Wednesday 8 December 2010

PRF December meeting

The December meeting had the usual networking opportunities and sharing of good news. We shared some ideas for the impact guide to pedagigic research. We also had an interesting presentation:
"PBL in Cross/Inter- discipline Teaching and Learning. Two studies and a dialogue.
delivered by Helena Knapton (Edge-Hill University) and Jane Griffiths (LBS, UCLAN)
see webct (elearn area)for slides.
In their scenarios PBL is shown to be a really effective learning tool that takes the students and lecturer fascinating places that had not been anticipated.

Monday 29 November 2010

PRF afternoon

We had a really interesting afternoon with the PRF firstly a presentation on students perceptions of feedback by Sarita Robinson, which made us consider the emotional investment angle and how to better support students. This gave me lots of ideas when giving my feedback. The workshop by Tania Horak from Wiser on academic writing was useful as again in uncovered some of our innate assumptions about students writing, and how to recognise a really good piece of academic writing. Its not all about grammar and spelling you know! The next academic workshop will be in March which has more of a practical how to angle.

Thursday 25 November 2010

ISSOTL

A few mambers of the PRF and a lot of the LDU went to ISSOTL in Liverpool. Ruth Pilkington and Peter Lumsden had great posters which attracted plenty of interest. Dawn Harrison gave a session on reflection, and myself and Mandy Dillion gave a round table discussion on research informed teaching. We made some great new friends from universties near and far, and even set up an online discussion group on measuring impact. It was a worthwile event but rather expensive conference held at the Liverpool BT convention centre on the Docks. The convention centre itself was ok but some of the rooms were to small and the staff were not very helpful, and the food was nothing to write home about. Liverpool is a lovely city but i may avoid the convention centre next time.

Monday 4 October 2010

"Education in our times must try to find whatever there is in students that might yearn for completion, and to reconstruct the learning that would enable them autonomously to seek that completion" Allan Bloom

Wednesday 8 September 2010

Student confidence

Instructors that focus on building the confidence of students, providing strategic instruction, and giving relevant feedback can enhance performance outcomes.
Hoffman, B. & Spatariu, A. (2008). The Influence of Self-Efficacy and Metacognitive Prompting on Math Problem-Solving Efficiency. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 33, 875-893.

9 evidence based study tips

The September issue of The Psychologist magazine is a free-to-view student special containing a feature by the Research Digest editor on the journey from A-level to Undergrad psychology, including the following 9 evidence-based study tips:

Adopt a growth mindset.

Sleep well.

Forgive yourself for procrastinating.

Test yourself.

Pace your studies.

Vivid examples may not always work best.

Take naps.

Get handouts prior to the lecture.

Believe in yourself.

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/09/9-evidence-based-study-tips.html

http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm/volumeID_23-editionID_192-ArticleID_1719-getfile_getPDF/thepsychologist%5C0910tran.pdf

Tuesday 24 August 2010

humbox humanities teaching resources

http://www.humbox.ac.uk/
HumBox - a new repository to share, store, manage and repurpose teaching materials from across the Humanities has been launched at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield.

The repository has been developed by a partnership of four subject centres: English, History, LLAS and PRS and eleven institutional partners. It is funded by JISC and the HEA.

HumBox already contains over 1000 resources all uploaded using Creative Commons licences. Resources range from simple handouts to more complex learning objects as well as audio and video resources. The repository includes a simple commenting function so that users can leave feedback on the resources. Users have a profile page to promote their own research and teaching. They can set up collections of related resources and include descriptions to ensure that they are more usable for teaching.

Monday 12 July 2010

handouts before lecture?

Research in the Applied Cognitive Psychology journal states that having access to handouts of the slides during lecture was associated with a number of benefits: less note-taking (studies 1 and 2), less time needed to prepare for a final test (study 1), and better performance on the final test (study 2). Overall, receiving handouts before lecture helped efficient encoding of the lecture

BPS digest lecturers-should-provide-powerpoint


Access to handouts of presentation slides during lecture: Consequences for learning

Friday 9 July 2010

assessment conference

Well the Uclan Assessment: Research and Innovation for Inclusive Practice conference went great!
I created a poster for the PRF extolling the virtues of pedagogic research and some responses from members, who really appreciate the community. There were some fantastic talks and workshops, ppts will be up on the website soon.
http://www.uclan.ac.uk/assess_conference

The online talk was interesting and it was good to work the technology and realise that you don't to have to be there to give a good talk. you can still take part and respond here:
http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/r12245797

Monday 14 June 2010

Reading groups

Is there any particular topics that people would like to see articles on? Assessment, group work and feedback all seemed to strike a chord!

Hopefully the first of many!

This is the new blog set up to disseminate information about the Uclan PRF (Pedagogic Research Forum) This has been inspired by a great talk by Ruth Smith on blogging as a means of reflection at the last PRF meeting.
This year got off to a slow start but the PRF really got its wings by the end of the academic year. we had some really productive sessions and reading groups, the adobe connect workshop was so packed we had to run two slots. Suggestions for workshops next year are end note referencing software, research methods/ designing a study and the new elgg social networking site which we now have a PRF group on http://atp.uclan.ac.uk/elgg/pg/groups/1656

Elgg is a site to support study, research, networking and collaboration at UCLan. If you don't have a password or would like some training email atpadmin@uclan.ac.uk. You must do this using your UCLan account (yourusername@uclan.ac.uk).