Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning

November is Sharing Good Practice Month at the college where I lecture so I thought I’d jump on the Chalkface blog and share two of my favourite things.

I love historypin. It’s a Google Maps mashup where you can upload pictures from the past and compare them to the current street view. You can add video and audio too. There’s heaps of potential for school projects and it’s a great tool for digital storytelling. Have a look at the Beatlemania tour for inspiration!

Continuing with the maps theme, every maths teacher needs to know about the Maths Maps project.  Again using Google Maps this collaborative resource links maths questions to physical places.  For example, a pin in Real Madrid Football Stadium invites you to zoom in and calculate the area of the pitch. Further more, one map can cover many topics and colour coded pins allow for age or level differentiation. There’s more information on how to join in with the project on the edte.ch blog.

I wrote in my dissertation draft (Version 1037.2) that the reason I was surveying students about their experience of initial assessment was because I thought that they were more likely to give candid responses than their lecturers.

I beleive that academic staff would have answered my questions about assessment based on; what they think they should say, what their organisations policy says is done, and what they think they’ve done. Whereas a student would say; “we did this” or “we didn’t do that”.

Now of course I have to find some evidence to back up my assumption.

Filed under: Initial assessment; the student experience

After throwing out the non-completers and the time wasters I have a set of 31 survey results. Admittedly not a huge sample but since each of them represents a student in a separate institution, some interesting patterns are emerging.

As expected, all of the students provided their university or college with their name, address and date of birth before their course commenced. All but one reported that they had also provided information about their existing qualifications, and the grades they had attained. All but one respondent provided their university or college with a personal statement.

The next most common information provided prior to the course starting was references, 17 respondents reported giving this information. Less than a third of respondents gave any further information before the course started and even fewer gave any of the information once the course had commenced.

Numeracy ability was provided prior to the course starting in 8 cases and afterwards in 1. Literacy ability was provided prior to the start of the course in 7 cases and not at all once courses had started. Which suggests that 23 of the colleges or universities sampled did not carry out initial assessment in numeracy or literacy. Either that or 23 students didn’t realise they were being assessed!

Filed under: Initial assessment; the student experience

Analysing the results of my dissertation survey I realised that I’d forgotten to ask my respondents some basic information. At the time the age and sex didn’t seem like relevant information but once the results were in and I discovered that I had around 60 Postgrads with literacy problems, I started to question why, were they male or female, was English even their first language? So here goes Mark2 http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/screeningstudents fingers crossed!

Filed under: Initial assessment; the student experience

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how people use the same platform in completely different ways. Taking Facebook as an example, the information and type of information people choose to share varies from a running commentary of what’s happening on the TV to thoughts that would or should otherwise have been kept secret.

I was interested to see a “facebook friend” deleting status updates and removing news feed items, personalising the platform by removing the auto-generated content rather than adding to it.

In his blog entry Graham expresses concerns about privacy and draws our attention to the issues around tagging photographs. He says that it is critical that we have the rights and the tools to manage our digital identities, but with rights come responsibilities and I think that we have a responsibility to exercise those rights.

Posted in Dissertation distractions ;-)

Not content with my MA research and a part time lecturing job I’m keeping myself busy working for Pontydysgu, I say working, I’m not sure work is supposed to be quite so interesting, or fun (it’s not fun Graham, I’m working really hard, honest!). At the moment I’m trying to find out about the use of personal learning environments in training activities. I need to find some examples of good practice and determine what is actually going on at the moment in terms of using PLEs in training. So far I think that the “personal” bit is a barrier to using PLEs and social software in training. I know that people use Twitter to create their own “Personal Learning Networks” but this is done by individuals looking out for their own personal proffessional development, not by your boss tweeting you the latest Health and Safety updates! Or is it? Suppose I should get to work and find out.

I need to interview PLE developers and researchers, teachers and trainers, or trainees. I’m looking for ideas, answers and comments on the following questions…

1) What ICT is used in training activities in Lifelong Learning?

2) What is the level of use of PLEs in training activities?

3) What are the possibilities of PLEs in training/learning?

4) What has been improved by using PLEs?

5) Who is involved in the promotion and development of the PLE: Past /Present /Future.

6) What are the main achievements of the PLE in training/learning?

7) What are the barriers to the development of the PLE in training activities: technological / social /educational.

What is the role of the PLE in lifelong learning/training: is it a suitable tool for managing lifelong learning/training?

9)The future of the PLE in lifelong training strategy: what are the main characteristics which can define the PLE as the training tool of the future? Policy support? Etc

That’s a lot to think about

Posted in Dissertation distractions ;-) Tagged: ple, pwd, pwdemploy, pwdproject

Every year, colleges and universities invest large amounts of time and money into the recruitment of students. The process can involve numerous steps from the obligatory form filling, interviews, conditional and unconditional offers to open day events and induction weeks. The purpose of these stages are two directional, the institution wants to fill its courses with suitable candidates, the student wants to make sure that they have chosen a suitable institution. During this period, vast quantities of information exchanges hands. I want to find out just how much this information is used to impact upon the student learning experience.

Much of the data collected is not used to benefit the teaching or learning process, instead it is collated and used to produce statistics for institutions and to obtain funding. There may be little information in application and enrolment forms of any worth to subject teachers, (they were never intended to be used in that way) if this is the case then the whole process could be a missed opportunity.

Many institutions do collect Initial Assessment data, the theory being that by taking a series of short tests an idea of the students’ levels of literacy and numeracy can be gauged, those falling below a certain level can then be offered further assistance. Having recently been at both ends of this process, as a teacher and a student, it became apparent that Initial Assessment was merely a box ticking exercise. I received no feedback about my own initial assessment and I am still waiting at the end of the school year for the required further assistance to be granted to my own students.

I am curious to learn about other students’ experiences and hope to uncover a more positive view of initial assessment in the UK. I’m not asking the institutions because I want to focus on practice not policy. I would also like to find examples of good practice and ways of improving the system for everyone.

Posted in Initial assessment; the student experience

Finally got around to finishing the survey last week, tried it out on my sisters and a student friend (thanks all) who suggested a few tweaks to the language.

The final version is here.

Now I’ve got to get it to as many students in the UK as possible. Hope they don’t mind breaking from revision for five minutes!

Posted in Initial assessment; the student experience

The Search for Spock initial assessment tools;

DfES recommend the following resources via their read write plus campaign http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/readwriteplus/

The Basic Skills Agency has produced “skills check” tools as a way of screening students to see if further initial assessment is required. http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/toolslibrary

Cambridge Training and Development (CTAD) “Target Skills” http://www.targetskills.net/ not much info here, but leads to publications pages.

West Nottinghamshire College have produced a Basic Keyskillbuilder although the links all lead to password protected moodle site where you can’t even log in as a guest user – so no use for anyone wishing to follow examples of good practice.

The only useful one here so far is the Basic Skills agency, available resources are; “Good Practice Guidelines” http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/pdf/Good_Practice_Guide.pdf which is subtitled “for literacy, language and numeracy teachers, subject support staff and adult learner supporters” . Who are these guidelines designed to help?

“Skills for Life is an ambitious strategy that is designed to address literacy, language and numeracy needs of all adults and young people. It covers all post-16 learners on learning programmes at levels from pre-Entry up to and including Level 2.”

So not all adults and young people as it doesn’t include level 3+ courses?

New search;

“Initial assessment in HE” returned the following document written in 2001, http://readingroom.lsc.gov.uk/pre2005/quality/goodpractice/initial-assessment-of-learning-and-support-needs-and-planning-learning-to-meet-needs.pdf which highlights some good points (this is from 2001 not found anything more recent yet…)

The trend appears to be to assess basic skills; literacy and numeracy, upon commencing a course, those who need help with either are picked up and support offered such as testing for dyslexia, there are relatively few references to screening mainstream students and where they are screened, it is only for “basic skills”

Otherwise existing qualifications are used as the startpoint to compare gaining new skills and knowledge against. But this doesn’t help determine what additional support the students need.

Posted in Initial assessment; the student experience

The plan is to get the student perspective, find out what assessment is carried out and how the results benefit them. I have students who sat through literacy screening in September and still haven’t had the follow up support they need 8 months later. Maybe I work for a particularly bad example, maybe initial assessment is just another hoop to jump through, but why bother collecting the data if you’re not going to use it for the benefit of your students?

If I use the Ofsted criteria as a guide, what questions should I be asking the students?

Specialist staff? Who carries out the assessment? Course lecturer, personal tutor, specialist, online, self assessment?

Appropriate time? Start of the course? Interview?

Starting point, learning plan? Is it relevant, are the targets attainable, is it updated regularly?

Screening for literacy/numeracy?

Results, feedback?

Appropriate support?

What tools already exist for evaluating an initial assessment policy? This one from QIA helps staff to discuss initial assessment; http://excellence.qia.org.uk/media/attachments/108534/Initial-Assessment-Tool-v6.pdf

I’m off to play around with surveymonkey.com

Posted in Initial assessment; the student experience