Allison Hulmes, Senior Lecturer in Social Work, shares Romani history, past and contemporary struggles, and a call for allyship.
The flag consists of a background of blue and green, representing the heavens and earth, respectively; it also contains a 16-spoke red dharmachakra, or cartwheel, in the center.
International Romani Day, which takes place each year on 8th April, is a day for celebrating the Romani people, our history, culture, and ethnic identity. It’s also an opportunity to shine a light on the issues that affect Romani people in the UK and internationally, not least the continued racism, stereotyping, and inequality gaps in health, education, and housing.
We have officially celebrated International Romani Day since 1990 when it was decided during the 4th meeting of the World Romani Congress in Poland. The roots of this important day can be traced however to a meeting of international Romani representatives in London in 1971, a meeting which is now accepted as the first-ever World Romani Congress.
During meetings of the World Romani Congress, delegates discuss key issues for Romani people. The primary issues remain linked to human rights and advancement our in civil society, the preservation of Romani culture and dialects, our identity as a minority of Indian origin, and ensuring that the Roma and Sinti Holocaust is never forgotten.
International Romani Day Timeline
1,500 Years Ago
The Exodus: The Roma start leaving northern India.
1100s
Arriving in Europe: Roma groups begin to arrive in medieval Europe.
1971
World Romani Congress: Twenty-three representatives from nine different nations attend the first World Romani Congress in the United Kingdom.
1990
An Official Declaration: Delegates at the fourth World Romani Congress in Poland officially declare April 8 as the International Day of the Romani People.
The Map shows the movement of the Romani people between approximately 500 and 1500 CE. The dates used on this map are commonly accepted approximations based on historical accounts and linguistic evidence. Some dates, such as the timeframe in which Romani speakers moved out of the Indian subcontinent, can only be loosely estimated based on linguistic and genetic research.
An increasingly hostile environment
It is important to know that British Gypsies are a legally protected ethnicity for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 and are therefore protected from discrimination based on our ethnicity.
“The Equality Act 2010 says you must not be discriminated against because of your race. In the Equality Act, race can mean your colour, or your nationality (including your citizenship). It can also mean your ethnic or national origins. Race also covers ethnic and racial groups. This means a group of people who all share the same protected characteristic of ethnicity or race. A racial group can be made up of two or more distinct racial groups, for example black Britons, British Asians, British Sikhs, British Jews, Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers.”
“The 2015 planning definition states that Gypsies and Travellers who have permanently stopped travelling for work due to a disability, long-term health condition or age will not get planning permission to stop on their own land and will not have their accommodation needs assessed and met through this policy.”
This judgement is a victory for the tenacity of Lisa Smith who initiated the case, the organisations and legal teams who supported the action, and significantly, for human rights in the UK at a time when state sanctioned oppression under the present Government in the UK, seems determined to take a steam roller to our fundamental rights and freedoms.
As an ethnic Romani Gypsy and a Social Worker, I ask you to honour our important day by learning more about us and defending our human rights by standing alongside us in allyship and solidarity.
Allison Hulmes is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Swansea University and a co-founding member of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Social Work Association.
Microscope – a lens for reflection plus a mechanism to find evidence?
In the March 2024 blogpost, I outlined the key changes to the Professional Standards Framework (2023) in comparison with its predecessor, the 2011 UKPSF.
I highlighted that two things remain central to the revised PSF:
the importance of this being a retrospective claim on your practice of teaching/learner support
that you need to reflect on and provide ‘evidence’ that your practice is effective.
In this blogpost I’m exploring how you might determine whether your practices are effective and the evidence base for this. This is a combination of addressing these revised dimensions from the PSF 2023:
V3 In your CONTEXT, show how you use scholarship, or research, or professional learning, or other evidence-informed approaches as a basis for effective practice and
K3 In your CONTEXT, apply knowledge of critical evaluation as a basis for effective practice
Both of these dimensions have to be evidenced in applying for recognition in ANY of the fellowship categories.
An approach to reflecting on practice and leadership
One of the underlying tenets of the PSF is that educators need to be reflective of their practice, examining what went well and what could be enhanced to support learning or in leading others.
There are lots of models for undertaking reflection on learning (e.g. Borton (1970), Dewey (1938), Kolb , Schön (1983) etc – see Bates (2019) for summaries of key learning theories), but one approach to help reflection is to consider the ‘lens’ through which we can gain evidence.
In Chapter 4 of his book, “Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher”, Stephen Brookfield offers the four reflective lenses:
Students/followers
Colleagues
Self
Theory
He advocates this approach for those directly supporting student learning AND for those leading others. So, they are a useful set of lenses for those seeking recognition at any category of the PSF.
What is ‘evidence’?
The Collins English dictionary defines evidence as a noun: “Evidence is anything that you see, experience, read, or are told that causes you to believe that something is true or has really happened.” https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/evidence. This perspective of evidence aligns well against Brookfield’s four lenses.
Examples of practice aligned to Brookfield’s lenses
The tables at the end of this blogpost provide some examples from Brookfield’s work to which examples have been added from Advance HE’s fellowship applicant guides. Our internal fellowship programme will also be referring to these as examples.
But as many students and educators acknowledge, hearing or reading the stories of others is a powerful tool to anchor our understanding so I’ve asked some colleagues to provide examples of how they have use different strategies to check if their practice is effective.
Maria Pournara, lecturer in Criminology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences reflects on her experience as a first-time presenter at SALT’s Learning and Teaching Conference, July 2023 and outlines several benefits that have arisen from this.
Maria Pournara presenting at #SUSALT23
Last summer, I presented at the SALT conference for the first time. The topic was ‘assessment and feedback’, an area of teaching and learning which I have spent plenty of time thinking about so, finally, I took a morning in April 2023 to write an abstract on the use of ‘creative and flexible’ assessment and submit it. It is one of those things that academics typically postpone and oftentimes end up not doing at all; one of those activities that are never on the forefront of a to-do list. However, based on my experience, I think that the benefits of participating in the SALT conference can be underestimated. Hence, in this blog I will try to convey some of my thoughts on my whole experience, from preparation to my presentation on the day and, finally, to some welcomed yet unexpected outcomes from the day.
based on my experience, I think that the benefits of participating in the SALT conference can be underestimated
My decision to submit an abstract, initially stemmed from nothing more than a tick box exercise, I must admit. Being a Lecturer in Criminology in a teaching pathway for the past four years, it has been something often discussed in probation and later PDR meetings but increased workloads, research and the pandemic had been pushing it further down my to-do list. However, once I started writing the abstract, I realised very quickly that the process of reflecting on my teaching practice and on the reasons and strategies for designing assessments would be extremely beneficial. It allowed me to take a very different look at the advantages and disadvantages of the assessment type I chose to talk about in my presentation. Sure, I knew what they were, but without the incentive of a conference presentation, I do not think that I would ever give myself the opportunity (or time) to identify them, write the down and reflect on them using relevant higher education literature – that last bit was so valuable and eye-opening.
Presenting on the day was a very positive experience. The conference was well organised, and everyone was so warm and friendly. I presented in one of the morning parallel – yet very well attended – sessions where colleagues from across the university shared with me encouraging nods, looks of solidarity and, finally, thoughtful questions and constructive feedback. Honestly, it felt more like a working session, albeit with a very big and diverse teaching team, rather than a conference presentation.
In the aftermath of the conference, I was invited to deliver my presentation in an online SALT Effective Practice session which was great for connecting with even more colleagues who could not make the conference. Last but certainly not least, an unexpected outcome of my participation to the SALT conference for me was that I got really inspired by other presentations on projects funded by SALT and SEA. I’ve also managed to network with people who provided valuable information and support regarding funding calls so, I decided to apply. As a result, I am currently working on two projects, one on students’ perceptions of AI use in HE assessments (funded by SALT) and another on the impact of curriculum-embedded employability on student experience and graduate outcomes (funded by SEA).
I am looking forward to presenting findings from these projects to this year’s SALT conference – I hope to see you there.
After using the same professional standards framework for over a decade, Advance HE coordinated a sector-wide review regarding what a revised framework would look like. After almost a year of consultation, a final version was launched in January 2023.
The language of the dimensions have been fine-tuned, some have been dropped, some re-organised numerically within the framework and there’s a new professional value – V5 “Collaborating with others to enhance practice”. All category descriptors remain (Descriptor 1 – Associate Fellow, Descriptor 2 – Fellow, Descriptor 3 – Senior Fellow and D4 – Principal Fellow) but each have been revised to just three statements that relate to the dimensions of the framework and how these are articulated for that person’s practice.
For Associate Fellow, more dimensions need to be demonstrated; for Fellow, there is no significant change – all of the (revised) dimensions have to be evidenced; but for Senior Fellow in particular, there is a much stronger emphasis that this is different in nature to a Fellow – the activities are different, and the impact will not be directly on students, but on peers/others. (There’s been changes to Principal Fellow category too – while there is some support internally, interested staff will need to apply direct to Advance HE for that. See the link at the end for further information).
Impact at Swansea University
At Swansea University, because of an extended approved accreditation period to August 2024, we’ve been able to continue to use the ‘old’ 2011 UKPSF as the relevant Dimensions of Practice to align practice against, along with the ‘old’ category descriptors.
But we have to adapt to the revised PSF 2023, and plan to introduce a fine-tuned Accredited programme consisting of
a pathway for Experienced Staff,
a supported pathway to AFHEA for PGR students who are employed to teach
continuing to offer an accredited PG Cert teaching in HE academic course for new or inexperienced staff
all of which has been re-aligned against the 2023 PSF.
There have been relatively small enhancements to the experiential pathways (informed by feedback from applicants, considering our own self-reflections, the input from assessors and our external moderator). We’ve considered where in the PG Cert the revised dimensions will be supported, developed, assessed.
Our proposals for the revised pathways will be submitted to Advance HE for scrutiny in late March 2024. Pending approval, we hope to be able to start Information Sessions for experienced staff in May/June, with the cohort of ‘new’ staff starting the revised PG Cert in September and information sessions for PGR students advertised by the PGR Office in the autumn.
Over the next few blogposts, we’ll be highlighting some of the key aspects to the PSF 2023 and in particular how it differs from the ‘old’ 2011 version. We hope it doesn’t confuse matters for anyone ‘brand new’ to the PSF!
What’s new in the 2023 PSF?
For this blogpost, one of the key aspects of the new PSF is the broadening out of the language to reflect the reality of the varying types of staff (and students) that support learning in Higher Education. This is referred to as demonstrating the context of one’s role. So previously, there were some specific phrasing of the PSF that might have appeared to exclude staff in professional services roles who supported learners. There were also separate supplemental guides offering examples relevant to each ‘type’. This difference has gone, so in a claim for recognition, you will have space to provide the context of your experience and kinds of support you provide at the start, before providing relevant examples which reflect the scope of your work.
Whereas the 2011 UKPSF included a narrative that gave the typical staff that each category might be appropriate to, the revised PSF 2023 does not do that. What remains is that you gain recognition for your retrospective, recent practice (usually examples from within the previous 3 years for Associate Fellows or Fellows, 5 years for Senior Fellows and longer, 7 years or more for Principal Fellows. So ‘length of service’ CAN be relevant, but it’s the practice from the time period prior to your claim that’s important, aswell the scope of your practice. (Accommodations can be made for those with career breaks.)
Made more explicit is that your practice, whether with students or in leading others, is inclusive. This is partly reflected in the increasing prominence of the Professional Values being re-organised within the Framework literature to underpin teaching and support activities, and in particular in the two values of V1 – respect individual learners and diverse groups of learners and V2 – promote engagement in learning and equity of opportunity for all to reach their potential. But its explicit mention in each descriptor brings this element to the foreground reflecting the contemporary HE environment for staff and students and external partners.
What’s remained the same?
Two things remain central to the revised PSF:
the importance of this being a retrospective claim on your practice of teaching/learner support
that you need to reflect on and provide ‘evidence’ that your practice is effective.
We’ll be exploring what ‘evidence’ might look like, along with what ‘effective practice’ means along with the new professional value V5: ‘Collaborating with others to enhance practice’ in the next few blogposts.
Until then, DO get familiar with the 2023 PSF and complete the fellowship category decision tool with honest examples. That will put you in good stead, ready to start your fellowship ‘journey’ with the Recognition Team in SALT. We look forward to guiding you along your reflective path.
In the HEA Fellowship blog, we’re continuing to measure the impact that HEA Fellowship has on teaching practices, on students and on the practices and approaches of peers.
Ben Harrison, Technician, Faculty of Science and Engineering
In this post, Ben Harrison, a technician supporting students in the Chemical Engineering programmes shares his story of reflecting on his role in supporting student’s learning, the stimulus and guidance he had to gain Associate Fellowship recognition. There has been a lull in applications from staff providing technical support for student learning through our internal Fellowship programme- Ben is the first technician to gain recognition for several years. Brilliant result!
“I’m much more vigilant about not asking ‘do you understand?’ style questions, but instead asking specific questions to assess their understanding“
Louise Rees, Senior Academic Developer in the Recognition Team reflects on recent emergence of feelings of imposterism.
Developing our Identity as an Educator in Higher Education
Developing as an educator in Higher Education and considering one’s identity is a topic covered in the last module of the PG Cert Teaching in Higher Education here at Swansea University. We explore how our teaching philosophy and approaches can be represented through visual metaphors and other creative approaches which I shared at the 2023 SALT Conference. As we start to consider how our identity is being influenced, many discussions note that imposter phenomenon (commonly termed imposter syndrome) is a prominent feature of the feelings of staff new to teaching, whether in academic or professional services contexts. Teaching in higher education is often viewed as a roller coaster. If we’re lucky, we get a ride which has seats with a firm base for our feet rather than a ride where our legs dangle!
Where is the support to address Imposter Syndrome?
Imposter syndrome is clearly a feeling that stubbornly refuses to go away for many in academia demonstrated by the 125 articles in our IFind catalogue covering this topic over the past 10 years (search conducted October 16th 2023) and a plethora of blogposts, podcasts, videos, images and websites offering tips (some recent sources at the end of this post). Many studies show its ongoing prevalence among female staff or those self-identifying as BAME (Reynolds, 2021) – hence the provision of leadership development courses such as Aurora and Diversifying leadership from Advance HE.
Why is it that we doubt ourselves?
I continue to doubt my capabilities, and I put it down to not a fear of failure, but one of perfectionism and that surely others will be able to do it better than me? And it’s happened to me very recently when I was asked if I’d facilitate a workshop on creative approaches to support reflection for another institution arising from my presentation at the 2023 SALT Conference.
What could I possibly offer in terms of new approaches or a different slant? The facilitator of the workshop series at the other HEI is themselves very well regarding in active learning approaches and creative reflective techniques! I would be laughed at surely or mutterings of ‘well we learnt nothing new there since X has shared those approaches with us before!’
Before accepting the invitation to deliver the workshop, I thought about it and almost declined. But I decided to contact the facilitator (who I briefly ‘knew’ in other professional contexts) and was open with them about my imposterism! What followed was a supportive conversation about how they hadn’t shared their approaches with the particular staff group who I’d be running the workshop for, providing reassurance in my approaches and a mutual recognition that we all experience these self-doubt feelings during our careers.
The stimulus for this blogpost
An October 2023 podcast with Ijeoma Nwaogu on Overcoming Imposter Anxiety stimulated my reflection about imposterism and why it is that we doubt ourselves. Not only as new teachers, but perhaps as experienced staff faced with something new. Take online teaching, learning and assessment strategies for example. Or responding to Generative AI to ensure assessments are authentic, or preparing for a curriculum review, or indeed facilitating a workshop on creative approaches (me!).
We have become ‘experienced’ and comfortable with methods, yet as the podcast recommends, we should adopt a growth mind-set (see Dweck, 2014) when faced with challenges, recognising that things may not go entirely to plan, (its OK to fail – that’s how we learn – that’s the message we tell our students so why not us?). Knowing when to stop working at something – that sufficient is OK – but the pressure of e.g., critical peer reviews of research and publications or metrics of student evaluations or comparison with others or our own perfectionism makes us fearful that good enough is NOT acceptable.
How our practice responds to imposterism
When we are faced with moving out of our comfort zone to learn and deliver something new, I would argue that we often regress down Kugel’s (1993) stages of development as a ‘professor’ to Stage 0/1 – we focus on becoming subject experts in the discipline and/or the approaches and practice until we are ‘perfect’. We are very self-centred, focusing on our own performance and worried what students think of us. Our immediate reaction is to want to appear to be ‘the expert’ and afraid that students might question our expertise. That’s what happened to me.
However, as Nwaogu indicated in her podcast, its OK to be vulnerable (see Lowrie’s 2019 blogpost), to be authentic with our students (Fidler and Espinosa-Ramos, 2023), to use our individual personality to connect with our learners (Hockings et al, 2009) rather than comparing ourselves with that other lecturer who effortlessly connects with her students exchanging wit as if performing in a Comedy Club.
Important Concepts about Imposter Syndrome
There are a several concepts that Nwaogu discusses in her podcast – but a couple that I wanted to focus on.
The difference between belonging and mattering, of
“Reveal to Heal” and
Of being present not performance.
That whilst it is good as an educator to experience a diversity of viewpoints and expertise, sometimes what gives us confidence is to have those around us who we trust, who share similar values and approaches, whom we can trust. Termed Mattering. Its important to feel we matter.
And when feelings of impostership start to emerge, be brave enough to ‘Reveal to Heal’ – since sharing one’s uncertainties can connect with those who share exactly the same feelings yet remain unspoken. Again, this has been my experience that others are just as scared as you are, just waiting for someone brave enough to voice their fears. To do so, you need to trust in people, hence the Mattering.
And finally, that while we might consider that the only people learning in your class are those actively answering questions and engaging, it’s the quiet person who is thinking and reflecting, and comes out with the insightful question every once in a while that is probably gaining the most. They are exhibiting deep learning. Sometimes called ‘lurkers’ or being vicarious learners learning from observation (Bandura, 1977 – see summary explanation Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory In Psychology (simplypsychology.org)), Susan Cain also notes the power of listening often demonstrated by introverts. While I’m a great advocate for ‘active learning’ techniques, I am still challenged by that notion and find it difficult to recognise that learning is taking place even when someone isn’t ‘actively contributing’. But that’s where I need to be inclusive in my approaches and enable them to contribute in ways that suit them.
How SALT can help give you confidence and thwart the imposterism!
There are couple of opportunities that SALT facilitates that I’d encourage you to engage in and another that I’d encourage you to perhaps take a different view of. Ones which are safe spaces where its OK to share vulnerabilities and possibly lack of knowledge and get support to address any uncertainties you might be feeling.
PG Cert teaching in HE
The first is the PG Cert teaching in HE programme[i]. The programme gently scaffolds participants in their teaching experience from micro-teach observations from peers, through regular peer observation of themselves and by themselves and for those that take it, an Advancing your Practice module that provides a safe space where participant’s slightly longer microteach experimenting using different approaches is recorded to enable playback. These have SO much personal benefit for participants in strengthening their confidence.
Peer Observation as a Positive Collaborative Professional Development Opportunity
The peer observation process followed in the PG Cert programme uses the official forms and process adopted by the University (see the Peer Observation Policy and Template). Because it is approached in a developmental and supported process, the lens of reflection and preparation shifts for all concerned from a perhaps punitive or reluctantly mandatory aspect of scrutinising one’s ‘performance’, to a constructive, collaborative endeavour where both party learns. I’d encourage you to undertake your regular ‘peer observation’ in the same way and not ‘because it has to be done’ but because it will enable you to grow, both as the observer AND the person being observed.
Seminars to share effective practice and teaching tips
The other aspect that SALT facilitates is the range of CPD sessions – Effective Practice and this year’s Teaching Fundamentals programmes (https://staff.swansea.ac.uk/academies/salt/what-we-do/cpd-programmes/). While we would encourage all to be as effective as you can be, don’t be daunted by the practices share by our presenters and facilitators and think ‘I can’t do that’.
Take time to reflect on what they share, embrace the safe space of these sessions, ask questions or follow up with the session facilitators, and consider how you can apply it in your context, discipline and particular teaching approach. It might not work exactly how they’ve shared or indeed work at all for you and your subject. But by adopting a growth mind-set, we can smooth out our roller coaster of emotions of ‘not being good enough’.
___________
[i] The PG Cert programme is usually mandatory for new or inexperienced staff, but it is open for those who wish to do it. It is a two year, part-time course which starts each September.
Disclosure
These views are the view of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching
There’s been so much to think about in the past year. At the forefront may be how you can adjust your assessment approaches to be more authentic and address concerns about potential (mis) use of Artificial Intelligence platforms.
SALT offers a range of tips and resources to help you consider carefully your engagement with students about effective use of AI, preparing them for the realities of using AI in the workplace or indeed considering changes to your assessments. There’s also the recordings of the webinars available to watch back.
We have past recordings of Effective Practice sessions for you to consider aswell as more planned for the coming academic year – check out our Eventbrite page for details and to book. And a range of resources about being an inclusive practitioner and building accessibility into your planning, delivery, learning environment and assessment approaches. Hopefully these resources give you some ideas for what might work for you in your context.
In September 2022, I wrote a blogpost providing a range of tips to get yourself ready for the new academic year. It was stimulated by the blogpost of a peer and developed further by crowdsourcing. I did that via Twitter. The changes since last year to that social media platform has caused me considerable reflection since Twitter (now ‘X’) was – still is – a major source of CPD for me. I now wonder how my links to colleagues and resources are hampered and we consider switching to alternative such as Mastodon, BlueSky or Threads. A post from an individual at LSE outlines the challenges of using social media to support the development of academic communities: Where now for academics on social media, post Twitter? | LSE Higher Education
Do reach out and find a network of supportive peers to help you develop your practice whether that’s online or in person!
The categories offered in last year’s post about preparing for the new academic year however still apply and hope you find these useful reminders as you prepare to teach/support learning using effective and inclusive practices in 2023/24!
I facilitate the learning of students on the PG Cert teaching in HE programme for new/inexperienced staff and their assignment is to reflect on their identity, their practice and to identify future professional development needs and avenues to address them.
Recently, the issue of engaging with students and supporting their connections through appropriate ice breaker activities seemed to be a common need among several new lecturers.
I raised this as a need we could help to facilitate amongst SALT – and I received quite a ‘marmite’ response. People tend to be in one of two camps – love them or hate them and this is evident from Twitter discussions going back many years (using the terms “ice breakers college education” reinforces this!). For example:
“When will higher education institutes realize that grown adults don’t wanna do ice breakers” – Jan 14th 2021.
However, for lecturers, such as suggested by Virna Rossi, the ice breaker topic can be structured around the actual subject material and was particularly helpful when teaching online synchronously. They can help start discussions both at social and knowledge level and as a form of creative “play” can help reinforce learning: The Creativity Post | Play Matters: Six Play-Full Practices For…
And so, we’ve started a PADLET of some suggested effective ice breakers in different contexts and with a range of ideas from elsewhere – we hope they are helpful. Do add others that have been helpful for you – as well as ones you’ve found less successful and why!
Celebrating Swansea University’s 700th Colleague gaining a Category of HEA Fellowship!
Dr. Aled Singleton, School of Biosciences, Geography and Physics, AFHEA
In the HEA Fellowship blog, we’re continuing to measure the impact that HEA Fellowship has on teaching practices, on students and on the practices and approaches of peers. We’ve also asked for some suggestions when teaching/supporting learning online!
Darren Minister from SALT’s Recognition team interviews Dr. Aled Singleton from the School of Biosciences, Geography and Physics to gain his reflections on his impetus for gaining Associate Fellowship (AFHEA) recognition as post-doctoral staff member. Aled offer tips for other researchers who have some responsibilities for teaching and/or support student’s learning in preparing their AFHEA claim.
(You can watch more tips from Aled and Marcos Quintela-Vasquez at our June 2023 Effective Practice seminar.)
Aled’s Top Tips – Give yourself time, attend seminars, come to the SALT Conference
Tell us about your discipline, the skills you teach, how long have you been teaching in Swansea and in HE
I’ve actually come to teaching sort of mid-career really. I spent most of my professional life managing place-based and regeneration projects. My discipline is Geography broadly, and about how our relationship with place and time. My first degree is actually in Computer Science, which is massively different to Geography, especially Human Geography, that I do now.
I came to Swansea to do a PhD which was about ageing and broadly about our relationship with places over our life. Studying these kind of emotional attachments to places led me more towards Geography as a discipline I wanted to concentrate on for the future, especially in terms of teaching. During my PhD, I did a bit of teaching on the Creative Writing Non-fiction course in English, because one of my supervisors is a writer. I did some tutoring during the pandemic on online tutoring, through the Brilliant Club.
In the last couple of years, I’ve taught workshops on research methods with Master students and PhD students. I also did a bit of work with Year Two geography students in 2022. But then this year I’ve taken up a role doing teaching and tutoring in Geography, so first and second year students. We’ve been covering subjects like globalisation and health, and different human geography techniques. Also, I have been tutoring 40 students in the first and second year. In March we went to Berlin on a lower carbon field trip. Plus, I work two days a week as a Research Officer.
You gained Associate Fellowship in November 2022 congratulations. You’re also a seven hundredth colleague within Swansea University to gain a category of HEA Fellowship. So why was gaining HEA Fellowship important to you and why did you apply?
As I was coming towards the end of my PhD, I started to realise more clearly that the University is not just about research. In fact, you can quite easily, as a researcher, just wander around the university campus and not even notice how many students there are. I know it sounds strange, but you operate in very different worlds. You go to different conferences and, especially in the pandemic, we weren’t here on campus very much.
A different motivation was that I struggled quite a lot in my first and second year as an undergraduate. After 20 years I guess that I thought a bit more clearly about wanting to do teaching. Moving to the Geography Department for a postdoc year meant that there was a lot more contact with students. I asked if I could do some teaching and they gave me some opportunities. Then last year I just realised that having the HEA Fellowship recognition was definitely going to be critical to taking my teaching forward. Also, I realised that I didn’t have any sort of formal recognition. The Brilliant Club was really good in terms of their training. They give you lots of guidance, and they make sure that you follow lots of online learning before they let you do any work with students. For example, when I got interviewed for the Brilliant Club they made me think hard about being in the classroom, and they even pretended to be young students when I had to give them a mock class. However, it doesn’t seem to be quite the same at university. You seem to just get chucked into things. The HEA framework was a good as it was structured, and it’s something which applies to every HE institution. I can talk a little bit more about the support here at Swansea, but the HEA framework felt like a structure, and it felt like some basic teaching principles to follow.
I think it was quite good that the HEA scheme does appreciate that people have to start somewhere, and the different levels mean that you can prove what you’re doing as you go along. It’s long-term commitment and a transferable qualification as well. Since getting the recognition I’ve done bits of teaching, not just at Swansea, and it’s been helpful to show that I’ve got that qualification. So, I think altogether it was something to aim for back in 2022. It took me a while to put together my application, and to plan ahead where I was going to gain my experience.
You mentioned online learning, so how have you continued to apply the standards of the UKPSF in your work since gaining recognition. Also, do you have any tips for anybody teaching online or supporting learning online?
I now spend a lot more time physically at the University. The Geography Department seems to be pretty good when it comes to arranging tutorials as one-to-ones and group tutorials outside of lectures. I can certainly see how that goes beyond what happens in the classroom, and particularly, offers more than an online scenario where you turn up and you deliver online and make a video recording there.
The tutoring helps to fulfil A4: supporting and guiding. For example, by creating different environments outside of the formal classroom or the online space. It’s been really good to help individual students and help them work together as well. The smaller spaces means that they’re a bit more confident. I can see how they’ve got more confident, certainly in terms of how to discuss ideas and help each other. For example, the first years looked at referencing and critical reading skills, and I think they’ve benefited a lot from that. It’s a very different scenario to standing up and delivering lecture that you have prepared. With the tutoring it’s a bit more directed by the students. This is now really apparent to me, having come away from the phase of teaching online.
One of the things that’s opened up for me is an opportunity to write a chapter for a book about Outdoor Learning. This was a link made by one of your colleagues in SALT, Louise. The book is being done through SEDA and will be published by Routledge. This is something that’s been chugging along in the background and means that I get to share some of the work that we do here at Swansea to the wider world. These scenarios, these opportunities, are helped by connections made through Twitter. In fact, the people I’m working with on the book, I’ve never actually met them in person, and it’s all been through online contact. This collaboration with others enhances what we do at Swansea and shares it with other people. Hopefully we will be able to bring in a lot of the other contents of that book to teaching here too. Did you ask about tips?
Is there anything that you learned about teacher online that you now apply in any face-to-face teaching? Or you are specifically supporting students as they get more used to face-to-face teaching again?
I found that using Mentimeter was really helpful when we were doing stuff online, because we could get the students to give some feedback and help shape the different teaching. Using Mentimeter in the classroom is something which I’ve carried on with since the pandemic. Also, it gives an anonymity to the students as, for some of them, it takes a while to get used to asking questions in class. It’s very visual as well, it goes up there on the screen during the lecture. This means that I can incorporate their feedback into the lecture recordings, and I also put it on Canvas afterwards. So that’s been really useful.
I think generally that Canvas means we can assemble lots of other materials, and not just the lectures. I think also, being able to offer online one-to-one meetings is a good thing as not all of the students live close to campus, nor the staff either. That’s been really helpful to be able to carry on using things like Zoom for the different meetings. I think one of the good things about Zoom, or whatever else people use, is you add links into the chat and incorporate resources straight away. Probably because I’m still ‘newer’ to teaching than lots of other people, the technology doesn’t daunt me: it’s all useful, plus, my first degree was in computer science, so I understand how it all works as well.
Sometimes when you are newer to teaching you are not as encumbered with as much ‘baggage’ as it were, so you are more willing to maybe try things which later on, as you get stuck in routines and everything, you maybe become bit less reluctant to do so, having that sort of mentality is really nice.
Yeah, I think things like using Panopto to record lectures doesn’t always work quite as we expect. Sometimes you get thrown by a room having different AV equipment to another room. But I think videos are pretty good; the way that we can just share stuff with students. Also, the deeper I get into teaching, the more I understand that students have got lots of work to do and other reasons, so digital recordings really help those students who, for whatever reason, can’t come to lectures. Furthermore, we can turn around the editing really quickly. I mean I generally just do lecture, come back, edit, get it out, and that’s something which I assume didn’t happen before the pandemic. I basically wrote my PhD Thesis during the pandemic, and finished my PhD in the pandemic, so working remotely wasn’t as big an issue for me. But I can see how it probably was for people who were used to doing everything in the classroom itself.
For someone not sure about applying for HEA Fellowship recognition. What words of encouragement would you offer?
I think, first of all, like everything in the academic world it is effectively based on peer review. So, it’s based on people reviewing each other’s work. Initially you have to get two referees to support your application and that involved one colleague coming to one of my lectures and giving an observation on my lecture. The other person was my mentor.
It is in the University’s interest to have more people go through this particular scheme and it is great, and actually quite surprising as well, to be the 700th person. In my case, applying for the Associate Fellow, set a direction for me in 2022. It made me think about what I needed to discover, what I needed to follow and it pushed me a bit harder. The thought of applying for full Fellowship this year is also pushing me harder as well; things like writing that book chapter, and any even things like writing a blog after the Berlin field trip. Thinking about made me think a bit more clearly about sort of what we could offer the students on that on that trip. Actually, one colleague, they’ve mentioned how students use things like Instagram as a way of telling us how they’re getting on with the field trip.
The process of applying for the Associate Fellowship was pretty rigorous. At times I did think is it worth it? Because it did feel like so much extra stuff to do. But they [SALT] did give you some useful guidelines, and it means that you can transfer these skills to other places as well.
So, what top tips would you offer to someone preparing an Associate Fellow application?
Tip 1 is about asking for help. I would say that the whole set up at Swansea is really well organised, and you can see which members of staff are behind it. The whole thing is devised as a Canvas course which takes you step-by-step through what you need to do, and the SALT team are very experienced. Sometimes it does feel a little bit overly structured, but having completed it I can see why now. Everything you need to find is on that Canvas course, which is useful.
Tip 2 would be to give yourself time to actually attend things like seminars. I went on quite a few seminars by BERA and I also went to the RGS (Royal Geographic Society) Geography Conference last year. There was quite a bit of content there which was about learning and teaching, some of them were recorded so you could listen to them again. I think each discipline will have its own sort of education angle. Like I said, for me, coming from that more research background and applying this education, it took me a while to find these things.
Point 3, I would go to the SALT Conference, and also pitch an abstract to the conference as well. I sent one last year, and it was really helpful for me to get some feedback from people and just make some useful connections. Quite a few connections have come from me doing that presentation plus I actually used it in my application as well. Make sure that you are part of what SALT does. Various members of stuff have been really helpful to me to take things further. And you know, like talking to you today, you can see that it is taken seriously by the University.
For Further Details
Visit SALT’s webpages for details of the internally accredited programme leading to Associate, Fellow or Senior Fellow and for links to Principal Fellow resources.
This year’s SALT Conference is July 12th 2023 at the Bay Campus. Further details and to register, see SALT’s website:
This post shares my experiences in seeking to foster significant learning and academic integrity through non-standard assessment formats in my Parliamentary Studies module. Parliamentary Studies is an optional final-year module available on various BA programs at Swansea’s Department of Politics, Philosophy, and International Relations (PPIR). Being taught in cooperation with the UK Parliament’s Education Team, the module combines guest speaker talks and a field trip to Westminster with an emphasis on active learning and small-group activities.
As part of conversations within PPIR around the value of non-standard assessment formats, I introduced the following changes to the module’s assessments when becoming convenor in 2022. Previously, the module was assessed through a take-home exam (50%) and a draft submission to a House of Commons select committee inquiry (50%). I reduced the latter’s weighting and replaced the take-home exam with a draft Wikipedia article and a recorded presentation (table below).
Draft submission to a House of Commons select committee inquiry
45%
2, 3, 4, 5
08 December
(Th, Wk., 10)
Coursework 3:
Recorded presentation
30%
3, 4, 5
18 January 2023
For the Wikipedia article, students could choose between creating a new article of approx. 1,250 words and expanding an existing article by the same length. Students were free to choose their topic as long as it related to the module content of the first three weeks and met Wikipedia’s article criteria.[1] Rather than making online edits on Wikipedia, students were asked to submit their draft via Turnitin.
The second assignment provided students with an opportunity to practice researching and writing for Parliament by drafting a written evidence submission to a House of Commons select committee inquiry (approx. 2,250 words).[2] Students were free to choose an inquiry from the list of inquiries that accepted submissions at that time and had a closing date after the assignment’s submission deadline as long as they adhered to Parliament’s guidance for written evidence submissions.[3]
Politics in and around the UK Parliament has generated numerous questions and debates about some of the most important challenges and opportunities of our time. In the final assessment, students were asked to select ONE question among a list of such questions and prepare a 10-minute recorded presentation proposing and defending their answer.[4]
I wanted to make these changes for several reasons. 1) The move from two to three pieces of coursework aimed to move toward a more continuous approach to assessment in order to identify and address bottlenecks early (Middendorf and Pace, 2004: 4-5), enhance in-course feedback to support student learning (Molloy and Boud, 2013), and assess the learning outcomes at lower levels of Bloom’s revised taxonomy before moving toward more sophisticated tasks (Anderson et al., 2001). 2) The Wikipedia assessment built on a platform students tended to be deeply familiar with to facilitate reflection on core assessment criteria that are relevant for many assignments beyond this particular module. By engaging students with the platform’s criteria for new articles, this assessment aimed to introduce students to notions of originality/novelty, relevance, referencing, and research rigor that are relevant for many types of coursework at a stage where such assessments tend to become particularly prominent and impactful for their final classification (e.g. dissertation). It thus aimed to enhance students’ understanding of assessment criteria and empower them in the self-assessment of their work. 3) By providing the option to (support students in revising their work in order to) publish their article on Wikipedia and/or submit their report to their chosen select committee inquiry, I wanted to facilitate a sense of ownership and agency over their assignments and support significant learning by making students reflect on their work’s societal contributions (Fink, 2013). 4) The recorded presentation aimed to capture the learning outcomes previously assessed through an exam while empowering students in enhancing their employability by producing output that evidences communication and IT skills often sought after by employers. 5) The recorded presentation also aimed to enhance inclusivity by providing a non-written asynchronous assessment and thereby further recognizing special learning requirements such as dyslexia.
The new assessment format resulted in concrete benefits.
1) The move from two to three modules reduced the pressure on individual assessments and facilitated assessment-to-assessment learning. At the end of the feedback for each assignment, I included 1-2 specific action points that I particularly encouraged students to consider when working on the next assignment. Conversations during office hours and assessing students’ subsequent work have suggested that this helped create opportunities for students to reflect on feedback and make adjustments to their work process.
2) By dissecting how and for which sentences authors on Wikipedia included references, this assignment proved highly effective in sharpening students’ engagement with academic integrity. I was amazed by the great care students took in properly referencing their sources and the critical reflection some students articulated with regard to what constitutes a suitable source.
3) The new assessments were also useful in fostering an understanding of academic work as contributing to knowledge. Especially the Wikipedia article and the select committee inquiry submission required students to reflect on why and how their work would contribute to and expand on what we already knew about a topic. For the Wikipedia article, they needed to reflect on why their topic would meet Wikipedia’s originality and relevance criteria if they chose to write a new article or visualize (e.g. through track-changes) where and how they contributed to an already existing article. For the select committee submission, students were required to maintain a clear focus on the objectives of the inquiry and reflect on why and how their selected material constituted suitable evidence to respond to these objectives.
4) The use of the recorded presentation also proved effective in building confidence in students who, by their own sharing, had found presentations very challenging in the past. Arguably, this format was also useful as a self-assessment tool since talking through one’s own argument is often an effective technique to evaluate its focus and consistency, and all presentations, while differing in the depth of their analysis and use of evidence, maintained a clear focus and were coherent in their argument throughout.
5) The new assessment types were also highly popular. Student feedback has often highlighted that students appreciate assessment types that do not have the standard essay- or exam-format. The newly introduced assessment formats were praised by students throughout the module and, from correspondence, seemed to attract students to the module in the first place. All this plausibly contributed to very positive attainments. Almost 90 percent of students achieved a 2.1 mark. No student failed. At the same time, an average mark of 63 with a standard deviation of 6.6 suggests the new assessment formats did not result in the often-discussed gradeinflation. The module achieved a satisfaction score of 4.9/5.0.
What take-aways can be derived from this experience? Traditional assessment forms certainly have their place in higher education, but this experience has reminded me of the value of “mixing things up” at times. The new assessment formats facilitated conversations in the classroom that highlighted that assessments are not box-ticking exercises. They can be used to produce something that is valuable – for us in higher education as well as for the world more broadly.
References
Anderson, L.W., D.R. Krathwohl, P.W. Airasian, K.A. Cruikshank, R.E. Mayer, P.R. Pintrich, J. Raths & M.C. Wittrock (2001) A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: Longman.
Fink, L. D. (2013): Creating Significant Learning Experiences. An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Middendorf, J. & D. Pace (2004) “Decoding the Disciplines. A Model for Helping Students Learn Disciplinary Ways of Thinking.” New Directions for Teaching & Learning 98(Summer): 1-12.
Molloy, E. & D. Boud (2013) “Changing Conceptions of Feedback.” In Feedback in Higher and Professional Education. Understanding it and Doing it Well, eds. D. Boud & E. Molloy. London: Routledge, 11-33.
Footnotes
[1] I provided scaffolding on how to select a topic by discussing Wikipedia’s criteria for new articles and sharing the list of “stub”-class and “start”-class articles. Students were required to confirm their selected topic with me by the end of Week 2. I also provided guidance on how to respond if a new article on their selected topic was published before students submitted their assignment.
[2] I owe this assessment format to a previous convenor of the module.
[3] I provided scaffolding on how to approach this work via the module guide, in-class discussions, and office hours.
[4] Throughout the semester, we built a toolkit that students could use when approaching analytical questions in the study of the UK Parliament. We repeatedly put this toolkit to work in various class activities. Further support included a Q&A in Week 11 and technical guidance on how to create and submit their recording.
