Dr Marcus Leaning
University of Winchester
Paper given at Higher Education Academy: Art Design and Media
Learning and Teaching Day, 29 November 2011 – Ravensbourne.
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Report on a new
module run last year
for the first time in the
Media Studies
programme at
Winchester.
Winchester students
typical ‘good’ post-92
cohort:
◦ 300 UCAS points,
◦ Very few mature students,
◦ 15-20% International –
10% English not first
language.
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Course taught on the BA Media Studies
degree at Winchester.
Part of the new(ish) Media Studies degree that
was validated in 2010.
Degree focuses upon:
1.
2.
3.
4.
New media / MS 2.0;
Employability - strategic use of media;
Research;
Doing ‘public good’.
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Students starting university face (at least) two big
problems in their studies:
1. Expected problem of the new substantive field to learn
that may be very different from what they have studied
before.
2. Unexpected problem of new set of practices and skills.
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higher standards of argument;
critical analysis and engagement;
writing and presenting;
research and academic practices of referencing.
 Also information literacy - skilled use of new media and
information considered important (Walton & Pope, 2009).
 Obtaining these skills is understood as acquiring academic
literacy (Lillis, 2006).
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Traditionally the onus lay with the student to
gain such skills.
◦ Just by being at university we acquired them through a
process of ‘osmosis’ – the hidden curricula of HE.
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90s expansion and professionalization.
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Mid-2000s Approach criticised
◦ Recognition of problem faced by non-trads.
◦ Study skills units appear.
◦ Study skills divorced from academic practice
◦ Sense of ‘additionality’ or ‘penalty’ for non-trad
students seen as unfair.
◦ Gradual shift to re-integrate academic literacy into
academic study = courses on writing and academic
skills.
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Phenomenon of the ‘writing
module’, Composition 101 in
US terms.
Winchester had a course called
“Writing for Media Studies”,
other places have similar
courses.
Personal experience is that
such courses are not
universally popular,
◦ very low levels of student
satisfaction;
◦ lack of internalisation of LOs;
◦ superficial or surface learning;
◦ Perception of disconnection
between the module LOs and
those of the programme;
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Hated not just by the students.
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When the programme was being rewritten
Manipulating Media was developed to address
the need to:
1. Provide Media Studies students with a module that
developed academic literacy;
2. Provide a meaningful experience for students;
3. Link to the wider aims of the programme.
1.
Explicit emphasis placed upon encouraging students to
work collaboratively:
 when well executed, collaborative work enables students to
learn much from each other (Gokhale, 1995), problems
engineered out through assessment design Brooks & Ammons,
(2003).
2.
Extensive use of social media by students required.
 useful means of building skills in students (Buzzetto-More,
2009), part of media environment and critical use of them an
important aspect of media education (Jenkins, 2009).
3.
Constructivist / constructionist approach is heavily drawn
upon.
 the emphasis is upon the student engaging in the production of
actual texts and materials instead of a more ‘traditional’ learn by
observation approach.
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Module is 2
semesters.
A compulsory course
and constitutes ¼ of
the first year (30
CATS credits).
Divided into 2
stages.
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First six weeks of semester one - workshops
1.
Introduction
2.
Project management
3.
Research
4.
Content creation
5.
Production and dissemination
6.
Reflective practice
 greeting and orientation; planning and managing a project; work flow;
using simple management tools such as a Gantt chart; managing
communication and team working
 planning and managing a project;
 identifying information need; search strategies; finding and evaluating
information; importance and mechanics of referencing.
 recognising and writing for different audiences; genres and formats;
structuring an argument; rhetorical strategies.
 presentation of visual and textual content; drafting and checking;
dissemination strategies for different audiences; selection and
management of media channels.
 analysing one’s own performance; identifying strong and weak practice;
learning from feedback; strategic self development.
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Final week of stage
one students put in
groups of four and
allocated roles:
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Project manager;
Researcher;
Content creation;
Production and
dissemination;
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At the start of week 7 they are given the 1st
project in the form of a brief.
◦ 3 week turn around.
◦ Will require skills of all team members.
◦ Tutor used as an expert consultant – meeting 1-2
time per week – ‘feed forward’ help in producing
better work.
◦ One of the first tasks is for the Proj. Manager to
plan a programme of work, arrange meetings etc.
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In week 10 the class meets again and the
projects are presented to the whole group.
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New teams are formed - students can’t work
in same team.
For each project students do a different role;
project manager, research, content creation,
production and dissemination.
Each project is 3 weeks with a presentation
week.
Students work on four separate projects and
perform each role once.
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In addition to their work on the projects
students keep a blog concerning their
experience of the different roles and the work
on the projects.
Used to encourage writing, to help them think
about their work and other perspectives on
the project and sometimes to resolve
differences.
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For each project, students are given a separate
mark related to the performance of the role.
Thus in a piece of work with a strong research
element the student performing the research role
will receive a good mark.
Over the course of the four projects students will
earn four separate marks, each being worth 20%.
The blog is marked at the end of the course and
this constitutes the last 20% of the student’s
grade.
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Students received only a numerical score for
their work.
All ‘how to improve’ commentary was given
on drafts and ideas the students produced at
tutorials.
This ideas was emerged from a L and T unit
study on assessment.
The idea of ‘feedfoward’ rather than
feedback.
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The key element of the module are the briefs
and ensuring that the ‘deliverables’ require
that students use the skills the course aims to
develop and that the performance of the roles
is obvious.
1.
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2.
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Because Uni’s worth it!
Produce and upload to Youtube a short video (or series
of) that would persuade failed applicants to reapply
the following year and that it is still worth going to
university – highlight the economic, social and
intellectual benefits of attending university.
Communicate the message in an appropriate manner
to the target audience.
Save the Essay!
Correct a badly written essay – students were given an
essay retrieved from an online essay site that was full
of errors.
Students had to check all aspects of the essay, redraft
it, reformat it to stringent guidelines and upload it to
Slideshare.net
The spoken essay...
3.
Students were given a choice of 10 essay questions related to
contemporary media topics and had to research and craft a 5minute presentation consisting of a narrated PowerPoint
presentation which was uploaded to Slideshare.net.
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4.
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Educate and inform the University of Winchester
electorate.
Students had to mount a campaign to raise awareness of the
electoral reform referendum held in May 2011 for students,
staff and visitors to the university.
The students had to identify suitable channels of
communication and produce content that would engage and
inform staff, students and visitors to the university of the
importance of voting in the referendum.
Students detailed evidence of their campaign in a short video
uploaded to Youtube.com.
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We expected
students to like the
more practical
projects but they
were split; and even
a slight majority
liking the detail of
the analytic projects
more.
We are using similar
projects in the
current year.
At the end of the module students were asked to
fill in a module evaluation form and 98% of the
students still on the course completed the form.
 There were two main positive points:
1. The course proved to be popular with the vast
majority of students (vastly more so than with
the previous “Writing for Media Studies”
course);
2. Students reported feeling they had gained
specifically in skills of project management,
referencing, organising ideas and handling of
information.
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There were four main negative points:
1. The system of feedback was disliked by virtually all
students – this was a ‘feed-forward’ approach that
provided constructive assistance to students prior to
the submission of work and then only a numerical
grade as actual feedback. This approach was
developed from research by the Learning and Teaching
Unit at the university as they found that students often
did not engage with the traditional feedback.
2. The length of the projects (some desiring longer
projects, some shorter).
3. The length of the workshops.
4. Having to write blogs.
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In future years the
feedback system will
be altered to one
where we continue to
offer feed-forward but
additionally provide
some more
substantive feedback.
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Too early for any serious longitudinal
analysis, BUT initial semester 1 results for the
cohort do show certain things:
◦ Group work is far better – they are using the group
methodology of allocating roles, also adapting it to
different situations.
◦ Presentations are of a completely different league;
seeing them as a piece of work that is
collaboratively produced rather than 3 bits of work
stuck together - this is also shown in contrast to
other degrees that share modules but did not do
Manipulating Media.
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Students like the course.
Almost universally positive, they also seemed
to understand how the skills gained are
useful.
They use the skills in other areas – not just
academic, a bit of metacognition going on.
Staff vastly prefer it, took a bit of time to win
some over but now a very popular course to
teach.
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Brooks, C. M., & Ammons, J. M. (2003) 'Free Riding in Group Projects and
the Effects of Timing, Frequency, and Specificity of Criteria in Peer
Assessments'. The Journal of Education for Business, 78(5), pp.268-272.
Buzzetto-More, N. (2009) Using Web based project learning to build
information literacy. In M. Leaning (Ed.), Issues in Information and Media
Literacy: Education, Practice and Pedagogy (Vol. II). San Jose, Informing
Science Press.
Gokhale, A. A. (1995) 'Collaborative Learning Enhances Critical Thinking'.
Journal of Technology Education, 7(1), pp.22-30.
Jenkins, H. (2009) Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture:
Media Education for the 21st Century. Massachusetts, MIT Press.
Lillis, T. (2006) Moving towards an 'Academic Literacies' pedagogy:
Dialogues of participation. In L. Ganobcsik-Williams (Ed.) Teaching
Academic Writing in UK Higher Education: Theories, Practices and
Models. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
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Walton, G., & Pope, A. (2009) Information literacy for the 21st century. In
M. Leaning (Ed.), Issues in Information and Media Literacy: Education,
Practice and Pedagogy (Vol. II). San Jose, Informing Science Press.