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We are joined by Rob Shaw from the Digital Education Team to discuss his recent article on the benefits of polling apps in lectures, and David Anderson from the Pathway College to talk about the changes learning technology has brought to teaching, and how it can be best applied.
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We are joined by Rob Shaw from the Digital Education Team to discuss his recent article on the benefits of polling apps in lectures, and David Anderson from the Pathway College to talk about the changes learning technology has brought to teaching, and how it can be best applied.
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The podcast discusses the impact of learning technology on classroom practice. The participants, Rob Shaw and David Anderson, share their experiences and interests in teaching and learning with technology. They discuss the simplicity and accessibility of using technology in the classroom. The conversation also touches on the evolution of technology in education and the shift from teachers being in control to students having access to resources. They mention the Dogme movement, which aimed to promote authentic communication by reducing reliance on materials and technology. They emphasize the importance of being in the moment and using technology to facilitate discussions and student engagement. They also discuss the challenges of selecting the right resources in an era of abundant options. Welcome to the Scholarship and Teaching Learning Podcast, which is not the Scholarship and Teaching Learning Podcast today. It's more of a free-flowing format. We're here to talk about the impact of learning technology on classroom practice. I'm joined today by Rob Shaw and David Anderson. Rob and David, do you want to start quickly by giving a bit of brief background about yourself and what your interests are and your experience in teaching, learning, and all things technology? So my name's Rob Shaw. I'm an educational advisor. I've been here at the university for just coming up to five years now. But throughout my career, I've been a teacher and learning technologist in further and then higher education, all the way through really. So I guess kind of the application of learning technologies, how to teach better with learning technologies, has always been sort of a big part of my day-to-day career. And I guess I naturally moved more towards the kind of less technical side of the learning technology continuum and more. You know, I always describe to my role through a lot of my career as using relatively straightforward tools, but in highly effective ways to improve learning and teaching in the student experience. Okay, so you've got, we're here because you've got the article that you've just written in the forum on using Mentimeter in the classroom, which we'll come back to in a sec. But yeah, I think one of the things that David and I have often talked about in the past is the idea of using technology to sort of become, make things a little bit simpler rather than more complex. Yeah, I mean, that's one thing that's come through very, very strongly in discussions with staff and students that it doesn't have a high barrier of entry. I mean, there are complexities around it, just like there are in any tool, but people tend to be quite pleased by how quick and easy it is to get on with and work with. Nice. Okay, we'll start there in a sec, but David, give us your bio. Yes, hi, thanks for having me. I've been a teacher since probably the late 80s, and I started off as an English language teacher in Spain, and we had almost no resources whatsoever. So a large part of my job was trying to make do with the resources that we had and any technology that we could bring into the classroom. And in those days, it was literally Tipp-Ex and a pair of scissors. Any technology we had, you know, to try and make classes more interesting, it was something that, you know, I was interested in. And technology in general, I was one of the ones who got a computer way back in 1980, the old ZX80. So I've just loved technology, you know, through every job I've had, and I've always tried to introduce it into the classroom, explore it and find out different ways that it can be used. Yeah, I think this is one of the things that's happened over the past, I guess, I guess the past 20 years have been really key. Well, I'll say that I'm possibly not probably everyone, everyone thinks their own era is the one of the scene, the most rapid change. Yeah, I think we certainly remember it. We've seen a lot of technology flood into the classroom and things that a lot of possibilities open up, which we certainly didn't have back in the day. Yeah, I mean, originally, it was the teacher who had the technology, they were the one in charge of the tape recorder. That was it. And maybe you had a TV. But now it's the students who have the access. And that's completely changed the whole dynamic. I wonder if you've been a bit harsh there, David, you know, if I think back to the language lab and some of the ideas of the 70s of sort of student, not that I was around at the time, but the language lab. I mean, I've used language labs quite a lot, but it consisted of the teacher sitting at the desk. Sometimes they had control over what the students were listening to. So but the students weren't bringing a mobile phone or a PC or a laptop to class. So I think the tutors certainly selected the material, but I guess it was possible to have a control at that stage to allow people. Yes. So there was some independence. Yes. Yeah. They could work at their own speed, for example, through the materials. But I think the revolution has come because, you know, originally I was teaching in a small town in Spain and I was the source of all the materials. There were no other English language materials in that town other than the textbooks I happened to have with the newspapers I had. But, you know, obviously, with the Internet, the information is now democratised and everyone has access to it. Yeah. I mean, I was an English language and study skills teacher until around 2003, something like that. And, you know, what you're saying really chimes, but I remember I don't know if you ever did you ever come across the dogma movement? Yes. Dogme. Yeah. Dogme. Dogmatic as well. But, you know, it strikes me you were naturally thrown into that situation in Spain. Well, yes, exactly. So you deal with what you bring. Exactly. So if you happen to have a good newspaper article, you would think of a hundred different ways to exploit it. You know, you could make it into a gap fill or it became a part of a speaking activity or reading exercise or grammar or vocabulary. And it was very much about making the best use of the limited resources you had. And I think we've gone in the opposite direction these days. We've got so many resources, it's actually difficult sometimes to select which ones we should be taking into the classroom. I agree with that. I think some of the issues, the challenges that the Dogme movement tried to address. I think we should explain what Dogme is because people might be wondering. I'll leave that to you. It's a long while since I do remember it from around the year 2000, I guess. Yes, it was something around then. And the idea behind it came from Danish filmmakers who decided to make films only using natural settings. They used real people for the situations and they improvised the dialogue. So the idea was to get rid of the artifice and make everything as natural as possible. So that Scott Thornberry wrote an article about it and he said that we should try and get rid of materials in the classroom because they were getting in the way of authentic communication. So people were focused on, you know, the piece of paper in front of them rather than engaging with the people around them. And so he was very much for the idea of opening up activities, encouraging discussion, engagement, interaction, that kind of thing, instead of this reliance on technology and materials. Yeah, he talked a lot in terms of grammar McNuggets at the time. I remember that phrase that he sort of chimed with me. It was very much driven by a very chunked syllabus and we have to get through. And, you know, once we've covered 20 minutes at one particular grammar point, that's done. And just the whole idea of shifting away from that sort of approach towards a more holistic one that sort of deals in the moment of, you know, perhaps addressing language points, pronunciation points as they come up naturally and only working with what students themselves bring along. I felt even at the time, I did feel that it almost aimed its sights at the wrong target in a way that, you know, a lot of the people who even at that time were starting to think about using e-learning within the language classroom were kind of coming at things from the same sort of angle that the Dogme movement was trying to do as well. And the idea that students could, yes, bring themselves, but bring an extended version of themselves by bringing their phone along and, you know, accessing resources in the moment and things like that. But, you know, it kind of tapped into the kind of pedagogical benefits of using learning technologies. And I think the idea of banning having a rule to prevent students from bringing things into the classroom was perhaps taking it too far and that it missed the idea that by bringing, you know, chosen items or even referring to them in the moment, that was, I've often wondered what they would have to say about some of the approaches that kind of… Yeah, and I'd like to pick up on something you said there, which is about being in the moment. And I think, you know, that's one of my goals, I suppose it's the surfer do to me, but being in a class and being able to produce something that fits that particular moment rather than having something that's well prepared in advance. And you go through the material step by step to get to some kind of end goal. And, you know, just to give a simple example, sometimes teachers, they go online, they find a good video to show to the class, and the students watch the video. I've actually found it much more powerful to say, okay, I want you to find a video on this topic that's about this length. They do the research, they watch it, and then they come together and have a discussion about the different videos that they've watched. And some of them might be good, some of them might not be quite so good. But that discussion is far more valuable than having that pre-prepared set of materials. Absolutely. I think one of the key ideas is that you get, if this is a connection to the flip learning picture, is that you, what you're using class time for, and it's for integration of knowledge, and facilitating recall rather than the introduction of concepts per se. So you might be tempted with the proliferation materials, whether it was, you know, the kinds of things Scott Thornberry was talking about with, back in 2003, with paper-based things, and, you know, physical materials, or the things that we're faced with now with learning technology and just the sheer number of apps and sites, all of which are great. But the temptation is to try and use all of it, and the upshot can be that the efficacy of the class time as a means of properly assimilating information, that kind of integration into new knowledge, into existing knowledge, is being sort of sidelined because you're using it to put fresh things under people's noses and say, like, have a look at this, you know, you'll find this really useful. And they may do, but it's not the optimal use of class time. But yeah, I wanted to, we can come back to that, because I think this sort of connects to the, some of the lit reviews and things that we were talking about offline earlier. But I, before we get into that, I just, Rob, wanted to come back to your article, because you, one of the things that you talked a lot about, well, in the space that we have in the university. You gave a pretty positive endorsement of this particular piece of learning technology, which is polling software, and particularly talking about Mentimeter, which I guess is one of the more sort of widely used pieces of polling software at the moment. So do you want to talk a little bit about what your main motivation was for writing that and how you find it beneficial? Sure. So yeah, we adopted Mentimeter as the university supported tool, not very long ago, a couple of years ago. And initially, it was part of an approach to evaluating the introduction of Menti as the new supported solution. We used to have something called Turning Point Responseware, I don't know if you guys remember that. Yeah, I didn't get on that. Very common for people to say they found it really challenging. We had some pockets of really good practice with it, but it never seemed to go over into... I was thinking that one, it sort of works well with PowerPoint, but not so well with other stuff, is that right? Yeah, I mean, it works well with PowerPoint when it worked. There were challenges. Yeah, I think it had a very steep learning curve as well. And the good thing about Mentimeter is, you know, you can log in and you know how to use it, it's quite intuitive. Yeah, you can get something working quite quickly. You know, immediately seemed to me one of the benefits, because even though in the forum magazine, I reported on the student survey research that we did, but we also spoke to a number of students in interviews and focus groups, and had discussions with staff as well, that were built around a kind of a walkthrough type approach, where the conversation would start with a kind of, well, what do you do with it? Can you show me a couple of examples and describe how you used it? What do you students get from that? And so on. And I think that the thing that struck me from those conversations, was very much that, you know, this kind of approach describing of a content driven, we have to get through this prefix content, that it was in some ways helping to break that down a little bit by putting the focus, even in very large group contexts, on to interaction, and on to engagement, and on to an opportunity to see how things are landing, rather than moving on to the next point, having a break. But as the forum magazine article suggested, the students were incredibly positive around their own experiences of that, that they reported on a number of real strong benefits from doing that, particularly in long lectures. For anyone who hasn't used Menti before, or in polling software, this is a tool that enables students if you need your phone, basically to take part. So the assumption is that you've got a lecture hall of students with their devices, you're standing at the front, I always got the impression it was generally aimed at lecture theatre context. But I know you were talking about working well with small groups as well. But where you've got a hall of 200 people, and you'd like to get a bit of check the pulse of understanding, see where students are at. The idea is you've got a giant QR code or, you know, an access code on screen, students go to the particular site, enter the code, and they can sort of, in a way, interact digitally. And then you gather, if you get 100 responses, you can see how many, you can get quantitative responses, you can get word clouds, you can get polls, and you can sort of splice up a two hour lecture with pockets of interaction where you see where, you know, what students can have contributed and what, how many students have got certain concepts. Yeah, no, I think as well as using it, because the way you've described it there, it's basically, you know, each individual student's response to something that goes up onto the screen. But if you have topics of conversation, and you invite the students to form small groups and debate a particular issue, and then come to a conclusion, you can actually take a lecture theatre, make it much more interactive as well, interactive between the students rather than just interactive between the technology and the screen. Yeah. So it was, it was a way of getting that interaction in what would normally be a sort of large scale information transmission situation. I think what became clear was that it is already being used in a variety of ways in lots of different contexts. And that the lecture doesn't necessarily mean, you know, an informationally driven, I mean, it often still does. But, you know, it highlighted the kind of the range of approaches that people were already making of it. It's actually, you know, I'm so old, I can remember this before all this technology, there was actually no idea of buzz groups. Have you come across buzz groups before? So basically, you you you stop at a point in the lecture and say, okay, form small groups, and just repeat all the information that I've said up until now. And that just, again, it breaks up that lecture, it gives the students a chance to recall what's been said, you know, compare their notes for the person next to them discuss any, you know, anything they're not quite sure about. So those those techniques, you know, mentees, great, but there are ways of doing it without the technology as well. Absolutely. And even just having a break, a regular break, a stop and check an opportunity just to chat to the person next to you. But I guess it allows them, it opens up more opportunities. Yes, exactly. And it's the opportunity to apply knowledge. And I think that's very often what's missing from the lecture situation is, okay, here's the information, but what are you going to do with it? So, you know, if you could put up an essay question, you know, 15 minutes before the end, and the students have to debate, you know, how they would go about answering that particular question so that you're freeing up space, so they can apply that knowledge. Yeah. And I think one of the uses that we highlighted in some of the case studies that we developed to capture some of this practice was in biology, where they have very large workshop spaces, students are working at tables, but there's still 80 people in the room, it's still quite a kind of challenging context for creating discussion and workshop activities and so on. And Menti was used in that in a kind of regular pattern of activities, connected to a flipped learning approach. So, before coming along, the students would have taken a look at some resources built around some recorded videos, and then they'd come into the session, and there'd be a kind of an opportunity for questions. Menti's great for Q&A because it allows upvoting and so on, you probably know that, you know, when we have a lot of questions coming in, it really helps to prioritize them. And, you know, it's a nice, neat way of showing the questions and marking when they've been responded to and things like that. So, Q&A, quick knowledge check, which, again, you know, Menti can do in that kind of Kahoot style way of quite quickly working through a number of knowledge checking questions. And then, after that, there'd be a kind of an opportunity for group work built around short exam questions. So, each table would sort of send through their response, and then there'd be some immediate feedback and discussion. It's those opportunities to discuss what's coming in, to respond to it in some way, or to use it to spark an activity, or so on, that can be really, really useful. Yeah. And, again, it's the idea of being there in the moment because you're getting instant feedback to the students. You know, in a traditional setting, you might have a lecture and then a homework activity, which isn't corrected for another week, and you get the feedback two weeks later when you can't remember what the whole thing was about. But Menti allows you to be there in the moment, you know, engaging with the students, perhaps walking around and solving problems. Yeah. I don't think this is mentioned explicitly in the article, correct me if you did, but I think one of the key things here was that Menti and things like that, you know, other polling software is available, but it aligns more neatly with how we know learning takes place now. We know a lot more about how the mind works, how it processes information, how we absorb information, the rate at which, you know, bringing ideas like cognitive load. We know that chalk and talk, it's going to vary depending on the delivery. I'm not going to say it doesn't work. Clearly, it does in certain contexts, and people get a lot of value out of lectures and lectures still here. But the idea of somebody standing and talking for two hours without pause or hesitation, this is not what we know optimal learning conditions to be. So bringing in something like Menti and having those opportunities for space repetition, for reinforcement, for pauses in transmission. This is just a reframing information that's already been delivered. This is a much more effective way of making sure that information is being taught, essentially. So I think when we talk about it, it's never that clear link to research made clear. But I think, you know, when you read a lot of the clearly laid out, you know, what do we know about how learning takes place? And how do we set up some conditions? And these polling software seem to play a, you know, they've really been transformative in making the traditional lecture slightly more aligned with good pedagogical values. I mean, your feedback was really positive from students and you, you know, they seem to really enjoy it. But was this something you were mindful of when you were reviewing the survey responses? Or what was your? Well, I mean, I guess what what you were saying there, David, about that there's nothing particularly new about the pedagogical principles behind breaking up a longer teaching session, having recaps, having opportunities to apply or reframe what you've just heard, make connections between sessions. And that's what people are doing with it. You know, they're starting a session with that reference point to the previous session. Yeah, I carried things forward. But they use it in lots of other ways as well. And I think that was the beauty of the kind of walkthrough interviews, it was really, really good to see the decision making that gone on, and the context of how Menti was used. And just the kind of, you know, the way a simple tool like that ends up being used in such a range of ways, you know, there are people who are kind of using it to support reflection on progress by having regular, regular stop and check, self assessment, scales activities, just linked to the learning outcomes as simple as that, you know, how far do you feel you're going with each learning outcome by doing that regularly, it makes it part of the kind of the language only takes a moment, but it gives an opportunity for people to just think, well, you know, how am I getting on here? And I guess that, again, there's nothing new about that from a pedagogical point of view, is there to, you know, encourage people to make connections and to self assess. But I think it is, even though there's nothing new about the principles, and it's something people even before we explicitly knew it with, you know, cognitive research and stuff like that, people intuitively knew that this is a, you know, a good way of teaching. But it is an example of a way that learning technology is actually, if not revolutionized, augmented, like clearly benefited how we can do this. So if you've got a lecture, a large lecture theatre, or, you know, even a small classroom, this is something that allows us to get more out of that time. But you could say, you know, get into groups and discuss last let the last class, what do you recall, and things like that. But this is a much more interactive way with with transparency between everyone can see what each other's thinking and doing and saying, yeah, the younger pushback, I was wondering what you guys made of this. But I, I think, if you're going to make a counter argument for it, it's, it's the impact of having devices like this in the classroom, because I'd like anecdotally, this is what you you hear from teachers a lot. And you, you know, scanning a lecture theatre on any given day, you do see a lot of students in the tractor beam of their device rather than. So we know that these things sort of, I guess, you could say that their purpose for existence is to capture attention. So we have, we're dealing with students with whatever we're trying to deliver in a class or lecture theatre, whatever we are always now competing with their social media feed. I know some people have talked to some degree, tongue in cheek about banning devices in the classroom, would that be a little bit Orwellian, but I can sort of understand the rationale behind it. If you want to really promote, you know, proper deep attention and focus on a particular, but it's about the judicious use of technology. I mean, as teachers, we need to decide what the best application is for, you know, each particular circumstance, and the students themselves also have to make those kinds of decisions. So perhaps it's a question of giving some learner training, so they can appreciate, you know, the best uses of technology. I mean, a case in point are some of the Chinese students, sometimes, or, you know, other international students, they have software that translates lectures as they're listening. Now, if that's recorded and used after the lecture, as a kind of, you know, refresher, that's a very positive use of the technology. But if they're not listening to lecture, but relying on that translation in the lecture, then clearly that's not the best way to go about it. So I think these kind of simple choices make a big, big difference to the learning outcome. Yeah, that's definitely true. And we don't do a lot of work on learner training, managing devices, and we kind of have proceeded with seminars and lectures, assuming that students are approaching them in the way that they always have, which is maybe a bit, you know, it's not strictly true. But I was just thinking, you might say, right, guys, just check your devices quickly. Because I'd like to ask you a quick question on here. Everyone picks up their device, turns it on and realizes they've got three notifications. And, and then once they're in, have you ever tried to get out of a YouTube rabbit hole? Yeah, it's like, it's incredible. I don't know. Is there a case for just where we're either even judiciously picking up devices, putting them down again? Is this is this damaging our attention? Yeah. And I think one of the problems is the students don't see much difference between using a mobile phone outside class and inside class. It's just one seamless integration, you know, technology is there by your side the whole time. Whereas we might reframe and think, actually, this is a special occasion, we've all come together, you know, think about how you're going to use the technology. But I think many students, I don't even know if they appreciate, you know, sometimes, you know, you can see people obviously checking messages and things, I've no idea if it's an important message, maybe they're waiting for an appointment from the hospital. So I, I don't feel I can ban it. But at the same time, you know, do the students really appreciate what is judicious use of technology? And what are the what are the best ways of learning? You know, perhaps we should spend more time on the whole idea of what is learning? What is the best way of learning? We kind of learn that as teachers, and we try and organise our classes in that way. But do we communicate that kind of information to the students? Do they really know what the best way of learning is? Yeah, I think it I think it links to broader research into engagement, and what it means to be engaged and the different aspects of engagement in the moment in the space, and so on. And I don't think, per se, having a phone is necessarily going to dissipate any kind of engagement in the space. If it's an engaging space, you know, I think people can make that decision, you know, there's a sense of flow in the room, there's a you can see when it's happening, and when it's not happening. And I think Menti can only help to encourage or help a teacher to get to get to that state by actually, you know, finding out more about what is happening in the room. And, you know, it's not always, it's not always easy without that opportunity to have some exchange. Do you find that there are staff who are reluctant to use Menti? I've heard the whole argument about, I mean, I think one of the one of the things that I've heard quite a bit is that it, it can be quite superficial, I think there are there are certain disciplines, maybe or certain types of teaching or types of approaches, where they wouldn't see something like Menti as being for them. I think sometimes scratch the surface, and that's a conception of it being very kind of MCQ based, very quantitative in nature, and maybe it's a kind of a misconception about what Menti can actually do. Because I suppose, you know, in terms of the questions you might ask on Menti, it depends, you know, the kind of question you ask, you know, you can ask a superficial question, or you can ask a really profound one, and that which can generate a lot of discussion. So it's less about that technology, more about how you use it, and what how you formulate your I think it's maybe a sense that it can break up the narrative too much, you know, if you've got a very complex narrative that you want to get across or encourage, but you know, but we know how the brain works, and the brain doesn't work, you know, one hour lecture that that was convenient for timetabling in the past, but that's not really the way the brain works. And, and, you know, even if you think of a piece of writing, writing is broken up into paragraphs, because that's a manageable chunk. And the lessons that became clear in the pandemic about chunking, and, you know, the sort of interleaving of approaches and so on, I think they have stuck to a certain extent. And I think, you know, in the interviews, a number of staff members talked in terms of it really helps to drive that narrative by bringing everyone together after 20 minutes, and, you know, having a having a checkpoint before continuing and so on. So people, people have actually said, you know, I used to think that it would get in the way of my narrative, but actually, you know, yeah, the way I'm using is helping to drive that narrative. Yeah. And I think, and sometimes you need a kind of change of perspective. A lot of the time, you know, I used to be guilty of this in the past is what have I done in this class, you know, I've done this, I've covered that, you know, all I've given an explanation of that, therefore, it's been a successful class. But if you change perspective, and think about what's going through the student's head, have they taken all that on board? Have I given them the opportunities to learn that material? So it's about reframing, you know, what's happening, and always thinking about the kind of processes that might be going on in the student's head? Are they engaged? Are they are they are they doubting things? Are they analyzing things critically, whatever it happens to be? Yeah, yeah. So interesting, because I know this when you said that I, the amount of times I hear conversations, you know, in conversation with other teachers, I'd be like, you know, I just don't have time to we have a lot of material to get through. I don't think everyone appreciates how much we have to get through. There's no time for this. And it sounds like the idea of just plowing through certain points is so you know where it comes from, because there is a lot of material to get through. And if you want to master a certain subject, there are, you know, a number of checkpoints on the way, especially in you know, various in disciplines, but how they're structured, but you can see in something like, especially in the STEM disciplines, how you do need to have internalized this before we get onto this, and we need to get you here. But still, you're left with the idea of the class time being chugging through certain points, which has, as you say, is we know intuitively and empirically that this isn't perhaps not the best way of imparting knowledge. Yeah, I can give some examples. I used to do some teacher training. And when I was observing the classes, you know, sometimes there'd be a really good discussion going and the teachers would interrupt to the, you know, they'd stop it, they bring it to a close. And I was like, No, keep it going. This is the best part of the whole class. And you want to get onto that photocopy? Why? No, keep those, you know, if there's a really engaging activity going, let it let it go, you know, till it comes to a natural conclusion, even if it means you need to set something for homework, or you do something in another class. This is a hangover of what you know, well, hangover still goes on, doesn't it? When you're doing some of the lot of the teacher training courses, you stage lessons by the minute and you have to time them. And that sort of fixes the idea in your mind that, you know, the, you know, the hallmark of a good teacher is to stick to a lesson plan and move on at certain points, irrespective of how students are responding in the moment. I think most staff are under all kinds of pressures to cover a certain amount of material and to manage the space and to control things. But just having that shift from a what am I teaching to what are they learning approach and just being prepared to respond makes a huge difference, I think. And that's where Menti really can have benefits, because to be able to respond, you have to respond to something you have to, you have to create an opportunity where everybody can get involved. And one of the things the students were really positive about didn't hear anyone have a word to say against it was the idea of anonymity. Yeah, I was going to mention that earlier, because that was a key thing, wasn't it? Yeah, it really was. And the benefits it had, I mean, you know, to some extent, even to the point where it surprised me a little bit, but I guess it shouldn't, it, you know, it really seemed to help with inclusivity in terms of, you know, giving options for how to get involved, how to contribute, and so on. And one of the things that staff worry about is anonymity and the potential for people to say something inappropriate, you know, to put something in there that's not just inappropriate, but offensive, or even illegal. And, you know, these, these are things that can happen and have happened in other institutions, and so on. And I guess that comes back to what kind of environment you're looking to create, you may not be able to stop it. But at least if you have those conversations with students as adults, and you kind of setting out an environment where you're in this together, rather than trying to control everything, you know, that company comes back to the same thing of putting the focus on learning rather than teaching what they're doing, rather than what you're doing, and being able to respond in the moment as well. Because we have, I mean, you know, it's not something that many staff said that they do, but one or two people talked in terms of meant to being so easy that they could, if something came up, oh, someone's made an interesting point that I wonder if everyone agrees, they would just create a question on the Yeah. And release it. I don't know if that's something you've done yourself. I have, yes. And it's powerful. It is very powerful. So I did have a couple of questions that was trying to shoot one in here. But the first one was about becoming research, not researchers, but dissemination of good teaching practice, scholarly ideas, whether it's engaging in action research or doing as you've done, or both of you have written articles and book chapters. And how do you get involved in this? Because we one of the aims of this podcast was to try and encourage other people to do this and share advice and get practitioners actually publishing. So any thoughts you had on that one? And I'll just line up another question. So that we're zooming on whichever one you feel is appropriate, but getting good ideas actually into the classroom. And I think Rob, you're probably have quite a lot to say about this, given your current role. I was wondering whether you, you know, you see in this central role, good things which teachers should be doing, and getting them to change entrenched practices and update their classroom practice, what issues and barriers and how you overcome those? Those are two quite big questions for five minutes. So please just, you know, what zoom in on on whichever, you know, you feel in taking them in order. Yeah, like, I'm fortunate to work in a, in a team that, yes, it manages the learning technology to tool set, but it's very interested in pedagogy to and researchers on the agenda for trying to look at how the tools that we use are used. And a number of my colleagues have also taken part in various studies into, for example, near peer support, you know, supported using slack, as an example, and, you know, culture change around accessibility practices and things like that. So not just kind of, I think, I think to make the case in a university like ours, you have to be able to refer to, to evidence, really, even if that's just being able to refer to some practices, genuine practices from other areas of the university, you know, we try wherever we can to pull together short case studies from, for people to kind of see other people's practices and so on. But I think I read something somewhere, I don't know if this aligns with what you think is emphasis teaching staff, but that people only really talk about the teaching practice to a very small number of people around them, five or six people. And I don't think there's very many opportunities to watch other people teach as well. So, you know, I take on board what you say there. But I think also a part of the responsibility needs to be put on teachers. I mean, they should be exploring their own practice, they should be doing action research, they should be trying something. Maybe it works great, they can do it again. If it doesn't work, then perhaps they could, you know, try and understand the circumstances for that and then do it again and not give up because these techniques are very powerful. And, you know, in the long run, it's beneficial to the students. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess I aspire to being able to feed those conversations that people may see something or hear something that they will then talk about with that very small number, you know, and genuine practice is more likely to do that then some idea of here's a shiny new tool and look at what it can do. And, you know, we see that we see that all the time, don't we? You know, this tool is going to solve everything it never does. It always comes down to culture and practice and, you know, how it's used in context. And so I guess what one of the one of the people who taught me to be a teacher was Julian Edge. And he wanted one of his stock phrases was, how are you going to do it differently? He would, you know, you've done that lecture however many times, how are you going to do it differently this time? And I think that that kind of attitude, that willingness to explore is absolutely key to get to getting people to change. Yeah, well, we're pretty much bang on time. So thank you both for coming along and contributing your thoughts on this is a pretty huge topic. And we've barely done it justice here. But it's hopefully one that will be to be continued. I'll put links to a couple of resources, including your article below the podcast. Rob, thank you very much for giving up your time and David too. Thank you. And this is very much to be continued. Okay, until next time. Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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