Reflections on Teaching Practice - Student-led Learning

Reflections on teaching practice – student-led learning

In a previous post on here I reflected on how different it was going from small(ish) classroom-based teaching at Heriot-Watt to mega-teaching at Stirling. In this post I want to reflect on my experience of something quite the opposite – last semester I dabbled in student-led learning with a module of 14 students who were in their honours years (third and fourth years).

The module was called Governance and Society and it is ordinarily convened by a colleague who was on research leave. I offered to convene it when I started at Stirling to fill a gap and because I felt reasonably comfortable delivering a module on governance. The time spent wrapping up a research project and running my gigantic module in autumn semester meant I’d had very little time to prepare for running the module, but I knew I would do something along the lines of student-led learning as this was a teaching style I was comfortable with and it would meet the learning outcomes.

The teaching style I’d experienced at Heriot-Watt and that I implemented myself there because I realised it worked, used a lot of techniques that are seen as “trendy” and new, such as the flipped classroom, as just good, interesting teaching. Also, on reflection, I realised that the supervision/tutorial system of Oxbridge, that I had such an interesting experience of, is essentially student-led learning to the max.

I ran the module by doing a deal with the students. They chose three topics from a list I had prepared (I said they could chose others if they wanted) and then they would work in groups to deliver teaching materials in the final three weeks of semester for their colleagues. If they produced good quality materials then I would guarantee that they would not fail the exam – I would give them 40% just for writing their name and leaving the room (I did this on the basis that they were likely to get 60%+ on the question for the topic they had researched anyway, so would probably not get under 40% for the whole exam). In the end they accepted the deal and chose: co-production and the governance of public services; the governance challenges of wind farm developments; and Bourdieu, Putnam, social capital and governance.

For the first eight weeks of semester I led the teaching giving students a basic grasp of ideas around governance, such as governance as a descriptive term (i.e. the rise of the network society) and governance as a normative concept (something governments should do instead of governing). I broke this up with a really interesting trip to Stirling Council to hear their Community Planning manager talk about how they do governance and also brought in a colleague who has decades of experience on governing boards and committees, including an NHS board, who spoke about “good governance” and accountability.

I really wanted the students to get a good grasp of theoretical approaches to power within the module. One of the key parts of this was spending an entire two hour class discussing the second edition of Luke’s Power: A Radical View. It was a book I had not read for a long time and wanted to revisit it. Revisiting with the small group of students was a brilliant, enlightening process for all concerned. It is a difficult book, and the second section of the second edition adds a lot of theoretical meat onto the previous discussion and gets into some challenging discussions on the ontology and epistemology of power. Overall, it worked brilliantly – the students stepped up to the mark.

This section of teaching gave the students the basis for their coursework essays. The student-led teaching formed the basis of the exam. I want to focus on the co-production group as they taught me the most about teaching and learning. In the first week all groups took a very formal approach and basically did a 50 minute presentation of their work to date. I gave each group feedback verbally in class and online through the VLE. The following week the co-production group picked up every point I’d made the previous week and answered the comments through their presentation – it was a case of “you say jump, I say how high”. In the feedback to the group I asked them “were they co-producing?” and “how could they co-produce the teaching in the final session”.

In the end they did co-produce the final class by highlighting how student-led teaching was, in effect, co-production and co-producing a discussion about this. Rather wonderfully it started off as a bit of a love-in as to how much they’d enjoyed the module, but it also worked brilliantly in delivering learning. We covered key issues in co-production theory: inequalities, power, professional knowledge and expertise, the opportunities for transformation. It was great stuff.

Ultimately the student attainment was good – not spectacular, but I imagine the small group were more engaged and therefore stretched themselves more than if I had used standard broadcast techniques of teaching. As one of the students said though, they probably put more work into the module than they had in any module in their studies (these were mainly third and fourth years) and they really enjoyed it. They accepted the responsibility for their own teaching and learning. And I got fantastic feedback.

I don’t know if I’d do it again for this sort of module, but I’ll definitely learn lessons from the experience and try and encourage more moments of student-led collaborative learning within my teaching. I’m looking after another module this coming spring semester and am going to start that with a collaborative problem-definition world-café, for example. And it’s interesting, it probably didn’t save me that much academic labour, it just shifted a lot of that to a different time – commenting after a class using the VLE, rather than producing PowerPoints before a class. But, overall I’m glad I carried out this little experiment with my wonderful honours students. 

Futures of social policy

So, teaching at Stirling has so far been very different from at Heriot-Watt. So far most of my teaching has been on an enormous second year module called "Understanding Social Policy" - I'm module coordinator on what is essentially social policy 101. It's good fun, but as it has 367 enrolled students I have to use the tried-and-tested lecture and tutorial method rather than my preferred class activity-based method.

However, it's giving me some great public speaking experience. I've recently discovered that the lecture theatre has radio lapel mics and roving mics, so I've been doing a bit of interaction which has mainly involved me running around the lecture theatre a lot. 

I've also been playing around with the number of slides in lectures following a twitter conversation with some colleagues. For a lecture (well, political rant really) on poverty, I reduced the slides right down to a few graphs the students needed to see, but provided them with a full set of slides on the VLE which were essentially my speech notes. At the end of the semester I'm doing a future, blue-skies, "Future of Social Policy" lecture. For this I'm going PowerPoint less. However, this has meant I've had to produce something for me to speak to, so I don't just ramble on too much for an hour, and also for students who have accessibility challenges. So, I thought I might as well make my essay on Futures of Social Policy available for the rest of you. Enjoy. All errors and omissions my own.

This post is not about #IndyRef

#Yes Scotland in Leith pic.twitter.com/TWBg7PxUYG
— Peter Matthews (@urbaneprofessor) September 8, 2014

Well, the above tweet has got 36 RTs at the time I write this, so it gives an impression of what the ferment of the #IndyRef debate on social media is like at the moment. Therefore, I'm not optimistic that a blog post about my recent paper will have much success. But here goes...

Most of my research and writing outputs to date have been on urban policy and urban regeneration with a distinct interpretive policy analysis approach (here, here and here) with some dabbling in discourse analysis (here and here) and most recently in my work on middle class community activism with Prof Annette Hastings (here, here and here). My most recent paper is dabbling into the world of urban sociology a bit more, published in Housing Studies.

In this post I want to shamelessly promote my writing by producing a synopsis of the paper, but also reflect a bit more on the process of peer review, as I am wont to do. The paper comes out of the AHRC Connected Communities project, led by Prof Chris Speed at Edinburgh Uni that was involved in called Ladders to the Cloud, along with RCAHMS and community partner organisations in Wester Hailes. You’ll have probably heard about this project before because of the totem pole that was partly a result of it.

The paper essentially takes further the analysis and argument made in blog posts for the social history blog From There to Here, here and here. If you look at the comments on the photos on the From There to Here Facebook page, I argue, you see residents and former residents of Wester Hailes collaboratively writing stories. There’s two main formats: “Do you remember this?”, “Yes, it was X in Y”; or “Is that you and X”, “Yes and that’s X we were doing Y”. These stories add a little more evidence as to how working class people understand their sense of home and place.

In the first version of the paper I focused on two aspects of sense of place in particular – firstly, coming out of the coproduced fieldwork and my research background, was how these stories resisted widespread stigma to Wester Hailes and reframed the neighbourhood in a positive light. Secondly, I drew on the concepts of selective and elective belonging to explore how committed these commenters were to their neighbourhood, or former neighbourhood.

The very positive, useful and extremely in-depth comments from the peer reviewers also allowed me to bring in a broader literature on working class sense of home from Chris Allen among others. This massively improved the paper, though due to work commitments at the time, it did delay the process of producing the revisions.

The process of peer review was very good indeed (although a little bit lengthy, but hey-ho). The original paper focused much more on the aspects of stigma, but also tried to bring in the broad literature on social capital, social class and community activism. I sort of knew it wasn’t working, but thought the paper was ready for peer review. The reviewers comments made me realise this part of the argument really wasn’t working and I just dropped it and focused on a much slimmer argument.  And luckily, mashing together the chopped stuff with some stuff from this paper that was rejected by a journal with some quite staggeringly bad comments, has left me with another paper ready(ish) to go to a community development journal.

However, what was most surprising was the paper went from “Reject and resubmit” to “accepted” following one set of revisions. I was absolutely gob-smacked. The last time this happened was with my first ever paper from my MSc dissertation. Anyway, I can’t complain as reading through the paper to correct my proofs, it isn’t half bad, if I say so myself. Also, unlike some reviewers (me not included) my reviewers focused on improving the broad sweep of the argument being made, rather than providing corrections line-by-line. As a result when I submitted corrections I’d almost run out of my 50 spaces manuscript central would allow me.

Anyway, I hope you do read the paper and enjoy it. To summarise the argument, it is:

• If we look at historic, naturally shared narratives of working class belonging then they are complex and nuanced with various degrees of selectiveness to their belonging; 
• Facebook sites can be a really good source for “natural” talk about neighbourhoods and belonging;
• Facebook is media and the content of it shapes responses - beware the algorithms.

Tada! As ever, copies available if you drop me an email.

Making peace with Cambridge

I keep it quite quiet(ish), but I am a graduate of the University of Cambridge. I graduated with a first* in history from Robinson College exactly ten years ago today. I’m using this post to reflect on this. I was not happy at Cambridge; in fact I almost committed suicide. Like most Cambridge graduates I went back four years after I “matriculated” to get my free upgrade to an MA, a visit marked by, firstly how unbelievably shite our B&B was and secondly, by some very unpleasant emotional reactions, and spending twenty minutes sat in the sun on Jesus Green weeping.

The great span of a decade, and also my experience of different universities since, has allowed me to reflect on this. So, you’ll be pleased to note this won’t be a psychological moan (although there will be a bit of that) but a reflection on the inequalities in the UK’s education system that, I now realise, led me to be as unhappy as I was during my undergraduate degree.

A bit about my background first. I’m very middle class. I was brought up quite middle class, by a social worker and a teacher, in a reasonably well-to-do suburb of Bradford. I went to a state comprehensive that was very mixed, would probably now be referred to as “coasting” (failed the poor kids, didn’t stretch the clever rich kids) which usually got one or two pupils into Oxbridge from sixth form each year. I’d estimate about 20 per cent of my year went to university eventually; mainly the new universities and often those closest to Bradford.

My parents on the other hand were from very working class backgrounds, and in my mum’s case absolute poverty. They were products of the postwar expansion of education and the welfare state. I’m also openly gay, but only came out to my parents when I was 20. So that gives you a bit of an idea of the 19 year who toddled off to Cambridge back in 2001.

Cambridge is really weird

As presents heading off to Cambridge I was given a video of the classic TV series Porterhouse Blue by my mum and a bottle of Turning Leaf red wine by my mum’s friend whose daughter had gone to Oxford. The wine, it was explained, was to share at my first formal hall. At this I started to think Cambridge was a bit odd, but generally I was just scared and excited about going off to University.

As I didn’t have a video player at University I didn’t get to watch Porterhouse Blue until I came home after my first term for Christmas. If you’ve never seen it, I would recommend it. It stands with the opening chapter of Clive James’ May Week was in June as one of the greatest satires of Oxbridge establishment. It tells the parallel stories of a new master at Porterhouse College who wishes to reform it from its medieval ways and a young doctoral student plodding through his studies. It absolutely pillories the conservatism of Oxbridge, especially in terms of the ludicrous “traditions” – in the case of Porterhouse exemplified by a swan being served for dinner.

I laughed a lot watching it, and recognised a lot of what I’d already experienced in Cambridge in it. But I was defensive, and explained to my mum that Robinson wasn’t like that because it was the most modern college and was the only Oxbridge college founded as co-ed.** On reflection though, Robinson was modern in look, but was as conservative as the ancient colleges could be. We had formal hall twice a week, although attendance was optional, and in many regards the college had pretentions to be ancient. What I now recognise as the shame of the college management as to their listed building modernist building, also testifies to this. I’ll come back to pretentions later.

As I now understand, Cambridge is really weird in how it teaches. In organisational terms what would be programmes or degree courses at other universities was the “tripos”***; modules or courses were “papers”. I got my marks at the end of semester by going to see my Director of Study who would talk me through it (I can still recall passing one of my peers running, in tears, out of our DoS’s house at the end of first year). My final mark was posted on a sheet of A4, along with all the other students, on a board outside Senate House for all the world to see (Data Protection Act?).

In terms of teaching methods, in history you basically did an essay a week for eight weeks and submitted it for supervision with an academic and discussed it with them for an hour. The supervision/tutorial system is supposed to be what makes Oxbridge so good in terms of education. And in what other university would a student get eight hours of one-to-one tuition every term? I was lucky in that most of my supervisors were ok, although one did make me cry in a supervision. But as a timid comprehensive school lad, I can’t say the teaching method did much for me. Good feedback would have been sufficient.

Lectures were optional and as a result I only ever made it through all eight lectures of one lecture series. In the final lecture, me and two other students filled out the feedback sheets for the lecturer. He looked at them and commented that the same thing happened every year – he got glowing feedback, but only a handful of students stuck with him for the whole semester. Another lecturer essentially read out his textbook that had been published in 1983. It was out-of-date in about 1992. I did not stick around for all eight weeks of that one.

In one of my first lectures, Prof Blanning’s series on modern European history, he mentioned the setting up of the University of Berlin and its pioneering seminar method of teaching. He went on to mention, as an aside, that this was far superior to the supervision method. I experienced good seminars for two terms in my final year – in the special subject I had to do as a history student called Mid-Victorian culture wars. As someone who has experienced a range of higher education teaching techniques since, I now realise this was the only good teaching I ever got at Cambridge. It was student-led, with us all volunteering each week to do a report (I spent days pouring over the London Illustrated News on microfiche in the University library to produce a witty précis of the Great Exhibition of 1851, including a good chunk on the inventor of the square wheel) with proper seminars where, as a group, we were treated as equals. The reading was predominantly original historical material which we then had to reflect on in the exam.

Apart from my dissertation, and a 2,500 word research report I had to produce in second year (which got a special mention for being particularly bad in the examiner’s report) all the assessment was exams. My final term at Cambridge was basically spent in libraries revising and writing mock exam papers. My hand was so crippled at the end of it I lost marks for my handwriting. I came out knowing remarkably little about the historical method; a remarkably specialised knowledge of mid-Victorian culture and eighteenth and early-nineteenth century history; and a lot of emotional baggage.

In terms of basic pedagogy, a learning outcome was never mentioned to me; as a learner I gained no transferable skills through my study (you had to get those through extracurricular activities); admittedly I was there 2001-4, but still only one lecturer used PowerPoint and a projector; I did not realise you could access journal articles online until halfway through my MSc degree at Heriot-Watt. My first experiences at other universities, Heriot-Watt and the University of Glasgow, was just how superior their teaching methods were; how much more challenging and rewarding it was; and how much more enjoyable it was. These are all lessons I’ve taken into my own teaching.

So, yes, Cambridge was, and I presume still is, weird. But what I’ve come to realise since, is Cambridge is weird because of social class.

Social class and Cambridge

I want to start this section with two stories of my time. In 1999 my school sent a group of us down to Cambridge to look around on an open day. Naively it just sent us off to Robinson, Queen’s, and in my own case Gonville and Cauis (pronounced “keys”) because the school had got students into them before. As part of the open day we were taken to the office of the Director of Studies for History at Cauis. We all sat around and he asked who we were and which school we were from. I was quite near the end. Every other prospective student went to a private school, some of which I had heard of. When everyone mention this the DoS replied with something along the lines of “oh good school. Do you know so-and-so, good chap”. The most awful one was the discussion with one about which position he played at Rugby as they’d been to the same school (which might have been Rugby). When it got to me I enthusiastically explained I went to “the Salt Grammar School, in Saltaire, the Victorian industrial model village built by Sir Titus Salt. You might have heard about it?”. He replied with “that’s nice” and went on to the person next to me. I felt literally winded and thought I’d ruined my chances of getting to Cambridge there and then.

Then on my first day we had our first ever formal hall. I didn’t take the bottle of Turning Leaf down as the college actually provided barely drinkable wine. As we awkwardly sat around I chatted to the guy next to me. It turned out he was an old Etonian. After the Latin grace, we sat down to eat and the guy asked me which set of cutlery he should use for the starter. Somewhat aghast I explained you worked from the outside in. I knew that because my grandmothers had been in service so laid the table like this for great families. As respectable working class and aspiring middle class, when we had a posh tea with that many courses (high days and holidays) that’s how the Sheffield silver plate cutlery was laid.

In my research now, I’m becoming increasingly knowledgeable about, and supportive of a Bourdieuan cultural understanding of class and for me these stories exemplify this. The latter story on the cultural capital of dining (although why Eton isn’t teaching this, God only knows. If I was a parent, I’d want my money back), the former story on the exclusionary nature of social and cultural capital as replicated in the UK’s schooling system as it is deployed in social settings.

I thought I fitted in at Cambridge, but in respect I did not because of this force of cultural and social capital. Yes I was very middle class and knew how to eat properly, but I hadn’t been to private school and did not know how to behave. What is more, as a timid young man, learning to live with his sexuality, it was never a skill I gained. I write this not long after the death of Richard Hoggart. In a wonderful tribute Lynsey Hanley explains the difficulties Hoggart, and herself, felt at university as “anxious and uprooted voices”. This very much resonates with my experience. I obviously cannot prove the counterfactual, but I think I would have been more comfortable at a redbrick university. As it was I was an “anxious and uprooted voice” because of social class at Cambridge. Yes, Cambridge has done a lot to widen access, but it cannot get away from the fact that a vastly greater proportion of it students went to private school then you will ever meet in everyday life. Those who went to state schools largely went to the best schools surrounded by similarly very middle class people. Much as I tried, I could not learn the comfort others had in social settings – the cultural capital – to feel like I fitted-in.

In retrospect, I found this article in the Telegraph, of all places, epitomises this. The bit that particularly resonates for me is the mention of the student who “prattled on about how you didn’t have to enjoy punting or drinking champagne to think about putting Cambridge on your UCAS form.” In my experience, you absolutely have to enjoy punting or drinking champagne (both of which I did) to fit in at Cambridge. I remember the summer I left there was a documentary on BBC2 about the experience of ethnic minority students at Oxbridge and it included some footage of people queuing to get into Trinity college ball - £150 a, very exclusive, ticket with all the champagne and oysters you could consume if you made it to the other side. Sat watching this footage of very wealthy young people in ball gowns and dinner suits from the sofa in my mum’s three-bed semi in Bradford, I realised how different Oxbridge was from the rest of the UK.

A further dimension of how social class expressed itself particularly as an exclusionary force is exemplified by the infamous Bullingdon Club photo of David Cameron and his cronies. When people raise charges of elitism in reference to this photo, it is, all too easily, dismissed by them as the language of envy and class war. But drinking societies in Oxbridge matter. My college had one ironically called “The Robinson Rentals” referring back to the humble beginnings of David Robinson who made his first millions renting out TVs in the east of England. Being a member of a drinking society essentially meant you were in the in-crowd and had friends and connections for life. Even if you were not invited to join, if you were on the periphery it helped you get on socially. If you were excluded then you were one of the bullied geeks around the place.

Although they were both less exclusive, it is fair to say that the Cambridge Union Society and the Cambridge University Conservative Association (the two organisations were indistinguishable when I was a student), played a similar role in social networks and social exclusion within Cambridge.

The dominance of the drinking societies meant that a certain form of classed behaviour predominated in social circles – a behaviour of low-level bullying and drinking that came straight out of boarding schools. In my second year I was the LGBT rep on our college Students’ Association. One Saturday morning I awoke to a bed sheet that had been tied to the balcony walkway outside my window, on which someone had scrawled “this college is gay”. This was the most direct homophobic attack on me as a person I had experienced since I had left school. Everyone knew it was the Rentals that had done after they’d got pissed on Friday night. But among the students it was dismissed as “a laddish prank”. It took the enlightened intervention of the Senior Tutor to email all students and express how appalling the incident was.

This is the behaviour you see Cameron doing in his “flashman” moments. The fact that the press so blithely accept the “it’s class envy” argument when things like the Bullingdon Club are mentioned, for me, demonstrates the hegemonic dominance of such people and such ways of behaving in British society. The dominance of private schooling and Oxbridge in the elite of the UK ensures class inequalities are perpetuated. If you can’t access these things by birth, then you seek to imitate them through getting your kids into the best school, and the pretensions of non-Oxbridge universities, and their students, to be like Oxbridge.

I know a lot of comprehensive school kids from similar backgrounds will read this and go “this is rubbish. It wasn’t like this at all. This is all about you”. That is a fair argument. Of the non-private school students who get to Cambridge, I’m sure many do very well. I’m sure my story will resonate with others, however. And while I was not in a happy place as an undergraduate generally, I am now very much aware of the role social class had in this, and that cannot be denied. Similarly, I’m sure people will point to the laddish behaviour of students at other universities – the University I’ll soon be moving to is a case in point – as to why that behavioural aspect of my experience at Oxbridge is nonsense, it exists at all universities. But the unique thing for me, is the sheer dominance of people educated at Oxbridge in the elite of our nation means this matters a lot more than Stirling’s hockey club.

As an undergraduate in my first two years I took part in Cambridge’s access work, going to my local FE college in Bradford to eulogise to them about applying there. I remember talking about how happy I was and how it wasn’t all posh, and then going on to say how much I enjoyed punting and the May balls. I know for a fact I managed to put one student off applying. I couldn’t do this now. If I was to do it I would be forced to admit punting was an activity started by Edwardian toffs with little else to do and was actually quite pricey; the price of a May Ball ticket was probably much more than someone from the majority of the households in the UK could afford to pay once they’d forked out for their tuition fees; I’d have to tell them that whenever they mentioned which FE college they had attended they would be ridiculed; I would have to tell them that the people they meant who sneered at them for their background, who described their college as “looking like a prison” out of sheer snobbishness, would then be in power over them, setting the agenda for debate at a national level in the UK. I would tell the students to go to any other university in the UK because the teaching will be better, the mix of students more inclusive and interesting, and the opportunities to be yourself far wider.

* my first is why I am a very understanding member of exam boards as an academic now. At Cambridge your final degree classification is decided on the results of your second “tripos” which in History is your final year. It consisted of four papers and a dissertation, and since everything was double-marked, 10 marks. On my dissertation and two other papers I had very divergent marks. Off the top of my head, my marks were something like 51, 53, 68, 68, 68, 70, 70, 73, 75 and 80. I can’t remember for sure, but basically, with my mean mark I’d barely scraped a 2ii, however I was told by my Director of Studies that the exam board debated me for a long time, and agreed to give me my median mark of a First.

** although, there was a myth that the wonderful building designed by the partnership of Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan at Gillespie, Kidd & Coia was not originally fitted with showers in the bathrooms because one of the women on the panel who supervised the design was of the view that “ladies do not shower, they bathe”.

*** Latin for a three-legged stool. Need I say more?

Teaching philosophy statement

Someone has just asked for it, so I thought I'd put it up on here. I completed it in September 2011 before I'd had a full-on teaching semester here, however I still agree with it. I think I'd now probably just have a bit "bullshit detection" of the Postman and Weingartner sort. And in December last year I gave it to my first year class to comment on whether I achieved what I set out to and the general, positive view was that I did. So, here you are:

I want students to have those eureka moments of enlightenment. I want students to sit-up and be alert in lectures they’re enjoying; or at least not yawn too much. I want students to gain practical skills they can use as professionals in the workplace. I want student to gain skills of critical analysis to be aware of alternatives. I want students to gain deep understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of the subject.

These are high aims and I will be pleased if I meet them sometimes. The student body on urban studies courses is diverse and becoming increasingly so, presenting new challenges for teaching and learning. Students are beginning courses from very different disciplinary contexts, with differing ontological and epistemological assumptions, all of them valid in some way in urban studies subjects. Students also come from different learning contexts with very different expectations and learning outcomes. My role as a teacher is to provide a nurturing learning environmental where this knowledge and these skills can be brought out, challenged and developed into the deeper analytical skills required for the subject.

To do this in my teaching practice I will:

In lecturing – use an active lecturing style, with classes broken up with questions to the class and break-out sessions to apply learning immediately through practical application and reflection.

In tutorials – challenge and stretch students with theoretical writing and practical case studies that will develop deeper understanding and critical reflection.

In assessments – to use a range of assessment techniques appropriate to desired learning outcomes. Reports and presentation will develop practical skills, such as group working, report-writing, communication skills and practical problem assessment. Extended writing will develop theoretical knowledge and critical analysis and writing skills. Summative examination will be used to test relational learning outcomes, or used creatively – such as open book examinations – to develop deeper understanding of topic areas.

In technology-assisted and distance learning – to keep materials up-to-date and interesting and be brave in utilising new technologies and media when they are available, such as blogging, micro-blogging and social media.

In mentoring and supervision – to be attentive to individual learners’ skills and weaknesses and support them in develop skills such as academic reading and writing, literature searching and reviewing and research design and development.

In relating to students – treat them as adults and support them accordingly, providing prompt responses to queries whenever possible; provide positive, constructive and timely feedback on assessment, within the two week time limit of my discipline; and support them through their wider programme of learning.

To achieve this I will seek and use feedback from students, focusing as much on negative as any positive feedback. I will also work closely with colleagues to feed back to the collegial support I have already been offered in developing teaching materials and my practices. This might include peer observation, seeking moderation of assessment marking, and quality control on teaching materials. Through reflection in my Royal Town Planning Institute log book and PDR process, I will challenge my emerging approach to teaching and learning and adapt it to ensure I am meeting learning outcomes and providing a positive and challenging student experience. I see developing my teaching and learning style as a career goal. Students, society and technologies are going to change enormously over the next five years, let alone the next 40. Keeping abreast of changes and aware of student needs will keep learning materials and approaches fresh and accessible and ensure they will provide the learning outcomes I aspire to.

The weird and wonderful world (or World) of peer review

I'm now getting to be quite seasoned at the process of peer review. So far this year I've managed (somehow) to submit four papers for review and I await commentary on all of them. But, to be frank, it's a very odd process. I've been joking on Twitter that I've been making sacrifices to the gods of peer review, because, well you might as well. I really do have my tongue firmly stuck in my cheek when I tell students they must use academic journal articles because of the "gold standard" of peer review. The problems are well rehearsed, especially blind peer review: many reviewers are just unhelpful and rude, hidden by the anonymity of the "blind" process; it's not blind at all and could never hope to be – I've raised concerns that I've seen papers before to editors and they've just said go ahead; and the editors have said go ahead as they struggle to get reviewers; you can submit a paper and get rejected and then resubmit it and be accepted. In the social sciences and humanities in particular, peer review also seems to be much more about giving essay feedback than going through findings with a fine-toothed comb (although the scandals of forged results and plagiarism in the natural sciences suggest the process isn't going well there either).

I've had a mix of experiences. Two of my papers accepted so far went into, or were intended for, special issues, so they had lighter-touch peer review. Of my other two papers, my difficult theory paper got the best peer-review I could ever imagine – reams of helpful comments and references to read it up on. The other paper eventually got published in Environment and Planning C after a nice wee peer-review process; and I've discussed before how helpful peer-review was in getting the difficult theory paper out. However, the EPC first got submitted to another journal and I got the worst set of comments I've ever received on anything (until just the other week). In particular this pair (edited down to make them sound particularly horrendous and preserve some vestige of anonymity):

Although this paper covers an interesting area and attempts to tell a convincing story, its failure to follow basic research standards in reporting and contextualisation means that it is not suitable for publication.It does not recognise other ABI approaches which act as benchmarks and alternatives to 'New Life'; critically, several of these pre-date this central government entry into the field. So GEAR, Area Agreements, APTs, etc. were already established along partnership lines, had spawned their own community involvements and fora and with some degree of success had been addressing the regeneration issues this paper discusses. NL was a political project, therefore, to counter the [other authorities] successes.This paper denies that history; apart from a scant few, does not offer any of the many references on … There are other errors of fact or omission.

Were one to use the standard criteria for publishing in an international Journal – clear originality of the main questions posed, a rigorously presented paper likely to appeal to an international audience etc. – this paper would be a reject.It is not:(1) clear what is original(2) why the findings of the paper are agreed around the 2 themes introduced on page 15(3) presented in a way such that the findings have been sufficiently conceptualised – most the front end has been devoted to a review of well known territory…

To add a bit of context – this was a difficult paper. I wrote it in a few evenings, in between my thesis corrections, while working full time for the Scottish Government. One of my supervisors supported my writing and helped a bit and he knew we would be asked for major corrections, but even he said it was the worst set of reviewers' comments he'd ever received. They were so vituperative, bitter and unhelpful that I actually presumed the journal had rejected it based on them. I was quite shocked when I received an email from the editorial assistant, after the paper had been accepted for EPC (in much revised form, but with the same central argument and evidence base), asking why I had not resubmitted it.

In the course of drafting this blog post, I've since received a further rejection from a journal. One of the reviewer's comments were similarly helpful to these. I was so hurt and angry by them I immediately emailed the editor back suggesting they should not have bothered forwarding it on as they were utterly unhelpful. Rather wonderfully, the editor got back very quickly suggesting:

"Reviewers have different styles and some can come across as rude as you observed. However, I think it's often because they are so pressed for time and still trying to be of service to the journal. I thought it was a bit ironic that this reviewer criticized your article for being stream of consciousness when that is what the review itself very much appeared to be. But I hope there are still valuable comments you can take from it."

For the first 18 months of my full-time academic career I managed to stay off the editors' radars for peer review, but papers now roll in about one every two months. I use this horrible experience to try and be a good reviewer. I'm even tempted to do what I know a colleague has started doing: finish the review with their name, to end the pointlessness of the anonymity. Two experiences recently have made me reflect a bit more on my role as a reviewer. Firstly, I recently reviewed a paper that was very much in my research specialism. It needed a lot of work to bring it up to publication. But, if I was horribly uncooperative and frankly evil, I could've rejected it out of hand and used the ideas it contained, with my own knowledge and reading, to produce a very similar paper. But that would have been grossly unfair, especially since it was fairly easy to work out who the authors were from the reference list and they didn't need to be treated like that. I provided about half a page of feedback and comments and a handful of references to help them on their way. In the brief format of a Twitter direct message one of the authors said (once the farce of anonymity had completely broken down): "Thanks, comments very fair & constructive. We knew it needed work but decided rather than miss the opportunity to submit and then revise it". Pretty much what I was doing with my EPC paper.

Another recent incident was when I paper was sent back to me to peer review for the second time. This time, when I logged into the journal submission website* I could see the other reviewer's comments. And, well, basically, they were a lot more detailed than mine and gave me a massive thwack of self-doubt. Am I a good reviewer?

With this in mind, and with the permission of the editor, I thought I'd post my most recent review here:

"First of all, I hope the authors take these comments in the spirit they are intended - as constructive criticism. There is a paper here (if not two or three) and the authors are clearly skilled scholars, but the paper is far off publication as it stands.I will start with two broad comments. Firstly, the paper has been submitted as a "Research Article". As a reviewer I cannot accept it as such as it is a review article. Secondly, the paper really lacks structure - the best word to describe it is "baggy". As a reader it felt like I was being bounced around like a ball in a pinball machine. The paper leapt from policy area to policy area and from theorist to theorist. The abstract, I think, is testimony to this. It could be an abstract to anything - it certainly does not inform the reader as to what to expect from this paper. I certainly was not expecting the conclusion when I got there. To move forward, I think it would be really useful to sit down and get the conclusion nailed, so you know the direction you are writing towards. This means the paper can then have a very thorough edit to give it a strong focus.Some specific comments to pick up on:- the introductory section (pp1-2) makes some sweeping generalisations (some of which you contradict almost immediately) with very light referencing. It also essentially repeats the section from page 2-7 which with editing would make a better introduction - the statement on p7 of what the paper will do and focus on is excellent - keep hold of this and use it to direct your writing- you do need much more clarity on policy areas and what you mean by "science" throughout the paper. It is a bit too sweeping at the moment, and one of the most interesting things across the globe is how different policy areas are amenable to different ranges of evidence and vice versa. This would help support your point made on p7.- throughout you introduce big ideas, like "[theory in here]" and big theorists ([theorist] on p16 was particularly striking) without fully explaining the term/what the theorist says, or justifying why you are using them."

I've edited it down slightly and hidden a couple of bits to preserve anonymity, but I want to know, would this be helpful peer review for you? Am I evil and unhelpful or would you be pleased to receive this sort of feedback, particularly if you're an early career researcher?

In closing, I want to return to my recent rejection. The other very nice, worthwhile thing that the editor said in their reply email was:

"By the way, we also rate the reviews we receive for timely response and helpfulness. While we don't produce a "hall of shame,” we do present annual awards for the best reviewers for the journal. We hope this encourages reviewers to do the best jobs that they can, and also provides them with something they can put on their C.V.s to receive credit for an anonymous service."

This is not the first time I've heard of this – a colleague won a journal award for being their top reviewer. But perhaps this is a way to improve the quality of review and something more journal editors should consider? Or do we need something more radical like open peer review or move to a wiki model of academic publishing?

* I could rant about how crap manuscript central and the like are, but I'd be writing for weeks!

Demolish Morningside!

That was the controversial title of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe show I was involved in, the fantastic Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas organised by Beltane Public Engagement Network. Yes folks, after my most popular blog post ever on cycling and the Niceway Code (1244 hits so far...) we're back to me blogging about academia, which I know you all love...

So, what was the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas? Well, it was a range of academics speaking for an hour in the afternoon on a range of subjects to a paying audience. In our case, it was me, Professor Richard Williams of Edinburgh College of Art and the wonderful compère skills of stand-up Susan Morrison.

I've uploaded a sound recording of it to SoundCloud for you to listen to:



I've got some videos that have been given to me as well, including one where I explode with rage about the way Forth Ports have treated Leith and Edinburgh - I'm told this was quite the moment in the show!

Basically, the premise of my argument was one I've kind of rehearsed here - that we're more than happy to demolish deprived neighbourhoods and disrupt the lives of vulnerable working class people to delivering "mixed communities" but we'd never dream of doing the same to affluent neighbourhoods, like Morningside. Indeed, Edinburgh Council's accidental introduction of Moving to Opportunity when homeless people were housed in private-rented housing through a contract with a company, led to widespread opposition to the hoi polloi being moved into nice areas (often quite rightly, as the tenancies were not managed properly and there were many incidents of distressing anti-social behaviour).

Myself and Richard only spoke for about 15 minutes in total and then we moved onto discussion with the very informed audience. This was very interesting indeed it also allowed me to progress my argument a bit more - particularly introducing the complicated idea of "neighbourhood affects" and highlighting the complexity of understanding them in a Scottish context; and also my main argument that rather than demolishing neighbourhoods, maybe we should invest in them and deliver very good public services in them? That way we can move away from the situation where local authorities think that this is a good way to manage green space in a deprived neighbourhood:*

Two quick reflections on the experience. Firstly, the discussion ended up containing a lot of statistics and a lot of complex ideas. What was really impressive for me was the depth of this discussion. The audience members were very good at providing critical insights, particularly to the stats, highlighting for example, how Edinburgh's population stats are skewed because of the city's boundary and because people are increasingly living in West Lothian, Falkirk and Fife due to housing affordability issues.

Secondly, the audience response was quite amazing. We had an audience of 32, only 11 of whom were our friends and family (including my mum and my partner). Somebody came up to me at the end and suggested I should run for office. I declined politely as I think my role is best served in the academy. And, if I can do more things like this, then maybe I'll start to change how some people think. One of my mum's friends said to her afterwards that it was the best festival show he had seen that day, and the discussion and ideas that were being bounced around left him thinking for the rest of the day and distracted him from the concert he was seeing. 

So, in a little way, we were helping to create a bit of a Habermasian discourse. Of course, because we had the power imbued upon us as being "academics" it did not meet the conditions of the perfect public sphere. But the audience definitely didn't hold back from being engaged in the debate! And I can't tell you how nervous I was beforehand. I've heard that Immanuel Kant was never paid, but left a bucket at the exit to the lecture theatre for students' contributions. This experience felt very much like that! 

All in all, I'm very glad I did it.

* a bit of background here, this is what the City of Edinburgh Council have been doing in Wester Hailes, a neighbourhood I work closely with. They basically tarmaced over areas of grass and shrubbery they couldn't be bothered maintaining. The Council say this was due to "community demands", but from what I hear the community demanded the spaces be tidied up and they were offered the opportunity to get some tarmac. It gets me so angry. The evidence is that this will literally shorten the lives of the people living around these areas. In terms of partnership working, I think the Council should be expected to fund local primary care for the increase in prescriptions of anti-depressants that will result. Further, the grass and plants are already growing through the tarmac and the trees are dying because they don't get enough water. And not to mention the increased flood risk. And this, after Scottish Enterprise spent hundreds in the 1990s putting in the landscaping in the first place! Luckily, the community is equally as angry and in some other neighbourhoods in Wester Hailes these areas are becoming community gardens.

I'm an atheist who goes to church...

The other title for this post could have been "Retreat!" but that made it sound a bit militaristic and futile.

So yes, I'm an atheist who goes to church. This proper Scottish Episcopalian Church -  St John's, Edinburgh. None of this atheist church nonsense. I was brought up an atheist, I've never been baptised as my grandmother on one side was excommunicated by the Catholic church for marrying a protestant (the bell tolled for her soul and the bible was slammed shut) and on the other side the view was "we're living in absolute destitution and all you offer is platitudes".

St John's is a fantastic church. I started attending because my partner sings in the choir and as I'm a lazy sod I only ever to make it for Evensong on a Sunday (followed by beer and chips with said choir). If you've never been to a traditional Anglican Evensong, go - although watch out because a lot of choirs take July or August off. The settings of the responses and canticles are always nice (I'm always stunned by the words to the Magnificat) and very meditative; you get to say the Apostles Creed, which is better than the Nicene creed, and with a lot of luck you won't have to sit through a sermon.

At St John's you will have to. Or a "reflection on the readings" at least. You can stare at the beautiful stained glass windows if you want during it; or note that the painting of Jesus on the altarpiece looks oddly like he's holding a bendy straw (he's now colloquially known as the "Blessed Christ of the Bendy Straw") or do what the choir do and read a book or play candy crush saga. Given I'm usually one of about ten members of the congregation, I feel it's rude not to look like I'm listening. And often I do listen. Those ten minutes of someone talking to you about the nature of humankind or asking big questions like "what is justice?", "what is truth?", "how do we know?" "how do we create a peaceful World?", "what would the terrified 14-year-old Mary have felt like when she found out she was pregnant?". In our busy lives it's not very often we take the time to think deep thoughts like this. Or if your mind isn't captured by the sermon, even ten minutes of contemplative thought staring at very beautiful things.

It's this aspect of militant atheism that really angers me - that somehow church attendance and faith is an easy cop-out - that it provides "simple" explanations for life. I can't say anything that's ever been said to me in church has been simple or easy to understand. In fact being deeply, intellectually challenged is why I keep going. Oh, and the music is very good too.

Anyway, this isn't the main focus of what I wanted to say on this post. Through this non-religious conversation I've become good friends with a number of clergy. A central part of clergy life is going on regular "retreats". Often these are in silence. Contemplative weekends away from the church and congregation that allow some deep thought and emotional sorting out to be done.

After the week I've had preparing for the AHRC Connected Communities Showcase and doing a lot of work on a very exciting new undergraduate programme, I really envy the idea of retreat. Although, that's the thing - retreats are definitely not holidays. When I talk to my friends about their retreats, they usually sound refreshed, but often the intellectual work of sitting, walking and thinking is hard work for them. And even with bracketing and controlling my time as much as I can I still don't feel I get that long time to think and really exercise my brain and extend thoughts to logical conclusions that are offering new insights. If I set time aside in big blocks it's usually writing time as this also requires big, long, uninterrupted stretches of focused time.

Most importantly, retreats are part of your working life as a cleric and improve your pastoral role and theology. Because of this, I think academia could do with instigating the retreat as a common practice. I know many academics set aside a week or so as a "writing retreat", but this is still different from the retreat concept as I've encountered among my clergy friends. Similarly, we have the research sabbatical, but the out-of-office emails along the lines of "I'm on sabbatical, so it may take me longer to reply to emails" really demonstrates how academia's working culture stops people tuning out completely and thinking more deeply.

One thing I find very odd, particularly in the UK, is that the retreat is so central a part of clergy life yet is not part of academia. I find this odd as the UK's universities, especially in England, were so intimately tied to church life. Before the reformation the ancient colleges and universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Saint Andrews) were essentially a cross between priories and seminaries. After the reformation they became sort of seminaries, preparing people for the priesthood or other professions, and it's striking that right up until the late nineteenth century a lot of Cambridge science profs were "The Reverend...". And we mustn't forget the University of Durham was created by the CofE in a panic to try and halt the rise of non-conformism. Some of the vestiges of this remain - we still wear medieval monks garb for graduation ceremonies. The fights over the cellular office and (quite right) opposition to open-plan offices demonstrates how academia still holds to a model of a monkish eremitic working life (as well as a concern about the privacy of distressed students). But we've lost, or perhaps never gained, the concept of the retreat. 

Like many academics I suspect, I use conference travel - particularly thinking time on trains - as a sort of retreat. It's not proper retreat though. It's not in a location designed for retreat, secluded from the World, quiet, with nourishment (intellectual and nutritious) provided at a low cost. I think adding a few sessions of retreat into the standard academic contract could really help. Although the problem is with that is we'd be adding to the absenteeism that is already a problem in universities.

A wee quick edit. Over on twitter I'm getting a couple of suggestions for reading for atheist church-goers. So, I thought on here I'd mention this book: Liberation Theology and Sexuality, by a former congregation member of St John's. It's an amazing book and well worth a read if you're interested in why religion can be challenging and revealing even if you are an atheist.

Policy discourses...

Many moons ago, when I was putting together my slides for a class where I introduce my students to critical narrative approaches to policy analysis, I came up with the following. I think it's quite clever and amusing, even looking back on it, so I thought I'd reproduce it here.

In the spirit of Deborah Stone's causal stories I tell my students a story, with a beginning...

"Once upon a time there was a village called Ricarston. All the villagers lived peacefully, growing crops to eat and working very hard in the local University. But, on a hill above the village was a cave and in the cave lived an evil dragon called Napier. Mayor Matthews, who ruled Ricarston benevolently, was scared of the dragon..."

A middle...

"...one dark and stormy night Napier swooped down from his cave and breathed fire throughout Ricarston. The poor villagers fought the fires on their thatched roofs. At number three Hermiston Walk, poor Mrs Chapman, the widower who took in orphans, burnt to death along with three-year-old Tommy..."

An elaboration:

"...Napier also swooped over the fields, scorching the earth and burning all the villagers’ crops. It was too late in the year for the seeds to be sown again so the villagers only had the food that could be saved from their stores. By the end of semester two they were so hungry they failed their exams..."

And an end:

"...The villagers were very angry. Just when they were going to give up and move to Edinborough, the great and fearless knight Sir Gov Ernment rode into town swinging his battleaxe with great big knobs on. He led the villagers on a charge up the mountain to Napier’s cave. After a short skirmish Napier was captured and imprisoned. He spent the rest of his live providing sustainable heating to the village of Ricarston by breathing fire."

I ask my students to identify who the story positions as the victim, who is to blame and who was the hero.

I then present an entirely different story, taking from the mythical policy document: Together, Forever: A Policy on Dragon-Village Relations in Edinshire

"Under the Universal Dragon Rights Directive, all dragons have a right to reside where they settle without interference from local communities. There should be an expectation on local communities to reinforce their dwellings from fire using steel sheeting and asbestos. Communities near a dragon nesting site should also take necessary action to ensure a secure supply of food in case of fire-based communication breakdowns..."

To demonstrate how causal stories can be hidden in technical language but still apportion blame and heroic status. So, do you support dragon rights?

Reflections on teaching practice - loving international students

A quick blog post because I'm feeling the HE luvvin at the moment. I've previously blogged on my experiences of the internationalisation of teaching through my PGCap assignments - the negative bit about the neo-liberal multiversity here, and a constructive reflection on teaching and learning here. In doing this project it amused me how a lot of the eulogistic writing about international students, particularly from days when they were still a novelty on campuses, was so different from the actual experience of teaching a class with almost a majority of international students. I highlighted how the growing number of international students was actually presented as a problem by my colleagues, particularly students from a Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC). This was very different from the wonderful world of intercultural discovery portrayed by some authors. In particular the following stereotypes were very strongly in play (some of them based on reality):

• that CHC students lacked critical thinking skills and were compliant
• that CHC students looked to the teacher as leader and all-knowing demi-God.
• that CHC students have poor English language skills.

My PGCap project found that the latter was likely to be the main barrier to educational success. However, on the former two points I know I can be a little bit racist in presuming that these are true assumptions - that these students have swallowed the Communist Party line and struggle to criticise what is happening back in China.

I'm pleasantly finding out how wrong I have been. Last year I had a little window into this - a student was discussing how she wanted to do a dissertation on the accessibility of public transport to disabled people in China. I mentioned how the Chinese government might not allow the sort of campaigning organisations around disability that we have in the UK - the response was a wry, very knowing, smile.

In yesterday's environmental planning course I was discussing types of pollutants and got onto discussing air pollution in Beijing. I raised the issue of the disparity between the Government's air quality measures and those of the US Embassy. The response from one student from Chinese was to burst out laughing. Given all my students fall asleep in this class, I was not expecting this at all! One of his friends pointed out he was from Beijing, so I asked why he was laughing - it was because the fact that the authorities diddled the figures did not come as a surprise to him at all. And he knew everything that had happened during the Olympics to try and clear the air. In the same class, another student from another town in China also discovered that there was an aluminium smelter in his town that had basically been killing people with its pollution. 

It's moments like these that definitely make you #lovehe.

Why do I blog and should I bother?

In a moment of over-indulgence, this time last year I did a couple of self-congratulatory blog posts reflecting on the previous year. It seems it is still the thing to do, as this excellent review of the year by Alex Marsh suggests.

As I put it quite bluntly to Alex on Twitter, my blog is no way near as good as his. In fact it was his blogging and that by Alasdair Rae at Sheffield, which gained him the attention of the Graun, that inspired me to start blogging in the first place.

However, my latest few posts have given me pause for thought – well, essentially I’m turning into this:


Back in the summer, if I put up a post then I could guarantee that in a day it would reach over 100 hits. My all-time most popular post (970 hits and counting), on housing and planning wasn’t written by me, but by a wonderful colleague at Sheffield Dr Sarah Payne. My other guest post by my colleague Dr Kirsten Besemer was also popular with 335 hits. My own most popular post was one of my rants about cycling with 691 hits. This obsession with audience was not helped by watching the excellent film Julie and Julia the other night!

It’s the funny thing with blogging – you get a good idea of your audience from these stats, which you rarely get with other written media, although Facebook insights allows you to become even more obsessive. What do all these numbers tell me? Well, reading them straight off, it seems I’m not a very good blogger and my two guest authors have written better than me. Well, I am when I rant about cycling, but people are less interested in my academic work, particular around public sector reform and regeneration (apart from this post which went bizarrely viral among people employed by the Scottish Government). More realistic is the link between Twitter and the blog. Somehow, I’ve ended up with over 1,200 followers on Twitter – my unique blend of tweets on RCTs on the best fat to cook roast potatoes, cucumber special offers in Tesco and random musings on local government seem to float people’s boats. As I said to academic lawyer Malcolm Combe when he started blogging and joined Twitter, Twitter and blogs go hand-in-hand – if you build up sufficient followers on Twitter then when you tweet out your new blog posts, and get retweets, then it drives traffic to your blog.

So, if I wanted to drive more traffic to my blog I should write more rants about cycling and tweet about it more. I’m not sure about the former, but the latter is something I should think about – I don’t tweet as much about my blog as I used to as I find the self-promotion a little awkward.

I used the classic clip of Norma Desmond for a reason – you’re supposed to pity her over-inflated ego. I don’t want my concern about falling audiences on my blog to give you the impression that I spend my days in my office worrying about it. It’s just something I had noticed. And anyway, people reading what I write is not really why I started to blog in the first place. I presumed no one would read it and if people did it was a bonus. I mainly write because it is a form of analysis. I can have ideas and arguments in my head, but they only really come to anything if I write them down. This has led onto work being published in academic journals, for example this post became this Viewpoint in Local Economy journal; and this post by Kirsten is being worked up into a bigger piece of work on deprived neighbourhoods and sexual orientation in Scotland based on some more analysis of the Scottish Health Survey. Blogging is just a nice way to get ideas out there and reflect on practice and research.

Looking back at my self-congratulatory post a year ago, one thing I said I would do, that I haven’t really, is blog about the exciting Ladders to the Cloud project in Wester Hailes. This was very remiss, as a lot has happened, as these two posts in the Hailesmatters blog show. The Totem Pole is now up, with the Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh unveiling it and Jennifer Jones is now working in the neighbourhood for a few months to build up some citizen journalism capacity.

Another set of posts that people in HE seemed to enjoy were my “reflections on teaching practice”. That I could do these was fortunate due to the fact I was completing my Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice and had to produce the work and I’m coming to the end of this now. However, I want to keep up to these as reflections on teaching practice as it shouldn’t stop just because I’m not studying – it’s the only way to improve on my excellent practice so far, after all.

All-in-all, I think my blogging New Year’s resolutions will therefore be:

• To keep blogging;
• To make sure I publicise my blog through Twitter;
• Make sure I blog about Ladders to the Cloud as the project comes to an end;
• To keep blogging about my teaching experiences.

Oh, and the other thing I’ve noticed, is if I link to my own blog in my blog posts it drives traffic no end! And with that, I’ll leave you to go and read a proper academic blog post over at Alex’s Archives.

Reflections on teaching and learning - using Prezi

Like many in this wired World, I’ve been playing around with Prezi – the non-linear presentation tool. I came across it about a year ago thanks to Nicola Osborne and like many tools in the Lakeland Plastics of the tinterwebs it seemed to fill a need I only ever had a niggling sense I had – for a presentation tool that unlike PowerPoint did not make you present in a linear fashion (I have since discovered the ability to press “B” in the middle of a PowerPoint and also am a lot better at designing and animating slides). The fact Prezi is free to academic users also helped my conversion.

I’ve watched one presentation delivered by Prezi (I felt a little bit seasick too) and delivered three – one for a Petchakucha of my research interests, and twice in teaching. I’m going to focus on these two and think about Prezi as a teaching tool.

The student experience

I’ve got a bit of an insight into the student experience of being subjected to a Prezi from two perspectives – firstly from everyday feedback and secondly, rather usefully, from an autoethnography I have a couple of students doing for their dissertations and my PGCap. From this it seems Prezi makes for a poorer teaching and learning experience than PowerPoint from a practical and seemingly pedagogical point of view. One practical problem – students cannot print out a Prezi. Or they can, but it’ll either be one sheet the size of a billboard or 70+ sheets of A4. I had trouble enough because I saved my PowerPoints as pdfs, so this was a bit of a problem with Prezi. This was the case even though ever lecture was twinned with exhaustive distance learning notes. I embedded my Prezis in our VLE (BlackBoard) but I’m not sure how many people went back to them. Also, students feel seasick too – and I didn’t do that much zoomy swoopy stuff on my Prezis! My student doing their autoethnography also thought I’d presented using Prezi three times, whereas it was just twice in two separate lectures. This suggests that it actually failed to deliver a lasting impression for this student.

My experience

I deliver my lectures as a story. The beginning is usually a real-world, nice example of some of the issues I will be discussing in the lecture. The middle is the construction of theoretical scaffolding and then fill in some the gaps with real-world examples, often through the use of group work in class, and then end (now) with a “this is what you should know” section. So, PowerPoint actually suits this way of speaking. I felt much more comfortable speaking to the narrative of PowerPoint. Further, it was much easier to get an overview of a PowerPoint presentation written some months before in the five minutes before a lecture began, than it was the equivalent Prezi.

To be fair on Prezi, I think it was also partly my fault and that I was trying to be too clever. In the effort to make something that looked good I discarded the PowerPoint rules-of-thumb: using bullet points to summarise points and act as prompts; using strong images as prompts and to provoke thoughts etc. In one of my Prezi delivered lectures I got to one frame and it was just a gigantic question-mark. Clearly I’d put this in a year before with the idea that this would be a good time to ask the class questions of clarification. Could I remember what the question was? I’d hidden the answers in the dot at the bottom of the question mark and had to swoop in, check what they were, and zoom back out again and ask the question. Which rather defeated the purpose of asking the question in the first place. And as an interactive lecturer I also found Prezi, by making me a bit more nervous, reduced the amount I happily engaged with the class.
 

Finally, the one thing I started using Prezi for – the non-narrative nature of it – wasn’t helpful at all. The couple of times I did have to go off-piste, so to speak (navigate around the Prezi field without using the pre-drawn path) I was just lost and it took my far too long to find what I was looking for and zoom in on it properly. The one thing that really bugged me was at the end of drawing your path around your Prezi, if you had to change it, especially if it was near the start of your presentation, the only way to do it was delete the whole path and start again. This compares to just inserting a new slide in PowerPoint.

So, in conclusion, I have to say I’ll probably be ditching Prezi entirely for teaching next year and sticking with PowerPoint (for all its flaws) for the foreseeable future. The real test will be in the end of semester feedback and the exam results!