RELECTIONS ON A TAUGHT MODULE

BY

Malcom Kirkpatrick 6th March 2015

MALCOLM KIRKPATRICK MRICS ICIOB

Hello, I am Malcolm Kirkpatrick.

I have been a Chartered Quantity Surveyor for 30 years, working both overseas and in London before joining the College of Estate Management in 2013 as a Tutor in Quantity Surveying.

VIRTUAL CONFERENCE AIM

• My aim is to reflect on a module that I taught in 2014, using as a guide, frameworks such as: – Brookfield (1995) framework of the ‘four lenses’ – Diane Laurillard’(2002) design framework of

learning environments.– David Kolb (1984) learning cycle framework– Benjamine Bloom ( 1994) Taxonomy Wheel

These reflections will have the benefit of the FSLT 15 training.

INTRODUCTORY LECTURES• The lectures that I have chosen were an introductory set of

lectures for a Construction Practice module which carried 20 credits and was part the from MSc in Surveying Programme

• The lectures took place at Reading University on the 4 th of October 2014. and my cohort was about 20 students.

• These sessions consisted of two lectures in the morning and two in the afternoon, one of which was dedicated to an activity.

• .

DIVERSITY

• The student cohort was about 20 on the day and being a conversion course, I appreciated the diversity of the students who would have differing educational and varied experiences. As a result, the lectures were designed, so that plain English was used, without English colloquialisms such as ‘heavy handed’.

LECTURE DESIGN

• The design of the lectures ( Apart from the activity) was decided (after a peer review), to have three quarters of an hour of teacher centred delivery, a half an hour of student centred dialogic with open questions and answers and a quarter of an hour of student feedback.

• It is interesting to note that Bligh, D. ( 1998) concluded that lectures were at least as good as other methods of teaching.

LECTURE DESIGN

• As this was an introduction to the construction practice module it was important to introduce the students, not only to the topics, but to remind the them of the requirements of the learning and assessments of this QAA Level 7 module.

• This level required more deep learning at the higher levels such as Bloom(1994) taxonomy verbs such as Analyze ,Evaluate and Create, which the students would not have been used to.

LECTURE DESIGN

• The dialogic, experiential and activity nature of the lectures was designed to encourage an appetite and facility for learning at these higher levels.

• Reflecting back on the dialogic side of the lectures I can see the process at work as highlighted by Diana Laurillard ( 2002) in her framework model and in D Kolb’ ( 1994) learning cycle wheel.

STUDENT FEEDBACK

• Student feedback is very important especially with such a diverse group.

• The feedback from the first lecture was that the students enjoyed being student cantered, but thought the that there were too many slides on the first three quarters of an hour and it was difficult to take in all of the information.

• I determined to alter the lectures , as described in Shon’s (1991) ‘reflections in action’ where I changed the lecture at the time of the feedback and following Shon’s ‘reflections on action’ , I made a note to change future lectures.

TEACHING STRATEGY

I used a ‘flipped lecture’ method, for parts of the lectures, whereby I sent out the slides, a week in advance and requested the students to come prepared with questions, which would be discussed in the half hour

slot in the lecture.

CONSTRUCTIONAL ALIGNMENT

• I can reflect that the module design had undergone ‘constructional alignment’ following the guidance of Biggs and Tang (2011) where the learning outcomes had been aligned to the teaching and learning delivery.

MODULE DESIGN

• The teaching strategy included lectures such as these, and online , there were Webinars, Forums, Wiki’s Quizzes and Self Assessment exercises for the students to assess their learning progress.

• These strategies were also aligned to the requirements of the professional body that were accrediting the Programme and were therefore quite prescriptive learning outcomes.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• After introducing myself, I reminded the students of the learning outcomes which I had included in the slides for each lecture and reinforced that their learning was learning outcomes led. There was also a contents slide which explained what was going to be covered in each lecture.

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

• Whilst I am new to lecturing, I have many years experience as a practicing chartered quantity surveyor and during my delivery of the lecture, I took opportunities to recount my experiences concerning different issues ( trying not to ramble or become boring) and listened to the students’ own experiences. This was the experiential part of the lectures that has been informed by Kolb D,A.(1995a)

ATIVITY BASED LEARNING• The first lecture of the afternoon was activity based, in which

I divided the twenty students into groups of four and set them a building measurement activity using drawings. I gave all the groups an introduction to the task and monitored their progress.

• I spent equal time with each group and discussed any problems they were having. I discovered that the students found that they did not know as much as they originally thought about measurement and were struggling with simple logic tasks. The students enjoyed the session however and the feedback was that they had learnt a great deal.

DIALOGIC LEARNING/TEACHING

• My teaching style was dialogic but I have learned lessons from the students and I should have allowed more time for discussion and argumentation which probes and challenges rather unquestionably accepts issues.

PARTICIPATION

• The lectures were participatory and I gave the students time to have their say, and for the planned part of the lectures to be student led

• The students said they appreciated this in their feedback especially, with the opportunity to learn from each other. I have to say that I learned from them as well , so it can be a two way process.

COMMUNITY

• The participation in the lectures allowed the students to form friendships, which they relied upon in the future, on the distance learning forums and encouraged them to be less inhibited and feel more of a community of learners. I wanted to present myself as ‘a guide on the side’ which I think worked for them.

REFLECTIONSI believe that being a critically reflective teacher will result in an improvement in my teaching and the student learning experience. My reflections according to Brookfield’s Lenses were:Personal lens -- Better planning of lecture was required – too many slides.Peer Lens -- Needed better control of dialogic timing in lectures. Student lens -- Too many slides in first part of lectures

But generally enjoyed the introduction.Academic lens -- Improvements to be made from the study of the FSLT 15 Course.Improvements are currently being put into practice following the above.

REFERENCES• Biggs,J . Tang, C.(2011)Teaching for Quality Learning ar

University ( Fourth edn.),Maidenhead : Open University Press,• Bligh, D, (1998)The Opinions of others. What’s the Use of

Lectures? (5th edn.), Exeter: Intellect.• Bloom, B. S. (1994). Rehage, Kenneth J.; Anderson, Lorin W.;

Sosniak, Lauren A., eds. "Bloom's taxonomy: A forty-year retrospective". Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education)

• Brookfield, S. D. (1983). Adult Learning, Adult Education and the Community, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

• Brookfield, S. ( 1995) Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, San – Francisco:Jossey Bass.

REFERENCES• Kolb, D. A. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as a source

of Learning and Development (Vol 1).Englewood Cliffs,NJ:Prentice – Hall

• Kolb D.A., ( With J. Osland and I.Rubin) (1995) Organisational Behaviour: An Experiential Approach to Human Behaviour in Organisations,( 6th edn,), Englewood Cliffs ,NJ:Prentice Hall.

• Laurillard, D. (2002) Rethinking University Teaching:a conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies (2nd edn.),New York:RoutlegeFalmer.

• Shon,D. (1991) The Reflective Practitioner,New York: Basic Books.