Changing things up - Learning Plan
As befits a “Learner” I am always striving
to become more than I am now. That’s partially why I made so many moves in my
career – see earlier. But it also means I have some way to go.
Having completed one year part-time and two years full-time teaching at Humber, I am still developing many basic teaching skills. Judging from SFQs and feedback from my Associate Dean and others, I believe that I am doing well in many areas: class planning and preparation, student engagement, creating a positive learning environment, commitment, knowledge of material.
I have found that I'm already starting to get comfortable with the way I do things. And while that's good in some ways, it's very bad in others. There are many areas where I need to improve:
1. Use of technology. Although I use Blackboard successfully at its basic level – posting content, e-mails and communicating with students, grading – I have yet to master its full capabilities, including discussions, on-line assessments and wikis.
2. Active learning. I have successfully included active learning components in nearly all my classes. However I am not doing enough to maximize their value by helping students see their relevance and cementing learnings through reflection and other techniques.
3. Marking and rubrics. I am still learning how to create rubrics so as to make my marking fair and give clear expectations while still setting the high standards the
program demands. This is a particular challenge in a field such as advertising where there is a large degree of creativity and hence subjectivity.
4. My mastery of emerging areas of advertising needs to be constantly kept current. There is a growing impact of digital technologies on advertising vehicles (Google, Facebook, Mobile etc.). There is a danger that my knowledge and hence my value to my students starts to erode. I need to keep current with these developments.
5. I have previously stated that my intent is to instil passion in my students. That is an ongoing project but one area I intend to enhance my skills in is the use of case study teaching. If done well this both engages the students and creates an energy that can start to build passion.
2012/2013 Learning Plan
For 2012/13 in particular I concentrated on three areas:
1. Technology. I instituted Wikis and also online Blackboard based quizzes in my Art of Persuasion course. Technically it worked well. The students found it easy to use and share information within their groups. It helped to ameliorate one of the problems of group work - arranging meetings. But it didn't work in two areas. Some groups delegated the act of inputting information to one person. It was therefore hard to see who wasn't pulling their weight within the group. (Something I thought would be a benefit to me of using a BlackBoard based Wiki). Secondly several of the students didn't find it that useful - it being another layer of technology they had to learn. But I achieved my objective of using Wikis and now am well placed to use them more effectively in the future.
2. Reflections. In all classes I instituted reflections as part of the class format, using different approaches to see what worked best. All worked well so long as students felt they would be accountable in some way. Simply asking them to reflect only worked with the strongly committed students - the rest didn't bother. But it didn't need a lot. At a minimum simply asking three students at random to share their reflections usually got them all doing it. But generally the more formal I made it the better the quality of the refection. Writing things that were handed in or submitted through Blackboard, having a printed sheet for them to respond on, allocating marks to the refection all worked well.
3. Currency. Over the year I have made a real effort, through personal contacts with industry people, reading, and subscription to online newsletters to improve my knowledge in the growing field of Social Media. It would be wrong to say that I am an expert in this area - indeed what I have learned is that the area is changing so rapidly that anyone who claims to be an expert is probably deluding themselves.
2013/2014 Learning Plan
For 2013/14 I will continue the reflection and active earning techniques and
use of technology where it works. But I am also planning three areas to improve
my skills.
1. Marking. I already use a standard approach which is very similar to the new Grading Standards instituted by the School of Media Studies. But currently I find two areas where I could improve. Often marking takes a long time for me in areas which don't provide real value to my students in terms of feedback. Secondly when I create structured rubrics I sometimes do not give sufficient weight to originality and creativity and too much on doing it basically right. To help this I will be attending seminars from the Centre of Teaching and Learning covering these topics and the applying them to by rubrics for 2013/14.
2. Active Learning - Case Studies. I have been gradually increasing the amount of active learning in my classes. One thing I did in one class was to institute a term long project and the lectures and in class activity was structured round the project they were working on. This helped make the traditional lecture material relevant and made the classes more engaging. This year I intend to increase the amount of case work done in at least one of my classes where it would fit - Creative Strategy. Towards that end I attended the Case Study Teaching workshop this June.
3. Student Participation - As in any class some students are actively engaged some are not. In an industry like advertising it is essential that all students are capable of participating actively if they are to succeed. I intend to introduce a number of techniques to allow the quieter students to participate safely. These will include requiring everyone to actively participate in some activities and discussions, encouraging role playing, and identifying and targeting those students that can safely be encouraged and pushed.
But what I also find is particularly good at creating improvement is watching other professors at work. They do things differently, often doing things better than I do. And even if it doesn't work it nearly always gives me ideas.
For example watching John Bourgeois teach actors gave me some great insights that I directly used in my presentation skills class. But he also said something that has stuck with me. He told me that acting is a tough profession and only the best would succeed. So he accepts nothing less than excellence. Anything else would be doing a disservice to the students giving them a false expectation and increase the chance of them failing in their chosen profession. And advertising is similar. Interestingly many fourth year students in the Creative Advertising Degree program single out outsiders coming in and giving them harsh criticism as one of the most useful parts of program.
And watching Mike Planche with his approach to flipping the classroom in the business school has made me seriously rethink how I do my classes.
So despite the fact that I know longer need to do class visits to meet my ProDev requirements, I am going to keep doing them.
Having completed one year part-time and two years full-time teaching at Humber, I am still developing many basic teaching skills. Judging from SFQs and feedback from my Associate Dean and others, I believe that I am doing well in many areas: class planning and preparation, student engagement, creating a positive learning environment, commitment, knowledge of material.
I have found that I'm already starting to get comfortable with the way I do things. And while that's good in some ways, it's very bad in others. There are many areas where I need to improve:
1. Use of technology. Although I use Blackboard successfully at its basic level – posting content, e-mails and communicating with students, grading – I have yet to master its full capabilities, including discussions, on-line assessments and wikis.
2. Active learning. I have successfully included active learning components in nearly all my classes. However I am not doing enough to maximize their value by helping students see their relevance and cementing learnings through reflection and other techniques.
3. Marking and rubrics. I am still learning how to create rubrics so as to make my marking fair and give clear expectations while still setting the high standards the
program demands. This is a particular challenge in a field such as advertising where there is a large degree of creativity and hence subjectivity.
4. My mastery of emerging areas of advertising needs to be constantly kept current. There is a growing impact of digital technologies on advertising vehicles (Google, Facebook, Mobile etc.). There is a danger that my knowledge and hence my value to my students starts to erode. I need to keep current with these developments.
5. I have previously stated that my intent is to instil passion in my students. That is an ongoing project but one area I intend to enhance my skills in is the use of case study teaching. If done well this both engages the students and creates an energy that can start to build passion.
2012/2013 Learning Plan
For 2012/13 in particular I concentrated on three areas:
1. Technology. I instituted Wikis and also online Blackboard based quizzes in my Art of Persuasion course. Technically it worked well. The students found it easy to use and share information within their groups. It helped to ameliorate one of the problems of group work - arranging meetings. But it didn't work in two areas. Some groups delegated the act of inputting information to one person. It was therefore hard to see who wasn't pulling their weight within the group. (Something I thought would be a benefit to me of using a BlackBoard based Wiki). Secondly several of the students didn't find it that useful - it being another layer of technology they had to learn. But I achieved my objective of using Wikis and now am well placed to use them more effectively in the future.
2. Reflections. In all classes I instituted reflections as part of the class format, using different approaches to see what worked best. All worked well so long as students felt they would be accountable in some way. Simply asking them to reflect only worked with the strongly committed students - the rest didn't bother. But it didn't need a lot. At a minimum simply asking three students at random to share their reflections usually got them all doing it. But generally the more formal I made it the better the quality of the refection. Writing things that were handed in or submitted through Blackboard, having a printed sheet for them to respond on, allocating marks to the refection all worked well.
3. Currency. Over the year I have made a real effort, through personal contacts with industry people, reading, and subscription to online newsletters to improve my knowledge in the growing field of Social Media. It would be wrong to say that I am an expert in this area - indeed what I have learned is that the area is changing so rapidly that anyone who claims to be an expert is probably deluding themselves.
2013/2014 Learning Plan
For 2013/14 I will continue the reflection and active earning techniques and
use of technology where it works. But I am also planning three areas to improve
my skills.
1. Marking. I already use a standard approach which is very similar to the new Grading Standards instituted by the School of Media Studies. But currently I find two areas where I could improve. Often marking takes a long time for me in areas which don't provide real value to my students in terms of feedback. Secondly when I create structured rubrics I sometimes do not give sufficient weight to originality and creativity and too much on doing it basically right. To help this I will be attending seminars from the Centre of Teaching and Learning covering these topics and the applying them to by rubrics for 2013/14.
2. Active Learning - Case Studies. I have been gradually increasing the amount of active learning in my classes. One thing I did in one class was to institute a term long project and the lectures and in class activity was structured round the project they were working on. This helped make the traditional lecture material relevant and made the classes more engaging. This year I intend to increase the amount of case work done in at least one of my classes where it would fit - Creative Strategy. Towards that end I attended the Case Study Teaching workshop this June.
3. Student Participation - As in any class some students are actively engaged some are not. In an industry like advertising it is essential that all students are capable of participating actively if they are to succeed. I intend to introduce a number of techniques to allow the quieter students to participate safely. These will include requiring everyone to actively participate in some activities and discussions, encouraging role playing, and identifying and targeting those students that can safely be encouraged and pushed.
But what I also find is particularly good at creating improvement is watching other professors at work. They do things differently, often doing things better than I do. And even if it doesn't work it nearly always gives me ideas.
For example watching John Bourgeois teach actors gave me some great insights that I directly used in my presentation skills class. But he also said something that has stuck with me. He told me that acting is a tough profession and only the best would succeed. So he accepts nothing less than excellence. Anything else would be doing a disservice to the students giving them a false expectation and increase the chance of them failing in their chosen profession. And advertising is similar. Interestingly many fourth year students in the Creative Advertising Degree program single out outsiders coming in and giving them harsh criticism as one of the most useful parts of program.
And watching Mike Planche with his approach to flipping the classroom in the business school has made me seriously rethink how I do my classes.
So despite the fact that I know longer need to do class visits to meet my ProDev requirements, I am going to keep doing them.