Last week saw the 3rd ELESIG Summer symposium; this year in Leeds. ELESIG is “an international community of researchers and practitioners from higher and further education who are involved in investigations of learners' experiences and uses of technology in learning”. The website can be found at http://elesig.ning.com/
The first day was a mix of past projects sharing their stories and new hopefuls pitching their ideas
Terri Rees from Plymouth in her work with international students experience of e-learning talked about the how learners often have different levels of participation on and off line. Some individuals contribute less online than they do in class and some the other way round. She talked about the importance of rapport building before learners go online in order to build community.
Alice Lau from Glamorgan also talked about the experience of international students, with the iLExSIG project. Her presentation had the added bonus of having two students with her to talk about their experiences. You can find out more about iLExSIG on the ELESIG site.
The second day combined with the Aim Higher conference, with a keynote on Transition by Bill Johnston from Strathclyde. Among many areas he talked about were -
The need to look at transition in broad societal terms
The idea of Transition in and out of higher education. Do the careers service have an input?
Transition is about any aspect of the first year when individuals have to make a change – learning, social …....... many areas
Students often start excited but then dip in motivation and performance. “I only need 40% to pass that's me, I can get by.”There is a need to look more at what success is. Learning goals or assessment goals? Marks of real learning? Do we want students to learn or pass? Just passing will end up with everyone unhappy eventually.
Don't look at why students drop out, look at why they stay. What was it that made them stay, particularly if they were thinking about dropping out. Sounds like a case for Appreciative Inquiry to me :-)
He also asked what is success in higher education and illustrated his thoughts with a few quotes -
“to prepare students for lifelong, self-regulated, co-operative and work-based learning” Jan D Vermunt 2007
“used to think that academia, like the Vatican and prostitution, was great survivor of social upheaval”
“information literacy is the adoption of appropriate information behavior to identify, though whatever channel or medium, information well fitted to information needs leading to wise and ethical use of information in society” – Johnston & Weber
Hmmm…. Ethical? BP and RBS managers are graduates!
But how to embed Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship (ESDGC)into the curriculum? He argued for an Information Literate University, which has information literate staff, curriculum, students and graduates. It’s much more than creating knowledge workers for an information society
This was followed by a very interesting workshop by Kyriaki Anagnostopoulou and Deeba Parmer from Middlesex University, where we looked at what could be done to help some fictitious students make the transition to university life.
One of things that Middlesex has done is to show the real university, warts and all, in bridging materials before students come. Obviously marketing didn't like this. “Where's the sun and happy students?” they cried. “This will put them off” To which the response was that if they are put when they arrive and leave, the university is no better off but if some have a more realistic view of university life, the transition process may be smoother and some who may have dropped out will stay.
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