6th Academic Practice Study Day &
Conference
An annual event supporting pedagogic
research at Northumbria
Monday, 27th June 2011
Sutherland Building, Northumbria
University
6th Academic Practice Study Day & Conference
An annual event supporting pedagogic research at Northumbria
Monday, 27th June 2011
Sutherland Building, Northumbria University
Programme
8.45
Registration & Refreshments
9.15
9.30
Welcome, introduction to the day
Papers 1 & 2
Sue Bloxham, University of Cumbria:
Supporting student achievement: the mismatch between guidance and
marking.
Mark Huxham, Edinburgh Napier University:
Experiments in Education: how quantitative approaches can help us
understand our teaching
Discussion of papers 1 & 2 in smaller groups over coffee/tea
(you will be allocated to a group, list in conference pack)
Plenary discussion of papers 1 & 2 with speakers
Participants’ round tables
11.45- 12.25
Parallel round tables, slot 1
 The difficulties in teaching engineering ethics to engineering students Reaz Hassan, CEIS (Room 201)
 Work-based Project and Masters in Academic Practice - Kevin Elliott,
BNE (Room 205)
 Virtual Peer Mentoring - Dealing with a neutral outcome - Joanne
Smailes, NBS (Room 206)
 Bridging the Distance Gap - The Human Voice as an Interface - Claire
Hoy, NBS (Room 209)
12.30 – 13.10 Parallel round tables, slot 2
 The challenges posed by group teaching and assessment on a distance
learning law programme - Claire Bessant, Law (Room 201)
 Does formative feedback and formative assessment really work for
international students to inform their future approaches to learning Martin Foo, NBS (Room 205)
 PODcasts – ‘Learning outside of the Lecture Space - David Morton, BNE
(Room 206)
 Academic Advising - Do we need to think about sustained support for
students? - Fiza Rashid-Doubell, LS (Room 209)
10.30
11.15
11.45
Sutherland
Building Foyer
Great Hall
Great Hall
Rooms 201, 205,
209
Great Hall
Rooms 201, 205,
206, 209
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13.15
14.00
15.00
15.45
16.15
17.15
17.30
Lunch
Poster viewing
Book stall from the Well Read Bookshop
Paper 3 & 4
Ann-Marie Bathmaker, University of the West of England:
Complexity, uncertainty and confusion: applying for HE in a changing field of
higher education
Gwyneth Hughes, Institute of Education:
The 'inbetweeners': exploring contradictions experienced by taught
postgraduates
Discussion of papers 3 & 4 in smaller groups over coffee/tea
(you will be allocated to a group, list in conference pack)
Plenary discussion of papers 3 & 4 with speakers
In a nutshell - information skills and resources for pedagogic research
16.15 Jamie Harding: SPSS for quantitative data analysis
16.30 Jane Wilcockson: NVivo for qualitative data analysis
16.45 Suzie Kitchin: Effective searching for literature
17.00 Michelle Walker: Using Endnote for referencing
Rounding up
Questions & Answers about information skills and resources
More poster viewing and bookshop stall
Drinks and nibbles
Close
Great Hall
Great Hall
Rooms 201, 205,
209
Great Hall
Great Hall
Great Hall
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Plenary Speaker Abstracts
Sue Bloxham, University of Cumbria
Supporting student achievement: the mismatch between guidance and marking.
This paper draws on personal research over a decade to explore the issue of helping diverse
students succeed in their University assessment. I shall do this in a rather back to front way
by starting with what tutors are doing as they mark, how they are making their judgements
and what they are looking for. The reason I am taking this approach is because my recent
research career has actually gone in the opposite direction. As I have worked with
colleagues on a range of practitioner research projects designed to help, so called, ‘widening
participation’ students to succeed in higher education, I have become more and more
interested in what ‘succeeding’ is all about, and that has led me, not surprisingly, to
investigating tutors’ marking practices. What has struck me most perhaps, is that students
understand the importance of focusing on staff marking; they have told us how important it
is to talk to tutors, to find out what they really want, to hear it from the horse’s mouth so to
speak, rather than rely on the formal guidance that we may give them.
The paper will draw on a range of studies both of the student perspective and staff marking
to explore the disjunction between guidance and judgement and will conclude with some
suggestions for achieving greater alignment.
Sue Bloxham is Professor of Academic Practice at the University of Cumbria. She has taught
in higher education for many years, developing a particular interest in action research
related to assessment, active learning and widening participation. Sue published the best
selling Developing Effective Assessment in Higher Education: A practical Guide (Open
University Press) with her Cumbria Colleague, Pete Boyd, in 2007; the same year that she
was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship. Sue’s interest in assessment focuses
particularly on how we manage our higher education assignments and examinations to
support the achievement of students from under-represented groups. She has also
researched and published on matters such as student skills development, group assessment,
feedback, course design and marking.
Mark Huxham, Edinburgh Napier University
Experiments in Education: how quantitative approaches can help us understand our
teaching
Pedagogical research in Higher Education is dominated by qualitative and small-scale
studies. Controlled experiments are rare, despite their status as ‘gold standard’
methodology in medicine and other fields. The reasons for this are complex and interesting.
They include strong arguments in favour of qualitative approaches and of ‘critical pedagogy’
that eschews experimental designs. In this talk I will argue that despite these objections
experiments should have an important place in our methodological toolkit. In particular I
will address four common criticisms – ethics, crudity, insensitivity and territorial arrogance –
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and illustrate how they need not apply to experimental studies. By considering a slice
through the ‘ontological onion’ of HE pedagogy I will suggest that we can identify areas of
research where experimental approaches should be expanded and others where they are
likely to be less useful.
Mark Huxham is a Professor in Environmental Biology and Senior Teaching Fellow at
Edinburgh Napier University and believes in combining teaching and research for the benefit
of both. In addition to the research reported in his paper, he has investigated how effective
interactive sessions are in stimulating learning, the strengths and weaknesses of alternative
methods of evaluation and ways of providing rapid feedback to students. His teaching
interests include first-year student support and retention; support for new, part-time and
postgraduate colleagues; collaborative research on teaching; and peer observation and
'academic exchange'. He is module leader for a module aimed at postgraduates who teach
at Edinburgh Napier. In 2009 he was awarded the Higher Education Academy Ed Wood prize
for teaching. Mark's subject research focuses on inter-tidal ecology, and he heads a research
project on mangrove restoration in Kenya.
Ann-Marie Bathmaker, University of the West of England
Complexity, uncertainty and confusion: applying for HE in a changing field of higher
education
The taken-for-granted common sense understanding of what it means to participate in
higher education is ‘going to uni’ to study full-time for a Bachelor degree. A major focus of
policy interest in higher education transitions is therefore on who gains access to university,
and who gains access to which university. However, this dominant image of undergraduate
higher education does not reflect the diversity of HE provision that has evolved since the
1960s in many countries in Europe and beyond, including England. Although less visible in
the media and public perceptions, a considerable amount of HE takes place in ‘nonuniversity’ institutions, including ‘dual sector’ further and higher education institutions, and
provision includes ‘short cycle’ sub-Bachelor qualifications, such as the English Foundation
degree, as well as the traditional Bachelor degree. Under New Labour (1997-2010), the
intention was to use these diverse forms of higher education to meet goals of increasing
and widening participation.
This presentation, and the paper on which it is based, explores how students following
‘alternative’, mainly vocational routes engage with the opportunity to participate in higher
education. The paper uses data from an ESRC project which researched evolving provision of
HE in the context of FE/HE institutions in England (the FurtherHigher Project), and focuses
on the experience of applying for HE study amongst students studying in these institutions.
Evans’ (2007) concept of ‘bounded agency’ is used to explore the interaction of structural
factors and individual agency in the process of applying for HE.
The data presented in the paper reveal the complexities and uncertainties associated with
transitions to higher education amongst students who do not follow ‘standard’ academic
routes to Bachelor degree study. The analysis suggests that structural factors play an
important role in positioning students in relation to HE, but so too do students’ dispositions
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and orientations to HE. Evans’ concept of ‘bounded agency’ provides a means of
understanding how an interaction of structural factors, dispositions and orientations to HE
linked to the habitus and to individual agency, shapes the experience of applying for higher
education amongst students in the study. The paper concludes by discussing the
implications of ‘bounded agency’ for transitions to HE in the context of diverse, mass higher
education.
In addition to discussing data and findings from the study, this presentation will consider
how I came to use the concept of ‘bounded agency’. Here I discuss the process of identifying
and then applying a theoretical lens or resource, and how the use of a particular theoretical
lens may help to analyse and understand empirical data.
Ann-Marie Bathmaker is Professor of Further Education and Lifelong Learning at the
University of the West of England, Bristol. Her research focuses on vocational and postcompulsory education, and new forms of higher education. She is particularly interested in
constructions of teaching and learning in changing policy and socio-economic contexts, and
the implications for social justice, equity and human agency. Her recent research includes an
ESRC-funded study of widening participation in new forms of higher education (the
FurtherHigher Project), an evaluation of Work-Related Learning in English schools, and a
longitudinal project exploring the construction of professional identities in English further
education. She is currently working on a Leverhulme-funded project which investigates
working class and middle class participation in higher education at the two universities of
Bristol in the UK (the Paired Peers project), and a study of the construction of knowledge in
English General Vocational Education.
Gwyneth Hughes, Institute of Education
The 'inbetweeners': exploring contradictions experienced by taught postgraduates
Taught postgraduates are little studied but the transitional position of such programmes
between undergraduate and doctoral study calls for a greater understanding of the
experiences of this group of mature and often part-time students.
The literature on part-time students suggests that these learners are highly motivated but
face constraints because of managing busy lives alongside study. However, little attention
has been given to the academic transition that these learners undertake. Using a theoretical
framework which draws on concepts of communities of practice and of learning careers, this
paper presents findings from a longitudinal intensive study of 15 Masters students. Work
intensification was managed well by these motivated learners, but they were presented
with contradictions between autonomy and relying on tutor expertise and between
bureaucracy and respect. Successful negotiation of these contradictions enabled
participation in disciplinary communities of practice as well as full membership of peer
learning communities. Younger students were less able to manage these contradictions than
the more established professionals and the role of assessment was of particular significance
for students with previous negative experiences of learning. The paper concludes that the
contradictions could be openly discussed with students and introducing ipsative feedback
might be helpful.
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Gwyneth Hughes is Senior Lecturer in Higher Education and Faculty Director Learning and
Teaching in the Faculty of Policy and Society at the Institute of Education, London. She has a
wide range of research interests which include learning technologies/e-learning and ipsative
assessment. The research reported in this paper derives from a collaborative research
project funded by the Higher Education Academy which investigates transitions to and
during Master’s degree courses in the UK, with the aim to examine how improvements in
formative assessment and feedback can facilitate these transitions.
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Round Tables
11.45- 12.25
Parallel round tables, slot 1
Title
The difficulties in
teaching
engineering ethics
to engineering
students
Presenter
Reaz
Hassan,
CEIS
Work-based
Project and
Masters in
Academic Practice
Kevin
Elliott, BNE
Virtual Peer
Mentoring Dealing with a
neutral outcome
Joanne
Smailes,
NBS
Bridging the
Distance Gap - The
Human Voice as an
Interface
Claire Hoy,
NBS
Short Description
I have been delivering engineering ethics to Mechanical
Engineering students for the past five years. The whole
experience had been very challenging but rewarding. I
would like to share my journey with the development of
the curriculum content, assessment and feedback
mechanism. I am now planning to investigate the
perception of ex-graduates and final year students
returning from placement about the importance and
relevance of engineering ethics. I would be seeking your
opinions about my plan for conducting interview and
questionnaire survey.
Presentation and discussion of my work-based project
which focuses on researching available construction
textbooks and tries to identify what makes for a good
textbook, with a view to seeking advice from round table
participants for ways in which this may be progressed. Is
there mileage in conducting such a meta analysis? How
would others go about collecting and analysing the data
required?
The explosion of mobile technology use within the
general population means today’s students are often
referred to as Digital Natives or the Net Generation
(Oblinger and Oblinger, 2005; Prensky, 2001,). Baston
(2008) notes that our educational systems are not yet
fully recognising the changes which have arisen from this
generation. As part of a pilot study in Newcastle
Business School, the social networking package
Facebook has been used as a support mechanism with
students. Questionnaire results received illustrate some
neutrality towards this initiative. This round table will be
used to discuss ideas in the way this can be
disseminated effectively and avoid jeopardizing the
potential for this initiative to be adopted as main stream
practice.
A discussion to gain ideas and perspectives on
developing a systematic research approach to evaluating
the impact of podcasts as a means to 1. Encourage
greater engagement of distance learning students. 2.
Promote deeper learning. 3. Improve understanding of
assessment requirements
Room
201
205
206
209
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12.30 – 13.10
Parallel round tables, slot 2
Title
The challenges
posed by group
teaching and
assessment on a
distance learning
law programme
Does formative
feedback and
formative
assessment really
work for
international
students to
inform their
future
approaches to
learning?
PODcasts –
‘Learning outside
of the Lecture
Space
Presenter
Claire
Bessant, Law
Short Description
Discussion of the proposed benefits of group
assessment, the challenges encountered in practice
when students are distance learners
Room
201
Martin Foo,
NBS
Montgomery & McDowell (2010) make use of active
and authentic tasks to engage international students in
learning and use formative assessment to try out their
learning before summative assessments. Bennet (2011)
questions whether there is actually any agreement
amongst educators as to what constitutes “formative
assessment”. So where are we with our understanding
of assessment? and how can we use this to the benefit
of our international students.
205
David
Morton, BNE
206
Academic
Advising - Do we
need to think
about sustained
support for
students?
Fiza RashidDoubell, LS
Presentation of podcasting developments undertaken
in own practice (tutor developed podcasts and active
lectures including Smartboards, voting handsets and
note-taking in pebblepad) in order to obtain
participants’ views on ways in which they can be
evaluated and researched
Discuss the concept and remit of academic advising
and to meet others who are working or interested in
developing research in this field.
209
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Posters
All posters will be available at 13.15 – 14.00 and again at 17.15-17.30
Title
Blending and patchwork: an
approach to learning,
teaching and assessment for
mentor preparation
Presenter
Kathryn
Steele, Jen
Logan, HCES
Learning outside of the
lecture space – PODcasting
David
Morton,
BNE
Podcasting in Pitlochry
Cath White,
BNE
The evaluation of a new
module assessment for
postgraduate students;
moving from the traditional
essay to the production of a
conference
Evaluating an elective
placement
Lesley
Geddes,
HCES
Piloting concept mapping as
an alternative research tool
to investigate understanding
Jill
Gilthorpe,
HCES
Nicola
Reimann,
HR
Short Description
We propose to explore two key educational concepts
that have informed the development of learning,
teaching and assessment strategies in a short
programme for mentor preparation. The use of
blended learning and patchwork text aimed to
encourage students to explore their own experiences
within a community of learning and practice. Early
evaluation has indicated the need for further
exploration of these key concepts and their
application to practice; and we are keen to obtain
feedback on ways in which to develop such research.
To create a learning platform on which to promote
inquiry based learning to support lectures and
seminars. By using currently available technologies to
connect the classroom to what is learnt in students’
own independent inquiry based learning.
A research project investigating podcasting as a way
of engaging with place for first year B.A and B.Sc.
students on a first year geography fieldtrip
An evaluation of a new form of assessment
introduced on a postgraduate poster is discussed. The
evaluation used mixed methods including
involvement of students in a focus group. Findings of
the evaluation will be discussed.
In this poster I am proposing ideas for the evaluation
of an elective physiotherapy placement and would
appreciate discussion of and feedback for my ideas.
I am in the process of developing a collaborative
research project which aims to investigate the way in
which HE staff understand assessment. I have
become increasingly sceptical of using interviews as
the only means to investigate conceptual
understanding and would therefore like to
experiment with ‘concept mapping’. However, this
results in the dilemma of needing to learn how to use
concept mapping as a tool, while trying to gather
useful and useable data at the same time.
PLUS:
Well Read bookshop
Opportunity to browse, buy and order books relevant to pedagogic research
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In a Nutshell: Resources for Pedagogic
Research
16.15: Jamie Harding, SASS: Using SPSS for quantitative data analysis
This session will introduce SPSS, a software package which is used by many quantitative
researchers to explore, analyse and display statistical data. Jamie’s own pedagogic research
will be used as an example to provide a very brief overview of what SPSS can do, which
include statistical tests and the production of graphs, charts and tables.
16.30: Jane Wilcockson, HCES and Independent Trainer in NVivo: Using NVivo for
qualitative data analysis
NVivo is a powerful software for storing and managing a wide range of qualitative data, for
example documents, PDFs, spreadsheets, audio, video and pictures. The range of tools
within NVivo provide the opportunity for the researcher to explore the
data, pursue connections, to reflect and add their own insights and ideas. This session will
provide a very brief introduction to the potentials of the software.
16.45: Suzie Kitchin, Library: Effective searching for education literature
Struggling to find pedagogic research and theory? Learn key searching techniques and see
top education databases highlighted.
17.00: Michelle Walker, Library: Using Endnote for referencing
Are your references on paper or stored in Word? Spend too much time formatting
references for journals? Struggling to manage your references for different pieces of work?
Endnote, the reference management tool, can help with all of these issues. See Endnote’s
key features demonstrated and gain an overview of how it can help you.
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