Managing affect in learners' questions in undergraduate science

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2012 Society for Research into Higher Education.This article aims to position students' classroom questioning within the literature surrounding affect and its impact on learning. The article consists of two main sections. First, the act of questioning is discussed in order to highlight how affect shapes the process of questioning, and a four-part genesis to question-asking that we call CARE is described: the construction, asking, reception and evaluation of a learner's question. This work is contextualised through studies in science education and through our work with university students in undergraduate chemistry, although conducted in the firm belief that it has more general application. The second section focuses on teaching strategies to encourage and manage learners' questions, based here upon the conviction that university students in this case learn through questioning, and that an inquiry-based environment promotes better learning than a simple ‘transmission’ setting. Seven teaching strategies developed from the authors' work are described, where university teachers ‘scaffold’ learning through supporting learners' questions, and working with these to structure and organise the content and the shape of their teaching. The article concludes with a summary of the main issues, highlighting the impact of the affective dimension of learning through questioning, and a discussion of the implications for future research

Devising strategies for enhancing quality staff development in embedding ICT in teaching and learning

Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) have huge potential and can add value to the quality of university teaching and learning. However, to fully exploit the potential of these innovative technologies, it is imperative that teaching staff are well informed about how to embed ICT in the curriculum in a way that is underpinned by sound pedagogy. Professional development programmes can enable staff to acquire appropriate skills to effectively facilitate technology-supported learning.The teaching staff from The Robert Gordon University and Edith Cowan University, are facing similar staff development challenges. Both universities provide online and distance education courses to their local and remotely located students. Staff involved in designing and teaching these courses require knowledge about and skills related to the appropriate use of ICT within teaching and learning contexts. Both universities face dual challenges: how to construct staff development programmes which develop their teachers’ ICT knowledge and skills; and how to include full time, part time and remotely located staff in such programmes. The authors of this paper are involved in assisting staff within their universities to develop ICT skills and have adopted a collaborative approach to designing a staff development programme in this area. This strategic alliancing between two institutions with similar profiles, staff needs and ICT experiences is proposed as a viable technique for implementing effective staff development in ICT.This paper reports on the initial stage of an ongoing collaborative project which aims to devise strategies to enable staff to use and embed ICT in their teaching

Supporting Staff Development in the Use of C&IT: From Needs Analysis to Implementation in the ELICIT Project

Output from the SHEFCE funded project on Enabling Learning Innovation through Communications & Information Technology project

Personal development planning in practice A series of case studies

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:m01/26074 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

The student experience of piloting multi-modal performance feedback tools in health and social care practice (work)-based settings

The aim of this study was to evaluate newly developed performance feedback tools from the student perspective. The tools were innovative in both their mode of delivery and the range of stakeholders they involved in the feedback process. By using the tools in health and social care settings, students were able to engage in interprofessional assessment of common competences and obtain performance feedback from a range of stakeholders not commonly involved in work-based learning; these included peers and service users. This paper discusses the ways in which the performance feedback tools were developed by a collaborative programme and compares their delivery, across a wide range of professions and work-based settings, in paper-based, web-based and mobile formats. The tools were evaluated through a series of profession-specific focus groups involving 85 students and 7 professions. The data were analysed thematically and reduced to three key categories: mode of delivery, assessment tool dynamics and work-based issues. These will be discussed in detail. The students agreed that the structured way of capturing and documenting feedback from several sources would support their practice placement learning. The reflective nature of the tools and the capacity for guiding reflection was also welcomed. The concepts of gaining service user, peer and/or interprofessional feedback on performance were new to some professions and evoked questions of reliability and validity, alongside appreciation of the value they added to the assessment process