The Curriculum in Context 

Portfolio for EDU6930: Curriculum in Higher Education, Katherine Inskip, September 2015

Introduction - six not-so-simple questions

The primary goal of studying curriculum in Higher Education was that we would deepen our existing understanding of curriculum, reflectively and critically, on a contextual scale that ranged from our own local teaching practice outwards towards an international and interdisciplinary (and perhaps also intergenerational) perspective.  The module was shaped from the start by six seemingly simple questions: the what, when, where, how, why & who of the curriculum. However, the simplicity of these questions stands in stark contrast to the complexity of the answers discussed, beginning with the definition of curriculum itself. It is well beyond the scope of this portfolio to address any of these questions in any great depth. Instead, drawing on my own involvement in the curriculum (whether tangible or hidden) as the connective strand, I will consider aspects of these questions from a range of different angles.

PHY242 vs. PSY354 - a question of ‘What?’ and ‘Why?’ (Co-written with Asha Akram)

As Asha Akram and I were both in the process of developing modules for the coming academic year, we agreed to meet up to discuss our separate processes, and how they are informed by our respective departments. The following text is a collaborative piece developed between the two of us under dual authorship.

Katherine: It was fascinating to hear how the approaches to new modules differ between the departments of Psychology and Physics & Astronomy. Obviously the same basic structures have to be adhered to - module leaders have to come up with a module idea that meets their department’s needs, submit an E/1 form and have it formally approved - but the similarities in terms of the over-arching curriculum really end there. Asha’s module (Psychology of Sleep, PSY354) is a 3rd year option module, which draws on some first year material but otherwise stands alone. The topic was selected as one which would be of general interest to students, and that they would find inspiring, but is not obviously grounded in the research interests of Sheffield’s psychology department. This is quite different to 3rd/4th year option modules in Physics, which very much echo the established interests of the various research groups within the department.

Asha: Most third year modules in Psychology are based on expertise of staff. Usually academic staff will deliver a module directly relevant to their area of expertise. Therefore PSY354, is unique in this way and also has been quite challenging to write. I’m learning the material as I write it and this also means that I may not be able to explore the ideas at a deeper level. However, I chose this topic as it is of great interest to me and I’m willing to explore this journey. I’m hoping students will really enjoy the content of this module and not just learn it because they have to or just for the exam.

Katherine: There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. On the one hand, restricting higher level modules to the department’s specialist research topics guarantees that at least one informed expert will be on hand to teach it. On the other, it may also result in a natural tendency to restrict the teaching of certain courses to certain individuals, as well as limiting the department’s flexibility when it comes to major curriculum changes. The inherent bias of a research group towards familiar subject areas suggests a certain level of inertia when it comes to responding to shifts in student or employer interests, especially when the recruitment of external experts is subject to the vagaries of national and departmental research funding.

Asha’s module neatly surmounts many of these issues. The choice to move away from local research interests reflects the fact that cutting edge research is a collective endeavour, and worthy of study regardless of whether or not it is being carried out close to home. It also promotes a broader awareness of the current state of research in the field. By building upon generic psychology skills and learning, it should encourage students to approach an unfamiliar topic synoptically, and to recognise and put into practice the transferability of their prior learning. The primary utility of a science degree is, after all, the ability of its graduates to turn tools acquired over the course of their studies to whatever tasks might be required by their employer, whether familiar or otherwise. The lack of established topical research expertise is balanced by invitations to guest lecturers. Additionally, the module contains considerable curricular freedom for the students: there is ample scope for student-led learning via topic selection in the latter part of the course, while the broad syllabus allows for differentiation through depth and direction of further study.

Asha: From discussions with Katherine regarding curriculum development, it appear that there are both similarities and differences between the Psychology Department and the Physics Department. It seems that in Physics there is more holistic approach taken when developing a curriculum. There is great emphasis on how modules link and also building on knowledge and skills as students progress through their degree. However, in Psychology links between modules are not clear nor is there much attempt in linking modules to build on the knowledge. There is greater emphasis on developing skills so students can transfer these across different modules. For example, in the first year students have a module devoted to developing their reading and writing skills required for academic work. These skills are essential for all levels of the degree and students are encouraged to build on these skills throughout their time at the University. There is limited emphasis on building knowledge that is required in subsequent modules.

Katherine: I wonder how much of this is down to the nature of our respective disciplines? Hirst (1974) was quite right about the need for some logical and coherent structure in the teaching of Physics, and as far as subjects go it’s definitely in the ‘hard pure’ region of Neuman et al’s framework (Neuman, Parry & Becher 2010), but I wouldn’t know where to place Psychology. It’s just so diverse! 

Asha: I completely agree with this. I think the nature of the subject definitely plays a role indicating the content and assessment. But what is the goal of the curriculum? What do we hope to achieve from the curriculum and what do we hope students to achieve?

Katherine: The goal of the physics curriculum is to produce physicists, and the goal of the students is to become one! (I’m now wondering if the whole process is a little too much like sausage-making… something that really doesn’t bear thinking about too deeply?) But what is a physicist? Someone with subject knowledge that spans an appropriate breadth and depth. Someone with the physicist’s toolset at their ready disposal: problem-solving skills, detailed analysis skills and an understanding of how and when to simplify, high-level maths, tolerance of the socially maladroit. Someone flexible enough to do novel science and acquire new skills/learning as needed. All of this applies whether they end up in industry, academia, or somewhere else entirely. What about psychology?

Asha: The goals of the psychology curriculum are to encourage learning of knowledge and the development of skills. The way in which these are assessed should also be considered. At undergraduate level the curriculum requires students to study the whole range of subject and take modules which cover developmental, cognitive, biological and social psychology as well as individual differences. The degree also requires students to study research methods and conduct practical work. A-levels should consider this to ensure students are prepared to enrol on to a Psychology degree however, they should be designed to avoid too much overlap between A-level context and degree content. The skills obtained from a Psychology degree are transferable and less subject specific in comparison to other science based subjects. This is why Psychology Graduates have a wider scope for job opportunities when they leave. Some of the skills they leave with include ability to develop research questions and design appropriate methods to test these questions, statistical analysis and data interpretation, discussion of results and presenting findings. Some of the more generic skills include team work, communication skills and time management. However, students often fail to recognise the skills they have developed and how they would be useful in future employment.

Katherine: That’s true for us as well!

Asha: Although A-level curriculum is designed in accordance with the Quality and Curriculum Authority (QCA), there are significant differences between the awarding bodies. This creates problems for HE as students who enrol onto the degree have come with different skills and knowledge of Psychology. This further highlights the need to improve the coherence between A-level and degree level Psychology.

Psychology offers an opportunity to create a course that is interesting and one that most of society can relate to. We should make the most of this opportunity to design our curriculum so it’s interesting to students, interesting for us to teach and also still embed the skills and knowledge that we aim for our students to achieve.

It’s difficult to devise appropriate assessments to test these skills as the majority involve a process that would be assessed. When we consider developing the course we need to think careful about what we want to students to achieve for completing the course and how do develop appropriate assessments which are suitable to test the these goals have been achieved.

Surprisingly the methods used for assessments at A –level and degree level are very similar even though the approach to teaching and learning are significantly different. The assessments are mix of coursework or examinations which test traditional academic skills such as writing report or an essay.

Katherine: Most of PHY242 (~65%) is going to be assessed by exam - problem solving and descriptive explanations tightly related to the syllabus, but I’m also going to have a piece of coursework where they put their understanding into practice, which is assessed on the report write-up (20%), and a series of 3 workshops where students will be more assessed on what they do (5% each).  That’ll spread some of the load out over the semester. Asha, you’ve gone for exams, right, to lighten the load while they write up their dissertations? As a department, we’re trying to make sure that deadlines are spaced out a bit, but we don’t look at overall workload very often beyond guesstimating the hours of work we expect the students to put in, and complaining when they don’t…

Asha: Another issue with the assessments is the drive to choosing assessments which are easy to administer and teach rather than what they actually test. This is why we need to re-think the type of assessments that we use whilst developing the content of the curriculum. We should strike aim to strike a balance between ease of use and suitability of assessments. These types of assessments can lead to teaching students how to do well in an exam and can restrict and dismiss other subtle aspects of student learning (Connor-Greene, 2000). The current assessments are focussed on what the students know rather than what they understand and what they can do. There is a need to develop assessments which go beyond this and test the skills students have developed.

The BPS encourages diversity within the curriculum and students should feel within the content of Psychology. We live in a diverse society which includes people of different cultures, ethnicities, life experiences and social behaviours. Therefore when developing a curriculum it’s necessary to place to consider cultural, social and individual diversity. This contributes to general education and benefits society as a whole.

Katherine: A very worthy goal! But that varied intake into your first year can’t be that easy to manage….

Asha: The key elements to look at here is the content of A-level Psychology, the skills which students develop and whether these ease the transition between A-level and HE. If the purpose of A-levels is to prepare students for HE then we need to improve the coherence between the A-level curriculum and HE. However, another issue here is that we accept students on the basis of their A-level grade regardless of whether they have completed an A-level in Psychology. As a result the first year of the Psychology degree is focused on standardising students’ knowledge and skills across the year group. This includes delivering modules with a focus on the skills which are required throughout the degree such as reading academic papers and developing academic writing skills. A-level Psychology places great emphasis on content over skills. In contrast at University there is greater emphasis on skills. Both A-level and degree level Psychology seem to discourage creative thinking and independent learning. Although we encourage independent learning at University level often students don’t see how this benefits them as learning seems to be assessment driven. This also discourages creativity because students cannot see the rewards for doing this.

Katherine: It’s easier to draw clear links between the physics syllabi at A-level and degree, but we still have issues over whether a physics A-level is good preparation for degree-level studies. In fact, there’s a strong case that it doesn’t! (For example, see Peter Coles (2015) recent blog post on the topic.) Peter argues that the problem solving skills that our students need to develop aren’t given a head start by the A-level in physics, and what is most essential is good maths skills. (This is true. Students generally drop out of physics degrees because they’re struggling with the maths.) By not requiring physics A-level, we could recruit a much more gender-balanced student body than is currently possible. As far as my own department is concerned, we ask for A-levels in both Maths and Physics, but aren’t fussy about which one is awarded a higher grade - an A in maths and a B in physics is seen as just as good degree preparation as the other way around. Physics A-level gives students awareness of the syllabus. Maths A-level gives them the tools to tackle it. Neither really develops the essential abstract thinking skills.

Asha: The content for A-level Psychology is dated, whilst at degree level the teaching is ‘research led’. However, they are missing development of Psychology from the dated theories which they are taught at A-level to current research. They therefore don’t know how to interpret and process this information as they cannot put it into context. We need to bridge this gap between A-level content and degree content. This will help make the transition between A-level and University an easier process for students. The historical versus contemporary perspective should be combined so that students understanding how Psychology has developed and progressed. Solely focussing on a historical perspective leaves students with dated content, whilst solely focussing on the contemporary perspective means students have no grounding or context for this material which makes it difficult for them to understand.

I have asked students in their first year tutorials what they thought a Psychology degree would involve prior to their arrival. The majority of the student’s responses were that it was completely different to what they had expected. They thought it would build on their Psychology A level (if they had one) and there was a lot of confusion about why they are learning to read and write. The BPS report that the majority of the students enrolling on to a Psychology degree have already studied the subject for at least two years. It’s claimed that this has created a challenge for Universities to adjust their curriculum so it takes into consideration the prior student knowledge. There was a lot of disappointment with the content as there was a lack clarity on how some of the modules are relevant to Psychology. I think there was an assumption that there will be more theory and focus on ‘Psychology topics’ rather than academic reading and writing. This raises the question of whether the students has misunderstood what a Psychology degree involves or whether the University needs to be clearer on how the degree is advertised both on the web page and also at open days.

Katherine: I think the only thing that catches some of our students unawares is that we do expect them to be literate, and to hone those skills as well as their more discipline-specific learning. Some of them really don’t like that aspect of the course. They think they can get away with solving everything with equations all the time, but real life - and real physics - just doesn’t work that way!

If nothing else, that first year module on reading and writing skills that you mentioned earlier sounds like something we could do with! We give them plenty of experimental experience in labs, and we give them opportunities for making use of their communication skills, but assessing and following up on how they’re developing is a different matter. There are a whole range of things we expect them to learn by doing - writing, graphing, data analysis, presentations, problem solving - and we do give them training and some examples of what good practice looks like… but the continuity in this aspect of the curriculum is lacking. An academic tutor can help guide the development of problem-solving skills over the course of a full year, but when I see a piece of written coursework for one of my modules it’s (a) anonymised, and (b) a completely discrete piece of work from everything else the student has done before. (I don’t even get a great deal of feedback on student performance in the problems classes, beyond an idea of how easy/hard the cohort as a whole found a given question.) How can I judge whether the student has improved? Or if there are lingering misconceptions about how an introduction works, or a specific part of the physics syllabus? (I’m trying to sell Hughes’ (2011) ipsative assessment here….) Thinking about it now, I really hope the online management of feedback takes off. We’ve discussed it in the department and everyone else was very much of the opinion that it was pointless and irrelevant for physics, because you either understand something or you don’t. BUT THEY’RE WRONG! The physics curriculum is about so much more than just the physics. I’m certainly going to pay more attention to these additional skills for my personal tutees this year. After all, who else is in the same position of oversight for individual students? Who else would bother caring? As for my second year modules, I’m definitely going to request problems class feedback from the students themselves - good use of a MOLE discussion board, I think?

Coincidentally, something related to this crossed my radar just yesterday, via IFLScience - one of Leicester’s 4th year modules for physics/astronomy students, ‘Journal of Physics Special Topics’ . Students work in small groups to apply their physics knowledge to a synoptic and fun problem (Noah’s Ark! Relativistic aging of Luke Skywalker! The Wings of Pegasus!), and then they write up their research for a departmental journal. They have peer review and a rotating editorial board and everything! This ticks so many curriculum boxes, and it includes detailed feedback on skills development as part of the standard peer review process. It’s a brilliant idea and I want to steal it...

Asha: That sounds really good and certainly worthwhile for the students. They are actively developing research questions (problem) and using their knowledge and problem solving abilities to solve this problem and also write up. This a great way for students to actually get involved in going through the cycle of a researcher from start to finish. We actually do something similar in level two Psychology, where students carry out a research project in groups of five. They have tutorials to guide them through the process of developing a question and an appropriate design to test it, gaining ethical approval for their projects and then carrying out data analysis and writing up a report of their findings. This module has received some good feedback from students although there are some small issues that could be improved. Kirsten and I have been working with the module organiser to help improve how we deliver this module so we have made some improvements for this module for the upcoming academic year. 

I think what students are trying to gain is work experience either from their degree or outside of their degree and we are currently looking at possibilities of how we can do that. Our competitors, such Cardiff University have introduced a four year programme where students go on a work placement in their final year. Do your students like the four year Physics degree? Does having an extra year of placement help increase your student numbers? And how does this compare to Physics degrees at other Universities?

Katherine: I think the ones that opt for it do. About half of our current second years are registered for a four year degree of one type or another - and bear in mind, this is an extra year of academic studies including a 40-credit project - years in industry/research groups are an additional option. The MPhys has been around since the early nineties and is pretty well established - I can’t think of any physics department that doesn’t offer it. It’s designed to provide a smooth transition from undergraduate to postgraduate study, and is most popular with students considering a strongly subject-based career, whether in academia or industry. 

Asha: I think it’s a fantastic opportunity for students and I think that it probably encourages students to continue on to either work in the field after completing their undergraduate degree or go on to pursue a postgraduate degree. Majority of our students go on to work outside of Psychology, if we were to introduce something like a work placement this could improve the prospects for students as they would have the work experience. Majority of them are currently lacking this which makes it difficult for them to work in Psychology field straight after their undergraduate degrees. 

Katherine: It’s the best opportunity to get to do a project driven by current research - third year projects tend towards more of skills-development slant. The curriculum has developed with the needs of the graduates and their employers in mind.  

Asha: I think we have a similar view in psychology, hence why there is a lot of emphasis on skills more so than content. 

In psychology one of the biggest changes we have observed the increase in students numbers. With this increase in numbers we also have greater diversity amongst our students. This has probably been one of our biggest challenges. Our current curriculum was suitable for a 100 students but now the student numbers have gone up to 250 we need to make changes. This is something that we are currently working on in response to the periodic review. I think different modules probably face different constraints. When developing my own module my decisions have largely been influenced by students’ prior knowledge, skills and their expectations. I’ve focused on developing a module which all students can appreciate. Most modules in psychology a discipline specific e.g. cognitive, developmental, social , clinical, biologcal psychology and neuroscience. The aim of my new module is to study a phenomena from the perspective of all the approaches. Having modules which are specifically related to each discipline means that we are dependent on having a certain number of staff with expertise in these fields.

Some other constraining factors for staff include academic workloads, timetabling and of course teaching space. We have recently had discussions on teaching space as the psychology will undergo refurbishment next year. As part of the design process we need to think about the changes we are making to the curriculum and our teaching and ensure these are reflected in the design of the new building. These changes will influence requirement for space and resources. One of the obvious constraints students face, as discussed earlier, are the lack of academic skills required to complete a psychology degree. However, some of the aims of first year teaching is to include modules which are specifically focussed on these. What do you see as the constraining factors (staff and students) which influence the development of the curriculum in physics?

Katherine: I imagine we have many of the same problems - students with varying abilities and backgrounds that need to be catered to, and a few staff members with little desire or aptitude for teaching (who still have to do it and are placed where they’ll do the least possible damage). Room space and resources are a perennial factor. But the biggest issue right now in terms of impact on curriculum development is the increase in student numbers. Third year numbers are growing from ~100 to almost double that. Our fourth year will go from 30-40 students to closer to 100. That’s a huge change in net project supervision hours, in both years. We’re responding by considering more extensive projects in the 4th year (60 vs. 40 credits, which wouldn’t reduce staff hours spent on projects but would free them up from elsewhere) and group-based projects with a partial taught/workshopped component for the third year (e.g. Quantum Optics Lab, Physics Education, Observational Astronomy on La Palma, etc.). Skills are another issue - shifting the computation element of the curriculum from the C/C++ language to Python has led to a lot of staff re-training themselves, and experts (i.e. our newest Associate UT) being recruited with specific skills in mind.

As far as my own new module goes, I’d like to go back to one of Asha’s earlier comments - that physics actively make links between different modules. One thing I didn’t expect was how fluid this process is. The syllabus for PHY242 has already shifted away from what was laid out in the E/1 form, with more emphasis on one area and other areas being cut. We all have subtly different ideas of what ‘shape’ the syllabus should have, and because our astronomy modules are all so interdependent, we can’t get away with just doing our own thing - some consensus needs to be reached. I get the impression that this doesn’t happen so often in Psychology, but what you do have is more people involved in the teaching. 

One thing we didn’t cover when we last spoke was how we plan for our modules to evolve. The curriculum isn’t a static thing, and I don’t think either of us expect that the work we’ve done on our modules in the run-up to teaching is the end of the process. What are your plans for future development of PSY354? 

Asha: My vision is that PSY354 will continue to develop over the next few years. This is important, not only to keep up with the advances in research but also to respond to student feedback. I will make changes as necessary, and I completely agree that the curriculum is not static and is something is ever changing in order to keep up with the requirements.

Katherine: Absolutely! And a perfect place to finish.

3: A picture paints a thousand words - a question of ‘When?’ 

One of the early pieces of writing we did for EDU6930 was to look at our own involvement in the curriculum. In this piece, I made a brief mention of the Physics department’s new Graph Prize, an idea that was shamelessly stolen from inspired by a similar initiative in Durham. 

This was an idea we brought back from a conference, which we hope will encourage skills development and a serious attitude to presenting data, through a vehicle of competition & prizes. It got sold to the TC, taken out of my hands and presented to the students, then quietly mouldered for six months. This week it got resurrected and pushed at the students again. Hopefully some of them will get sucked in by the lure of $HARD$ $CASH$ and ~OFFICIAL~ ~KUDOS~… but I think (if I’m understanding things right?) it’s a nice example of a chunk of not-very-well-hidden curriculum. We think they make lousy graphs. We think they could and should be doing better. So we get out the bag of carrots...  It’s not part of the taught curriculum, but it’s there, and deliberate, and it has an evil hidden purpose a completely unobjectionable end goal in mind.

Graphs and figures are a key component of a clearly presented scientific document, but it’s surprisingly easy to get them wrong. That said, we spend very little teaching-time directly focusing on skills such as these, or on related skills such as general report-writing. (One of the complaints I received about my first year module on the Solar System was that ‘physics students shouldn’t have to spend so much time writing wordy answers’, and skills-based teaching is regularly given short shrift - very much in line with the expectations of Star and Hammer (2008). Clearly, we have issues with mismatched expectations between students and staff, above and beyond the question of when we actually teach them these transferrable skills.) Some guidance is given early on in the first year on how to write a decent report, but the main vector for learning is via constructive criticism of completed work/works-in-progress, or from sample texts and figures. However, we don’t always lay out exactly what we’re looking for, or provide clear and accessible comparisons between work of differing standards.  Feedback is sometimes poorly timed and not taken on board, and it is not always obvious to students how to apply the lessons learned from one piece of coursework to any subsequent assessed submissions. These messages-cum-failings certainly aren’t unique to my home department - see, e.g. Higgins et al 2010, Hughes (2011), Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick (2006).

Let’s look at what the Graph Prize judges are looking for:

Eligible students shall submit a maximum of one entry per student consisting of a graphic element plus caption. The work must have been produced in the context of a module taught within the Department of Physics and Astronomy (e.g. PHY230/231, PHY213, PHY241, PHY242 at level 2, or project work at level 3).

If you wish to submit a graph created during group work, this will count as the single submission for ALL students involved.

Entries will be assessed on the basis of:
i. the accuracy and precision with which the data is represented by the graphic;
ii. the effective use of graphical methods to convey the significance of the result;
iii. the appropriateness of the chosen format;
iv. the quality of the caption, which should convey the necessary information in a concise, effective and appropriate fashion;
v. the visual and aesthetic quality of the submission.

There are huge gaps between what I understand from these statements and what a student may or may not get out of them. Some of it comes down to the basic rules of good graph making - no wasted space, clear indication of uncertainties, decent labelling of axes, a functional caption - but we expect students to pick up on these things without necessarily giving any definitive guidance. There’s also a level of artistry involved with scientific plots, and not just in an aesthetic sense. Understanding how best to use a graph or other plot to ‘sell’ your results is a skill which is honed by experience. One under-utilised element of the Graph Prize is the intent to showcase good practice, so students can learn from their peers from previous cohorts what works and what doesn’t.  The unstated hope of exercises like this is that the informal and hidden curriculum (e.g. Hafferty 1998, Kelly 1999) will do a lot of our teaching for us: students will pick up on what is expected of them in terms of skills and standards by seeing what kind of work gets rewarded. But I don’t think this is enough. 

As I alluded to earlier, report-writing skills are also a problem area. Students are assessed at various intervals, and feedback is given, but whether it’s at a level that students can actually learn from is open to question. This is an area where peer assessment could have a massive impact - the opportunity to critique the work of others is enormously valuable for understanding where one’s own work falls short (e.g. Kear 2011). A side benefit of peer assessment is the requirement for crystal clear assessment guidelines - an accepted good practice for assessment for learning (e.g. Brown 1996 and the Assessment Reform Group’s 10 principles of Assessment for Learning 2002).

As a department, while we try to build our curriculum as a coherent, interlaced structure, we rarely look beyond the walls of the Hicks building for support - outsourcing Maths tuition to them upstairs is bad enough, but actively drawing on the resources of 301/The Academic Skills Hub/the English Language Teaching Centre? It might be useful for some of our international students, but there’s a palpable reluctance to making more general use of such resources. And given the sheer breadth and necessity of the science-syllabus aspects of the curriculum, finding space for generic skills teaching is a real challenge.

If I were to survey the department’s teaching staff, and ask ‘when is such-and-such a skill actually taught’, I imagine I’d get a fairly consistent set of answers: we know when things are meant to happen on a general level. But if I were to ask how we know when something has been learned, how we tell if a student has improved on their prior ability, and whether ongoing teaching/skills-exposure is effective at all… that suggests a different answer to the ‘when’ question entirely.

When do we teach these things? 

Actually, we probably don’t.

4: Listening to Birdsong - a question of ‘Who?’ and ‘Where?’ 

One of the early exercises during EDU6930 was a quest for images of our teaching and learning spaces. Alongside the usual suspects of formal learning environments (lecture theatres, seminar rooms, libraries, private and group study spaces) we also considered more informal settings, from a student’s personal room to public spaces/the great outdoors.  And then there was this one:

Figure 2: snippet of conversation from a Learning & Teaching in Higher Education Twitter Chat on assessment.

Twitter, along with other social media platforms, has had increased visibility in academia in recent years (see, e.g. Cunnane 2010, Veletsianos 2012), but its pedagogic utility is still under debate - particularly given the difficulties in articulating what counts as sufficiently worthy evidence (Price & Kirkwood 2014). The image above is a very brief excerpt of a scheduled and semi-structured two-hour twitter conversation on the topic of assessment - the type of exploration alluded to in Smith’s Encycolpaedia of Informal Education’s document on ‘curriculum theory and practice’ (Smith 1996, 2000), that of group exploration of shared practice. Similar chats take place on a weekly basis, providing an international forum for university educators to discuss topics of interest and share good practice.  The ‘where’ of learning has moved from the real to the virtual in this case. The somewhat anarchic, multi-headed and asynchronous conversation that ensues cannot be readily replicated in face-to-face group discussions, but provided the conversation remains engaged with the topic at hand it clearly has pedagogic value. (Unfortunately, the internet is also a powerful tool for distraction and procrastination…) 

Megele (2014) identifies several distinct ‘pedagogical threads’ embedded within organised twitter chats: 

(a) […] learners create/construct their own meaning and/or application of new knowledge […] (b) learning is […] embedded in the social context within which knowledge is used/applied […] (c) learning is a collaborative process […] at a self-directed level […]

Based on my own experiences with twitter chats, I can identify with all three of the above: improved understanding of a topic or perspective within my own mind, the development of a shared contextual underpinning, and a many-hands approach to problem solving. 

One area where twitter plays a particularly salient role is that of conference audience discussions. In the case of a relatively well-informed audience, the cognitive load is low enough that there’s more to be gained than lost from the use of a potentially distracting web-based tool. Twitter-based commentary can be used to provide immediate critique, to link cited papers, to promote key results to a broader audience/absentees, to identify like-minded academics within the room - or, indeed, a friendly member of the opposition! Curated collections of ‘tweets’ (e.g. via Storify) can provide a permanent, filtered record of these conversations, which are as valuable a resource as the real-time experience.  The social aspect of social media is also of value: the community-building that took place during the ESLIS15 conference is clearly reflected within the storified tweets compiled over the course of the meeting. 

Is there a need to include new technologies in our teaching as well? Valid pedagogical reasons that go beyond utilising modern tools for their own sake? Wesch’s video A Vision of Students Today (2007) emphasises the considerable cultural changes that have taken place in recent decades, and the opportunities for student engagement that are missed in a traditional ‘chalk and talk’ approach. But provided that an audience is actively engaged with the course material, does the teaching medium matter at all?  I would argue that it does. 

One of the plenary talks at the recent Variety in Chemistry Education/Physics Higher Education Conference was on the subject of Ecopedagogy, a Freirian critical movement which places high value on increased social justice and sustainability, as well as seeking to act from a less anthropocentric standpoint. The audience for this talk were required to actively identify their shared geographical roots prior to identifying links between the surrounding local ecology and their specific research interests in the physical sciences, with the results of this inquiry collectively shared via twitter (and subsequently storified by Simon Lancaster). Here, we see students (the audience) as active co-creators of new learning, using the tools of modern technology (“iPhone resting on iPad taking photo controlled by iWatch”) to examine their relationships with the physical, natural world, and the more abstract realms of research and pedagogy. Once again, social relationships (in this case driven by a self-identified sense of place) brought a new angle to what might have been a far sparser individual experience. The activity also encouraged constructive emotional engagement with the topic, a factor which is rarely accorded much emphasis in HE (e.g. Storrs 2011).

It is inevitable that dialogues between certain groups of students will take place regardless.  Sharing these conversations more broadly can promote a student’s sense of inclusion within the departmental ‘tribe’ (e.g. Becher & Trowler 2001), as well as enhancing the cohesion of the cohort (e.g. Hung & Yuen 2010). Similarly, open communications and greater sharing of expectations and experiences can ameliorate many of the troubling issues raised within the shared Gazing at the Future (2015) report produced by the Institute of Physics and the Royal Astronomical Society, on the very different experiences of male and female PhD researchers. By opening up our teaching to more conversational, interactive or even anonymised processes, less privileged voices can be shared and heard on a more equal footing. By listening to what our students are saying, we might even learn something for ourselves.

5: Revamping PHY213 - a question of ‘How?’

This autumn will be my first experience lecturing a module for the second time - the module in question being PHY213: stellar structure and evolution. Overall, the module went very well, but as always there is room for improvement. With that in mind, I signed up for the ‘MOLE Exemplary Course Programme’ workshop over the summer. I hadn’t made a great deal of use of MOLE at the start of last year, and primarily used it as a dumping ground for essential information and links, including to the course material I hosted on my own webpages. By shifting things across to MOLE, I hoped to take advantage of integrated tracking, grading and feedback options, while my hopes for the summer workshop were mainly to gain motivation and learn something new.

The workshop began with us assessing two example courses on MOLE, one good and one bad, which encouraged some very useful reflection on where we had each gone wrong or right in the past. The ‘good’ course was modelled on Blackboard’s 2012 exemplary course rubric (Blackboard Inc., 2012). This rubric covers the following areas: course design, interaction and collaboration, assessment, and learner support. While much of the focus of the first day of the workshop was on how we present our courses on MOLE (i.e. covering course design) the presence of the other rubric areas made me consider how my own students could benefit from what they offered. The Blackboard rubric is clearly informed by good teaching practices, but is equally obviously a very commercial enterprise - I didn’t want to add new features to the online learning environment for PHY213 simply for the sake of adding them.  

In terms of course design, a few minor alterations went a long way. Mostly, these were aimed at making site navigation intuitive and idiot-proof. The presentation is kept consistent throughout, with contact information in the footers and a sidebar menu walkthrough included on the welcome page (pictured). The content is much the same as it was for the previous web-based version: a module FAQ and syllabus, pdfs of the lecture slides, key equations, details of the laboratory exercise, a page on recommended books and suggested reading, a few useful links, some suggested physics problems and a link to the module’s past papers on the departmental website.  One change I’ve made for this year’s module is the addition of embedded links from each syllabus sub-topic to the lecture they’re covered in, aimed at making information retrieval as straightforward as possible. Along with the course FAQ and the obvious contact information, I think I’ve now got the module to the point where the ‘learner support’ objectives are being well met.

So what am I doing that goes beyond the level of minor tweaks? The biggest change is one I’ve been planning for a while - moving towards flipped teaching. A larger part of the course involves leading students through a number of physics derivations - starting from first principles, we derive equations that describe the interior structures of stars. These eat up a lot of lecture time to go through them properly, and in a few cases it’s a bit of a push to fit the entire derivation plus commentary within a single lecture. This limits time for interaction, for student questions, and for checks on their understanding. It also means that they’re in a high pressure state of getting the information down accurately, and questions won’t usually arise until after they’ve had a chance to mull the topic over for a while and figure out whether they’ve understood it properly or not. Last year, I provided handouts to support each derivation, but this year I’m going to present these parts of the course as pre-recorded videos as well. This will free up lecture time for going over problematic areas (e.g. convection in stars, stellar evolution - there were some lingering misconceptions that came out on the exam scripts last year) with more of a focus on understanding the physics and applying that understanding to more complex problems, than on simply ensuring that they’re capable of regurgitating book-work.  If I can ensure that the groundwork is clear and accessible to students, we can rapidly move on to applications of the various physics theories I will be sharing with them. The evolution of stars is a complex dance of different physical mechanisms, all pulling and pushing in different directions, and understanding which laws are most important in any given scenario becomes so very much easier once the underlying theory becomes assimilated down to an almost intuitive level. I hope the lectures will become more of a conversation, with students given the chance to develop their own understanding at a comfortable pace and plenty of opportunity to put the physics into practice. At any rate, anything I can do to increase the relative proportion of active learning is likely to be a good thing (Hake 1998). Greater mastery and individual ownership of their learning is what I’m aiming for.

As it happens, worked examples, multimedia teaching and scope for interaction also appear within the Blackboard exemplary course rubric. I would like to make the choice of teaching medium as powerful as possible - one further change I’ll be considering for subsequent years is the provision of a few lectures in the form of an interactive python workbook. The students are currently taught the python programming language within either one of two other second year modules, which run concurrently to PHY213, and they are expected to make use of the language in their end of semester assessed coursework. By providing lecture materials in the form of text plus interactive figures and accessible python code, students can pick up on the utility of the language - and examples of how to perform key tasks - without being explicitly taught it. Embedded commentary within the code will clarify its use and provide an exemplar of good programming practice - preparing them for their later coursework assessment. The integration of programming into the curriculum is gaining increasing importance in physics - there is ongoing speculation that the Institute of Physics will soon require that its accredited degree programmes include programming as an essential part of the physics curriculum. 

How do these changes fit into the broader curriculum for physics? The major driver for revamping other parts of the second year astrophysics curriculum is the perceived failings of our third and fourth years, as evidenced by their poor project-viva performance. The students of these previous cohorts have been generally reluctant to take on projects with a high emphasis on adequate computer programming skills, and have struggled to demonstrate a coherent understanding of fundamental astrophysical concepts and how they are interwoven across the discipline. They have exhibited a lack of confidence and/or ability in key problem solving skills (both mental and computational), and demonstrate poor synoptic understanding of the course material. The exam assessment of previous years has also been criticised for an over-reliance on book-work - memorised derivations and explanations. With this in mind, anything that pushes our students to work at higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomical pyramid (Bloom et al,1956, and subsequent revisions by multiple groups) can only be a good thing - especially as it is these higher level and more abstract modes of thinking that physicists pride themselves on being experts in!

6: Conclusions - answers in the here and now

Having laid out my own thoughts on curriculum development, how do they compare with those of others? The schema laid out by Barnett et al (2010) for science and technology disciplines is rather interesting: a Venn diagram in which the components of ‘Knowledge’ (subject-specific learning), ‘Action’ (transferable and practical skills) and ‘Self’ (an acquired educational identity) are prioritised within disciplines in that order, and where there is some level of overlap between ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Action’ only. I can’t argue with the relative weighting, but the lack of overlap between ‘Self’ and the other two categories is a glaring oversight which doesn’t appear to be touched on in the remainder of their paper. Physicists do acquire a great deal of subject-specific learning over the course of our degrees, but we’re relatively rarely employed to apply it. The goal of the physics curriculum is to produce physicists, because physicists are highly employable when it comes to doing other things.  The transferable skills of the action domain aren’t the only source of value - we, too, see ourselves as critical evaluators, as problem-solvers, as the simplifiers and translators of complexity.  The modern physics curriculum is built to serve those ends equally as much as it is to teach pure physics.

So what is the measure of a good - or even merely satisfactory - curriculum? Personally, I don’t have the foggiest idea, and I’m rather cynically inclined to think that even the looming prospect of the TEF on the horizon won’t do a great deal to clear things up. But without constraining its exact shape or how it works, I’m going to take a leaf out of the government’s book and set down my own ideals of what the curriculum should aim to be in the form of ten vaguely plausible statements.

Current
The curriculum should be modern, reflecting the ongoing changes in subject understanding and the present needs of its students. 

Universal
A curriculum which isn’t broadly accessible to a diverse range of students is a failed curriculum. 

Relevant
The curriculum should reflect the current state of society. It should be relevant for individual students, in terms of their interests and aspirations, and useful for the employers of the world at large.

Responsive
The curriculum should be dynamic, changing as required to meet the needs of students and society, 

Informed
The curriculum should be taught in a manner in keeping with evidence-based subject knowledge and pedagogy. It should be respectful of a diversity of opinions. 

Complementary
Even a highly subject-specific curriculum contains many transferable skills, and it is often these aspects of what a student learns that they find themselves making greatest use of in later life. 

Uplifting
An ideal curriculum will be inspirational, making the teaching/learning process as effortless as possible.

Leading
Subject specific learning should aim to approach the cutting edge of current research and development in the field. A subject’s curriculum should equip future leaders in that field.

Unique
The curriculum should offer all students the chance to develop their potential to the best of their ability, in a direction of their choosing. There will not be a one-size-fits-all solution. 

Mine
There’s a valid role for a highly pre-planned curriculum, but at the end of the day it’s a unique experience for both students and teachers. A good curriculum encourages individual ownership of both teaching and learning.   

There’s obviously an element of arbitrariness here, but I think the same is true of any simple prescription. The utility is in the time spent reflecting and searching, even if the answers aren’t quite found.

References 

Chapter 2:

Hirst P.H., 1974, The logical and psychological aspects of teaching a subject (chapter 8), in P. H. Hirst, Knowledge and the Curriculum, pp.116-131, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

Neumann R., Parry S., Becher T., 2002, Teaching and learning in their Disciplinary Contexts: A conceptual analysis, Studies in Higher Education, 27:4, 405

Connor-Greene P.A., 2000, Assessing and Promoting Student Learning: Blurring the Line between Teaching and Testing, Teaching of Psychology, 27:2, 84

Coles, P., 2015, Have we reached peak physics?, In the Dark [blog, online]
Available at: https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/have-we-reached-peak-physics/ [Accessed 20th September 2015]

Hughes G., 2011, Towards a personal best: a case for introducing ipsative assessment in higher education, Studies in Higher Education, 36:3, 353

Chapter 3:

Star C., Hammer S., 2008, Teaching generic skills: eroding the higher purpose of universities, or an opportunity for renewal?, Oxford Review of Education, 34:2, 237

Higgins R., Hartley P., Skelton A., 2010, Getting the Message Across: The problem of communicating assessment feedback, Teaching in Higher Education, 6:2, 269

Hughes G., 2011, Towards a personal best: a case for introducing ipsative assessment in higher education, Studies in Higher Education, 36:3, 353

Nicol D., Macfarlane-Dick D., 2006, Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice, Studies in Higher Education, 31:2, 199  

Hafferty F.W., 1998, Beyond curriculum reform: confronting medicine’s hidden curriculum, Academic Medicine, 73, 403

Kelly A.V., 1999, The curriculum and the study of the curriculum, in: Kelly A.V., The curriculum: Theory and practice, pp.1-24, London: Paul Chapman Publishing Ltd.

Kear K., 2011, Assessment for Learning in Online Communities, in: Kear K., Online and Social Networking Communities: a best practice guide for educators, pp.145-166, New York: Routledge

Brown S., 1996, Assessment for learning, in: Brown, S., A keynote lecture for Sheffield Hallam University, pp.1-14, Newcastle, University of Northumbria

Assessment Reform Group, 2002, Assessment for learning poster - 10 principles [online]
Available at: http://methodenpool.uni-koeln.de/benotung/assessment_basis.pdf [Accessed 18th September 2015]

Chapter 4:

Cunnane, S., 2010, Don’t be afraid to share, Times Higher Education
Available at: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4Tf4YiVB0moJ:https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/don’t-be-afraid-to-share/413795.article+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk [Google cached version accessed 10th September 2015]

Veletsianos G., 2012, Higher education scholars’ participation and practices on Twitter, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 28, 336

Price L., Kirkwood A., 2014, Using technology for teaching and learning in higher education: a critical review of the role of evidence in informing practice, Higher Education Research and Development, 33:3, 549

Smith M.K., 1996 | 2000, Curriculum theory and practice, The Encyclopaedia of Informal Education [online]
Available at: http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-curric.htm [Accessed 13th April 2015]

Megele, C., 2014, Theorising Twitter Chat, Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, vol 2, pp46-51

Willmott, C. J. R., et al, 2015, Enhancing Student Learning Through Innovative Scholarship: An edited record of the tweets using the #ESLIS15, from the inaugural Enhancing Student Learning through Innovative Scholarship conference in Durham (UK), 16th & 17th July 2015, Storify/Twitter. [online]
Available at: https://storify.com/CJRW/enhancing-student-learning-through-innovative-scho [Accessed 8th September 2015]

Wesch, M., 2007, A Vision of Students Today, Youtube [online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=dGCJ46vyR9o [Accessed 10th September 2015]

Lancaster, S., et al, 2015, Ecopedagogy at ViCEPHEC15, Storify/Twitter. [online]
Available at: https://storify.com/S_J_Lancaster/ecopedagogy-at-vicephec15 [Accessed 9th September 2015]

Storrs, D., 2011, ‘Keeping it real’ with an emotional curriculum, Teaching in Higher Education, 17:1, pp1-12

Becher, T., & Trowler, P., 2001, Academic tribes and territories: intellectual enquiry and the culture of disciplines, 2nd ed. (chapter 3), The Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press

Hung H.-T., & Yuen S. C.-Y., 2010, Educational use of social networking technology in higher education, Teaching in Higher Education, 15:6, 703

IoP & RAS, 2015, Gazing at the Future, IoP Press   
Available at: http://www.iop.org/publications/iop/2015/file_65624.pdf [Accessed 10th September 2015]

Chapter 5:

Blackboard Exemplary Course Program Rubric, 2012, Blackboard Inc. [online]
Available at: http://www.blackboard.com/getdoc/7deaf501-4674-41b9-b2f2-554441ba099b/2012-blackboard-exemplary-course-rubric.aspx [Accessed 16th September 2015]

Bloom B, Englehart M, Furst E., Hill W., Krathwohl D., 1956, Taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of education goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain, New York/Toronto, Longmans/Green

Hake R. R., 1998, Interactive engagement versus traditional methods: a six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses, American Journal of Physics, 66:1, 64 

Chapter 6:

Barnett R., Parry G., Coate K., 2010, Conceptualising Curriculum Change, Teaching in Higher Education, 6:4, 435

My Pen & Paper and Other Technologies 

Introduction

The focus of this module was the role of technology in teaching and learning.  Over the past few months, we’ve considered various different communications media, novel teaching tools, and the additional roles that different technologies play in our lives. But concentrating only on how new technologies are applied to teaching risks losing sight of something more fundamental - that all teaching tools come under the umbrella of technology, no matter how old, no matter how basic. Mathematics, language and simple diagrams are as important today as they ever were, and no amount of digital modernisation will save students from a lecturer who simply cannot communicate any enthusiasm for the subject at all.

My initial argument was that the simple combination of pencil and paper should be given equal consideration to a laptop, or a recorded lecture, or a virtual classroom. What is more important is how we use the technologies we choose. But having begun there, I want to take this position further - the subject-content of our teaching, and the chosen vector for transmitting it (or for enabling the development/growth of student learning if you wish to take a more constructivist approach), don’t exist in isolation. For teaching to be truly effective, it has to be made as accessible as possible. 

To this end, new technologies can be very powerful tools. Online resources, flipped classrooms and MOOCs can remove many barriers to education, but at the same time, they can also create new ones. Non-traditional learning communities require active facilitation in a way that an undergraduate cohort does not, and the cost-effectiveness of higher student numbers and peer-based assessment can limit the opportunities for understanding or even becoming aware of the specific needs of individuals.  

In the last year, I have become increasingly aware of the importance of so-called soft skills in teaching. High technology (for instance, polling software) can help a lecturer keep their finger on the pulse of student learning and allow them to modify their teaching accordingly, but even that only offers broad, anonymised statistics. To understand how an individual student is performing, one has to either track their every step, or communicate with them directly. 

Over the past few months, the government’s proposed Teaching Excellence Framework has become a major feature of the politicised educational landscape. As it stands, there are a number of likely metrics which may be applied to question of how teaching can be quantified and assessed. These include student satisfaction, ‘value added’ components of degree classifications based on incoming UCAS points or standardised tests, and post-graduation employment rates.  This is a quantified, technological solution[1] to what I see as a fundamentally qualitative problem.

It also rather misses the point.

What follows in this portfolio is a deliberately personal collection of musings on the intersections of education and technology. I’ve eschewed the use of references to the literature in this case, replacing them with anecdata and honesty. However, my engagement with technology in my teaching should be readily visible between the lines. I’ve also taken a loose interpretation of the word count, on the basis that poetry, art, animations, movies, coding and a few well timed explosions must surely count for something…

[1] Nine out of ten statisticians agree[2] that statistics are a technology.

[2]  Eight out of ten statistics are completely made up. You do the maths…. 

On a more serious note, I’ve experimented with flipped materials in some of my lectures this semester. Instead of presenting equation derivations on the board during lectures, I’ve provided them as online videos, and spent the freed-up lecture time on discussion and problems that utilise the equations concerned. Considering material for one typical lecture, over eighty percent of the students in the class made use of the video, and two thirds of the class viewed it within the first month of release. The students who didn’t view the online material were all present during the lecture (at which the overall attendance was ~85%), so didn’t miss out on the key results. One of the students who didn’t view the video downloaded the text handout that includes the same information. The others do not appear to be making any use of the online learning environment at all, either because they prefer traditional teaching methods, because they are disengaged with their studies, or for some other reason (access issues, perhaps?). 

More extensive changes in maths teaching for engineers have reportedly led to statistically improved contact-time attendance rates and better exam performance. I think I still have work to do on my own teaching in this respect, but I’m already seeing some benefits. The students appear happy with the opportunity to review material at a time and pace of their choosing, and an expectation that at least some of them will be familiar with the course material has aided in creating an atmosphere of two-way communication within the teaching environment.  Of course, it also helps that I’m familiar with many of the second year students from teaching them last year!  But overall, I seem to be having some success in using technology to improve the accessibility of the course material for different students, who might perform less well if their learning relied on a high-stakes lecture that they might not have even attended. The challenge for me is to make this process more demonstrably effective, and to make better use of the lecture-time opportunity to stretch student learning.  

One feature offered by flipped classroom materials is an increased level of oversight. If teaching resources are digitised, we can examine how and when our students access them - as I’ve done in the first paragraph of this section. We can identify whether a student is engaged in their studies in spite of poor attendance, we can have a quiet word with their personal tutor, we can ambush them in lab sessions… but is this proactive pastoral/academic care, a nanny-state model of HE, or the beginnings of something worse? 

Snakes and Ladders Rockets?

The date of the final MEd face-to-face session was the day after British astronaut Tim Peake arrived safely at the International Space Station.  While many aspects of the subject I teach have changed little in millennia, there are always new ways of making them fresh and topical. I think this is particularly important for a more abstract and mathematically challenging subject such as (astro)physics.  So, my contribution to the afternoon was a short lesson in rocketry.  Keeping with my oft-voiced opinion that technologies don’t need to be bleeding edge to be effective, I used a very simple end-of-term staple that can be modified to a wide variety of age groups.

Party Popper Rockets.

This is an incredibly simple physics activity. All that is required is the business end of a part popper (cut it off with scissors, as close to the fat end as possible), and some paper, tape and a pencil. The ‘rocket’ is constructed by wrapping paper around a pencil and taping up the seam and one end.  A sturdy launch pad can be constructed by poking the end of a pencil through a piece of cardboard, and then threading the party popper string through the hole.  Remove the ‘rocket’ fuselage from the pencil and slot it over the top of the party-popper launcher.  Pull the string, and your rocket will either ascend to the heavens or topple limply over, depending on how well it was constructed…

The line between success and failure is small. 

The challenge I set the other MEd participants was to think a little bit about the design of the rocket, particularly the aspects under their control - total mass (i.e. how much paper they used), nozzle design (flared base? Wide base? Narrow base?), and aerodynamics (length of ‘fuselage’ and pointiness of nose-cone). Obviously, the party-popper explosives weren’t uniform in terms of their lifting power, but the biggest factor proved to be heavy rockets or too snug a fit on the launcher. It was a fun, memorable activity that gave all participants a good feel for the balance between rocket mass and available fuel. In a physics-teaching setting, I would naturally put a lot more emphasis on the underlying equations, but while formulae alone are a perfectly adequate means for some students to grasp the basic principles, for others the tangibility and memorability of a demo can also help bridge the gap between unfamiliarity and understanding.  I don’t suggest using demos instead of working through a full mathematical derivation, but I do think they provide a valuable tool for reinforcing new knowledge.

Increasingly, physics understanding isn’t the only type of learning that we expect of our students. Alongside the so-called ‘soft’ skills of communication and general IT literacy, there is an increasing emphasis on programming languages. These are of high value for a large proportion of physics postgraduate students, and also offer enhanced employability in business and industry. The challenge is how to include them in the curriculum - as separate ‘programming’ modules in their own right, or embedded alongside other topics? In Sheffield’s physics department, we currently do both - as standalone modules in Python, Labview and advanced programming, but also as part of several core astrophysics modules in the first and second year.

In this piece, I hope to illustrate just a small part of the functionality of the Python language for physics education. The screenshots below are of a quick piece of code I wrote up earlier today, in the form of a jupyter[6] notebook.  One of the great advantages of this style of coding is that it can be packaged up within a user-friendly document, with the option to embed figures and equations. The code itself is fully interactive and editable. Students can set it running and enter the required inputs, and can also ‘tweak’ it as much or as little as they want. The provision of a functioning code also acts as an effective scaffold for subsequent learning - students can be set extension tasks building on the basic code provided, and it also acts as a useful reference which they can call upon when coding in the future.

This is a very basic ten-minute implementation of python8, but this tool really comes into its own for more complicated physics, particularly where simple solutions do not exist. It can be used to illustrate dynamic problems and formulae that can only be solved numerically. The hands-on and interactive element of the coding is also very useful in teaching very abstract topics - giving students access to an interactive notebook offers the same learning opportunities as a chalkboard-based lecture and many more besides.  And what’s more, it can also help teach coding by immersion.

I’m hoping to integrate more python notebooks into my teaching this year, but one thing I’ve noticed is that we still have a substantial number of students for whom the learning curve remains steep, particularly early on. As far as I can tell, the major issue is less to do with the language itself, or the teaching resources provided, but more to do with the students themselves - how much experience they have in coding, how they see themselves, and how we treat them as learners. These skills are so new to some students that they seem particularly strongly influenced by feedback on their learning, from all sources. Unfortunately, this year the students on another python module received negative feedback on their performance in their first assessment the night before their second assessment, with predictable consequences. It may or may not have affected the students’ overall performance in the second assessment (sorry, no data yet!) but it was certainly a memorable negative experience for many of them - the sort of thing that is very likely to stay with them for years, and to colour their opinions of/feelings towards computer programming. For students who already see themselves as non-programmers by virtue of their inexperience, this event is a nasty piece of stereotype threat that probably did them no favours at all. And it reminds me that the emotional technologies of student-teacher relations and both pastoral and academic support require as much emphasis and development as the more obviously technological technologies.

[6] See http://jupyter.org/ 

[7] …that somehow kept my primary-age kids entertained for hours!

So what do I make of it today?

There’s a limit to how much analysis one should go into on the basis of a rough sketch, but it occurs to me now that my students are expressing their individuality through their metaphorical learning alone. Maybe that’s a good ideal to aim for, but these students are also characterless. Genderless. Their hair-slash-fashion sense is no more than a lazy suggestion. They’re all similarly happy in what they’re achieving (except for the obvious exception). Basically, I’m in denial of their individuality except in terms of how it’s immediately relevant to me and my teaching.

Take a look at where we all are in this picture as well. I’m at the top of a high peak, with precipitous edges suggesting danger, and I’m asking my students to trust me. I’ve put myself in a position where they need me if they’re to obtain their goals.  I’ve set myself up as the master of multiple modes of flight, someone that Yoda-like powers has, and they’re not going to figure out how to get where they want to be without my help!

Whoops. Looks like my hubris is showing…

And finally, let’s look at the destination. I’m teaching them astrophysics, so they’re going to go off and study the universe whether they like it or not, dammit! Except for poor lemming-impression student, who is going to die a painful and bouncy death because they failed to achieve the rewards of becoming an astronomer.

…

Yeah. I’m cringing quite a lot right now.

I’d like to revisit my ideas on this - which is rather fortunate, because this semester we were asked to return to the same prompt and create a digital artefact. Mine is viewable here, and I’ve also included the associated images and a transcript of the text below.

I find the contrast between the two pieces rather telling, but the main point that stands out to me is how much of a difference it has made to get to know my students as individuals. I’ve become much more aware of the broader pressures they’re under, and the variety of other factors that influence their learning. It’s definitely not all down to me, and what they want for themselves is a far more important factor than what I believe them capable of. Being open to that, listening to what is or isn’t being said, watching instead of driving… I think (well, hope) that it’s going to make me a better, more effective teacher.

What is an effective teacher? How do we quantify that?

My answer to this is something that hasn’t changed over the past year and a bit. It’s the answer I gave when I came to Sheffield for an interview, and was asked where I saw myself in X years time. I told the panel I wanted to be one of the staff members that my students remembered, someone who made a difference to their education for the better, in any way at all.  Maybe, for some students, I already am that person. For all the rest, and for those I’ve yet to meet, well, we’re all works in progress, right?