(6) Visual stimuli as a prompt for discussion

In response to earlier feedback from students during course evaluations, I have been aware for some time that the use of lots of different methods in the class room is highly appreciated because they enable students to interact with the course content in a hands on way and they break up the monotony of traditional didactic delivery. Although in the past I have always tried to make my lectures interactive, I have frequently been concerned that students wanted more clearly defined activities and delivery methods, i.e. they want what Middledork and Kaslian (1996) call ”change-ups” between different delivery techniques to be dramatic and obvious rather than subtle.

This year I was asked to teach a module that focussed on fairly intangible aspect of the philosophy of linguistics that did not involve much visual stimulation, or language data. This meant that there was a danger the course would be overly reliant on text information, and verbal stimuli, with powerpoint slides actings as the main stimulus. To try and counteract this, I decided to break up the lecture into discrete sections using humorous cartoons, pictures of ambiguous signs and internet macros as a visual cue to mark a change in topic. In doing so I attempted to encourage active engagement by asking the students to think of similar examples (i.e. to use the images as a stimulus for discussion). This seemed to work well, and encouraged some of the students who were more normally reserved to actively participate. It surprised me the extent to which this involved certain individuals. It may be that by employing visual representations, I was able to to target interaction for those students with learning preferences for visual modes of instruction (Mayer and Massa 2003).

In this module, I also used short videos (usually a few minutes long) for the first time as a tool to engage students in the ideas I was trying impart. In the first video session, students watched B. F. Skinner conduct a Behavourist experiment on a pigeon. This allowed the students to see how operant conditioning works and allowed us to use this as the basis for discussing the differences between the conditioning of animal behaviour and the role of the caregiver in the acquisition of language by a child. The second video of Ali G talking to Noam Chomsky was much less informative in terms of the content, but through observing the types of misunderstandings Ali G had about Chomsky’s work, I was able to encourage the student to draw out some of the central tenets of Chomsky’s approach to language. In the this session in which I used video, the students learnt about the types of visual stimuli fieldworkers use in when describing undocumented languages. By watching these videos, I hoped that the students would able to put themselves in the shoes of a language consultant to help them assess the benefits and problems associated with using stimuli in the field. I think this partially worked, as a technique for consolidating learning, but next time I would also include some structured activity relating to the videos that forced the students to record what was discussed in order to try and maximise the affect.

By trying to integrate different change-ups into my classroom I have attempted to address my action plan (as outlined in my educational biography) and introduce some non-text based discussion prompts in my lecture. I found overall in my teaching this semester that students seem to prefer to engage in data driven tasks rather that discussion tasks. I think there is a role for both of these in the teaching of linguistics in HE because students need to acquire skills in both analysis and argumentation. While data driven tasks often involve both of these, discursive tasks can help with exploring the argumentation behind abstract topics.

References:

Mayer, Richard E. and Laura J. Massa, 2003. Three facets of visual and verbal learners: cognitive ability, cognitive style, and learning preference. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 833-846.

Middendorf, Joan and Alan Kalish. 1996. The “change-up” in lectures. The National Teaching and Learning Forum, 5, 1-3.

(5) Peer observation by Carlo Petrucci

On Monday in Week 6, my lecture for Linguistics for Translators and Interpreters was peer observed by Carlo Petrucci. When providing feedback on my lecture, Carlo expressed some difficulty in commenting on negative aspects of the class since his point of comparison was his own learning experience in Italy of extremely boring, dry lectures  that did not involve much interaction. However, he was able to highlight some positive aspects of my teaching style that will be useful for me to develop further and retain in future classes. In particular, he commented that the atmosphere in class and my attitude to the students was relaxed and friendly and that my body language and eye contact was very good .His positive feedback about my teaching was very reassuring.

In the classes of this module I had decided to implement a lecture structure in which there would be intermittent exercise for the students to complete in small groups. I did this because I had been made aware from through student feedback on my teaching at other institutions that students often much prefer an integrated lecture/tutorial style of delivery, rather than having a long lecture followed by a tutorial. During the class I stopped the lecture at intervals to allow the students to compete exercises, and after 10 – 15 minutes they would report back to the whole class to share how they completed the task. Such a technique is recommended by Middendoff and Kalish (1996) who suggest building a ”change-up” into classes – i.e. add periodic activities to the lecture structure – to reset the attention span of students.

These “change up” activities provided a break in the structure of the lecture  time for peer-to-peer discussion, which seemed to be useful was useful for developing a cooperative approach to learning. In our feedback session, Carlo specifically mentioned that he could here the students behind him actively engaging in the exercise, demonstrating that it was successful. This have given me the confidence to implement it in all of my lecture from now on.

The lecture structure ensured that 20 minutes of theory was followed by 15 minutes of the application of what was learnt and is a good antidote to delivery using powerpoint slides. Since studies on the attention spans of adult learners suggest students can only stay tuned into a lecturer’s voice for 15-20 minutes (e.g. Johnstone and Percival 1976, although see Wilson and Korn (2007) for issues related to attention span research) and this was a good way of trying to retain everyone’s attention and understand the value of what I was trying to impart through the application of what they had learnt. More importantly, it gave students the opportunity to talk to one another to discuss any point they weren’t sure about. During the exercises I made sure I was available to students, by moving around the lecture hall. This enabled me to give individual feedback to students on the way they were working throughout exercises (A3). This was really important, as it was only after engaging with students in small groups that I could identify problems that individuals had, since the class had over 60 students. Running the lectures in this way enabled me to develop an effective learning environment, whilst providing student support and guidance to individuals within the lecture itself, as set out in the UK Professional Standards Framework (A4). This is evidences by the fact that in the revision session that followed my lectures, students had retained knowledge of the techniques used in class to arrive at the correct results. I was impressed by their ability to do this so easily in class.

I started the lecture be encouraging the students to think about what we had already learnt and the types of methods we had used in the previous lecture.
In our feedback session, Carlo mentioned that he would consider adopting the technique I used to re-engage students with the subject matter in his own lectures. While it is a superficially simple exercise, this is a good way of linking together topics and providing students with a bigger picture of what they are learning. I feel that this has always worked very well each time I have used it, because students feel empowered when they are given frequent opportunities to reflect on what they have learned and to demonstrate it – to themselves and others.

References:

Johnstone, A. H. and F. Percival. 1976. Attention breaks in lectures. Education in Chemistry, 13, 49-50.

Middendorf, Joan and Alan Kalish. 1996. The “change-up” in lectures. The National Teaching and Learning Forum, 5, 1-3.

Wilson, K. and J. H. Korn. 2007. Attention during lectures: beyond ten minutes. Teaching of Psychology, 34, 85–89.

(4) Peer observation of Becci Jackson

On Tuesday of Week 10, I peer-reviewed a tutorial led by Becci Jackson for my lecture course Introduction to Morphology and Syntax. Immediately before the the tutorial, I taught the lecture with which the tutorial was associated. In addition to providing Becci with feedback on her teaching, peer observing this class enabled me to see the ways in which the exercises I prepare for the tutorial are executed. On a personal level, this peer-observation allowed me to reflect on the materials I provide other people to teach with and to think about the ways in which students engage with my exercises.

In advance of the lecture, I had provided Becci with a set of example sentences to which the students need to apply a set of tests that they had learnt about in the preceding lecture. While the sentences that I chose were selected on the basis of their grammatical properties, in essence, the activity itself was amenable to being carried out in a variety of ways, allowing Becci to devise techniques to consolidate learning independently of the exact content (i.e. the sentences I had provided). The way in which Becci taught the class made me realise that the content I had provided her with was quite distinct from the delivery. I think this will encourage me to think more actively about the separation of content and delivery and how I can sue this to my advantage in future.

Becci had set up four ”work stations” containing activities for students to complete in small groups. Each workstation contained activities related to the tests discussed in class. The layout of the workstations at the extremities of the usable floor space in the teaching room encouraged students to move around the room rather than learning statically in their seats. Conceptually, I think this also a good way of getting students to associate different spaces with different ways of dealing with a problem. While the shape and size of the room made it difficult to effectively achieve what she was attempting, Becci made the most of the troublesome layout. I think the association between space and ideas could be a useful tool to use in my own exercises in the future. This is not something I have spent any time thinking about before.

Becci put he class into four groups of four students to avoid individuals working on their own. I think peer-to-peer discussion of this kind is really valuable as a classroom technique because it allows students to interact with other and exchange ideas. However, not all groups were as conversant as the others, with one quiet group standing out as requiring a greater deal of encouragement to participate than the other three groups. As an independent observer, it was clear that some individuals in the groups found the group work difficult to engage in, as they were clearly talking about topics entirely unrelated to the class content. This demonstrates that the tutor’s movement around the room is essential. It was clear to me that Becci needed to spend more time with the quiet group (rather like attending to the quietest casualty in an emergency). However, in discussing this point with Becci, she pointed out that she was hanging back to ensure that the students had time to do the exercises before intervening. , while this is important (and something that has been observed to be an issue in my own teaching). One particularly good technique employed was to encourage groups off non-native speakers to engage with the quiet group which contained a number of native English speakers.

The exercise was useful way for students to gain confidence in dealing with data. However, students were not always clear what the task involved – i.e. what they were supposed to be doing at each workstation. While Becci set out the objectives and role she would play in the activity before it started, she did not discuss in any detail what the activity involved. At the end of the workstations activity, students went back to their seats to discuss the outcomes of the exercise within their groups, but on reflection, it would have been much more engaging if the individual groups were asked to report back on each sentence so that all individuals in the class were exposed to the same sort of information, regardless of which peers they worked together with in the groups.

In line with the results of a study by Hendry and Oliver (2012), I found that engaging in peer observation was beneficial to me – and I hope for my teaching – because I have learned about new teaching strategies and techniques by watching a colleague use them successfully. Hendry and Oliver (2012) report that the university teachers in their studies valued models who have similar students and class sizes, and a similar interest in teaching well, and are perceived as experienced or successful.  Peer observing Becci was useful because we have shared interests and it was rewarding to see someone more engaged and less reserved with developing their practice within my own field. In research on reciprocal peer observation, Donnelly (2007) explored staff perceptions of the success of the scheme and observed that participants thought that both components of the observation process were useful (observing and being observed). I feel that conducting both observations with the same colleague allowed us both to be open an honest in our observations as the relation between observer and observed was symmetrical.

By conduction this peer observation, I have engaged with contributing both to my own professional development (through reflection on my practise) and the professional development of a colleague. This has enabled me to evaluate professional practise in my discipline to partly contribute to an area of activity on the UK Professional Standards Framework (A5).

References:

Donnelly, R. 2007. Perceived impact of peer observation of teaching in higher education. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 19, 117-129. 

Hendry, Graham D. and  Gary R. Oliver. 2012. Seeing is believing: the benefits of peer observation. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 9, Art7 (1-9).

(3) Peer observation by Becci Jackson

On Tuesday in Week 7, my lecture for Introduction to Morphology and Syntax was peer observed by Becci Jackson. Although Becci officially observed just one session, she was present at 10 of the 11 lectures given for the course since she teaches the tutorials for this module. By virtue of being present on a weekly basis, she was able to build up a picture of my teaching practise in general over the course. As a result, I feel that feedback from Becci is particularly valuable as a tool to help me reflect on how I teach. In line with the UK Professional Standards Framework, I acknowledge that this is a useful method for evaluating the effectiveness of teaching because it has encouraged me to think about one less obvious ways of changing the way I teach (K5). The implications of this are broader than my own personal development because reacting to peer observation and student feedback can dramatically improve the quality of teaching delivered so that students retain knowledge and skills they can use in the workplace (K6).

Becci’s overall impression of my teaching was very favourable, and she specifically commented that the students really like me because I do not pretend to be perfect and have a very human attitude to lecturing. I am open about admitting mistakes or issues that arise in my teaching practise (e.g. an error on the handouts, or when an exercise was not as successful as I had hoped). However, at the same the time, the students feel I am credible, and this is particularly evident when I have had to deal with curve-ball questions in class that take us beyond the immediate topic.

A major criticism made by Becci concerned my time keeping in delivering the class and the consequences this has for other sessions. This was identified as a major area for improvement. Specifically, throughout the course I repeatedly only checked on the time too close to the end of the class to be able to rectify the timing problems I had. This primarily arose because all the material I was teaching this year was new, so it was hard to assess exactly how long each slide/exercise or discussion time would take to complete. The Becci suggested that I wear a watch to ensure that I am always aware of the time. I agree that this is important since most class rooms at the University of Salford do not have functioning clocks that are visible to the lecturer. The consequences of this also impacted on the delivery of the module by Becci herself, since her tutorials for the module ran immediately after lecture. I got the opportunity to see the difficulties this causes when Becci was unable to teach one week and I ran the tutorials in her place. On this occasion I over ran in the lecture, which meant the first tutorial group had less time in their tutorial and we did not get through all of the exercises I had set. I felt bad about this. I’ll think about buying a watch.

Another area for development identified in the peer review process also concerned timing, but in a slightly different way. Research into wait time (e.g. Tobin 1987, Rowe 1999)  suggests that increasing the amount of time students are given to respond to a question will decrease the number of ”short recall” answers given, and lead to more thoughtful answers. Becci suggested that I increase the ”wait time” between when I asked the class a question and, if it remained unanswered, the point at which I rephrased the question or answered it myself. This problem is pertinent because this was a first year class in which the students are not used to thinking about linguistics and need more time to reflect on what they are being asked than I was giving them. Following the peer observation, I consciously implemented this technique in one of my classes and although the silence was awkward, a student did eventually offer an answer without me rephrasing the question. Although the answer they gave was not at all what I was asking, it at least allows me to try to assess why they are giving a wrong answer, thus identifying areas where I need to try to improve their knowledge.

Becci also observed that when I first tried to implement some exercises as part of the lecture to make the class more interactive, they did not respond well because they were not used to having lectures like that with me. After a few weeks this issue no longer existed and the students seemed more relaxed with intermittent activities in the class. One way of avoiding a similar problem in future this would be to set out a culture of discussion and intermittent exercises right from the start of the module, rather than half way through when students had already become accustomed to a particular teaching style.

The final issue that arose in my classroom management could be summarised as the ”dominate student problem” in which the stronger students in the classroom participate more gregariously in class than weaker students. This is an area where I feel I could develop my Professional Values, as set out in the UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and supporting learning. For instance, it is only by being away of individual learning preferences (VI) that I can attempt to encourage participation of those individuals who take a back seat in class interactions. For those students who are less confident, one way to counteract this problem is to introduce a greater amount of peer-to-peer discussion within the lecture itself. This would hopefully promote participation in the class and ensure that quieter and less confident students have a chance to have their voice heard and express themselves in a non-threatening environment — thus providing equal opportunities for all learners (V2).

References:

Tobin. K. (1987). The role of wait time in higher cognitive learning. Review of educational research, 57, 69-95.

Rowe, M. (1987). Wait-time: Slowing down may be a way of speeding up. American Educator, 11, 38-43.

(2) Innovation and creativity in a HE context

In order to integrate creative teaching and learning to the classroom experience, I have designed a student-led activity using low tech resources with an aim to provide a more stimulating learning experience for students studying a specific topic that would normally be taught using highly conventional methods. In doing so I have attempted to use experiential learning techniques (Kolb and Fry 1975, Kolb 1984) that will allow the students to have  ’direct encounter with the phenomena being studied rather than merely thinking about the encounter, or only considering the possibility of doing something about it.’ (Borzak 1981: 9).

When teaching this for the first time this year in my module Linguistic Theory in the 20th Century, I found it particularly difficult to think of interactive activities that the students could participate in on this subject matter, mainly because it is of a non-tangible, philosophical nature.

The specific problem concerns the concept of linguistic relativity, the idea that the language a person speaks (in part) structures the way in which he conceptualises the world. The arguments that support this hypothesis rely on observations about differences in the linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour of in speech communities, typically attempting to show how concepts that are encoded in their linguistic system underpin thought. Crucially though, differences in behaviour must be attributable to differences in language, not just culture to count as evidence for such a view.

Linguistic relativity is particularly difficult to discuss at length in a class of mono-lingual students since it is not possible for everyone in the class to reflect on their personal experiences in this respect. This gives rise to the perfect opportunity to attempt to use an creative and interactive teaching approach to try to stimulate learning.

As part of the mixed reality game, I bought a low tech resource that contained many of the physical tools used in a real research project for determining whether the language that an individual speaks determines the way in which they think about physical space. The resource consists of a set of plastic human action figures, a plastic tree and a compass. In a piece of research designed by Levinson et al. (1992), speakers were shown photographs of plastic figures of men positioned in relation to a plastic tree to determine what kinds of spatial relations are employed to discuss the spatial orientation of figures. In a language like English, respondents typically determine spatial relations based on their perspective on the event. For example, in saying `The man is to the left of the tree’ or `The man is in front of the tree’ the speaker perspective on the event determines which spatial relation to use (i.e. the man is to the left of the tree, where the speakers’ lefthandside is relevant, not the man’s.). However, in other cultures, spatial relations may be determined according to cardinal points on a compass, the relation to the source of the usual direction of wind (when at sea), whether the figure is closer to the sea or inland mountains (when on land), etc.

The purpose of the game is to ask the students to work in pairs, so that one is the experimenter and the other the subject. The experimenter must place the figures on a map in a number of configurations with a different cardinal orientations (as illustrated in some photographs). Once the figures are correctly positioned the experimenter must ask the subject to describe the configuration. These descriptions will be noted down and we would then compile the responses as a class to think about what kinds of variation exists with in a single language, and why no speaker of a European language would naturally use the compass points rather than speaker centric spatial orientations, even when the ability to use this frame of reference is part of their linguistic repertoire.

I suspect there will be several benefits of using a creative learning strategy of this kind in the classroom that relate to the UK Professional Standards for teaching and supporting learning in HE. It would allow students to think about a problem through their own experiences, and thus make it real to them. This shows awareness of how students learn, both generally and within the discipline of linguistics (K3). It would provide the opportunity to open up a dialogue between students and as a class as a whole, whilst also exposing students to research techniques used in the field.

In carrying out this task, I have been thinking about how to design and plan learning activities (A1) that are appropriate for the subject area and level of the programme – i.e. I have attempted to implement research led teaching in a third-year module (K2). To do this, I thought about how students learn through experience (K3) and used some simple low tech learning technology to create an activity specific to the material and skills I wanted them to acquire (K1, K4).

References:

Borzak, L. 1981. Field study. A source book for experiential learning. Beverley Hills: Sage Publications.

Kolb, D. A. 1984. Experiential learning, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice Hall.

Kolb. D. A. and R. Fry. 1975. Toward an applied theory of experiential learning. In C. Cooper (ed.) Theories of group process. London: John Wiley.

Levinson, Stephen C., Penelope Brown, Eve Danziger, Lourdes De León, John B. Haviland, Eric Pederson and Gunter Senft. 1992. Man and Tree & Space Games. In Stephen C. Levinson (ed.), Space stimuli kit 1.2: November 1992, 7-14. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

(1) Educational biography

As with all teachers, my positive learning experiences have been highly influential in determining my teaching philosophy. Two important aspects of these positive experiences that influence my own teaching are (i) understanding the end to which the content of the class is useful or revealing of a bigger picture or skill set, and in doing so (ii) engendering interest in the subject matter. To ensure that I achieve these goals I rely on skills from the three dimensions of the UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and supporting learning in HE, namely Areas of Activity, Core Knowledge and Professional Values, some of which I highlight below.

My strengths as a teacher lie in my genuine desire to ensure that students have the confidence to use the skills they have acquired to access further resources for learning and put their knowledge and skills to practical use. I am a friendly, approachable and responsive teacher and consequently I continuously gauge the progress of the class whilst working through content to assess whether the learning activities I have planned successfully support the learning goals I have set.

My experience teaching linguistics at SOAS and the University of Salford has drawn on my expertise in planning, implementing, assessing and adapting my teaching materials to provide a positive learning and teaching environment for my students. This includes developing handouts, powerpoint slides and exercise sheets for the lecture courses I teach, and tutorial exercises for my tutorial assistants to use in their classes (A1, A2). I have similar experience of setting assessments in the form of coursework, essays and examinations at undergraduate and postgraduate level. I have marked, second-marked and provided constructive written and feedback on work at each of these levels and also supervised the marking process undertaken by my tutorial assistants for some of my courses (A3). In teaching I try to avoid a ‘surface’ approach to learning by fostering an environment in which the ‘deep’ approach to learning is integrated into the design of the class (Marton 1975, Biggs 1987). This way and I can maximize the engagement of my students to avoid a purely passive learning style and to ensure students grasp  threshold concepts (the label given by Meyer and Land (2006) to those concepts which need to be understood by students before they can understand  parts of the subject that follow on from them) which continuously arise in teaching theoretical linguistics.

I enjoy learning best when I understand how the content I am learning contributes to my breadth of knowledge on a subject and how this new knowledge feeds into a particular view of the world or perspective on the discipline. While this knowledge may be transferred using a variety of methods, without understanding explicit goals of a learning enterprise, I do not find it very easy to be interested or motivated and I do not enjoy participating in group work. My most positive learning experiences at university have occurred when my teachers have been enthusiastic about the subject matter and have managed to impart on me why I should be enthusiastic about it too.

Just as individuals have different learning preferences, students react differently to different methods employed in class and experience the same teaching in different ways (Fry, Ketteridge and Marshall 2009: 22). I have noticed that my students at the University of Salford, respond particularly well to group exercises in which they can draw on pooled resources to achieve an end goal. For some of the students I suspect this reflects a general lack of self-confidence with new material which prevails from previous learning experiences. Students of this kind benefit from talking through problems and exercises with those with more confidence with the material. Some students are confident with the material but socially more withdrawn and likewise can benefit from working with others in this way. This is an area of teaching where my own learning preferences are at odds with those of the groups I am teaching (V1). Consequently, one area of my teaching practice in which I would like to improve is in ensuring that I employ a range of teaching styles – including group work – within the classroom to ensure that different learning preferences of individuals are met (V2). To do this, I intend to increase the amount of activity based content in my lectures, even when they are already supplemented by tutorials. I believe this may help to consolidate student leaning in class so they achieve a better understanding of the content before this knowledge is built on further. For some content the primary difficulty in achieving this goal will be thinking of suitable activities given the nature of the subject matter, while for others it will be having time to integrate activities within a short lecture.

References:

Biggs, J. 1987. Student approaches to learning and studying. Hawthorn, Victoria: Australian Council for Educational Research.

Fry, Heather, Steve Ketteridge and Stephanie Marshall. 2009. Understanding student learning. In Heather Fry, Steve Ketteridge and Stephanie Marshall (eds.), A handbook for teaching and learning in Higher Education: enhancing academic practice, Third edition, 8-26. New York; Abingdon: Routledge.

Marton, F. 1975. What does it Take to Learn? In N. J. Entwistle and D. Housell (eds.), How students learn. Lancaster: Institute for Post-Compulsary Education

Meyer, J.H.F. and R. Land. 2006. Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: issues of liminality, In  J.H.F. Meyer and R. Land (eds.), Overcoming barriers to student understanding: threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge, 19-32. London and New York: Routledge.

What are spurious cultures?

‘His [Sapir's] distinction between “genuine” and “spurious” cultures (Sapir 1924) is a theoretical warning against the dangers of a society – such as the industrialised western society in which Sapir lived – that does not recognise the needs of its individual members. A genuine culture is one in which there is harmony between societal and individual needs – as in the traditional American Indian societies Sapir came into contact with during his fieldwork. A spurious culture instead is one in which the individual is forced into frustrating and spiritually meaningless tasks in the name of higher efficiency.’ (Duranti 1997:57)

References:

Duranti, Allesandro. 1997. Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sapir, Edward. 1924. Culture, Genuine and Spurious. The American Journal of Sociology 29: 401–429.