Core Area 4: Communication and Working with Others

Guidelines

Candidates should demonstrate their knowledge and skills in communication through working with others. Statements could describe the way in which your work involves collaboration, for example through participation in a team or acting as an interface to other groups. Also discuss how you disseminate your practice, for example through presentation or publications.

Working collaboratively with others

As stated elsewhere in this portfolio, I have a strong ethos of collaboration and support within my role as a HE educator. There is a lot to learn from others, which includes working alongside others. I am a member of many different communities that support teaching and learning both within the department and more widely across the University. Within the department, I work alongside a team of seven teaching focused staff. Together, we lead much of the teaching and learning initiatives in the department, and regularly meet to discuss ways in which we can support the learning of students, and in particular how we can use technology to do so. Across the University, I regularly attend and have presented at 'show and tell' events run by our Programme Development and Learning Technology team, and other events run by the University's Teaching and Learning Forum such as workshops, and the annual Teaching and Learning Conference (I was actually a member of the committee for this Forum between Nov 2017- July 2020). Many of these Forum events discuss learning technology and I have found them a really useful place to discuss ideas and experiences with colleagues, as well as a place to learn about new technology or how to use the technology I do use in different ways. I often meet many of the same people at these events which really fosters a sense of community; a community of practice.

Example of collaboration: building online resources to support academic writing

One of the areas students often require extra support in is academic writing. As part of the Academic Skills provision (see Specialist Area), we have an area on the VLE which provides a variety of resources for students to help with the development of their writing. Two particular sets of resource were created collaboratively with other staff and students, working together to use learning technology to create these resources.

In 2018, I led a funded project aimed at producing VLE materials to support students' essay writing skills. We based this support around the departmental marking criteria for essays. Part of the funds were to pay two final year students on an internship to help create online resources. After I'd written learning objectives for each criterion along with another member of staff, the two student interns were tasked with creating online resources that gave hints and tips for students to help them achieve each learning objective. Since we couldn't give the student interns editing rights to the VLE, they accumulated these hints and tips on a shared Google doc which meant in our meetings, we could all access the materials and make edits through the conversations we had in that meeting (later I transferred the content to the VLE). During one of our catch up meetings, the student interns came up with the idea of producing a series of humourous videos aimed at enticing students into each section which they subsequently scripted, recorded and uploaded to a shared Google folder. This was clearly something we had not thought of and added a really valuable section to the resources pitched at just the right level for our students. Another member of staff and I worked together to create self-led quizzes with the aim that these would help students understand the degree to which they'd met the learning objectives. We used Qualtrics for these quizzes as it gave us more flexibility in the different types of questions we could use (e.g. drag and drop, highlighting). Together, we then embedded these Qualtrics quizzes into the VLE.

To coordinate this project, I set up a shared Google folder for the interns, and also a Google doc to list the different quizzes which was shared with the necessary staff. We were fortunate enough to gain further funds the following year to run an identical project to set up resources in a similar format for practical report writing, using the same student interns as before.

The contributions of others to this project were invaluable. First, the student interns were able to pitch the advice at just the right level for our students and their idea to record and use funny videos was just brilliant. Without their input into these two projects, I truly believe the materials would have been less engaging for our students. This experience of working alongside students in using learning technology was so positive that it has fed into subsequent projects where I have enlisted the help of students (e.g. to create blogs, vlogs and videos to help students through transition points in their degree). Additionally, working alongside other members of staff to complete the quizzes was a rewarding experience. We worked well together often coming up with good ideas for using the different tools in Qualtrics to formulate engaging quizzes which I probably wouldn't have been able to do alone. These resources are now used extensively by our students to help them develop their academic writing skills.

Evidence

Google doc to collaboratively create Qualtrics questions

Screenshot of homepage of shared folder for internship 1

Screenshot of homepage of shared folder for internship 2

Screenshot of Qualtrics quiz embedded into the VLE

Example of set of VLE resources for one of the marking criteria for essays

Further collaboration

The experiences of working with others I've had to date has had a very positive impact on my practice. I truly believe that attending teaching and learning events can enhance a feeling of community of practice whereby we can all learn from each other. There is also true value in working on different projects with different people. I have had the privilege of working with staff and students on various different projects, one of which is described above, and I have learned a lot through the process.

However, I have yet to experience working with others externally to the University and I think this is perhaps one area that I'd like to develop. It can be quite easy to become stuck in a rut with doing things the way we do them at our University without considering how colleagues in other institutions use learning technology to solve problems or fill gaps in the provision for their students. One way I can make these connections is by attending external events. I have presented now at two different external events and subsequently have had conversations with someone from another University on how we use the writing support materials to help our students. While it's pleasing to see others being interested in the way we run support in our department, I am keen to learn from others to see how they use learning technology in their practice, and to perhaps forge relationships with others whereby we can run a collaborative project. One area of interest for me is to investigate the deficit of skills students have for online learning and to then develop materials and resources using learning technology that can help with this. Working with people (staff and students) from a variety of institutions will be invaluable for this type of project as they will likely have ideas and expertise around learning technology that I currently do not have.