Study Skills
#Take5 #27 The Best Way of Blending Learning?
LESSONS FROM A TEACHER DEVELOPMENT PROJECT: One positive instance of using technology for student learning, rather than its own sake. This guest blog explores the authentic embedding of digital practices within our pedagogic toolbox and has been prepared for #Take5 by Dr Paul Breen (@CharltonMen) who also shares, below, a link to his free book: Developing Educators for the Digital Age. Image: Teachers in Paul Breen’s PhD Study using iPads in the classroom The tools for the job “SHOULD teaching take place within an academic bubble detached from the outside world, or should it make use of all that is […]
#Take5 #26 ‘Do you write as well as you speak?’ A dialogic pedagogy to enhance student arguments in academic writing
This #Take5 blogpost has been produced by Dr. Tiffany Chiu and Dr. Olga Rodríguez Falcón This project was conducted at UEL 2017, where we intended to address a growing concern over student transferable academic skills for employability in higher education. It aimed to implement and evaluate a dialogic approach to embedding academic literacy skills into the subject curriculum. As researchers and practitioners in higher education, we have observed that, very often, students have found it challenging to generate ideas/strong arguments for their assignments and present them logically in writing. We devised a range of writing exercises which are informed by […]
#Take5 #25 The best way to support writing?
The what, why and how of the RLF Consultant Fellowship Scheme By Cath Senker, RLF Consultant Fellow Place ‘professional writers in higher education institutions to offer writing support to all students.’[1] This is the inspired idea behind the Royal Literary Fund Fellowship scheme, which has been sending authors into universities since 1999 to offer one-to-one tutorials to students. And it’s proved extraordinarily successful. Why? Writers face several of the same challenges as students: how to develop an idea into a piece of writing; how to plan and structure it; and how to edit a rough draft, smoothing out the bumps […]
#Take5 #24: The Best Way to Commute?
The birth of our online resource: Studying on your commute This #Take5 blogpost comes from Janette Myers, a learning developer at St George’s, University of London Sometimes it can feel that the concept of higher education is based on students who live on Campus or who live in or near their place of study. This vision excludes many students and their experiences. Many of our students travel long distances to our Campus, and many more have long journeys to clinical placements in hospitals and community settings all over the South of England. The students I see often talk about how […]
#Take5 #22: The best way to make PhD Students write?
The Thesis Boot Camp Thank you to Heather Campbell for this #Take5 post Take twenty-six PhD students, keep them in a room for 24 hours over a weekend, feed them, water them, motivate them and encourage them, and what happens? They write. In fact, collectively they write over 200,000 words towards their theses. Here at Queen Mary University of London the Thinking Writing team have just completed our fourth Thesis Boot Camp and the event seems to be going from strength to strength. The premise of providing the time, space and motivation for PhD students to write may be a […]
#Take5: 18: The best way to tackle plagiarism?
Turn-it-off: Making use of ubiquitous plagiarism to facilitate academic skills Liam Greenslade While asking why writers plagiarize might seem to be a fool’s quest, it can actually be very helpful in preventing future plagiarisms. After all, if we assume it isn’t just the “evil” that plagiarize, it makes sense to take a moment and figure out what would make a “good” person commit such a deed. Bailey (2017) In our cut and paste culture, even if it is not actually the case, it sometimes seems that we are being overwhelmed by a plague of plagiarism, not just in academia but […]
Take5 #4: Tackling Academic Reading
So – there we were W7 – and there they were, 63 first years, giving Poster Presentations to an audience of 70+ people. They had explored ‘learning spaces’ and constructed great arguments that referenced the reading (Thornburg and Giroux) and dazzled us with their Posters, their Prezis and their animations… It was thrilling How did we reach this lofty pinnacle of academic practice? Well – a couple of weeks before the Poster Presentations we prepared text-scrolls of just two key articles with which we wanted the students to engage: Giroux’s article on lessons to be learned from Freire: http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/93016:lessons-to-be-learned-from-paulo-freire-as-education-is-being-taken-over-by-the-mega-rich And […]
Take5: It’s week two, I’m on my knees – but here’s a post on Inquiry Based Learning!
Last week we met our new students – typically faced with lecture theatres full of unknown faces – exuding anxiety – or hiding their stress behind faces of studied nonchalance – or boredom – or both! Adrenalin and cortisol levels were flying high – everybody’s brains shrank to the size of a pea and panic ensues as we realise that we have forgotten everything – remembered nothing – impostors all. So – the Take5 question for us was, could we find a different way to introduce a module that did not involve us telling and the students forgetting everything we […]
