played the individual games (or were familiar with them) describing the game play a little. We were particularly interested in the way the path was organised, the game mechanics used, and the way the visuals of the game represented (or not) the content of the game. (Pirate’s Cove turned out to be a really interesting example as it was so complicated that everybody basically gave up attempting to play it within the first 10 minutes. Although it is visually stunning, there are so many different aspects that players need to prepare and take into consideration that trying to learn it just for a practice play was not worth the time. A great example of how it is possible to overcomplicate a game – a pitfall we didn’t want to fall into with our prototypes!)

The selection of board games we actually did play worked really well, because we ended up with ones ranging from a very strict path (Boardgame Blueprint – see some of the game action here), one with some options (The Game of Life), one where you are quite flexible (The Master Detective Game) and one where the object of the game is to ‘construct’ the path while playing (Tsuro). A number of basic game mechanics were in play, particularly different ways of triggering chance events (dice, spinner, game cards). There was also an interesting range of how the content was visually represented: The Game of Life, for example, uses visuals of an affluent Western Society and three-dimensional elements that seem a bit gimmicky. The Master Detective Game seems located in Victorian London, but presents a bright watercolour version of this and doesn’t include any grime or shady areas that one could associate with Sherlock Holmes. Tsuro is quite abstract but with an Eastern twist. And the Boardgame Blueprint’s large visual is of an iceberg, which seems not really connected with the subject of researching and writing an essay, although the little images on the individual steps feature related pictures.

We then had about an hour before lunch, and I had thought we would be able to go through the different steps at a fairly fast pace. But this is not how it happened… and I’m not sure why, maybe because we had more time people didn’t want to be rushed? Thinking on our feet, we decided to turn the initial idea of going through the steps – to turn the diagram into a flowchart, consider game mechanics and finally design a visual – together, into me walking participants through this and then letting them work at their own pace. As they had a hand-out that detailed all the steps this wasn’t a problem, and allowed people to be more flexible. And it allowed Katy and myself to spend more time chatting to people and helping in case anybody felt they got stuck.

Participants also were flexible in how long they wanted to take for lunch, so that the lunch break organically flowed over to the afternoon when we had scheduled independent development work on the games. The last half an hour or so a number of people shared what they had been working on – and just like after our first workshop. we were really impressed by how many fascinating game prototypes were created!

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Unfortunately we (again) didn’t really have time to do any playtesting. Maybe this is always unrealistic on the same day – so let’s keep this in our backpocket for a week long workshop 😉

Thank you and for facilitating and and for organising such a brilliant day. Will definitely be using what I learnt in the future. ()

 

So after this I think…

…starting with playing games is a great idea, because it not only gets people in a playful mood, but also because we then can talk about the different aspects of them (i.e. how is the path organised, what game mechanics are used, what is the visual impact – and is this connected to the content of the game). If there is not time enough to play, maybe it would be useful to talk about some at the beginning, or while going through the three steps? Playing (or thinking about) games could also be set as preparatory ‘homework’.

…as Jon suggested it would be great to have elastic bands to hand so that participants can take home their prototypes more easily after the session. (Actually I already bought an assortment of elastic bands based on this feedback and now just must remember to pack them for the next workshop!)

…the empty playing cards were a great addition to the resource table, particularly for the people who came with the idea of a card game in mind.

…I wonder whether the paper we are currently using is too big. Even when compared to board games that are commercially available the prototype we are producing is on the large side – however, this allows for us to capture small details (easy to do on a small scale if you have a computer for the writing, not so easy if you are working with markers – and I like encouraging people to use markers, because you have to commit to what you are drawing) – and it makes them easier to share in the session.

…it may be too ambitious to try to include play testing in a workshop, especially if people are working on their own individual games – I mean how would you choose which ones get tested and which don’t? (maybe we need to organise a workshop reunion to play test?) However, if working on collaborative games playtesting would be a useful addition.

If you have been to one of these workshops, let me know what you think via a comment!

Invitation to an Academic Afternoon Tea

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February 15, 2019
Alternative Presentations, stuff to check out, Workshops
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Looking back at conferences I have attended, I seem to remember little about the large themes, but so much about the people I actually got chatting to – sometimes in the scheduled tea/coffee breaks, sometimes over lunch, sometimes at the conference dinner and sometimes while deciding to miss part of the scheduled programme (and yes I admit to feeling slightly naughty for ‘skiving off’). These conversations (some of them struck up because of me seeing the other person give an inspirational paper, some through the simple coincidence of sitting next to each other) have led to me making changes to my practice, but also long-term collaborations.

Having the time to talk to each other is so valuable, but in today’s Education context this seems to become a more and more precious resource. Whenever I get to plan a conference or workshop, I have always tried to build in some extra time to just chat – whether that is a long lunch or (as in the case of the 2017 ReGenring conference) even an afternoon sharing session without formal programming. Sometimes this leaves attendees a bit surprised – there’s nothing planned? they say. Actually, there is something planned, the plan is to give YOU the opportunity to start to react to the all the content we’ve already thrown at you, to start digesting, and this works best if we can allocate some time for that.

I was absolutely delighted to be at a residential conference/course last September, where a whole day was declared a ‘Day of Conversation’ with the brief for us to go out and finish the conversations we had started with other attendees and start the conversations we hadn’t had yet, but really wanted to have. Partly this became an Unconference – people forming little groups around subjects, and partly this was tiny groups of two or possibly three people sitting together talking to each other – and if any of the others were like the conversations I had, they were scheming and laughing – making lifelong friends with people you had only met three days before and laying the ground work for future collaborations.

So it might not be a surprise that my upcoming workshop is experimenting with a different format – I wanted a framing that would let people chat and give them time to exchange ideas and practice. But I also wanted a little bit of structure. And delicious food. In fact, I wanted an environment that was different to the corporate teaching rooms at a university, changing expectations…

Academic-Afternoon-Tea-Blackboard-for-web

And so, the Academic Afternoon Tea was born.

Loosely structured by the three traditional courses of savouries, scones and sweets, this will give us the opportunity to explore subjects, share practice and network. The first one is open for booking now – join us at LEAF in Manchester, UK on 10th May 2019 to explore ways that principles of experience design can help thinking differently about students and our own roles! There will be tea, food, some guided creative activities (we might even start with the ever popular making of our own name tags) and – most importantly – lots of time to chat.

To get your ticket, check out the EventBrite page here.

Hope to see you there!

Board Game Workshops in Practice

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November 19, 2018
Workshops
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A guest post by Helen Tracey

How I applied my experience from The Sociological Review, ‘Undisciplining’ Conference Board Game workshop to my teaching practice

As soon as I saw the workshop, “Make Your Own Sociological Research Game” featured in the pre-conference materials, I immediately signed up. All of the conference workshops were innovative but this one in particular stood out to me. Aside from it being something different, it’s difficult for me to pinpoint why the workshop attracted me so much, as I didn’t really enjoy playing board games as a child. However, as an academic working in a Business School, the opportunity to do something so creative is rare. I also enjoy playing board games much more with my own children than I ever did myself at their age; Carcassonne, Labyrinth and Cluedo being my top favourites.
Before attending the workshop, some people I spoke to about it were actually quite skeptical about how useful it would be. However, attendance was well oversubscribed and therefore I felt lucky to get a place; they were even turning away people at the door! I certainly found it very useful to map out my research method as a process. At the time I had almost completed my data collection, but I could see that it would be good to undertake this activity at the start of a research project, particularly to determine any potential pitfalls. It was also interesting to see the other attendees’ board games and how they had designed them around their own research. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to finish (or play) my board game in the workshop, and despite my best intentions it is still not complete!
Not long after the conference I attended a workshop about Transforming Assessment and Learning at the university where I’m employed as a Lecturer (Northumbria). We were split into small groups (preferably aligned to module teams) and asked to consider module assessments against a range of criteria, including whether it was fair but stretching and whether it had real-world relevance. I am Module Tutor for a level 6 (final year undergraduate) module called ‘HR Resourcing and Development’. This module had just been reviewed and the Assessment word count had been increased from 2,000 to 3,000 words. So, something needed to change but I was conscious that I didn’t just want to lengthen the existing Assessment essay. During this workshop I was paired with another tutor from the module. As we are both visual researchers, we quickly decided that the Assessment should have a visual element, and that this would be a way to ask the students to reflect on all the topics covered by the module and thereby encourage engagement. I knew that I wanted to somehow use my learning from the Board Game workshop, but at this stage I wasn’t sure how.
It was only later that several factors led me to incorporate a two hour Board Game workshop into the Teaching and Learning Plan. I had a gap to fill, and I felt that my anticipation of the students’ need for support in producing the Assessment diagram aligned with Northumbria’s new Assessment foci. A key aim of this workshop was that it would provide students with a chance to develop or improve the skills they would need to develop their Assessment diagram. It would also be the opportunity for them to test out these skills as part of a group, and obtain feedback from tutors on what they produced, before they needed to work on their own individual diagram for the Assessment.

Glass Ceiling Prototype Game

The example game I prepared before the first workshop

I must admit I was a little nervous about trying something so new, especially after I mentioned the idea to my husband and his comment was that he thought it would be ‘too gimmicky’ for students. However, this proved to be unfounded as a few colleagues who I tested the idea on thought it be innovative. Also, importantly, the students really engaged in the activity. Despite some of them confessing that they felt themselves to be ‘not creative’, I think they really surprised themselves with their ideas. I have included some photographs (shared with permission of the students) of some of their work in progress, and also details of a finished game and how it is played.
I am hoping to run the workshop again when the module re-runs next September, particularly if it receives good feedback in the module survey. I will, however, need to make a few tweaks to the format. First of all, I will need to have more materials available; students asked for many things I hadn’t anticipated such as scissors and sticky tape. I would also prepare small cards to be incorporated into games (e.g. Monopoly style), as these were very popular with the students – I think because the task required them to incorporate a lot of module topics. I am probably stuck with a timescale of two hours. Really this was too short, and the onus was on students to finish their games outside the workshop to present back. However, next time I will certainly try and merge two sessions into one. Finally, the students were required to base their game on an organisation, and a central HR process (e.g. Recruitment at Ikea). Some students struggled with incorporating an organisation, although those who did accomplished this very well. For example, the group that based their game on Recruitment at Marks and Spencer (see photo) thoroughly researched the organisation in order to develop a series of question cards which they incorporated into the game. On the other hand, the majority of groups picked the same HR process, which was recruitment. In both these cases I feel like with more guidance and examples next time, a wider range of topics can be encouraged which are based on organisations.

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In general the students appeared to enjoy and value the activity – it has certainly been a topic of conversation! And although we didn’t have time for it in the workshop, I have heard back that students enjoyed playing the completed games in their seminar classes.

 

Here the details of two games produced by the students and how they are played:

M&S Recruitment Board Game

Progress around the Ludo style board, collecting coins by answering questions correctly. Land on a ‘Q’ space and you pick up a question card. Land on a ‘C’ space and pick up a chance card. You need to get your counters safe with 7 coins to win. The question cards cover all of the module topics.

Marks and Spencer Game

Marks and Spencer Game

A Year’s Placement at River Island Board Game

River Island Game

River Island Game

Progression around this Monopoly style Board takes you through a placement year at the clothing company River Island. Pick up the cards when instructed to by the squares; these provide you with dilemmas to solve based on the module topics.

 

What’s in a name?

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November 12, 2018
Experience Design
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…audience…co-creators…collaborators…consumers…customers…guests…participants…

How you describe and refer to the people who take part in an experience is an important part within experience design – and it is in education -, because what you consider them, and (even more crucially) what you expect from them, changes both your design and their experience.

Walt Disney’s approach might be the most famous: he insisted to consider visitors to his theme parks as ‘guests’ rather than ‘customers’, and the staff as ‘cast members’ (no doubt based on his experience of the movie industry). Yes, the guests pay to be there, but when they are in the parks, they ideally forget about the price tag and just enjoy the experience. Linked to that is the principle to pay once for entry, but when you are inside, you don’t have to pay for the individual attractions.

Considering students as customers, although they technically are, is problematic because the term (and its roots in business) suggests that they are a relatively passive part of a straight forward interaction, where they exchange money for some sort of good or service. In a way this is what they are doing, but of course they are not buying knowledge, skills or expertise directly, they are buying the access to learning opportunities. The learning they will still need to do themselves.

And it is the design of these learning opportunities that really is at the heart of education, it is designing experiences that students can choose to engage with, but that go beyond the simple notion of the student as customer. Their roles and agency is much more layered than that, and this is what needs to be considered when designing our teaching formats.

While the ‘traditional’ (and some would consider outmoded) model might be the ‘sage-on-the-stage’ lecture, a lecture isn’t the only way to frame a teaching and learning experience. In a lecture format, students are usually seen as making up the ‘audience’. But what does this mean for their role in the proceedings? In the most basic form they are viewers and listeners. Are these considered ‘passive’ participants? Is this what we want as part of this learning experience, or do we want something more? Apart from looking and listening, do we want them to take notes? to ask questions? to talk to each other?

Of course the answer to all these is “it depends”, because the L&T of learning and teaching is not a formula like the G&T you might want to partake in at the end of the day. If you always take this much gin and this much tonic, add some ice and maybe (if you are feeling fancy) a slice of lime, you will always have very similar outcomes. But in education we need to have different ways of challenging different minds, and we are dealing with different kinds of knowledge and different kinds of content.

I would say that teaching a referencing system is, in the first instance, content that is appropriate for a lecture. Here, I want the students to listen and look at the slides. They need to understand the principles (some of them somewhat random), before they can learn them. And learning them isn’t memorizing the examples, it comes from trying to put the principles into practice. And that is not a lecture-style content. Here the students need to move from listeners and watchers to do-ers, become writers themselves – writers who reference. So between these two very related contents, the role and agency of the students changes – they go from almost passive recipients of a principle to being in charge of their own work. And this switch is the main reason why the L&T activity needs to change!

This means that when planning L&T activities need to consider

  • the content – what sort of knowledge is it? Theoretical? Practical? Somewhere in between?
  • the role we want students to take in this context – listeners, watchers/viewers, do-ers, note-takers, thinkers, researchers, investigators?
  • the agency we want students to have in this context – are they relatively passive in this context, or are they (should they be) active? Are they interacting with the lecturer or with other students? Are they following instructions or are they independently in charge?

Don’t just see students as customers, they can be audience and collaborators, investigators and listeners, readers and speakers!

Should Educators learn from Experience Design?

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October 22, 2018
Conferences, Experience Design, Workshops
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This is a preamble to a forthcoming occasional series of posts on whether and what educators can learn from experience design, explaining how I got here…

I have been fascinated with Experience Design ever since I studied the related discipline of Theatre Design as an undergrad and I went on to do my Masters thesis on what museums can learn from Theme Park Design. My PhD ended up on the role of writing in design education (although that is not quite how it started out… as is so often the case with research), so it seems that I got a bit distracted for a while. However, when I was looking for a new direction for my research, this interest came back to me and I thought it would be worth exploring for a few months to see where it could take me and whether it would be worth pursuing.

Starting at the beginning of the year I delved into an exploratory research project, taking the starting point of my previous work on genre and regenring and the importance of storytelling that comes with it. I presented a related paper in February and in rather fast succession found a collaborator in Dr Jenny Kidd, we worked on and submitted a book proposal, had it accepted and wrote a book over the summer. This book, Critical Encounters with Immersive Storytelling, has just gone to typesetting and will hopefully be available in all good bookshops soon, even the online ones. I have also just come back from a week at the College of Extraordinary Experiences, a five-day event that is hard to explain to people who weren’t there, let’s say it combined the principles of a conference, symposium and course in an immersive and playful way. So, it has been a whirlwind few months – and I have realised (and of course with hindsight this is obvious), that I have not just (re-)found a research subject that I want to pursue further, but also that here is a discipline that is really worth knowing a bit about if you are an educator.

Experience Design is a relatively new discipline and it overlaps and draws on a number of other disciplines. One of them, of course, is Event Design, which when we think about it, is something that we do as teachers. When people ask me why I am not a designer anymore, I usually reply that I still am, that I currently design learning opportunities. While somebody else usually organises in what time slot I teach and where, it is mainly me who decides what happens within these slots. I design these teaching events, the experiences I want my students to have. Some of my colleagues design educational escape rooms (and I have dabbled in that), but even if you do not prepare anything as elaborate, thinking of the student experience when we design can surely help us clarify our strategies.

Funnily enough what started me out on my road to becoming a National Teaching Fellow was a workshop by NTF Dr Colin Beard that was about Experiential Learning (and his and John P Wilson’s book Experiential Learning is definitely one I would recommend). Experiential Learning and Experience Design again are disciplines that overlap – and this overlap I think is fascinating and that I am hoping to consider in a bit more detail over the next few months. Should educators learn from Experience Design? I think most definitely and I will share my musings here on WHAT I think we can learn from this discipline and hope that you will find them useful.

Looking back on the Chicken and the Egg issues – A conversation between Alke and Fiona

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September 13, 2018
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A bit more than two years ago, Fiona English and myself were asked by Julia Lockheart, the editor of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, whether we would be interested in guest editing a Special Issue on Genre and Regenring for that publication. A themed workshop and conference, as well as months of editing work later, not one, but two issues are now published (Volume 11: Numbers 1 and 2), by us jokingly referred to as the Chicken and the Egg issue respectively.

This seemed like a good point for us two co-guest-editors to reflect on the process, so here a conversation that we had one September morning, in case you are interested in our thoughts on the process, the idea of using two different forms of editorial (one traditional, one as an abecedary) and whether we would change anything.

Find out more about Issue 1 (the Chicken) here.

Find out more about Issue 2 (the Egg) here.

(This was a typed chat, and I have tried to get rid of typos but have not changed grammar or structure of the unscripted exchange.)

Cover image for the two Special Issues on Genre and Regenring

Alke: So, the two issues are out and I thought it would just be a nice idea if we reflect on what worked and what didn’t. Do you think we achieved what we wanted to do?

Fiona: I’m actually really proud of these two issues. The range and quality of the articles is fantastic – so interesting to read and so well written. The production side too is great. They look and feel good in the hand.

Alke: I agree, as the physical things, the journals worked out really well. Now for me this was one of the surprising things – that I always thought of the journals as a physical entity, but that is not how the publisher saw them, they see them as separate articles… that took me a while to realise. If we had thought about them like this, would we have done anything differently, do you think?

Fiona: Yes I know what you mean. The on-line article as stand-alone access makes the experience quite different. I don’t think we would have done anything differently in this particular case nor do I think we should have. The flow of the physical versions works really well and hopefully people will actually get to see this. However, if we do another thing like this we might think about it differently and provide a different kind of threading to preface each article. Maybe that’s something we could do in any case? If the publisher let us.

Alke: I’m not sure we should volunteer any more work on this, to be honest 😉 And I really like them as a collection – I think this is where the value of this lies, to see the different ways of using genre side by side, in a way. I seem to remember that one of the things we wanted to do at the beginning was give people the confidence to try out more and to take more ownership (shouting about?) the practice they were already doing, almost giving them a theory to be able to justify their playing with genre as a ‘serious’ thing – and I think that this collection does show that off, and hopefully does that.

Fiona: I agree – and I’m certain this has been achieved. I’m glad we pushed some people to write differently while leaving others to their own devices. It means that we have a range of genres which then means that readers can consider the affordances of each as they read. What do you think about setting up a kind of feedback forum? Getting readers’ responses to the different articles with regard to how the genres used impacted on their reading and on their attitude to the ‘knowledge’ being explored/developed.

Alke: I think that would be really interesting – maybe I could ask for that at the end of this blog post and also ask the contributors to add to.

Fiona: Yes great. It could also comprise an element of any seminar/party we might plan for the future.

Alke: I love it! A feedback party instead of a launch!

Fiona: It would be good to get feedback on people’s own attitudes to alternative genres for academic production and how they might be valid in the context of REF!!! And yes, a feedback party –

Alke: I think we might have found our angle for the follow-up event! Now, we also played with genre, not just in our own, separate contributions, but in the two editorials… which in a way are very different…

Fiona: Yes I’ve been thinking of the differences in experience doing them. The essential difference in terms of process is that one is a kind of narrative – it tells a story in a chronological order so to speak. The second works as a kind of glossary – explanation of terms of ref or rather concepts that are explored across the issues – and as such required a different kind of thinking – explanations and definitions rather than narrative. We had to say more about our frames of reference in the second one and more about the journal as a flow in the first. Is that right?

Alke: In a way, yes. I have to admit that I (maybe naively) had thought that the abecedary would be so much easier to do as a format than it actually was. In the end figuring out what to include and what not, and having the constraints of the alphabet was a really interesting challenge!

Fiona: the abecedary was a challenge for sure – but a very interesting one as it forced us to foreground concepts and key issues and to use the alphabetic constraints to think of fresh ways for describing/defining them. In other words, the affordances of each genre ensured that we approached the same information differently and in the process of so doing produced different ways of articulating it. This made us rethink – always a good thing.

Alke:: Exactly. And I am really glad that we decided on taking on that challenge rather than going for something like a conversation (which we had also considered), especially because it made us think about the content more in terms of definitions, rather than just rehashing the narrative in a two-person narrative way!

Fiona: Yes – that’s very true. And it was fun too! Playing around trying to find a way of using all the letters – only one cheat with the X.

Alke: Thinking about it, I think we could have made ‘xerography’ work… the idea of copying stuff, or not, would have worked int the context of gains and losses!

Fiona: xerography – yeah – but then we’d not have had ‘eXpectations’ – though we’d probably have squeezed that in elsewhere. Gains and Losses – yes – that’s true. What do you think these were between the two editorials?

Alke: Well, the first editorial gives much more background info as to how these issues came about, while the abecedary only really mentions the workshop and conference in passing. But they were both really important events. And, as you say, the second one is much more about definitions, being clear about what we are talking about and mean, which is easy to gloss over in a way when you are writing a narrative.

Fiona: Yes I agree. The first one tells the story of how things came about and why and how the journal is organised. It makes an easier read, probably, as a whole because it does what people expect despite the informal tone we use. It is also more effective in profiling the different articles because they are introduced within a narrative structure. This is the story of how we got together and this is the story of how we got the contributions for these special issues and this is the story of how the issues have been organised. The Issue One editorial had to go first – the chicken before the egg otherwise readers would have been totally confused.

Alke: LOL

Fiona: t’ll be interesting to get feedback from the readers/contributors of Issue Two about how they feel about the editorial. They won’t have seen the first one.

Alke: That’s a really good point! I hadn’t even considered that!

Fiona: No nor had I until we started this discussion. (the affordances of a dialogic genre 😉

Alke: 🙂   Would we change it if we had to do it again? Or better: is there anything we would change?

Fiona: That’s a good question. Did we point out in the Egg that we had done a different kind of editorial for the Chicken? I can’t remember. I think we saw them as two sides of the same coin and forgot that not everyone would read everything. Again, back to the thing about single article purchases too!

Alke: let me just check…We do mention it under ‘A is for abstract’ – sort of. Phew!

Fiona: That’s lucky – or rather not lucky – we took it into account. It’s amazing how quickly one (I, that is) forgets what one’s done almost as soon as you turn over onto the next page! I constantly have to keep checking back in things I’ve written to see what I said about something.

Alke: Well, I guess that comes with doing a lot of things. And once they are published, on file, so to speak, you don’t need to keep the details in your head, because you can just check back. but I think it is a really interesting point, that we didn’t just conceive this as a physical journal, but as a double issue, and didn’t really ever saw them as split up!

Fiona: That’s right!

Alke: maybe that means we misjudged our audience?

Fiona: Hum – yes perhaps. Not our audience exactly, but how our audience might read. This is food for thought. What we did with these two Issues could never be done via the on-line single purchase approach. We thought of these issues as if they were a book – a complete thing. That’s indeed what they are. The market forces behind the publishers, though, see/treat everything as stand-alone. It’s the same with modular university degrees. The idea that there is no need for an overall view/story but that things can just exist – contextless and floating out alone. In fact, the publisher’s approach militates against special issues!

Alke: I think you are right. In the book I just wrote they asked for each chapter to have its own separate bibliography so that the chapters could be sold separately (we decided to ignore that request for now…), but that changes the whole argument you can make and splits it into bite-sized chunks.Some things you want to say are bigger than that!

Fiona: Absolutely – this is a problem indeed and one which, in my view, leads to people picking up fag ends as the saying goes. In other words, piecemeal knowledge – knowledge with no context – in other words, not knowledge!

Alke: In fact, I think if at the beginning of this process somebody had told me to edit a collection of separate but related journal articles, I don’t think I would have been up for that! It is that context that makes it interesting and useful!

Fiona: Me neither. The whole pleasure of it was to put together a unified piece of work not lots of separate pieces of work.

Alke: So hopefully people will read both issues and not just pick out the odd article!

Fiona: I do hope so.

Alke: Anyway, anything else we would change?

Fiona: I don’t think so. For me the contributors have done a fantastic job in honing their articles not just in terms of academic content but in style and voice more so than in most other journal articles. I think they also saw themselves as working as part of a whole too. I mean they understood what they were writing to be a contribution to an overall story too. I think we got the range and balance right too across each issue.

Alke: Yes, I agree. I wouldn’t change the content. However – and this totally shows my roots as a designer – if I had realised how easy it was to change the cover image, I would have asked for two different ones: one of the furoshiki laid out, so you could see it whole, and one of it wrapped up, rather than combining those two ‘states’ into one image. but then maybe that would have put too much focus on that one artefact? Anyway, just a tiny thing with hindsight 😉

Fiona: Yes – that would have been good. And I don’t think it would have put too much onto the one piece. I think it would have perfectly represented regenring. But tant pis! They are still beautiful objects these two issues.

 

Find out more about Issue 1 (the Chicken) here.

Find out more about Issue 2 (the Egg) here.

 

If you have read both, one or just parts of these special issues, please comment on this post with some feedback about the above topics or others!

To Slide or not to Slide (Part 2)

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June 28, 2018
Conferences, Workshops
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After the workshop at #Undisciplining had gone rather well, I finally had some time to actually focus on the second session I needed to prepare for a conference in June. And initially I had been thinking of focusing this on an overview. If you are interested in how things fit together and/or on different levels contained within them, a tool like a prezi presentation that allows you to zoom in can be used to great effect.

However, as I reflected on what I wanted to do in the context of the conference I decided against the prezi and went with the traditional slides instead. The point of this particular talk was to present three different analogies I use within teaching and show some examples of how they work in practice. That could have been an overview, first framing the problem and then delving into the layers of how to solve it. The crucial thing, however, is that these analogies are not really linked to each other. They are all stand-alone, and the only thing they have in common is that they are all ‘everyday’ analogies, quite mundane things that my students will be familiar with (board games, clothes, sea creatures). As there is no real link between the analogies, I felt that the overview would not work, and on the contrary, that it might rather confuse. Slides are great when you want to walk people through something step-by-step. When moving on to the next slide, you can change the subject, mood and – most important – the focus of what you are saying, and of what your audience is thinking about (if they are listening, that is…).So in this case, I decided ‘to slide’.

I think this is also the reason I often use slides for my lectures. They allow me to boil down what I am saying into the most pertinent points to give a visual cue to remind me of what I wanted to talk about; for example they allow me to put up a quotation and then talk about just this, without distraction from anything else, before we move on. Ideally I then also have a whiteboard to further develop some of the point and sometimes I develop the overview on that – but this is development that happens in class, and is not pre-prepared – as it might come across when using a prezi.

I have heard people sneer at slide presentations and then present prezis that were basically just zooming from slide-like frame to slide-like frame. I think there is little point in doing that, if what you are saying is linear, you might as well use a slide format! A prezi makes most sense if you are exploring layers, not a standard sequence. The bad rep that slide presentations often get (Death by Powerpoint, etc.) isn’t due to the nature of them being a slide presentation, but rather down to bad design of the individual slides!

I guess my point is this: whether preparing a workshop, a conference presentation or a lecture, the tools we choose to use frame what it is possible to do. That’s what Fiona (2012) talks about when she talks about the ‘affordances’ of a genre. The traditional or conventional genre – in this case (PowerPoint) slides – might be exactly the right tool for the job. But it also might not be. It really depends on what you are trying to do. And that is well worth reflecting on before you choose what tools to use, rather than just go with the standard option.