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Natalie Whelan

Page history last edited by nataliewhelan 15 years, 9 months ago

Natalie Whelan is the current CILASS Student Co-ordinator at CILASS, and will be hosting a conversation on ‘Student involvement in the planning, implementation and evaluation of IBL projects’.

 

From her experience of working with staff to review IBL projects and implement change, Natalie found that she was able to offer a student perspective on the ideas presented by staff, which brought up issues and ideas that might not have otherwise been recognised.

 

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Today I hosted a conversation with guests Sabine Little from CILASS at University of Sheffield and Ian Tindall from Anglia Ruskin University. Even though there were only three of us in this session we did manage to continue the hosted conversation for the 50 minute session and talked about a wide variety of student experiences in the University environment.

 

 The aim of my hosted conversation was to discuss my experience as a student working with staff to review an IBL project and how I feel it was of benefit to the project itself, the staff working on the project and my own learning experience. As a Student Ambassador, one of our roles is to work with the staff in our department on CILASS projects and departmental projects concerned with the student teaching and learning experience and one such project which I used here as an example of student involvement.

 

 We also discussed the process of Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID) - a great link is provided here http://www.ntlf.com/html/pi/9705/sgid.htm -Typically the SGID process divides up a lecture theatre into small groups of 6 people where they answer three questions to review the module, typically being:  

 

  1. What you liked best about the module?
  2. What you liked least about the module?
  3. What you feel you as students could do to improve the module?

 

 Anyway Bob Petrelius from CILASS and I facilitated this session, and as a student I found it helped me tremendously to identify the skills that the students were gaining from the IBL activity from the responses they gave me and also the problems that needed to be overcome. I also found that I helped and added something to the feedback that from a staff perspective might not have been clear. Sabine already knew of my involvement in this process and so it was mainly me presenting to Ian what I had done and learnt from it.

 

 Although Ian found the process and interesting one of student evaluation, he didn’t think it would work in his institution which is mainly dominated by mature students and we began to discuss his methods of teaching and student evaluation, explaining that it was all done online which in the evaluation process, can sometimes be good as the students express what they feel, but sometimes are a little too harsh possibly because the lack of face to face contact makes this easier to do, with little thought of the consequences on staff.

  

We then discussed how students and learners change dramatically from the primary school level to University level and it is the point in-between from age 10-18 that it all changes. I identified the ‘spoon fed’ approach adopted in secondary school and college and this is also a stage where students begin to question their own answers before presenting them to classes which is why student interaction in IBL activities and lecture theatres in often limited in the student response. I feel this is because of the lack of confidence of many students when they first arrive at university and this ‘fear factor; mentioned by Sabine of students being wrong.

 

A way to break down this issue was suggested that instead of a question posed to the entire lecture theatre, instead break the big group into smaller groups or talk to the person next to them activity to voice their opinions in small groups before feeding back to the lecture theatre. From experience I have found this a more successful method and Ian and Sabine agreed that this is the way to engage students and build the all important trust and friendships that are so vital to student learning in the initial transition to University life.

 

 It was a shame that this session wasn’t attended by more from different institutions, possibly with a student faculty similar to the one CILASS hosts for the student ambassadors as it would be interesting to see if anyone thinks that these ideas presented and experiences I know that many of the Student Ambassadors gain from, could be adopted by another institution or alternatively give us ideas and suggestions for improvement.

 

 

 

 

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