Peer Supported Learning : development of Teaching Skills

a Cambridge Collaboration

Kirstie Preest, Isla Kuhn, Catherine Reid, Ryan Cronin

University of Cambridge

LILAC March 2015

What we did?

• Developed an in-house course which facilitated sharing of underlying

teaching theory and demonstrations of best practice to aid delivery of

information literacy sessions

• 3 half-day sessions over a week in summer vacation

• Attendees were encouraged to develop skills through their own reflection

and by receiving constructive criticism after delivering a “nanoteach”

session to their peers

Who ran the course?

photos

St John's College, Cambridge,

chapel court 01 by Sailko is

licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Murray Edwards College Library

Lucy Cavendish College Library

Where the need came from?

http://www.slideshare.net/infolit_group/cohen

Who could attend?

Session 1

● How confident are we as teachers?

● Who are our students?

● Information literacy

● Lesson planning

Session 2

● Teaching resources (handouts)

● Peer review & constructive feedback (reflective practice)

● Teaching demo

● Avoiding disasters

Plus : Teaching Audit

Session 3 (nano teach)

● Nanoteach

● Peer review

● Self review

● How confident are you now?

7 months later

● Survey

● Brown Bag lunch

● Successes and challenges

How we measured impact

Self-rating of confidence:

Pre, Post and 7 months

later

Changes in confidence level: summary

If you started with high confidence, you stayed confident

4.6% average improvement from start to 7 months later

If you started with middling confidence, your confidence improved

26% average improvement from start to 7 months later

If you started with low confidence, your confidence improved massively

328% average improvement from start to 7 months later

Did anything change?

every time I have to teach/present, I remember about the course

(especially the nano-teach session) and I say to myself:

"I can do it - and do it properly!".

Which is definitely a long-term increase in confidence.

The structure of the portfolio course was roughly the same as ever, but I added a powerpoint presentation and an activity for participants.

Yes! The course gave me the confidence

to really focus on what I needed to

say at the points where I had the

opportunity, and thus to leave out

what would only become relevant

later.

I prepared handouts with information to take away. I also thought more about students with different abilities eg. printing handouts on different colour paper

I used the mini teach I delivered at the

training last year to help me plan my MSt

eresources session - and ensuring I got

the students involved in the session.

Reflection: what participants suggested

● Provide constructive feedback ourselves for participants

● more time for planning nanoteach

● less post-it notes!

● Include more discussion time for participants to

exchange ideas/tips

What next?

● Summer 2015

○ re-run course (with peer reviewed real-life teaching)

● development of shared teaching resources

● Encourage staff to gain formal teaching accreditation

(e.g. HEA)

● Run programme at regional level?

Kirstie Preest, Murray Edwards College @kirstiewales

http://seshatscribe.blogspot.co.uk/ for blog posts on this course

Isla Kuhn, Medical Library @ilk21

Catherine Reid, Clare College @CatherineAReid

Ryan Cronin, St John’s College

With thanks to: Jo Harcus, Lucy Cavendish College; Libby Tilley, English

Faculty Library; and Meg Westbury, Wolfson College

References

Cohen, S. (2012), The missing link: librarians and the teaching identity . Presentation at

LILAC 2012 http://www.slideshare.net/infolit_group/cohen [Accessed: 7th April 2015]

Secker, J. and Coonan, E. (2014) A New Curriculum for Information Literacy. Available at:

http://newcurriculum.wordpress.com/ [Accessed: 7th April 2015]

Tilley, L. and Murphy, H., University of Cambridge (2015), Let me tell you a

story….Presentation at LILAC 2015, 9th April 2015

http://www.lilacconference.com/WP/programme/abstracts-day-2#tilley [Accessed: 7th April

2015]