The Socratic Dilemma

We've Moved!

2012-02-29T17:50:00.002Z

Dear Readers,

Thank you for visiting The Socratic Dilemma. I'm happy to inform you that we have now moved to a new home at http://www.melodeebeals.co.uk/teachingblog. Please visit us at our new home for all the lastest!
Best wishes,
M. H. Beals

Choosing their own Adventures: Exploring Historical Occupations in History Seminars

2012-02-14T16:38:00.001Z

In my Atlantic World module, we spend several weeks discussing various migration types, including exploration, sojourning, and settlement. Although writing lectures for these topics was simple enough, constructing seminars proved far more difficult. Should my students work through case studies or discuss the groupings more broadly? The former meant privileging one sort of sojourner over another, and the latter ran the risk of gross oversimplification. My solution? A Choose-their-own-Adventure group activity.

The students were divided into groups of 3 or 4 students each and given the following worksheet:

I am a 14 year old boy from Weymouth (Dorset) in 1730. Should I:

Join a fishing crew and sail for the Newfoundland Fishery
Apprentice myself to a Bristol counting house and hope for a position in North America
Attend seminary at Oxford and become an Anglican missionary in Sierra Leone
Stay home. It’s barbaric out there!

I am a 14 year old boy from St. Malo (Brittany) in 1690. Should I:

Join a privateering crew and sail for the Channel
Travel to Quebec and hire myself out as a Coureur des bois.
Attend the Jesuit College and become a missionary in New France.
Stay home. Try to win favour with the court and stay out of religious conflicts.

I am a 14 year old boy from Boston (Massachusetts Bay) in 1766. Should I:

Join a fishing crew and sail for the Labrador Fishery
Travel to England and attend Cambridge University.
Attend seminary at Harvard and become a missionary in Liberia.
Stay home. Become a merchant and marry well.

I am a 14 year old boy from Lisbon (Portugal) in 1616. Should I:

Apprentice to a merchant house and work as a factor in Madeira.
Joining a merchant ship heading to Angola to take part in the slave trade.
Join the Capuchin order and become a missionary to Brazil.
Stay home. Pray the Portuguese monarchy is restored (and make snide comments about Spaniards under your breath)

I am a 14 year old Wendat girl from Montreal (New France) in 1620. Should I:

Marry at Coureur des bois and seek out new contacts in the interior.
Join the Ursuline nunnery in Montreal
Become a companion to a French official in Quebec, raise a metis family, providing diplomatic support between my two homes.
Stay home. Europeans are nothing but trouble.

Each group was also given 24 post-it notes (6 orange and 18 pink). For each child, the group had to choose the best possible option, taking into account nationality and chronology. They would write their reason for this choice on the pink post it. For each of the other options, they had to give a reason why it was a poorer option.

Once all of these groups had completed this, the post it notes were placed on a large grid, drawn on the room white board. As you can see, opinion was greatly mixed.

Using the grid as a point of reference, we could spend the remainder of the seminar discussing multiplicity of options children of the Atlantic had (or didn't have).

Moreover, it reminded students that chronology (even in a thematic module) was crucial. Almost all of my students decided to send the young Portuguese boy to Madeira; being a merchant seemed the safest and most profitable option. Sadly, Madeira was ransacked in 1617 and would have resulted (most likely) in the young man's death. The one student who avoided this trap at looked up Madeira on their smartphone to seek out any possible pitfalls.

If anyone else tries a similar activity, here are my words of advice:

Use good quality post-it notes. Mine were quite old and only remained on the wall for about fifteen minutes before collapsing like a multi-coloured waterfall.
Allow plenty of time for discussion within the groups and as a whole. This is not a 10-minute activity.
And finally, enjoy your students creativity. Mine developed quite detailed biographies of these 6 children in order to justify their choices.

Social Writing: A Grand Experiment in Undergraduate History

2012-02-08T20:34:00.002Z

As part of my continuing efforts to improve undergraduate academic writing, I recently applied to the Institute of Advanced Teaching and Learning for a small grant from their Staff-Student Collaboration fund. I am very pleased to announce that this application has been successful. Thus, over the next 15 weeks, I will provide occasional updates on the project alongside my regular musings at The Socratic Dilemma.

The project, entitled Social Writing, aims to provide first-year students within the School of Comparative American Studies an opportunity to work collaboratively to develop academicwriting skills and the scholarly rigour expected of university undergraduates. The proposal was based heavily upon my own experience of peer writing within Clark University's freshman seminar programme.

Working with recent graduates, in form of current MA students, first-year students will attendweekly, half-hour meetings to explore different aspects of academic writing, share experiences of assessment and feedback, experiment with different forms of argument construction and develop communication skills in a semi-causal and non-threatening environment. Ratherthan perform predetermined exercises, which are available elsewhere, thesesessions will work with student writings that are currently under development forupcoming assessments. Moreover, by working in small groups of 3 to 4 students, they will be able to collaborate with the MA tutor on which aspects of their writing they want the group to focus upon each week.

Although the university and Department of History already provide academic writing support, I felt that thisform of peer-support was needed because current writing provision focuses upon library-provisioned academic writing sessions, lecturer-student feedback dialogues and ad hoc peer-to-peer discussions. By providing a formal space for peer discussions within the framework of the course, this project will re-integratewriting skills within the disciplinary context and expandreal contact hours between the department and students. Moreover, through staff administration and postgraduate facilitation, the project will support formal and regular collaboration between members of the department at undergraduate, postgraduateand staff level.

The project is not, of course, without peril. When I first posited the idea, several key difficulties were anticipated:

a lack of commitment from students in attending and engaging with a programmethat did not lead to direct assessment rewards
a lack of rigour by the MA student tutors
a lack of trust between undergraduate regarding intellectual property

Yet, by explicitly linking the peer sessions to their end-of-year projects, careful interviewing and selection of MA tutors and allowing self-selection of groups, it is hoped that these fears will prove unfounded.

Wish us luck!

Total Recall: The Shallow Learning Fallacy

2012-01-25T14:56:00.002Z

When it comes to teaching in higher education, I have undertaken a great deal of training. I have completed a two-year postgraduate certificate from my own institution as well as bespoke training from several other organisations.

In about 50-65% of these programme I received a photocopy of Bloom's Taxonomy. This handy pyramid is meant to represent the levels of a learners' understanding. You'll notice that remembering, or recall knowledge, is firmly at the bottom of the pyramid.

I have often been told, and, I suppose, come to believe, that recall knowledge is base sort of knowledge; fine enough for the plebs, but inappropriate for those of us residing within the ivory tower. When designing assessments and exams, we take this theory to heart, asking students to apply their knowledge, analyse data and qualitative details, evaluate the validity of historiographical theories and, at the end of their programme perhaps, create new methodologies or theories regarding historical trends and events. We certainly don't reward the simple recollection of name and dates. But should we?

I have begun to question the dismissal of recall knowledge for a number of reasons. First, an increasing number of my students have begun to make statements (orally and in writing) that they 'cannot provide specific details, but couldn't it be that...' when analysing or evaluating. A troubling development indeed. Rather than move THROUGH remembering and understanding INTO analysing and evaluating, they seem to have been advised to simply skip those steps altogether.

Although the paucity of details in written work is troubling, I have often let my students slide on their imperfect recall of full names or precise dates during seminars. I genuinely believed there are few occasions in life when you will need to know, off the top of your head, which month the Battle of Hastings was fought.

I'm not so sure any more.

I have just returned from an academic job interview in which that sort of recall knowledge would absolutely have been an asset. Indeed, this is the second interview in a row in which I was asked:

'Which historians would you say are the most active in this field right now? Whose writing do you see your work engaging with?

Under normal circumstances, of course, I know the full and complete answer to this question. However, I have very much trained my mind to work in an environment populated with notebooks, electronic documents, index cards and bookmarks. I would never write a literature review for a journal article based on recall memory. Therefore, in the heat of an interview, my mind falters. While I can perfectly visualise the colour of various book jackets and the font style of key articles, names themselves completely elude me. Instead, I describe trends in the research. The committee are very polite, but seem disconcerted by my lack of recall knowledge.

I therefore wonder if we are doing our history students a disservice by not exercising their recall knowledge on a regular basis. In almost any type of employment they pursue after university, they will likely need to access some recall knowledge at meetings, pitches or consultations and, as we all know, cramming before a presentation or interview is rarely an effective methodology.

If the brain is a muscle, why are we only exercising one part of it?

Why I Think Google is Skynet: A Response to Google Calendar Appointments

2012-01-18T21:48:00.000Z

It always happens. I receive my students' essays. I mark them. I print a sign-up sheet for feedback sessions and affix it to my office door. I email my students to let them know.

Perhaps 15% of my students sign up for session.

One of the most common complaints lecturers in the UK receive is that they do not provide sufficient feedback on assessed work. I simply do not understand it. I provide nearly a page of commentary for each essay I mark and sit patiently in my office for hours (and hours) on end, waiting for students to come and discuss their papers with me. For any given assignment, only 15%-25% do.

There are probably several reasons for this low attendance.

First, I produce a significant amount of written feedback on assessed work, and I provide this to students electronically. Technically speaking, a student does not have to interact with me in any way to receive his or her mark and written commentary. If they did well, or feel the comments were straightforward and sensible, they may simply not need any further clarification.

I doubt 75% of my students feel this way.

Intimidation might be another reason. Despite being a very keen student, I always dreaded those awkward 15-minutes when the tutor calmly reiterated what they felt were my failings.

I don't consider myself an intimidating figure, but the staff-student power relationship is a complex one.

As I sat pondering my situation an email appeared in my inbox.

'I'm sorry I missed my appointment this afternoon. I forgot which time I has signed up for. Can I reschedule?'

Forgetfulness. Forgetting to sign up, forgetting to attend. Yes. I could see that accounting for a good percentage of my non-attendees. After all, they needed to sign their name to a piece of paper that was affixed to a door they rarely passed. Add the fact that many people (myself included) write appointment times on their palm, only to wash their hands before transferring the details, and you have a perfect scenario for low attendance.

But how to overcome this phenomenon?

I could bring the sign-up sheet to class; I have done so in the past. But students do not always have their diaries to hand and usually pass the sheet back to me, asking if they can decide later.

I could post available times on-line and have students email me their desired slot, updating the list once or twice a day. But this seems a great deal of administrative work with little prospect of alleviating the tendency to forget to sign up at all.

I could not, I thought, be the only person facing this difficulty. Perhaps there was an appointment-making application out there, somewhere, that I could use.

After a very short search I found one. Google Calendar. More specifically, the Appointment Slots feature of Google Calender.

After a very short perusal of its features, I have decided that the service is completely unusable.

Now Presenting the Socratic Dilemma's Very First Negative Review

Normally, I am a fan of Google. They provide a wide range of services that are essentially free at the point of use. However, with their acquisition of YouTube, and the preponderance of unrelated websites allowing you to 'Sign in with Google', I have started to become a little concerned.

I don't really believe that Google is mutating into Skynet. Not really. At least, I'm pretty sure its not. But there are some times when it does seem to stray a bit from its unofficial motto: Don't be Evil. Google Calendar Appointments is one of those time.

The procedure seems simple enough. Using your own Google Calender, select a period of time and create appointment slots, choosing the length of each booking. Copy the link created and forward to the relevant parties. Simple:

No. It isn't.

In order to book a slot, my students would need to sign into their own Google Account. The appointment information would then be automatically populated with the Google Identity. What if they didn't want me to know their personal Google email address? I wasn't sure I wanted them to know mine.

And if they didn't have a Google Account, they would need to get one. Another password to remember, another account to check.

I just did not feel comfortable making my students do this. Moreover, I did not like the idea of Google tracking interactions between me and my students. The more accurate Google Ads becomes in anticipating my tastes and habits, the more concerned I become.

Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any free, anonymous alternatives. Google Docs Spreadsheets can be used without an account, but concerns over accidental deletions persuaded me against it.

After a more significant search, I realised that my university's Virtual Learning Environment (SiteBuilder) had the solution all along. With it, I could create a 'Resource Bookings' page. Designed for equipment or room bookings, it works just as well for appointments.

By signing into the system with their existing student account, they can book their feedback session from the comfort of home or the university library, and they can check, cancel or reschedule an appointment with ease. Whenever an appointment is made, I receive an email, which I can drag and drop into my Outlook Calender. Simple.

After only a few days, my appointment slots are quickly filling up and not a single student has failed to arrive on time.

But what about the lecturers out there without this VLE functionality? What would you use?

Coming to Terms with Student Feedback

2012-01-11T06:54:00.000Z

At the end of the fall term, I asked my students to fill in a one-page evaluation of the module thus far, and they were not alone. All across the UK (and the world) university students were being asked to rate their courses, their lecturers and their university. It happens every year, but I suspect that few really believe that their feedback matters. Indeed, some doubt that lecturers even read it. We do.

As part of an effort to reassure students that we've heard them (and are acting on their feedback) I was asked to write a digest of my students' concerns and how the staff on the module would address them. This isn't a new phenomena at my university, but as this is my first year acting as module convener, it is the first time that I have been able to review the entire feedback pool. It has been a strange experience.

Each module had its own quirks and wrinkles, but what I want to write about today is coming to terms with feedback of a personal (or at least individual) nature. How do you deal with nasty remarks? Worse, how do you deal with gushing praise. No one wants to write to their Head of Department and say 'They like me. They really like me.'

I have been told by career development advisers that we should all be more confident in acknowledging praise, but somehow I just can't bring myself to write a report that calmly lists those instances when my students think I'm great. It just seems...wrong.

What I can take away from the mid-module feedback, I believe, is a rather interesting sketch of my teaching personality. Taking the super majority opinion (>66%) I am

Nice & Approachable
Engaging & Enthusiastic
Organised & Responsive (to emails and queries)
Knowledgeable & Informative
Overly Demanding

Yes. That one threw me, too. I remember being a student and I don't recall many instances of my peers saying 'Professor A is wonderful. Very nice and such a harsh marker, too!'

Upon reflection, however, I find this juxtaposition strangely comforting. I'm not letting them get away with anything. I'm pushing them to read more and write better than they are used to, but I'm doing it with a smile. In the end, it's probably the best I can hope for. Of course, some students didn't find me lovably demanding. Some genuinely found me punitive and asked that their essays be second marked. Of course, they already are, but that's not the point.

The point is dealing with a not-insignificant minority of your students feeling unfairly tread upon. Do you take it to heart? Soften your approach? Or do you grumble--under your breath--what do they know, and carry on?

On the one hand, I've never given a mark below 60 without detailed feedback explaining exactly where I thought their essay was weak and how my mark relates to the specific marking criteria. I am, therefore, absolutely confident that I am not marking unfairly. On the other, I'm a big softy. Students come to my office on the verge of tears (quite often) and explain that they've never received a 2:2 (B-/C+) or Third Class (C-/D+) before, and they simply don't know what to do. I've never caved on a mark because of tears, but I have often wanted to.

Having reviewed this year's feedback en masse, I do worry that my standards are a bit high. But, in the end, when as student earns a First (A) in my class, they know they've really earned it.

Having dealt with personal feedback, I turn to that directed at the course itself. Now, I'm all for acknowledging faults in design and delivery, but what do you do when a third of your students want more of something, a third want less of it, and a third drew a picture of a rocket ship. Don't blame them. They've had to fill out a lot of these forms.

Helping Students Understand Argument Construction

2011-12-14T17:09:00.003Z

After completing my first bout of marking for this year I have come to the conclusion that my students have not yet been taught the difference between an assertion and an argument. Most seem to have been trained from secondary school or elsewhere that displaying knowledge of the correct answer is more important than a demonstration of their ability to evaluate and analyse evidence and historiography. I consider this a failing on my part, as was readily shown in recent feedback forms.

'I wish I had been told before I handed in my first essay what the tutor wanted.'

Indeed, most of my students are very good at obtaining information and reading around subjects.They are generally engaged with the topic and have a drive to do well. However, they often fail to understand why, despite extensive research, their argument structure results in a low mark. When one student entered my office to discuss their mark, I tried to explain they had relied too heavily on historiography, specifically the concluding summations by historians, as proof that their evidence was correct. They did not understand so I paraphrased on of their paragraphs:

The Salem Witch trials were the result of feelings of repressions by the young women of the community. Chafe supports this by saying 'the trials were the result of feelings of repressions by the young women of the community.' Thus, this proves that the trials were the result of feelings of repressions by the young women of the community.

Stated such, they understood and vowed not to make the mistake again.

I certainly do not, however, want to embarrass my students. They have been told for many years that if they mentioned key points (somewhere defined) they will earn points for each one and receive a high mark. This was absolutely the case in certain secondary exam, which were testing knowledge. It is not the case in my class where I am assessing analytical ability. I have thus come up with the following examples to illustrate poor uses of evidence and analysis, to help them steer clear of simple mistakes in the future. Please feel free to add your own in the comments below.

Question: Which are better, cats or dogs?

Thesis Statements:

1. Exploration Thesis

This essay will explore the relative betterness of cats and dogs.

This thesis statement is not an argument or answer to the question but merely a grammatically incorrect statement of the general topic

2. Rephrasing Thesis

But which, really, is better? Cats or Dogs?

This is simply rephrasing the question, rather than explaining what you will argue.

3. Loosely Qualified Thesis

It could be argued that cats are better than dogs, but it must not be forgotten that some people feel dogs are better.

This thesis statement is attempting to provide a qualified answer, one which states something is mostly true but occasionally false. When you do this, it is important to make it clear when the distinction occurs.

Uses of Evidence

1. Narration Cat

The cat (Felis catus), also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests.

This provides background information on the topic, taken from Wikipedia or some other tertiary (third-hand or textbook) source. It provides several non-contentious assertions without any indication of their relevancy to the question at hand.

2. Authority Figure Cat

According to J. R. Dallason, cats have longed been valued over dogs by peoples around the world.

This uses the authority of a named author to establish a fact as being true without providing either the evidence used by the author or additional evidence which corroborates the claim.

3. Authority Figure - Leap of Logic Cat

According to P. S. McManusstein, cats have long been believed to be the descendants of extra-terrestrials. As aliens are very cool, cats are clearly better than dogs.

This uses the authority of a named author to establish a fact as being true and then offers a ‘logical’ or ‘personalised’ interpretation of the relevance of this fact to the question at hand.

4. Implicit Argument Cat

Cats have whiskers and claws which can retract. This makes them superior climbers.

This offers a piece of factual evidence and then explains the implications of this evidence but does not relate the point back to the topic at hand or the argument being made.

5. Possibility Counter Evidence Dog

It can, however, be argued that cats are not very good pets at all. This proves that dogs are better than cats.

This confuses the possibility of an argument with the validity of an argument.

6. Unlinked Counter Evidence Dog

Dogs were domesticated from gray wolves about 15,000 years ago. Their value to early human settlements led to them quickly becoming ubiquitous across world cultures.

This is attempting to offer counter evidence, in an effort to make the essay more balanced. However, like Narration Cat, it is a narrative statement of facts or history which does not really shed any light on the discussion, despite being technically ‘on topic'. Counter evidence should be explained in the context of the main argument being put forth.

Conclusions

1. Assertion Conclusion

Therefore, I believe that cats are better than dogs.

This conclusion does answer the question but does not follow on logically from the essay preceding it. This is because it relies (apparently) on personal opinion.

2. Net Gain Conclusion

Overall, therefore, the evidence seems to be in favour of cats being better.

This conclusion seems to indicate that, having looked at all the evidence, your reader will agree with you that cats are better. It indicates that you have not had an explicit argument throughout your paper but waited until the end to offer your answer.

3. Summary Conclusion

Therefore, it can be seen that because cats have been so longed valued by humans, and the possibly of their being descendants of aliens, that they are better than dogs. The have biological advantages and although some people prefer dogs, cats are clearly better.

This conclusion summaries all the points that came before, then asserts the argument is true. It doesn't really help fit the pieces together or add anything new (analytically) to your paper.

Playing Devil's Advocate: Castro and Catcher in the Rye

2011-11-22T15:38:00.001Z

I know it, but I can't explain it.
-Undergraduate M. H. Beals

If you can't explain it, then you don't really understand it.
-Dr Paul Lucas

Dr Lucas was a wonderfully argumentative professor. He never, ever, let you get away with a half conceptualised argument or a unsupported assertion. I took two modules with him as an undergraduate, Our Western Roots and 19th-Century European Philosophy. With the possible exception of my viva voce, my arguments have never been as rigorously challenged by a listener as they were in those first- and second-year modules.

As the title of this blog suggests, I am an advocate of the Socratic teaching method. More than that, though, I simply enjoy playing Devil's Advocate. Before each seminar, I make a quick note of two or three particularly controversial topics which might come up. As the discussion progression I start making notes of my students' opinions (generally, not with any indication of who said what) and see if a general trend is emerging. When it becomes clear that my students have fallen into a uncritical rut, I leap into action.

I begin innocently.

'So, what do you think of the counter-culture literature of the period? Did you enjoy Catcher in the Rye?'

A general murmur of approval emanates from the ranks.

'Why did you like it?'

A slew of general comments slip past, often along the lines of

'I just get it, you know. I completely understand what Holden is trying to say.'

'I see.'

The time is right.

'But I mean, really, can you really sympathise with someone like Holden? Isn't he just a whiny, nihilistic, upper-middle-class brat? I mean, what is he rebelling against? His life is so easy! What gives him the right to complain about anything?'

Stunned silence. They honestly don't know what to say. One gathers the courage to confront me.

'No. I have to disagree. Even if he isn't rebelling against something economic or political, it is still reflective of the general feeling of the time, that everyone was feeling the need to rebel against the boredom of the situation.'

Victory.
I have done this for a variety of different topics, from everything from Columbus to the Earth Liberation Front. Sometimes it goes very well. I get the students to argue with me and present new and more specific evidence in their defence.
Sometimes they catch on, or hear from friends what stance I took. I simply switch sides.
Sometimes it goes horribly wrong. One student, when defending Kennedy's aggressive reaction to Castro's Revolution, looked absolutely crest-fallen when I argued against their point. They actually apologised to me after class for their opinion.

I managed to explain to them that I was playing Devil's Advocate, and I just wanted to push them to define their argument a bit more concretely. In the end, they seemed happy with the situation, but I am sure many of those stunned silent simply felt their ideas were wrong, or had been rejected out of hand.

So, where should I draw the line? When does 'playing Devil's advocate' go beyond stretching my students to actually breaking them?

My Experiment with Electronic Marking, or, Why heels, stairs and 150 essays don't mix

2011-11-17T14:50:00.001Z

This year, I will be marking roughly 150 two-thousand word essays every six weeks. As I still need to conform with the standard two-week turnaround, I needed to increase my marking speed without sacrificing the quality of my feedback. After reading a paper on the use of Grademark (part of the Turn-it-In software package), I was hopeful that I had found a solution to my problem.

There were, of course, a few hiccups. First, I would be the only tutor in my department using the system. Although Turn-it-In is widely used in other departments, history has not yet made its use standard. Instead, students are required to upload their essay to a web form (which stores their essay in case of loss, plagiarism or external examining) and then hand in a hard copy for marking and return. I had originally thought that simply replacing the hard copy with a second electronic copy would be a pretty simple procedure.

Yet, novelty often breeds confusion. Right up to the deadline, many students were confused on which of the three possible submissions methods they were supposed to use. This was complicated by the fact that departmental emails were (quite rightly) being sent out reminding the students of the 'correct' submission procedure, contradicting my earlier instructions. Nonetheless, after numerous reassurances from me regarding the exceptionable nature of my seminar groups, submission day came and went with all of my students managing to submit their essays successfully.

In terms of actual marking, I am not yet sure of the net outcome. As I am generally an optimistic individual, let me begin with the positives.

Simplified receipt process: After seven years of teaching, the idea of 'simply handing in your essay' is far more complicated than you would first imagine. For any given deadline, about 10-15% of my students will claim that broken printers, overbooked computer labs, delayed trains, broken USB keys and a general confusion about where to hand the essay in have prevented them from submitting on time. Electronic submission negates most if not all of these problems. Students can reach for their laptop from underneath their duvet, hit 'send' and return to land of nod. Likewise, if I am ill or have obligations off-campus on submission day, I do not have to come into the office for the sole purpose of essay collection.
Ease of transportation: Simpy put, 15 essays in a shoulder bag are quite heavy. 150 would be a nightmare. This is especially the case if, like me, you mark on and off throughout the day and therefore must keep essays with you at all times. With Grademark, anywhere I have a PC and internet connection, I can mark.
Handwriting: Mine is awful. I am pleased that I no longer need to subject students to late night cryptography. Although typing and printing feedback comments is an option for hard-copy marking, it is cumbersome and does not effectively replace marginalia. Grademark, on the other hand, allows you to insert 'comment bubbles' throughout the text.
Repeatability: There are some errors that most if not all my students make on their first essay of the year. Having to write 'incorrect citation format' 150 times is not fun. Being able to assign this comment to a macro is a godsend.
Delivery: Like the receipt process, essays can be delivered quickly and simultaneous to all my students. As I prefer to hold 'feedback sessions' after my student have read their essays, this provides me with the flexibility to return essays on Monday morning and hold feedback sessions on Friday, even if there is not a lecture or seminar during the week. Moreover, it allows commuter students or those who are ill to retrieve their essay quickly.
Feedback from students: I have only had minimal student feedback so far (my first feedback session is tomorrow) but those who have emailed me have been impressed at the level of feedback they have received and the ease with which it was retrieved. Moreover, as Grademark indicates which essays have been viewed for more than 30 seconds, I can gauge which students have looked through their feedback properly.

Now for the negatives:

Over zealous macro making: I like macros. I love the idea that I don't have to retype a frequent comment. However, I did get a bit carried away. In the end, I made of 40 different macros, many of them for pet peeves in grammar or syntax. Because many were very specific (and poorly labelled), I spent much more time searching for my macros than it would have taken to retype the comment. Use sparingly.
Bleeding scripts: I often tell postgraduate tutors not to make their essays bleed. Marking every typographical or word choice error will obscure more important comments regarding argument and structure. Having access to a wide range of pre-made copy-editing macros, I found myself being far more pedantic about punctuations and grammar than I would with a hard copy paper. Use sparingly.
Reliance on Turn it In: In the past, I have stated that I don't use plagiarism detection software because plagiarism is usually pretty obvious. It's common sense really. However, with the option to turn on 'Originality' highlighting, I found myself relying on Turn-It-In's judgement rather than my own. Use with caution.
Student formatting: Because the essays are submitted electronically, many of my students ignored the departmental style guide. Most aggravating was the lack of double spacing. Although ostensibly to aid marginalia, double spacing also makes the essay easier to read. I missed it greatly.
Time spent marking: It took me roughly 2 hours to mark 5 essays last week. This means an average of 24 minutes each. As my goal was 15 minutes per essay, this was rather depressing. However, once I used RescueTime to track my computer usage, I found I was actually spending just 18 minutes per essay. The other 7 minutes was spent getting coffee, checking my email, answering the phone and so on. Moreover, because I didn't have to clear my desk, re-read the first half of the essay to remember where I was, print out comment sheets, alphabetize the essays or enter the marks into a spreadsheet, I actually saved several hours worth of administrative work

One negative that didn't materialise was eye-strain. Although staring at a screen for extended periods can cause headaches and bleary eyes, I was never marking for long enough stretches for this to become an issue.

So what is my final verdict? I would recommend GradeMark, or similar alternatives. There were some logistical problems, but these were usually the result of human rather than mechanical limitations. Once electronic submission becomes the norm, and I learn not to mark an error just because I can, the negative column will shrink significantly.

Will it work for everyone? No.

Some people really enjoy curling up on the couch to mark. It gives them a break from computer work, which already dominates so many aspects of our lives. Others really value physically handing back essays during feedback session. Nonetheless, if you are an overworked teaching fellow with more papers than hours or upper body strength, it may be a good option for you.

Update: (Friday November 18th) Having spoken to many more of my students now, the verdict seems to be quite positive, especially point 5 on the positive scale. Being able to see all the marginalia in private before seeing me was apparently quite helpful.

The Verdict on Exemplar(y) Student Essays:A Review of A.nnotate

2011-11-09T22:56:00.000Z

With my experiment in model essay annotation now complete, the time has come to reflect upon the experience.

Organising the experiment:

Over the past few years, my students have begun asking (politely) for a model essay on which to base their own work. For many years I resisted these pleas (politely). Historical essays take many forms and providing a single model for the students would set an arbitrary precedent for the correct format. However, after reading Jan Skillen's 2006 essay, I was convinced that having my students annotate a model essay would provide them with the desired exemplar and satisfy my desire for students to explore and interrogate alternative essay structures.

When it came to designing the experiment, I had several options.

Pen and paper - Does not require any (modern) technology and can be done either within or outside formal contact hours. However, monitoring student progress requires the collection and examination of student scripts, or hovering over students while they work individually or in groups.
GoogleDocs - Requires minimal technology (web browser) but can easily go horribly wrong if students accidentally remove sections of the essay. It also reduces the amount of work that can be done during seminars / under my supervision.
Agilewords - (my original first choice) Requires minimal technology (web browser) and preserves the original formatting of the document by presenting the file as a PDF. However, the service requires students to create an account and the lecturer to pay (a nominal) fee for hosting the essays.
A.nnotate - (my eventual decision) Requires minimal technology (web browser) and preserves the original formatting of the document in a similar fashion to Agilewords. However, A.nnotate allows guests to access and annotate the document and offers free accounts to uploaders (allowing up to 32 pages a month).

The first step, of course, was to choose an essay to use. I had several legitimate student essays haunting my filing cabinet; the neglected ghosts of students unwilling to visit feedback sessions. Unfortunately, data protection legislation, and human decency, prevented me from using these without the author's consent. I could have written a new essay myself, but this would have been an obvious forgery, exaggerating my pet peeves like a film extra feigning drunkenness. One colleague suggested that I buy a 'study aid' essay from a 'study aid' website, but I couldn't bring myself to patronise that sort of establishment. In the end I uploaded one of my own undergraduate essays. Humility is an important attribute of educators.

The upload procedure was straightforward and I managed to upload 4 copies of my first-year model essay to the server in a single session. Once the document was processed, I set the access settings to allow guest (anonymous) annotators and generated a guest access link to send my students via email. Because the links are quite long, and non-intuitive, I felt relatively confident vandalism from outsiders would not be an issue.

When my students visited the site (each seminar had their own copy of the essay), they were presented with a non-editable version of the model essay. Using their mouse, they could highlight words, phrases, or whole paragraphs, bringing up an annotation 'bubble'. In addition to making a general comment, students could also tag their comment as a query, a suggestion or a variety of other annotation types (see image). Students could also click on existing bubbles and add 'replies' to the original comment. Although this theoretically allowed debates to evolve, most students chose to start their own bubble rather than continue someone else. They could also add a 'final thought' to the paper, much as I do during the formal feedback process.

During the week, I was able to visit the site and view a summary of the annotations being made on each of the essays. The individual notes could be viewed within an individual document (as seen by the students), across all 4 documents by date,

or in a list by each individual document:

From any of these screens, I could reply to student queries or redirect tangential or erroneous comments. As expected, because of the non-intuitive link, plagiarism by outsiders was not an issue.

Once my two-week experiment was completed, I was able to export the essay, including all annotations, as a PDF. The resultant PDF is very clearly legible (unlike printing annotated Word revisions) and generally takes the same number of printed pages as the original document.

I then printed out the marked-up essay and made hard copies for my students in order to facilitate an in-class discussion of the paper at our next seminar.

Having read the comments, I could tell that students were generally unimpressed with the essay. A few complimentary comments cropped up here and there, but in general the students were very clear about what the essay had failed to do; namely address the question and signpost the argument. When I asked students to give me their opinion in class, this was again the general consensus.

Working with the university's standard marking criteria, I asked the students to explain what mark they would have given the essay and why. Most hovered around the 2:1 - 2:2 borderline. There main rationales were that:

the question had asked about art OR literature, and the author had attempted to do both
there were no signposts in the essay to explain how each section answered the title question
the author was narrative rather than analytical

As these are my three primarily complaints with first-year essay, I was very impressed to hear them so precisely mentioned by my students. I then asked for their definitions of 'narrative' and 'analytical' to make sure they really understood the difference.

Narrative -- Telling a story
Analytical -- Arguing something

These are not, I admit, the best historiographical definitions, but they were a starting point for a fruitful discussion with my students about the nature of an analytical essay and the difference between arguing something and merely asserting it to be true.

Although I cannot conclusively state that the experiment was a success until the first essays are marked (in two weeks time), I am cautiously hopeful that it will make some difference to their understanding of the marking process.

I can also say that for affordability, versatility and ease of use, I cannot recommend A.nnotate highly enough.

Teaching v. Learning, The Eternal Struggle

2011-10-27T14:21:00.000+01:00

As week four of the first term concludes, I am left pondering the effect that my various teaching and learning practices have had on my students and on myself. I often struggle, as most lecturers do, with the idea that some of my students simply do not wish to be at university (or at least in my module) and nothing I do will affect their learning over the next twenty weeks. This year, thankfully, I am genuinely impressed by the level of dedication my students have shown. On the other hand, do all my tricks and tips actually help the learning process for my students? Do they even help the teaching process? Is it all just a lot of self-indulgent rubbish?

Case 1: X Marks the Spot in the Library

Last month, I spoke about a small-scale project I undertook with my students last year, in which they had to follow a trail of footnotes throughout the university library in order to obtain the answer to a set question.This year, the programme was rolled out to the entire cohort. The results were pretty clear cut.

The module is team taught, and I personally tutor about 40% of the students. I explained the project to them, assigned them pairs and sent them on their way. Over the course of the next week, I received four or five emails regarding the exercise, asking for assistance in obtaining certain sources or (politely) complaining that the activity could not be completed.

At our next meeting, students declared whether or not they had solved the question. In all four groups, at half of the students had successfully answered the questions and presented a completed bibliography for me to adjudicate. Overall, I was very much impressed by the accuracy of their bibliographies, although there were some minor errors, which I mentioned to them immediately.

The crucial part of the exercise, for me, was the final discussion. I asked my students where they had become stuck or, if they had completed the exercise, at which stage they had had the most trouble. As with last year's cohort, the primary stumbling blocks were

Locating mis-shelved monographs
Obtaining articles from hard copy or non-JSTOR electronic journals
Understanding how to obtain full bibliographic information from short footnote entries
Deciding when to use hard copy or electronic versions of a source

As I included two new treasure hunts this year, a new problem also presented itself. One footnote required students to look at a particular volume of a multi-volume series. Several pairs assumed that I wanted them to look at volume one, rather than the volume with the subtitle listed in the footnote.

I then asked if they felt the exercise had been worth while, or whether they had felt it to be busy-work. There was unanimous agreement that that it had been challenging, even frustrating, but absolutely worth their time and energy. Several students admitted that they had had no idea how to approach research in the university library before completing the exercise, and some had not even visited the library beforehand.

These, of course, were the reactions of my students. Having written the treasure hunts myself, I was able to gently guide them when they became stuck and verify where exactly in the library they would need to go. My colleagues, who also administered the exercise to their groups, were not able to do this. As a result, many of their students became frustrated with the hunt and declared the aim unachievable.

Moreover, rather than giving the bibliographies a cursory glance during the seminar, as a form of tie-breaker, my colleagues had had the students email their responses beforehand (or, more realistically, several days late). This placed much more emphasis on the bibliography writing stage of the exercise rather than the exploration of the university library. As a result, the 'fun' element was dampened and the exercise may have felt to drag on over multiple weeks as the answers trickled into the tutor's mailbox.

Although there is an element of serendipity with group dynamics, I would suggest that, in future years, more attention be placed on the 'learning' aspect of the exercise in all groups, and far less on the 'assessment' or 'judging' aspect.

Case 2: Example(ry) Essays in First year

This spring, I discussed the idea of using model essays with a number of colleagues at the What do History Students Want conference, held at the University of Loughborough. Proposed initially as a thought-experiment, with no empirical evidence to present, the concept of a student-annotated model essay seemed appealing to several listeners. Indeed, one of my colleagues has already integrated the exercise into his modules and achieved surprisingly high student engagement. By the time I began my own teaching, he had already deemed the project a success.

Bolstered by this good news, I too offered my students a chance to mark a model essay, annotating it with their own comments and queries. Crucially, the web programme I used was sheltered, via a long, non-intuitive web address, but did not require a log-in. This facilitated ease-of-access and also allowed students to remain anonymous for what they often felt were 'stupid questions'.

After a somewhat slow start (owing to a incomplete mass-mailing to students) they were off and running. The comments have become increasingly insightful (and demanding of the author) as each new reader adds his or her thoughts. Indeed, an electronic dialogue seems to have developed without any direction from myself. For example, one student, upon reading the somewhat prosaic introduction commented:

Give a direct answer to the question, set the scene later.

Blunt, but fair. Another followed up this comment with:

Agreed - use terms of question straight away e.g. their definition of Amerian exceptionalism. Also are they looking at art or literature?

Finally, a third student offered this balanced critique:

The Introduction answers the question by claiming at the end that American exceptionalism saturated literature and art. However, the introduction offers much in the way of contextual information but very little detail as to the broad ideas of how and why exceptionalism influencenced art and literature. It does give the reader any idea of what structure and argument the essay will present.

What is particularly interesting about these comments is that they demonstrate an understanding of essay construction that is rarely brought to fruition in first-year essays. By reading an introduction that offered only a minimalist answer to the set question, they have realised the error in simply offering 'context' and applaud its efforts to provide an indication of structure as well. Moreover, by collaborating with each other as to the 'correct' way to write an introduction, the students have created, independently, a set of writing values that will help their acculturation into university-level academic writing.

Case 3: Build-your-own bibliography

My third learning initiative was a student-built annotated bibliography. The idea behind this learning activity was to encourage students to become active researchers rather than passive readers for each and every seminar discussion. In previous years, I have had students develop a reading journal, but found this ineffective for a number of reasons:

Students felt they took a great deal of time to complete each week, which would be better spent researching essays or completing other preparatory work.
They were only read by me and therefore often reflected a desire to demonstrate that they had obtained the 'correct' answer rather than offer an exploration of the text.
From my perspective, it took a great deal of time to mark and give feedback on weekly submissions and, considering their content, the value of this feedback was not clear.

Rather than leap head first into reading blogs, which have a wider audience but can be extremely daunting to first year students, I offered the student-annotated bibliography as a gentler middle-ground.

Each week, students complete 2-3 required readings on a given topic. They are then asked to obtain a 3rd or 4th reading on a similar topic from the university library. During the first few weeks I offered additional aids such as suggested keywords and shelf numbers. They then answered, in less than two sentences each, the following questions:

Full citation
What is the argument?
What is the evidence used?
Is the work convincing?

Ideally, these three questions should only take students a few minutes to complete and on-line submission allows for the work to be completed at any time during the day.

After removing the students names, I can quickly compile the list into an annotated bibliography for students to use in their essay research. By pulling their efforts, they can explore a much wider range of reading as well as obtain more information about stray comments from their peers in class. Although these are still un-assessed pieces of work, website controls allow me to restrict viewing to those students who have completed the assignment for any given week, offering a potential carrot for timely and consistent completion.

After 4 weeks, I am very much impressed by the general quality of their submissions, especially as many are first-year students with little practice in written critiques. Moreover, with only very minor exceptions, they have consistently pursued a wide range of scholarly literature and in only one case used a non-peer reviewed source. Although this project's success will ultimately be decided by its impact on future research and writing projects, early indications are very promising.

Conclusions

So, after four weeks of teaching, how convinced am I that my students are learning as much as I am teaching? Although seminar silences are still prevalent and glazed eyes do occasionally stare back at me during lectures, I find myself increasingly convinced that my students are taking an active role in their learning. Although all three of these activities were un-assessed, I have had at least 98% of students fully complete the exercises, and all with surprising diligence. I am much more convinced of their ability and comprehension in week four than I have been in any other academic year and I am increasingly convinced that better assessment of learning needs to be implemented to replace the omni-present essay / exam regime.

They may not be memorising everything I say in lecture, but I am certain learning is occurring week-to-week.

Walking the Line, part 2: Authority

2011-10-20T07:00:00.000+01:00

When I began working as a postgraduate tutor (graduate teaching assistant or TA to my international colleagues) I was terrified that I would lack that intrinsic authority that all my professors had appeared to have so effortlessly. My undergraduate advisor was a woman who exuded confidence and my MA supervisor spoke at least ten languages and taught modules on everything from Reformation Europe to the Pirates of the Caribbean. How could I hope to compete?

I muddled through on a mix of awkward rambling (confusion tactics), approachability (lulling them into a false sense of security) and authoritarian marking (fear). It seemed to work, but I couldn't help but feel a bit of a imposter. I hoped that acquiring my PhD, and that all-important prefix of Dr, would imbue in me that sense of authority I was certain I lacked. As I stood before my first lecture I could not help but think that the Emperor knew full well he was naked.

I have often spoke to postgraduate tutors about authority in seminar teaching. I was not remotely alone in my (unwarranted) feelings in inadequacy. I knew far more about these topics than any of my students, by virtue of osmosis* if nothing else. Moreover, university students have been conditioned from a very young age to respect authority figures but virtue of their office, not their age or credentials. I knew that I could speak for 45-50 minutes on a topic, and my students would sit, quietly, attempting to absorb any new information I presented. It was pretty unlikely that fruit would be thrown or heckling commence.

So, when I speak of authority in my role as teaching fellow, I do not mean obtaining that base level of polite attention we expect to receive when speaking to any audience. I want my students to listen to what I say and think 'I get it.'

It would be nice if they occasionally thought 'wow' as well, but maybe that will come later.

In illustration of this theory of authority I present two anecdotes for you contemplation and commentary:

I am currently presenting the second lecture of my new module, The Atlantic World, 1492-1815. Last week, I discussed the ebbs and flows of Atlantic World Historiography and the ways in which historians can look at Atlantic History. It was a theoretical lecture without many names or dates to take down. This week I covered the state of the four continents in the mid- to late-fifteenth century, presented a basic chronology of European exploration and discovery, and discussed the myths and legends surround Columbus and how they have affected our view of the Atlantic World (and our starting date of 1492). About half way through 90% of my students stopped taking notes. They closed their laptops, put down their pens and started staring at me.

Were they enthralled? Confused? Bored? Did my lecture lack detail? Were the facts presented too similar to those they learned in previous modules or the reading they had done? I have never believed that lectures should be text-book replacements, but without a long list of names and dates for them furiously scribble down, my own sense of authority was shaken. What, if anything, were they getting from my lecture?

I am riding down in the elevator from own of my seminar sessions and I eavesdrop on the conversation of three non-history students discussing their modules.They complain that the lectures and seminars are worthless. They describe their lectures as 'irrelevant' and 'narrative' and complain that they discuss exactly the same ideas in seminars that they had heard in lecture; they don't learn anything new.

From what I can gather, they were describe the sort of lecture I had tried to avoid, one that provided students with a set of facts to learn. Indeed, they complained that they lecturer had given them only raw, narrative details and then prohibited their essays for following the same format. As for seminars, I had hoped that my lecture would provide a wide context and that the students would debate the details in their small group discussions. But, if I am not providing details, if I am not providing the raw knowledge, do I possess authority? If I do provide those details, but demand analysis and conceptional thinking in the assessment, will my students feel lost and unsupported?

My adventures in teaching fellowship continue next week with: Teaching v. Learning, The Eternal Struggle

*to my biology friends: I know that osmosis only refers to water through a membrane, not knowledge into a brain. But diffusion just doesn't sound as good, and you know it.

Walking the Line, part 1.5: Exhaustion

2011-10-14T18:03:00.000+01:00

Yesterday's post was meant to explore the role of authority in HE teaching. As you may have noticed, there was no post yesterday. This is due to exhaustion.

I love teaching, and I am very fortunate that I am teaching subjects and themes that complement my current research. Not all teaching fellows are as lucky as I am. Nonetheless, when it came to putting pen to paper, or rather, fingertips to keyboard, on Wednesday night, I found that I simply did not have the energy.

This week was my first full week of teaching. I

Led 13 seminar groups of 12 students each
Delivered 2 lectures on new topics
Wrote 2 (additional) lectures on new topics
Worked through mountains of administrative paperwork

This was in addition to:

Continuing preparation for my upcoming workshop on Network Science in Historical Research
Completing 2 funding / fellowship applications
Meeting with the departmental post-doctoral reading group
Continuing my current research project
Continuing to write up my previous research project, and
Having my departmental photograph taken

Not to mention little things such as eating, sleeping and acknowledging my family and friends still exist.

As I sit here, rest and recovery finally in reach, I have come to the conclusion that no matter how much preparation you think you have done in the preceding weeks or months, something will always throw you for a loop during that first week. Yet, despite the utter, crushing exhaustion, this week has taught me several important things about surviving (hopefully thriving) as a teaching fellow.

You will have to reorganise seminar groups for at least 30% of your students over the course of the first week. Using the word 'final' at any stage is merely tempting fate.
At least 50% of your down time will be spent in administration, so its best to schedule this explicitly into your schedule. Optimistically earmarking off-hours as 'research' will only depress you when they are spent reorganising seminar groups for the 6th time.
Just because a room fits 10 chairs does not mean it will comfortably fit 10 people.
The one student who admits that your module was not (remotely) her first choice will not devastate your self-esteem.
You should never take your departmental photograph after 6 hours of teaching.
If the seminar discussion (or lecture) has naturally concluded, letting your students leave 5-10 minutes early is not a failure.
If you mistakenly ask questions relating to next week's reading material, your students probably won't correct you.
There is always at least one name on the roster you have no hope of pronouncing correctly.
Students expect you to hold the power in seminar discussion. You do not need to demand it and you probably won't be able to relinquish it.
Permanent and research staff genuinely do appreciate your efforts and will sympathise with your exhaustion.

Next week, Walking the Line, part 2: Authority.

Walking the Line, part 1: Humility

2011-10-06T07:54:00.000+01:00

Each year, as I make my final preparations for teaching, I reflect upon the fine line I must walk over the next nine months. As a junior member of staff, as an immigrant (gasp!), as a woman, as a 20-something, as a chatterbox, and as a human being navigating a sea of new faces and ever-changing expectations and rules, I find that this line has become no less difficult to travel. One the one hand is authority, the desire to express my competence and my right to be at the front of the room. On the other is humility, the little voice that reminds me what it was like to be a first-year student and how absolutely terrifying that first week really is.

This week, I have tried my best to focus on the latter. Rather than assert my professional gravitas with incoming students, I attempted to make myself as approachable as possible. I arrive early in order to chat with the first arrivals in the hallway and offer self-deprecating stories of my own lack of navigational prowess. After three years, I still do occasionally manage to get lost on my own campus. This approach is aided tremendously by the fact that I am still often assumed to be an undergraduate myself. Whether this is because I actually look 20 years old (doubtful) or my years of study have simply imprinted a permanent 'student aura' upon me is irrelevant. What matters is that I am, hopefully, able to establish a collegiate relationship with my students before ingrained teacher-pupil protocols kick in.

The other, perhaps more important, method for keeping myself humble it to re-read my own first- and second- year essays. I graduated Summa cum Laude as an undergraduate. I earned a Distinction for my MA dissertation and continued straight into my PhD, which I completed in three years. I was a very keen student. But this does not mean that I did not write some truly horrific papers. The following is an extract from one from the beginning of my second year:

Besides social curiosity and patronage to finance scientific discovery, political and military consideration were also taken into account in the burgeoning age of science. The most obvious example of this was in the field of cartography. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were great times of regular travel for Europeans, both eastward to the Spice Islands and westward to the Americas (135). Although trade routes had already been established, unreliable information on locations led crews to take extraordinary detours to reach their final destinations. In voyages that were already guaranteed to be months long, accurate and time saving maps could be the deciding factor of who would reach, the therefore control, a richly deposited locale first. It is therefore not surprising that European governments offered great rewards for those who could accurately and consistently calculate longitude (14). Latitude having been properly established by the astrolabe and cross-staff (134), longitude was still needed in order to properly assess location. After agreeing that a celestial event would could be observed at different longitudes at proportional times (136), an eclipse seen in France could be seen in Canada some hours later, a variety of methods were used. Notable of these was the French method of using the eclipsing moons of Jupiter, or Medicean stars (136). For methods such as these to be accurate, several other fields had to be vastly improved. Clocks that would keep consistent time far from home were necessary to describe to the time change (136). Pendulum clocks, which required prestigious care (149) and often lost time around the equator, gave way to spring balance clocks. Portable but powerful telescopes were also necessary. Huge observatory telescopes became increasingly compact for easy storage and setup on sailing vessels. Therefore, the simple economic need to have reliable sea and star maps led to the birth of modern cartography, which in turn required the growth of chronography and optics fields.

Yes, I used parentheses instead of footnotes. Yes, I only used one source for that entire paragraph. Yes, the grammar and syntax are extremely poor. All I can say is:

Dr Amy Froide, if ever you should read this, please know,
I am very, very sorry.

Thus humbled, I am ready to begin the year anew.

X Marks the Spot (in the University Library)

2011-09-29T07:51:00.001+01:00

Passing by College Ready Writing last week, I was suddenly reminded of one more bit of pre-term homework: devising a set of new footnote treasure hunts.

Like Dr Skallerup, and many many others, I have often struggled to help my students gain confidence in using the university library. If an essay question could not be answered through a simple search on JSTOR or Google, many (though by no means all) of my first year students became frustrated and oddly creative in their search for bibliography entries. Year after year, I was presented with three-item bibliographies, two of which were from the 1920s and wholly inappropriately for use as secondary sources.

Last year, inspired by The Great History Conundrum, a wonderful games-based skills programme at the University of Leicester, I devised a footnote treasure hunt for my students to complete during the first week of term.

At the end of the first seminar, I separated my students into pairs and gave them the following handout:

For next week's seminar, you and your partner will need to answer the following question:

One gentleman wrote to another on 29 August 1791. How did the recipient die?

In order to answer this question you will need to follow the trail of footnotes below. First, find The British in the Americas in the university library and examine footnote 7 on page 88. This will lead you to another source. In that source, turn to page 206 and examine footnote 6. Continue until you find the source listed in step 9. From there you should be able to answer the question above.

In addition to answering the question, you should present, at the start of next week's seminar, a list of all the sources in standard bibliography format. Formatting guidelines can be found in the History Student Handbook. Whichever team gets closest to answering the question will be awarded a small prize. In the event of a tie, whoever has the best formatted bibliography will be declared the winner.

All sources have multiple copies available. Do not check out any of the sources listed. If all copies are checked out during Week 2/3 the competition will be cancelled.

A. McFarlane, The British in the Americas, 1480-1815 (London, 1994), 88 n.7.
Page 206 n.6
Page 751 n.2
Page 404 n.12
This author wrote another book with a similar name 14 years later.
The first source listed under the Suggested Reading for Chapter 5
Page 155 n.1
Page 8 n.14
Page 63 n. 19

The goal of the exercise was to introduce students to the various parts of the library, including the collapsible stacks of hard-copy journals, as well as the process of examining the footnotes of general narratives in order to find more detailed works. The second half of the exercise simply offered them practice with (and feedback on) formatting a bibliography. The exercise took me approximately 1 hour to create.

95% of the groups were able to follow the trail to #9 and about 80% managed to answer the question correctly.

When I asked why they thought I made them do the exercise, they felt that it provided them with

A familiarity with the library
The ability to use the collapsible stacks "without getting squashed"
A familiarity with the online catalogue. The 5% who failed to get to #9 did not know how to search for journal articles in the library catalogue.
An understanding of how to use footnotes. The 20% who failed to answer the question did not know how to find the full citation when only a short citation was given.

Although “the ability to create a bibliography” was not given by students, the tie-breaking exercise impressed upon most of them the importance of it.

None of the students complained about their pairings, though one seminar group did abandon the pretence of pairs entirely and worked together as a group of 12. There was only one case of a book going missing but, as it was merely misshelved, this was quickly rectified.

So successful was the exercise, I have been asked by my head of department to create additional versions of the hunt and to administer it more widely. Thus, I am off to the library to devise this year's set of maps. Although I cannot, for obvious reasons, share the answers to my maps online, I am happy to forward them to any interested individuals via email.

The prize, in case you are wondering, was a mini-Cadbury chocolate. When I didn't offer another competition the following week, several students complained.

Panic is Not an Option, or, How to Write a Lecture

2011-09-22T10:04:00.000+01:00

Over the past six years I have been teaching on an hourly-based contract. My 'day-job' has varied over the years (mainly being a PhD student and then acting as an educational developer for the History Subject Centre). 'My night and weekend job' was generally researching or writing up research for scholarly publication. This year, I am breaking new ground by undertaking a full-time teaching position. While I greatly enjoying teaching (and am extremely pleased to be able to devote more of my time to it), I find myself in a very strange situation, teaching full-time in a 'research university'. Over the next twelve weeks, I will be chronicling my 'Adventures in Teaching Fellowship' and exploring, not only my own transition, but also that strange creature know as the teaching fellow.

In many ways, I have started out this fellowship with some distinct advantages. Unlike many of my fellow fellows, I had nearly six months notice of my position and a significant amount of freedom in designing and redesigning the modules I was asked to teach. Although my employment (and pay check) had not yet commenced, I could take the time to really think about how I wanted to organise my teaching. Time can be a dangerous thing.

Over the past three months I have been obsessing over creating the perfect lectures for my module on the Atlantic World. Because the module has not been offered in several years, I was able to radically restructure the lecture and seminar programmes to suit my own strengths and interests. Suddenly, years of smouldering angst over that age-old dilemma (chronological v. thematic) came to the fore. Now was my chance to structure a module the way I always knew it should be. I sat down, loaded PowerPoint, and suddenly, quite unexpectedly, my mind drew an utter and terrifying blank. I panicked.

It was not that I did not know the material I needed to present. I have been immersed in Atlantic World historiography since I was an undergraduate. I simply had too many ideas and no way of determining the correct course of action. I was, in all honesty, paralysed with indecision. But, at least, I thought, I have four months until my first lecture. I am sure it will all turn out for the best.

Three months later I was not much closer. I had created a programme and developed reading lists to accompany it. Indeed, I had spent much of the summer re-reading these books and articles in search of inspiration. But I was no closer to a set of completed lectures.

I gave up, and it was probably the right decision.

I did not give up permanently, mind you. I simply needed a moment (a week or two) to relax and then to make some tough decisions. In the end, I came up with five lecture writing rules. They may not work for everyone. In fact, they probably won't. But they work for me and for what I want my students to achieve over the year.

Lectures are not textbook replacements. A complete chronology is available in the textbook and it is the students' responsibility to familiarise themselves with it before the lecture.
Having my students leave with three or four fully-explored concepts is better than leaving with a comprehensive list names and dates.
If I want my students to think, rather than merely transcribe, my lectures should offer spaces for individual reflection.
Just became the module is comparative does not mean that I need to discuss every single nation or ethnic group every single week.
I am allowed 7 hours to create a lecture and not a minute more.

So, with these five simple rules firmly established, will I succeed? Only time will tell.

The Morality of WriteCheck, or Why do we bother with door locks?

2011-09-13T09:31:00.000+01:00

Out of the corner of my eye, or rather the corner of my screen, I saw numerous tweets, re-tweets and commentaries on plagiarism this week, namely on how students are circumventing 'the system'.

The fact that students were avoiding detection by programmes such as TurnItIn did not come as a surprise to me. I have, on several occasions, found students taking lengthy, direct quotations from Wikipedia that were not flagged up by the system. I don't mind. I consider it a bit of due diligence on my part to scan the most obvious Wikipedia articles right before the submission date in order to familiarise myself with the basic structure and level of detail it offers. I have a very good memory for phrasing so I usually spot this sort of low-level plagiarism easily. I also routinely type the essay questions into Google and Yahoo! to review the three or four most popular sites. This, of course, only catchiest the laziest (or most clueless) of plagiarising students, but these are probably the ones I want to catch most. If you can't even be bothered to go beyond the first hit on Google to plagiarise, you deserve to be caught, and caught quickly.

What about those students who are more aggressive in their plagiarism? The ones who use Cyrillic fonts or HTML tags? TurnItIn probably won't catch them. But that's okay. TurnItIn is a tool, not a replacement for common sense.

There are numerous ways that I spot plagiarism. Wait, you say. Don't list them! Your students will know your secrets. Nonsense. I don't mind explaining them here because they are common sense and any half-way intelligent cheat is going to know them already.

Does the font, size, colour, spacing, indention or any other formatting suddenly change in the text?
Does the tone, vocabulary, phrasing or line of argument suddenly change?
Does the formatting of references change?
Is the referencing very consistent but wholly incorrect for use in your university / department?
Does the turn of phrase sound very familiar (might it be from the core textbook)?
Is the choice of synonyms consistently wrong (or ludicrously funny)?

Again, like using the four first Google suggestions, this is very low-level plagiarism and will almost always get caught by any marker with a modicum of common sense.

But then, I came across this article. Many lecturers were upset to find that the company that provided the TurnItIn software was also marketing a way to 'cheat' the system directly to students. WriteCheck. For a nominal fee, student can upload their document to the server and it will highlight all instances of possible plagiarism (as dictated by the same database used by TurnItIn). Scandalous. Students will see exactly what they need to change (and what they can leave) in order to sneak that plagiarism by you. This doesn't worry me at all. As I explained earlier this summer, I encourage my students to submit drafts to the TurnItIn software as a way of reinforcing proper referencing and paraphrasing technique. If they want to spend $6.95 to do it again, that's fine by me.

So, am I just not taking the whole 'plagiarism thing' seriously? Of course not. Plagiarism is a horrible blight on academic, journalistic and artistic discourse. It should be vigorously countered whenever possible and appropriately punished. At my undergraduate university, any instance of proven plagiarism resulted in automatic failure of the module, and additional counts led to expulsion from the university. This is a policy with which I fully agree. But if we as lecturers rely on some magic machine to point out plagiarism to us, we are behaving just as badly as the students we are trying to catch.

I do use TurnItIn in the first instance to weed out the lazy or ludicrously poor plagiarisers. It saves me the time and energy of typing obviously plagiarised sections into Google or JSTOR myself. But I also read the essays before I look at the TurnItIn report and pay close attention to their style and content. Even in a world without plagiarism, I am reading these essays to help students develop arguments and use evidence effectively. If an argument or a bit of rhetoric suddenly takes a left turn, I should notice it whether it is plagiarism or simply poor editing.

As for my title, think of student essays as your front door. You can buy an alarm system, or those lights that turn on in response to noise or one of those super-heavy-duty deadbolts. But if a professional and skilled burglar wants to steal your TV, your TV is getting stolen. If a student really wants to cheat on their essays, they will find a way, and they may very well get away with it.

But we should not get so obsessed with plagiarism that simply passing TurnItIn is sufficient to pass a module. I've failed plenty of essays without one word of plagiarism and I've helped several students with bad paraphrasing skills go on to become excellent researchers.

Managing Student Expectations: Etiquette and Examples

2011-09-08T10:54:00.000+01:00

Further my previous post, I have developed an initial guide for my students as to my expectations (and responsibilities) for my upcoming module. The aim of this document was to provide a written record of my expectations for students and what I believe will help them achieve a high mark (and level of understanding). Comments and queries are very welcome.

INDEPENDENT STUDY
Independent reading in The Atlantic World, 1491-1815 is the student's primary opportunity to obtain factual information and explore key historiographical debates. However, students should not expect that individual readings will provide answers to either the essay or exam questions. Instead, students should consider the connections and contradictions between different readings. For example, does the argument of one article contradict the evidence of another? or, Does the evidence used in one argument support the argument of another article as well?

NUMBER OF READINGS
Although each week will list 2-4 required texts, students should understand that there is no ideal number of readings on any given topic. Students should explore as many texts as they feel they need to understand and discuss the topic. Failure to read the required texts, however, will prevent students from having common ground during seminars and make these sessions far less helpful. The tutor will not provide summaries of the required texts during seminar sessions.

NOTE-TAKING
Students should take notes from reading to suit their own learning preferences. However, students should always note the full bibliographic reference as well as make it clear whether they are quoting or paraphrasing the text. Failure to do this may result in the student unintentionally plagiarising their reading in their assessed work.

LECTURES
Lectures in The Atlantic World, 1491-1815 are opportunities for students to expand their perspectives on key themes through comparative analysis. Student should not expect attendance at lectures to replace required or supplementary reading on these themes. Instead, students should use lecture materials to place their readings into a wider context and to suggest additional possibilities for independent study.

PREPARATION
Prior to attending the weekly lecture, students should read the relevant textbook chapter, listed on the module website at http://go.warwick.ac.uk/am214/timetable. As lectures will not necessarily provide a complete narrative of historical events, students should familiarise themselves with the chronology of the period prior to attendance.

ONLINE RESOURCES
24 hours prior to the lecture, a PowerPoint presentation file will be made available on the module website at http://go.warwick.ac.uk/am214/timetable.

24 hours after the lecture, an audio recording of the lecture will be made available on the same page.

Students with questions regarding the lecture should ‘tweet’ the module Twitter account (@Warwick_AM214) for clarification. The lecturer will address all points within 48 hours via Twitter as well as create a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), to be posted alongside the PowerPoint and Podcast of the lecture.

Students wishing to address the peers’ questions may do so, but should ‘Reply’ rather than send a ‘Direct (private) Message’ so that the lecturer is aware the question has been answered.

NOTE-TAKING
As the majority of factual information will be made available through the textbook and PowerPoint materials, and may be accessed at any time before or after the lecture, students should consider taking reflective notes during the lectures. For example, rather transcribe the definitions of ‘suzerainty’ and ‘sovereignty’, students may wish to note down how these definitions relate to their reading and notes from previous weeks or what they should look for in their future research. For example:

Suzerainty – such as de Gama’s scouting for trading posts and ports for resupplying ships

Students are then encouraged to consolidate their notes from lectures and independent reading to help cement their understanding. For example:

PowerPoint:
Suzerainty – The relationship between two individuals or groups, in which one offers protection or support in return for political loyalty or tribute in goods or services. The ‘weaker’ individual or group retains some autonomy and the ‘stronger’ does not have to expend the same level of resources to maintain control.

Lecture:
Suzerainty – de Gama’s scouting for trading posts and ports for resupplying ships

Reading:
“The small kingdom of Portugal, with a population of 1 million in 1500, quickly established a far-flung network of trading factories beyond Africa and India.”

Consolidated notes (for use in exam preparation):
Portugal’s expansion in the Atlantic, and into the Indian Ocean, was an example of suzerainty rather than sovereignty. It developed a very large trading network, which created a large amount of wealth, without having to militarise its relatively small population to physically conquer and control these same territories.

SEMINAR DISCUSSION
Seminar discussion in The Atlantic World, 1491-1815 allows students to confirm their understanding of the factual information presented in lectures and readings, as well as debate the interpretation of this information with their peers and tutor. Students should not expect to obtain any new factual information from the tutor during these sessions. Instead, students should come to seminars prepared to explain their own interpretation of the reading material, as well as any questions they have regarding specific evidence or arguments.

The aim of the seminar is not to collect a large amount of new information, but to refine and organise the information students already possess.

PREPARATION
In order to prepare for seminars, students should complete the required reading listed at http://go.warwick.ac.uk/am214/timetable and prepare consolidated notes from the reading and lectures. Each seminar page has a list of preparation questions that may help in the creation of consolidated notes.
Students should also obtain a further piece of reading and complete the historiography worksheet (see http://go.warwick.ac.uk/am214/seminarhelp/#freechoice for details).

ETIQUETTE
The tutor does not expect students to perform or demonstrate their memorisation of factual information during seminars. Instead, the tutor will act as a facilitator in a discussion between students regarding their interpretations of historical events and processes. During the first seminar, the tutor will work with the group to establish rules of etiquette that will help everyone participate and enjoy these discussions. These will include:

Who, if anyone, should lead the discussion each week? The tutor? A different student each week?
Who will decide which topics will be discussed? The discussion leader? The tutor? The group?
Who will decide when to move onto the next topic?
How should someone indicate they wish to speak? Raise their hand? Facial expressions?
Who should pass the conversation onto the next person? The person currently speaking? The discussion leader?

NOTE-TAKING
Seminars are opportunities for discussion rather than information gathering. Therefore, note-taking should be very limited, such as quickly noting new authors or pieces of evidence offered by peers. Students may decide, as a group, to allocate time for reflective writing during the seminar in order to consolidate thoughts raised from the discussion.

ELECTRONIC DEVICES
As a courtesy to peers, electronic devices such as mobile phones, tablets and laptops should be turned off and put away during the discussion. During collaborative work, note-taking devices may be used.

ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION

TWITTER
If you have a short, general comment or query, such as a broken link or directions to an electronic resource, you may ‘tweet’ the module account (@Warwick_AM214). Tweets will normally be answered within 2-4 hours, between 9am and 4pm, Monday through Friday.

Students should feel free to use the hashtag #AM214 to discuss the module, share resources and answer each other’s general queries.

EMAIL
Emails (m.beals@warwick.ac.uk) should be sent from your university email account and clearly labelled with the following subject heading:

Module Code – Group Number – Full name – Subject of email

such as

AM214 – Group 3 – John Doe – Broken Link on Seminar Reading List

I use email ‘rules’ to automatically filter my inbox to ensure that I answer student queries as soon as possible. If you format your subject as above, I will endeavour to answer your query within 24 hours, Monday to Friday, or during my next scheduled office hour, whichever is sooner. If you fail to use the correct subject heading, or use a non-university email address, your email may not be answered in a timely manner or may be mistakenly deleted as SPAM but the university filters.

During term, emails will only be answered between 9-5, Monday to Friday. Queries regarding the module during term break will generally be answered within 2-4 days. As an active researcher, I may be undertaking research out of the country during term breaks and may have limited access to email during these times. An out-of-office message will inform you if you can expect a delay of more than 2-4 days.

OFFICE HOURS

OFFICE
Each week, I will hold two office-hour sessions, Tuesday 1-2 and Thursday 2-3. You may drop by my office (Humanities H0.25) during these hours without an appointment to discuss any issues you are having with the module or to seek additional help with your assessed work. You may alternatively email me to set up an appointment for another time and day.

PHONE
During regular office hours, you may call me at 02476 151050 with any queries.

SKYPE
During regular office hours, you may use instant messaging or voice chat to contact me on Skype. My username is DrMelodeeBeals.

Managing Student Expectations of First Year

2011-09-06T12:09:00.001+01:00

As we approach (or dive into) another new year, I have been thinking about my role as a teaching fellow. This year, I have been given the task (and opportunity) of teaching a large number of the first year modules for the University of Warwick's School of Comparative American Studies. Recently ranked #1 in the UK, there is a weight of responsibility on my shoulders to live up to the expectations of incoming students.

This week, I will be putting together a new 'code of conduct' for my students, and myself, which I hope will help manage expectations and provide a smooth and enjoyable transition for my students. Before I begin, however, I thought it wise took look back at my own 2009 study of first year transition:

Choice
First year students were asked a number of questions about their choice of course. First, they were offered the open-endedquestion Why did you choose this course? This was interpreted by students to include both Why are you studying history? and Why are you studying at this University?

Respondents were highly individualistic in their responses to this question, but fourmajor themes developed, which were apparent in both international and home student groups:

educational background – the majority of students had chosen their degree programme primarily because they hadgreatly enjoyed studying the subject in the past or had achieved high marks in history in secondary school and thereforefelt confident in this subject.
reputation – a fifth of students indicated that they had heard positive things about the university, department or city;reputation was noted more often by home students under 26 than mature or international students.
course structure – the majority of those discussing structure appreciated the variety of module themes, teaching stylesand assessment models available within their course. A smaller number of students praised the opposite—that the coursefocused precisely on the period, theme or methodology they wished to undertake. Demographically, home students, femalestudents and those under 26 were slightly more likely to appreciate variety.The affinity of the first and third groups may bethe result of increased specialisation and modular teaching in UK secondary schools.
employability – nearly a third of respondents, both home and international, indicated that their choice was influenced byfuture employment prospects. Just under half of these students had already chosen a specific career goal (historical research,military, politics or teaching) that they felt necessitated a history degree. The remainder noted that history offered transferableskills, a variety of employment prospects and a more complex view of the world, which would assist them throughout their life.

Format
Entering university, most students were aware of the structural division between lectures and seminars—though thisknowledge may be the result of orientation and initial classes. Particular emphasis, however, was placed on the expectedprominence of peer discussion groups.This suggests that students believed that the majority of their university experiencewould be seminar based.This was in contrast to a smaller number of students who expected that university would involvesignificantly reduced contact with staff and a majority of their time being spent in independent study.

Nonetheless, in contrast to their UK counterparts, international students made few references to teaching format. Instead,their expectations focused on the importance of independent study and the opportunity to learn about history in a moredetailed and in-depth manner. Although many home students also spoke about independent study, this disparity betweenexpectations of teaching and learning may warrant further enquiry.

Difficulty
Across demographic lines, there appears to be general belief that higher education would be more difficult than secondaryschool. How students perceived this increase, however, varied considerably. Some respondents answered simply that thecourse would be more difficult. Others choose to frame the change more positively, utilizing terms such as challenging,intensive, professional and academic and fulfilling.This suggests that students were aware that expectations would be morestringent, but that this increase was usually welcomed.

It was also believed that this increase in standards would be as much the result of peer expectations as those of the staff.One international student felt that “everyone will care about the subject” and will therefore demand more of each other.Likewise, a home student noted that there will be “a genuine enjoyment of the subject” and you would not “be draggingyour heels on the way to your next lesson.”

As a sub-category of increased difficulty, there was a significant use of the term spoon-feeding by respondents. Most believedthat university would be a departure from the perceived tendency of secondary schools to teach for the test. Importantly,home students were more likely to use the term spoon-feeding than simply describe the phenomenon, although onestudent raised in Hong Kong also used the expression.This strongly suggests that British media portrayals have significantlyaffected perceptions of secondary education and expectations of university teaching. One home student explicated notedthat his expectations had come from media portrayals. “I’m the first member of my entire family that’s actually went intouniversity, so I honestly had no clue what it would be like, so I was quite reliant actually on the media and films and TV andstuff. I didn’t really have any other kind of thing to go on.”

With these point in mind, I dive into the task at hand. I will post the results this Thursday and hope you will offer your insights and suggests on my efforts.

Should any of my future students be hiding in the shadows, let your voice be heard. I am doing this for you!

Explaining Seminars

2011-09-01T09:30:00.000+01:00

Over the past few posts, I have been pondering the rewards of student discussion and whether or not my current teaching style makes these both clear and attainable. As a researcher, I find that scholarly discussion can be extremely rewarding because it allows for immediate feedback, as well as immediate revision, to produce a more coherent and sophisticated argument. I take this view of scholarly discussion because of piece of advice given to me by one of my favourite undergraduate professors.

When he asked (or shall I say, cornered) me during a seminar for my opinion on Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, I found myself at a loss for words. I had read the required reading, and I believed that I had understood its contents, but when push came to shove I could not express my opinion in the seminar environment. I managed something along the lines of "I know it, but I don't know how to say it." Dr Lucas, marvellous teacher that he was, did not let me get away with this. He calmly responded "If you can't express it, then you don't really understand it."

I've taken that bit of advice to heart over the past ten years, and tried to pass on his words of wisdom. Yet, I remember all too well how most of my classmates reacted to his advice. They were annoyed, frustrated and several dropped the course in the first few weeks. They felt they were being picked on because they had not immediately given the correct answer.

Years later, I have become increasingly interested in how my own students perceive seminar discussion; what sort of language they use, how the present themselves when speaking and how they reflect upon seminars in their end-of-year feedback forms. I have noticed the following speaking strategies:

All the world's a show - Many students believe seminars are a chance to demonstrate their intelligence to their tutor and their peers. They are very careful about their word choice and timing. If you look closely, you can tell that they are mentally rehearsing what they will say in the minutes before they speak.
Approval! - Many students believe there are definite right and wrong answers, at least in terms of what will be acceptable on future assessment. They listen very carefully to your intonation and try to work out what you want to hear by the way your phrase your questions. They are also the most likely students to fundamentally alter their opinion mid-sentence if you furrow your brow while they are speaking.
The ostrich syndrome - Simply put, these student believe that if they avoid direct eye contact you won't notice them.
Let's agree to disagree - These students believe that they should be engaging in conversation with both the tutor and their peers, but in a very brief and furious fashion. If someone makes a point with which they disagree, they will (with varying degrees of civility) counter that point with their own opinion. After one or more volleys back and forth, the two sides will, in the name of civil discourse, agree to disagree, concluding the conversation without either modifying their opinion.
Let you entertain me - A large proportion of my students find my seminars "very enjoyable" and "very interesting". I would love to take this as a compliment. If they were discussing my lectures, I absolutely would. But the way their feedback is phrased, I can't help but think that some of my students are referring not to interesting or enjoyable conversation, but rather to enjoyable or interesting information, which they have obtained through passively listening to me and the more dominant students of the group.

None of these discussions strategies are wrong and most people will use all of them at one time or another. But the magnificent Socratic dialogue I yearn for remains elusive. It appears now and again, almost tauntingly, only to disperse again into the ether.

What is crucial, however, is that my students do not all employ the same strategy. If they did, it would imply that I had given the wrong message about the goals of seminar discussion. That they have all approached it in different ways implies that I have given no clear message at all.So, as I finalise my syllabi for the upcoming year, I must sit down and attempt to answer the question:

What is the purpose of a seminar?

Think, Pair and Share: A Reflection on Passing the Time

2011-08-30T07:00:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago, I came across a post by Shannon Sidaway on TheTeachingTomTom entitled Encouraging student engagement – Think, Pair, Share. In it, she describes something all too familiar:

An awkward silence fills the room and student heads hang low in an attempt to avoid eye contact with me at all costs. I have put myself in quite the predicament once again and as a result, I am left “hanging”. It is my Wednesday afternoon tutorial class and I am trying to do all the right things. You see, this is my first semester as an accounting academic and part of what I have learnt so far is that it is important to gauge the class’ understanding of important concepts and that one should encourage an interactive learning environment. So this is why I asked the class “can anybody tell me the basic accounting equation?” and this is why an awkward silence has filled the room and this is why student heads are hanging low in an attempt to avoid eye contact with me at all costs.

The post goes onto explain Think, Pair, Share, which Sidaway has found very effective in encouraging quieter students to engage in peer discussion.

Think - Students are first given a problem or a series of questions and are asked to attempt the task on their own.

Pair - Students are then asked to pair up with the person next to them to compare and discuss their answers.

Share - We discuss the task as a class and each pair is required to contribute something to the discussion.

Her description of the process, however, was not what caught my eye. TPS is a common teaching method in history, one that I experienced as a student and one that continue to use in my own seminars. What was surprising was Sidaway's success. She noted that her students were more likely to respond to questions and discussions were more interactive. This has not been my experience, either as a student or as a teacher.

As a student, a know-it-all student I'll admit, I usually found TPS sessions to be a case of

the domineering student (usually me) formulating an answer
the same student expressing it to their partner or small group, eliciting either approval or passively listening (though sometimes showing clear signs of annoyance)
the same student relaying that same opinion to the larger group once again, taking turns but not engaging with the other domineering students (or the tutor).

There was no transformation or qualification of the original think ideas and no meaningful sharing or collaboration--and this pattern has continued in my own teaching.

At first, you may think that, even if it fails, a failed TPS session is no worse than the original situation of a few students dominating a large group discussion. You would be wrong. It is three times worse because it takes three times as long with equal results. Under the guise of engagement and interaction, you and your students are wasting contact hours rather than utilising them to their full potential.

In order to counteract these difficulties, I have tried variants of TPS, such as snow-ball discussions. Every time the group grows (singles to pairs to fours), I ask a more complicated question or set a more complicated problem, something that requires the students move beyond their original conclusions and actively formulate new ones. Other times, rather than increase the size of the groups, I merely have the students exchange partners--with the caveat that they must be able to relay what their former partner said alongside their own opinion. Both of these methods have had some success; they both move the conversation forward rather tempt students into repetition, and the latter relieves some of the pressure associated with speaking before large groups.

Yet, overall, I am left wary of TPS as an effective teaching methodology for the standard fifty-minute history seminar. The temptation to engage in shallow or repetitive discussions is too great and the rewards for meaningful exchange are too implicit. Much like online discussion boards, these mini-conversations are viewed by students, not as an opportunity to practice rhetorical finesse or refine arguments, but merely as something they must do with no tangible reward.

On the other hand, if these discussions had more explicit and tangible rewards, such as the development of an impenetrable argument for an assessed debate the following week, perhaps they would be seen as more than merely passing the time.

Discussion Boreds

2011-08-02T11:37:00.002+01:00

When I speak about integrating eLearning, in the broadest sense of the term, into traditional learning environments, I usually try to make one thing very clear: whether hardware or software, eLearning is a tool, and if that tool isn’t necessary, if it does make a process demonstrably faster, easier, more intuitive or in some other way better, there is no point in trying to sell it to your students or colleagues; they won’t buy it.

I have had a great deal of difficulty in implementing discussion boards, both in distance and blended learning environments. From what I can gather from other blogs, papers and articles, discussion boards usually fail for one of three reasons:

Technological incompatibilities – This seems a fairly uncommon occurrence in 2011, but any time you ask a committed technophobe (or an ancient library computer) to work with anything more complicated than Notepad, something is likely to go wrong. Individuals designing complicated discussion board tasks may fail account for the frustration factor. If it takes more than three attempts to log on, or if an accidental brush with the backspace key sends the browser back to the previous page, deleting the entire 2000-word entry, engagement with the process is going to be strained.
Aggression – This seems a fairly common occurrence in distance learning modules, and occurs near-constantly in non-academic fora, especially those dedicated to Real-Time Strategy or Role-Playing games. Indeed, the comment section of virtually any website is likely to contain a fair amount of vitriol. Without diligent moderation by the tutor or module leader, online discussion boards can quickly become molten streams of ad hominine attacks, often resulting from what, in a face-to-face context, would be seemingly innocuous comments. While I have often been privy to heated discussions outside the academic context, this has not yet occurred within my own teaching, though I have heard of it happening from enough colleagues to know it is a real concern.
Boredom and slow, painful death – This, I am afraid, is what usually happens to my discussion boards; hence the title of this post. In both distance and blended environments, I have found the initial impetus to post, and respond to others posts, wane completely in as few as seven days. The boards become ghost towns and even those student genuinely interested in the process will eventually depart owing to a lack of conversation.

I have tried several methods for keeping them alive, but with dismal results.

Requirement – I have in some cases simply made it a requirement that students post each week. However, this method tends to create streams of standalone statements, rather than a conversation. When I require they respond to another student it adds a momentary dialogue but is rarely continued beyond the requirement.
Active involvement – I have in other cases attempted to be an active participant in the discussion board, responding to students as I would have them respond to each other. This, however, this fosters a hub-and-spoke environment, something I try to avoid in face-to-face seminars as well. Indeed, my manner of response seems to encourage this type of dialogue, as evidenced by the frequent emails and DMs I receive about these blog posts but the paucity of comments posted for open consumption.
Directed conversation – In one case, I attempted to direct the conversation through specific initial questions. This worked very well, until the first 3 students had, in the opinion of their peers, sufficiently explored the implications of the questions posed. No follow-up questions were offered by students and the forum decayed.

I had started these discussion boards with the very best of intentions. I am acutely aware that students have limited formal contact hours with by me and their peers. I had hoped that the discussion board would serve as a semi-formal space to develop ideas for and from seminar discussions. However, students appear to see posting as a form of written assessment, one which requires a great deal of time for very limited direct reward.

In gaming discussion boards, literally hundreds of individuals will spend hours if not days and weeks discussing aspects of games in the most minute detail, sometimes writing tens of thousands of words on the morality, history or technical feasibility of a topic. In these discussions, they express an extremely high level of both technical competence and critical thinking ability; all with absolutely no financial or academic reward. Moreover, it would be simplistic to say that Space Marines are simply more interesting than the American Civil War, as non-academic boards flourish on these very topics.

Therefore, I must, once again, return to the idea of strategic learning. As a form of assessment, which is what it is most likely to be viewed as by students, it does not warrant the same level of attention and focus as essays and exams. It must therefore serve another purpose. Individuals interact with, even obsess over, gaming boards because they seek sociability, because they believe they are contributing to the general knowledge and because they believe their interactions will benefit them in their playing or developing of the game. As my add-on discussion boards fulfil none of these needs, it is no wonder that they continue to fail.

Shoulder Angels or Snarling Devils? TurnItIn and First Year Assessment

2011-07-26T14:35:00.003+01:00

Two pieces on TurnItIn®, the plagiarism detection software and service, came to my attention this week. The first was an article describing the recent furore over an NYU professor’s blog post that he would no longer be pursuing cheating amongst his undergraduate students. Owing to legal issue surrounding data protection—the post included feedback he had received from former students—the post has now been removed, but archived versions of it continue to exist on various sites. The heart of the matter is that the professor in question felt that he was being punished for his vigilance. A ruthless pursuit of cheaters, he felt, had led to significant reduction in his feedback scores and this had meant a reduction in his annual salary rise.

The second piece I read, Using ‘Grademark’ Electronic Feedback in History, was a case study by Drs Raphael Hallett, Kevin Linch and Simon Hall of the School of History, University of Leeds. Their piece chronicled a three-year trial of the TurnItIn® Grademark system at the University of Leeds and its effect on both the workload of the teaching staff and the perceptions of feedback by the students. The theory behind the system, which works much like Word or Acrobat commenting systems, was that they could provide rapid, legible and permanently reference-able feedback, which would promote greater student engagement with the assessment process. Although the technology was somewhat cumbersome, and did not fully integrate with standard university and departmental procedures, the response from students was overwhelmingly positive. The feedback was felt to be both easy to use and better (or much better) than traditional written feedback.

So, we are left with an angel and devil on our shoulders, whispering of our students’ promise and frailties. I have never used TurnItIn personally, but have seen it detect some astoundingly high rates of what I consider accidental plagiarism by first year students. I am not particularly worried about my feedback ratings, as they do not directly affect my pay increases (at this stage in my career) and my students already consider me one of the most frustratingly harsh markers in the department. Even this second point doesn’t really concern me as I still receive very high feedback and have had several students admit that, even though I gave them their worse marks ever, the feedback which accompanied it ensured much better marks in the future.

Indeed, I am absolutely of the opinion that you should make as many mistakes as possible your first year of university, when the damage can be expunged or at least rectified, rather than skate by on the sympathy of your tutors only to crash and burn later on. I have an innate soft-spot for first years and will usually go out of my way (and office hours) to help them through transitional issues. By second year, they should know better.

So, when I look at TurnItIn, I can’t help but think that this isn’t a case of a devil and an angel but simply two stages of feedback. The system allows for a draft of the essay to be submitted, at which stage students can see their plagiarism score and make corrections before their final submission. If it is accidental plagiarism, this serves the same purpose as marginalia from me, reminding students to cite properly and paraphrase where appropriate. When the paper does arrive in my inbox, many of the cases of bad paraphrasing and referencing will have already been addressed, freeing me to focus my feedback on more substantial issues such as argument and structure. As for those who will use the draft stage to see where they will and won't be caught, well, there are always a few bad apples, aren't there?

Whether my students will see TurnItIn as a pair of shoulder angels, as a carrot and stick or as a pair of snarling devils may rely entirely on how I pitch the process in that first seminar.

Screencast-o-Matic: An Online Lecturer's Best Friend

2011-07-21T11:18:00.005+01:00

In part two of my discussion on converting a workshop into a distance module, I will be discussing another great piece of kit: Screencast-o-Matic. When creating my lectures for the online module, I had several options available to me.

I could write a paper on the topic and upload this as a text document or Adobe PDF.

There was already a great deal of reading required on the course, however, and I wanted to include as much variety for the participants as possible. Moreover, many of the concepts I wanted to explain were only intelligible when presented alongside animated diagrams; something easily achieved in a live PowerPoint presentation.

I could record a live lecture.

Yet, creating what I considered the bare minimum in production value required an investment of time I did not have.

I could record an audio track for a pre-timed PowerPoint presentation.

Unfortunately, including both audio accompaniment and timed slide progression is only possible on the latest versions of the programme, and I could not ensure that my students would have access to this. Moreover, these files could not be easily embedded into my university's website system for streaming nor could they be downloaded in a reasonable length of time (a 30-minute lecture ended up being simply gargantuan in size).

I could give up and rely upon readings and worksheets.

This wasn’t really an option. It was simply how I felt after recording my first lecture in PowerPoint only to discover the above difficulties.

I could screencast the lectures.

I had been told about Screencast-O-Matic from a colleague who used the programme to offer his students audio feedback on their electronically-submitted essays. Simply put, the Java-based web application allowed you to record whatever you were doing on your screen with an audio or video track taken from your computer’s microphone or webcam. It required only a few seconds to install the necessary JavaScript within my browser and recorded up to 15 minutes for free.* You could pause the recording, in order to switch to another window and align the screen and cursor appropriately, and rewind if you needed to rerecord a section. Even if your computer crashed or the browser unexpectedly closed, the recording remained in your cache and could be restarted the next time you visited the page (even months later, I found to my delight).

In my miserliness, I recorded my lectures in 15 minute sections and then used video editing software to combine them, but at a mere $12 I would really recommend you purchasing the programme outright and supporting this wonderful software.

Having this piece of kit in hand, I simply loaded up my PowerPoint presentation, plugged in my microphone and gave my lecture as I had so many time before. I then exported the .mp4 to my computer (you can also upload directly to YouTube) and I was done. No fuss. No muss.

...that is, except for my colleagues' uncanny ability to ring or knock on my office door whenever I was in the middle of recording. But that’s a story for another day.

*Jing is another screencast programme that come highly recommended by my colleagues. However, it currently has a more severe time-limit and greater "pro" purchase price with essentially the same functionality. A more thorough comparision of the two is available here.

Reasonable Expectations of Reading (Lists)

2011-07-19T12:50:00.002+01:00

Last week I began the arduous task of creating weekly reading lists for my new module. I had, perhaps foolishly, redesigned the lecture and seminar schedule from its previous incarnation and therefore needed to redesign the bibliographies as well.

When I designed the lecture programme I went with my strengths and interests. What was I most comfortable speaking about and what would I find most interesting to discuss with my students? I know the debates within these topics well and foresee no particular difficulty in writing lectures for them in the coming weeks. Translating this knowledge into a coherent set of required readings, however, is less straightforward.

I abhor cluttered, extended reading lists. While they can be very useful when writing essays, in terms of week-to-week preparation, they simply overwhelm the majority of my students. They see a seemingly unending list of books and articles and collapse under the weight of that all-encompassing of question: how much do I need to read in order to get a B? (The implicit statement being, no human being could possibly read all those books.)

I have taught on a large number of other people’s modules over the years, where I have no particular emotional attachment to the reading choices, and I’ve noticed a few key points about the interaction between first-year university students and weekly reading lists.

Students expect all of the required readings to be available whenever and wherever they would like them to be available, and if they are not, it is not their fault—they believe—that they were unable to prepare properly.
If the reading list is very long, students believe that only books on that list are appropriate to use (see point above). If the list is very short, and they are expected to find their own sources as well, then any book, article or website vaguely on the same topic is probably equally suitable.
Students expect the readings to be directly related to the essay, exam and discussion questions they will encounter. Extrapolating from the argument of one article and the evidence in another is unexpected. Not impossible, mind you, but not expected and therefore not taken into consideration when taking notes.
Students believe that you expect the same depth of knowledge about each week’s topic that their A-level teachers expected about each topic they were tested upon in secondary school and that this is simply impossible in 7 days.
Required readings are comprised solely of facts that they are expected to relate in future essays and exams and students will take notes appropriate for this goal. They will surprise you with their ability to find information on the finest details presented by the author but will stare blankly when asked what the argument was.
And finally, when asked to read 3-4 of the suggested readings, they will believe that reading the 1-page primary source is equal to reading one of the articles or books.

I do not blame my students for any of these beliefs or strategies. They have been told their whole life that getting a 2:1 (B+) is vital to having any success whatsoever in life. They have also been told they must be involved with several sports and clubs, undertake job internships, work experience, and volunteering, play a musical instrument, star the university’s production of Death of Salesman and hold a seat on the student council. This, in addition to the pressure and desire to socialise with peers 6 nights out of 7 and earn enough money to pay for rent and food, means they absolutely
have to be strategic about what they read for your class.

So, as I begin crafting my reading lists I am trying to

Limit assigned reading to what I can reasonable expect an individual to read and reflect upon in five hours a week. If university is a full time job (as it ought to be, but rarely is) and students have four courses, that means they should spend about 9 hours a week on each class. With one hour in lecture and one in seminar, that leaves 7, and with 2 hours spent on their writing assignments (I can dream) that leave 5 hours a week for seminar presentation.
Make the articles complementary in methodology or evidence. They can’t be expected to draw together the various readings if they have only very tangential points in common.
Make the articles directly relevant to the pre-seminar questions they are meant to reflect upon. This may seem obvious, but with inherited modules, all bets are off.
Make them all easily accessible either through short-term loans or digitisation. It may be spoon-feeding, and it may make them less able to effectively use the university library, but its fair and sometimes fairness is more important.
Require them to find one piece of their own reading each and every week. This is mostly to counteract the point above, to give practice in finding appropriate sources, but also to introduce diversity into the seminar discussions while retaining a strong base of shared readings.
Specifically state which articles are required for the seminar and which are helpful if researching this topic for their essay. Again, managing and limiting the chaos of every student reading something so different that no meaningful conversation is possible while also acknowledging that some students need to be strategic in their reading for perfectly valid reasons (such as taking care of dependents or a heavy work schedule to pay for college in the first place).
Be consistent week to week. Having 2 articles one week and 5 books the next is going to wreck havoc with students who need a consistent workload in order to maintain their myriad of other activities.

Reviewing the list about, I can only think, yeah. Good luck with that.

So, faithful readers. For a year-long module, with 22 lectures and 15 seminars, what is an appropriate amount of required reading each week?

Dragon Dictation and Podcast Accessibility

2011-07-14T11:21:00.002+01:00

A few months ago I began a project to create an online module on pedagogic practice in higher education history. Primarily based upon two of my workshops, Teaching as a Postgraduate Researcher and Teaching as an Early Career Historian, I naively believed that the course would essentially write itself.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to share some of my experiences in converting face-to-face workshops into online courses. The first point I would like to bring up, however, is accessibility.

One of the sessions in my face-to-face workshop was on inclusion and accessibility; simple steps which postgraduates and lecturers could take to make their teaching more accessible to students with heavy work or family commitments, international students or students with learning difficulties. I therefore already recognised that there would be a need to address accessibility issues within the online version.

In order to simulate face-to-face interaction, the module included a number of recorded lectures and video podcasts, which students could stream or download. Alongside these videos, I intended to include full transcriptions of the audio. There were a number of reasons for this:

My American accent, while charming, was more likely to be misunderstood than a British accent by my predominantly British cohort
Many individuals find it difficult to navigate audio lectures without visual cues, such as facial expressions and hand gestures, or simply retain written information more readily than aural information
Not all students have frequent access to high-speed internet connections from which to download or stream the video version of the lecture

Although I knew it needed to be done, I was of two minds about how to do it. On the one hand, I could relate my lectures naturally, as I had in the workshops, and then transcribe them from the audio recordings. Having transcribed numerous interviews during my undergraduate days, this was not a prospect I relished. The second option, which I eventually chose, was to write out my lecture and then simply recite it into the audio recorder. The results were satisfactory, but the tone and pacing was much more stilted than my normal lecturing cadence.

I have since stumbled upon a programme that will not only aid in the creation of any future online modules, but also in provide more natural and rapid feedback to my students on their assessed work: Dragon Dictation.

Dragon Dictation is a free Apple© App for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. With a simple click of a button, it will record your speech and, when you are finished, text or email you a transcription. With a wide variety of languages and accents recognised (including American, British and Australian English) most people will find one that works for them. Although I have only used it in a limited fashion thus far, I have found it to be 85-90% accurate in transcribing my lecturing voice; more so if I make a conscious effort to enunciate.

So, supposing you have an Apple gadget and a Wi-Fi connection (the transcription takes place server-side), what can you use this for in your teaching?

Creating transcriptions of educational podcasts
Rapidly preparing natural-sounding written feedback on student assessments
Transcribing impromptu lectures or presentations
Capturing your immediate reflections on seminars or lectures

What will you use it for?

Spoon-feeding or Setting a Good Example?

2011-07-12T14:10:00.001+01:00

For new staff, especially post-doc or adjunct teaching staff, inheriting a module can be a deceptively time-consuming process. Even if you know the subject you will be teaching very well, the amount of administration required to adjust and streamline an inherited module guide can be daunting.

A few years ago, a colleague of mine began teaching, as an adjunct, part-time lecturer, a core module in a large department. The module had been taught at that university for nearly a decade and had been convened by no less than six individuals in that time. Surveying the module information booklet, it quickly became clear that each subsequent lecturer had added new books, questions and information with little or no notice paid to those entries that already existed. There was no sense of consistency in the formatting of bibliographic entries, no overarching coherency to the topics, themes or chronology of the module and even basic stylistic choices, such as font, text size and colour had been utterly ignored. It was, in short, a mess.

My colleague, of course, did not blame the previous convenors. They had generally been hourly-paid staff, compensated solely for hours spent behind the lectern and not those spent in preparation or administration. Nonetheless, enough was enough and he decided to rewrite the module guide from scratch, incorporating the information of the previous guide but within a new and consistent framework.

In the end, the guide was a work of art. Beautifully constructed in form and content, I had to take my hat off to him for the hours it must have taken him to create. There was one part of the guide, however, which was, for some reason, considered controversial: the bibliography.

The original bibliography had been a horror show of half-completed, inconsistent entries. When my friend attempted to verify if all the cited works were still available in the university library, it suddenly became clear why the students had not been doing the reading in previous years. Some were so cryptic that there was simply no way that a first-year undergraduate could find the correct text. For example, in all seriousness,

Smith “China”

Was this a book? An article? A website? There was no way of knowing. In the end, he simply gave up. Whichever books he could not identity, he simply removed and replaced with his own choices. Then he made his controversial move.

Rather than follow what has become the standard practice of module guides, listing just enough bibliographic information to identify the work, he wrote out the full bibliographic citations, in his department’s preferred citation style, and included the shelf mark reference number for his university's library. He did this for two reasons

His students would have clear, consistent examples of the correct bibliographic citation style
His students would have clear, precise directions on where to find the required reading within the library

When he showed the guide to me, I thought it was wonderful. First, his university’s preferred style was a strange variation of a common citation style and, to be honest, was very awkward to use without a wide range of examples. Second, first-year students are surprisingly computer-illiterate when it comes to online catalogues and providing them the shelf mark for the required reading helped them transition into working with a research library. My opinion was not shared by some of his other colleagues.

Aren’t you just spoon-feeding them? Shouldn’t they have to learn how to go find the books on their own?

I’ll admit. In my four years of undergraduate education I had to do some real detective work to decrypt some of my module reading lists, and I’m probably the better for it. But I had been one of those sad, nerdy-types who spent 70% of their childhood in the school and city libraries and was pretty comfortable with computer and even (gasp) card catalogues. I even knew most of the Humanities Dewey Decimal system, though this knowledge is sadly not as helpful in most UK university libraries as it had been in secondary school. Most first-year students simply do not have these skills the day they arrive. They are used to being provided standard texts, sometimes literally handed to them by their instructor, and working solely from these. Is it so wrong to offer them a little helping hand their first year on campus?

Until we take the time to provide proper library and referencing training for all undergraduates, and not just optional drop-in session during fresher’s week, do we have the right to be high-and-mighty about our module guides?

Moreover, in all honesty, could we not also do with a little bit of practice in this area? When editing work submitted for publication, I am often stunned by authors who cannot maintain an internal consistency for their citations, let alone follow the publication's preferred guide. If we cannot manage to prepare our citations correctly, how can we possibly expect our students to?

Reinventing the Wheel

2011-07-01T20:20:00.001+01:00

In my current position, I attend quite a few teaching and learning events. I also read widely to try and stay informed about debates in pedagogy, especially within the humanities. What I have found, and am sure others in my position have noticed, are two equally worrying trends.

The first is that practice and theory are miles apart. Education theories have moved on significantly from the days of Piaget and Papert in the 1970s and have likewise significantly built upon the work of Boyer in the 1990s. In fact, most would agree that we are within (if not coming to the end) of the third wave of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Yet, in practice, many lecturers and postgraduate tutors are still maintaining the same forms of pedagogy that were en vogue last century (if not earlier). Indeed, I have had several colleagues who have so fundamentally misunderstood the literature, or had only received it from faulty second- or third-hand sources, that they have discounted it entirely as a valid form of teaching and regressed to traditional, Victorian teaching methodologies.*

*Let me just say here that there are definite merits to rationalist teaching methods in certain circumstances, especially when teaching individuals such as myself, who are auditory learners, and therefore thrive in lectures, and who gain a great deal from rote learning in the first instance, though obviously not at higher levels of university.

So why is this? I am probably not going to say anything particularly ground-shaking here. It’s likely because of time, energy and bureaucracy.

We don't have time to read the literature, unless, like me, you are paid to keep up on your pedagogic readings. We pick up things in a socialised way, listening to our colleagues and occasionally reading a piece within disciplinary journals.
Energy? Most pedagogical innovations require a great deal of commitment from the lecturer on changing and maintaining a new syllabus. In many cases, it takes every ounce of our energy just to maintain existing modules and the thought of developing a whole new practice is daunting to say the least.
As for bureaucracy, there is simply a certain amount of standardisation demanded by our universities, faculties and departments. You go and throw a monkey wrench into this and someone, somewhere in the chain of command, is not going to be happy with you. Thus, we are left with a professoriate who, I think, genuinely wants to follow best practice but for whom best practice filters down in slow, piecemeal rivulets.

The other trend I've noticed over the past two years is that everyone keeps re-inventing the wheel.

I do this as well mind you. I often come up with ingenious ways of helping my students and excitedly write them up or present them at conferences only for someone to, quite politely, tell me that my idea is not all that new and that they have done it themselves or heard of someone doing it somewhere else. Likewise, I often receive proposals for funding and publications on methodologies that have already been thoroughly discussed and often widely implemented for some time. This, of course, leads us back to my first point. We simply don't know that our idea isn't new because we've not been able to access the existing literature in a comprehensive way.

So what do we do? We cannot just simply set aside our mountains of teaching, research, administration, washing up, laundry, hoovering, grocery shopping and general lives to read every scrap of pedagogical literature out there. It’s not feasible. It’s not practical. Have millions of blogs and online repositories is not the answer either because it’s just the same process in a more informal sphere. What we need, within a discipline at least, is a central location to go and shape our signature pedagogy.

This is not, mind you, a shameless appeal to save the History Subject Centre, the very fine organisation for which I work (though, if we have helped you, please do send a letter to the Higher Education Academy at your earliest convenience). It is a wonderful organisation, but even we couldn't read and disseminate everything available worldwide.

Instead, perhaps, the solution would be a History Pedagogy Wiki, which could be hierarchized in some fashion. For example, there would be page describing enquiry-based learning with links to the educational theory and history-specific examples and, under that, variants of these methods; a world-wide, crowd-sourced, instantly updatable, and free knowledge base.

I would certainly be happy to start it, but who of you would contribute to it? Would it be THE site of record or merely another in the great and expanding sea of wikis? Who’s with me?

Exemplar(y) Essays in First Year Modules

2011-06-09T22:17:00.000+01:00

In 2006, Jan Skillen published an essay that briefly discussed the use of exemplar essays in higher education modules as a means of teaching academic writing. I was, at first, sceptical.

The last time I'd seen an exemplar essay, as a student, was when I was preparing to take my AP US History exam. I had purchased the official study guide, helpfully produced by the corporation that writes and administers the exam and have thenceforth associated exemplar essays with secondary school standardised exams.

Thus, it came as quite a surprise when many of first-year students began to ask if they could see an exemplar essay for my module; they wanted to see what needed to do in order to write essays at various points on the grading scale. I didn’t quite know how to handle their request because I didn’t quite understand why they were requesting it; I wasn't administering a standardised test.

In truth, I have no problem with exemplar essays for secondary school exams. Hundreds of thousands of students sit these exams each year believing—sometimes rightly, often mistakenly—that their entire future depends on what they write in the next 20-60 minutes under extremely stressful conditions. More importantly, most of these tests do not really reward high-level thinking or innovative research. They are marked by lecturers, teachers and graduate students looking to earn a little extra cash to tide them over for the summer and spend roughly 5-10 minutes on each one—if you are lucky. Therefore, making your essay as close as possible to a standardised exemplar essay is to everyone's benefit; straightforward to write, straightforward to mark.

But I'm not administering a standardized exam. I have carefully thought out my questions to stretch my students, to encourage them to develop excellent research and analytical skills in addition to demonstrating a solid knowledge of the core content of the module. A box-standard essay is the last thing I want from my students. Yet, after my initial dismay, I began to think about how my students had asked for these essays and, eventually, I realised the exemplar essays might be the way to go.

They did not just want an example of a first-class paper to emulate. I know this because I offered them one last year and they said they did not find it particularly helpful. They wanted a lower-range paper, a middle-range paper and a high-range paper. They wanted to take these away with them and examine them themselves, to work out what the differences were and what they should work on to get a higher mark. This was, as far as I could see, pretty high-level critical analysis. They wanted to examine the exemplar essays and deconstruct the evidence and argument, looking for what makes a paper better or worse. Isn't this what we do every time we read a book or article? Isn't that how we learned to write well? Years of analysing other people's writings, looking for different levels of quality?

I thought about this for several weeks. I could not simply photocopy real essays from previous years; it would violate data protection regulation and wasn’t particularly ethical or humane. Instead, I began to contemplate writing a range of essays myself, but this had two main flaws. First, my essays wouldn’t be realistic. I know most of the common mistakes my students make, of course, but like acting intoxicated in a movie, writing a bad essay on purpose is difficult to do convincingly. Second, handing them three essays was not a particularly structured activity. Although discovery-based learning is a valuable tool in my pedagogic kit, I am not an advocate of its use in isolation, and I'm not alone this idea. In order to ensure the receipt, reconstruction and retention of knowledge, a guided learning environment is crucial.

Into the vacuum came Jan Skillen’s essay. Like my students, she advocated the use of exemplar essays, but with an important difference. She advocated the use of annotation, working through an essay with students to highlight aspects of the essay which were problematic or particularly good. This seemed a good, social activity which brought the teaching of academic writing back into the discipline, but it would never work. I simply did not have the time within my survey course to work through three exemplar essays.

My solution (in theory) will be to harness the mighty internet. Next year, I will post my three exemplar essays on Agilewords.com, in a password-protected environment. Here my students will be able to annotate the essay at their leisure (within the appropriate week) and receive occasional input from me to prevent them from going off track—because they have no frame of reference—or from giving up if they become stuck. The following week we can have a discussion about the annotation process, clearing up any remaining queries and this, I feel, is a much better use of the their contact hours. Moreover, the online environment allows quieter, more reflective learners the opportunity to speak when and where they feel comfortable, rather than automatically defer to their more extroverted peers.

I know what you are thinking: Why Agilewords? There are a couple of reasons. First, unlike Google Docs, the actual text of the essay remains static once it has been posted, much like a PDF. This means that my students can't accidentally remove sections, alter the order of the paragraphs or vent their righteous anger and vandalise the exemplar. Second, like Word or Google Docs, Agilewords has comment functionality. Unlike its competitors, however, it lets each comment to become a forum-like discussion thread. Google Docs does this to an extent, but not as well in my opinion. These discussion threads allow students to explain their thoughts about particular sections in a social and self-correcting way with clear visual connections to the essay at hand.

Will it work? Will the student engage with the process or become mere lurkers? I do not know. I am therefore asking you, dear reader, to let me know:

Have you ever tried a similar methodology?
Was it successful?
Would it be more successful in an exclusively face-to-face environment?

Prelude to a Conference: What do History Students Want?

2011-06-01T20:02:00.000+01:00

This Friday, I will be speaking at a conference entitled 'What do History students want?' at the University of Loughborough. As I composed my paper, I was struck by the idea that this title must be somewhat daunting for certain academics. It implies, perhaps, that we have finally succumbed to the consumer-driven model so lauded and despised. Yet, this is not necessarily so. Simply caring what students want is not an indication that we will bow to their ever whim. Most of us have learned, from innumerable mental scrapes and bruises, that no student, no matter how well prepared for university, no matter how keen or well suited to the discipline, knows exactly what they want or, more importantly, what they need.

When I began first began university, I thought I was terribly clever. Attending a liberal arts institution, I was required to take 8 modules (out of a total of 32) on a variety of themes from departments across the university. These included modules on Written Expression, Formal Analysis and Language and Culture as well as those highlighting Aesthetic, Natural Scientific, Global Comparative, Historical, and Values perspectives. The goal was that you would spend the first year of university developing the ability to

work at a university level
confirm your original, and often erroneous, impression of what you wished to major in
socialise with a wide variety of students

I cheated. You see, most if not all modules were listed under multiple departments. Comparative Studies in Genocide, for example, was both a history and a sociology module. Likewise, Western Theatre was listed by both the English and theatre arts departments. Because of this, and despite the fact that you were required to undertake the eight modules in different departments, I managed to complete almost all of required modules within History and Theatre, my double major, thwarting their best laid plans. I wish I had not done this.

Don't get me wrong. I gained an enormous amount from each of those modules. But by the time I reached my final year, I had exhausted almost all of the history modules available to me and was too far embedded within my disciplinary 'tribe' to even consider venturing back out into other departments. In truth, I was not able to weasel out of Spanish, maths and science, for which I am retrospectively very grateful, but I could have gained so much more from taking a proper philosophy module, rather than limiting myself to the history of philosophy, or a class on visual art, rather than contenting myself with my Theatre major. In the end, however, I did manage to obtain a wide-ranging education, despite my best efforts.

When I began to teach in the United Kingdom, however, I was shocked to see that my strategic efforts had been positively amateurish compared to those of my students. Gone was the year of reflection and experimentation. In fact, most of my students had begun specialising in history several years prior. The idea that they had been allowed to stop studying maths or science or history at 16 was somehow unfathomable. I had be 'strongly advised' that I would need to take at least six separate subjects, including maths, English, history, natural science, art and a language, until I was 18 if I wanted any chance of being offered a place at a good university. More worryingly, each year they walk into my seminar room increasingly certain that they not only want to specialise in history, or even American history, but a particular sub-field of history that I had not even fathomed at their age.

Over the years, I have had many students sit passively during my discussions of the American Revolution, praying for the week in which they could finally study Vietnam, or talk excitedly during the Civil War only to withdraw completely for the remainder of the year. When I asked them why, they said they had studied these subjects at A-level or Honours and wanted to study them again, in greater depth. Laudable, perhaps, but I was stunned. How could this 18-year-old know the precise topic that they wished to study for the next 3 years of their life? Didn't they know that you couldn't possibly understand the Civil Rights Movement without studying a whole range of other periods and localities as well?

No. They didn't. No one had ever told them that. They simply knew that they had studied it before, enjoyed it, received high marks, and wanted to continue to study it at university level. That didn't mean that they should. At least not right away and certainly not in isolation.

And it is with this mindset that I prepare for Friday's conference. Asking 'What do History students want?' is not about uncritically giving students what they want. It’s about understanding what they really want, and why they want it, and providing them with the tools and support they need to obtain it.

If you ask them directly, you'll get a limited range of answers. They want their three years of college to do something; get them a well-paying job or give them an epiphany on life, the universe and everything. Some think that university is just what you do after high school. But we've been through it and with the beauty of hindsight we can provide students with a much wider selection of 'wants' than they may have ever imagined. It is at this point that we can begin teaching.

Social Media for Researchers and Academics

2011-05-25T22:09:00.000+01:00

On Friday, May 20th, the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services held a one-day workshop on the use of Social Media for Researchers and Academics in Edinburgh. I was fortunate to be able to attend on behalf of the History Subject Centre (Higher Education Academy).

Why bother with social networking?
This was the first and most important question raised at the workshop. I will admit, quite openly, that I have an ambivalent relationship with social media. On the one hand, I find the speed of information dispersal made possible by social networking truly awesome (in the dictional sense of the word). However, I have also shuddered at the idea of 'txtspk' infiltrating other forms of written communication and the shallow nature of the majority of information transmitted via Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. Moreover, I maintain deep concerns regarding reputation management and personal privacy. Nonetheless, I recognise that social media are tools. If they have been misused in the past, that should not condemn their future use outright.

The organisers of the event, a group of very lovely individuals who genuinely wanted to provide information rather than proselytise, started the event by voicing my very fears, allowing a space for discussion rather than simply dismissing them as prejudicial. They then proffered the following advantages of social media, which we would consider during the rest of the workshop:

Social media platforms allow you to listen as well as speak - The main complaint surrounding social media is that it is mono-directional and not truly social. Rather than meaningful conversation, we are presented with an ever-increasing and seemingly unnavigable stream of information, often regarding cats requesting fast food. Yet, although this is the how many people use social media, it is not how social media must or even should be used. Instead, they provides a platform beyond 'traditional' promotional methods, such as printed publications and their electronic counterparts, for soliciting and responding to feedback from a limited or wide-ranging community. The example was given by one of the presenters was that he had once complained of poor service by ScotRail on Twitter and was pleasantly surprised to find that they had not only acknowledged his specific complaint, but offered him a voucher in compensation. They were listening!

Social media is cheap, easy to use, wide ranging in application and audience, much quicker than traditional media and allows for a degree of informality in conversation - The second point was that social media sites provide individuals and organisations with a ready-made medium for supporting their personal and professional aims. Most services were free, or very cheap in comparison with traditional dissemination tools, and were effectively instantaneous in reaching their intended recipients. They could also be re-purposed without retraining the user. Facebook, whether use for reconnecting with schoolmates, developing a research community or soliciting feedback on a new product, requires essentially the same skills and equipment from participants. Finally, social media sites allow informal conversations, an intermediary step between personal writings (in whatever context) and a more formal written, broadcast or commercial communication.

Social bookmarking (delicious)
The first tool we explored was social bookmarking, specifically the service delicious. This free website allows users to maintain and sort, through tagging, all of their internet bookmarks in a cloud atmosphere, making them accessible from any computer terminal with an internet connection. There were a variety of generic benefits of using this service, which are best explained by the folks at Commoncraft.

In addition to these generic benefits, however, there are a number of aspects of social bookmarking that are particularly useful to academics and researchers.

Sociability - While you can make a particular bookmark private, or set this as default, you also have the ability to make your bookmarks publicly visible. This has a number of uses. First, if someone else has tagged the same site as you, you will be notified by a blue box, which indicates how many users have also bookmarked it. By clicking on this box, you can see which tags have been used, the descriptions which have been entered and the user names of the people who have bookmarked them. Clicking on a user name brings up their bookmarks, which may introduce you to other relevant sites. Second, you can search by tag to find resources on a given topic. By noting the number of users that have also bookmarked a given site, you are given some indication of the value of the information therein.

Research and teaching collaboration - The tagging function can also aid research or teaching collaboration. By using an unusual tag, or by 'subscribing' to each others listings, a group of researchers can all tag sites which are relevant for their particular project. Likewise, a lecturer or tutor can create dynamic resource lists for their students. This is further aided by the ability to create RSS feeds of particular tags so researchers or students will be notified whenever a new resource is added.

A similar website, CiteULike, was also mentioned, though this was primarily for academic citations rather than websites in general.

RSS (Google Reader)
Another important tool highlighted by the workshop was a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) reader such as Google Reader. As researchers, we are daily visiting dozens of websites in search of updated information on a variety of projects. By obtaining RSS feeds of these websites, we can collate our information more efficiently. For example, by aggregating feeds of frequently visited news sites (BBC), academic journal publishers (Informaworld), blogs and funding agencies (AHRC), I can be instantly informed if and when any of these sites has posted new information. Although it only take a minute or two to visit each site manually, this time adds up very quickly and can unnecessarily take up a sizable portion of your day.

Want to know more? Head on over to RSS in Plain English.

Online communities (Facebook, Academia.edu, LinkedIn)
Next up was online communities such as Facebook, Academia.edu or LinkedIn. At one point or another I had joined all three of these site and was keen to know if there was more I could be getting out of my experience with them. Although LinkedIn has a growing number of professional users, I have found that Facebook and Academia.edu remain the most useful sites for me.

Academia.edu, on the one hand, does what it says on the tin. It is Facebook for academics. Because of this it has a number of academia-specific features, such as the ability to

post citations, publications and teaching material
tag yourself and your publications by research interests
search for others by research interest or university and
ask questions of the Academia.edu community

Only a few years old, Academia.edu is still growing, but already serves a very large international community.
Facebook, on the other hand, has a much wider clientele and a few features not yet available from Academia.edu. Prominent among these is the ability to create pages for communities, groups and organisations. Although they must be managed by one or more individual accounts, group pages allow you to converse with members of your community through wall posts or polls as well as disseminate information. Although feedback mechanisms such as discussion boards, web-forms and email can be integrated into your organisation's existing website, using online communities such as Facebook stop you from having to re-invent the wheel. Why develop and maintain a feedback mechanism which will require your community to create yet another online account (and remember yet another online password) when a large proportion of them will already have a Facebook account?

In the end, the most important thing I took away from the discussion of online communities was this: Whichever one you chose to use, you should approach networking online the same way you would approach it offline--organically. You wouldn't walk into a bar and yell out your research interests, hoping to secure a large number of useful contacts. Why would you do that online? Start your online network by friending or following individuals you actually know in 'real life'. By looking through their discussions and networks you will find others you want to connect with, and, through them, even more. But, importantly, they will have been chosen in a discerning fashion and, hopefully, their discussions will be ones you are interested in following.

Blogging
Before we start, head on over to Commoncraft for another great video. Now then, why should we, as researchers, blog? There are several excellent reasons, some more strategic than others. First, blogging about your research, or teaching, raises your academic profile. For early career researchers, with limited publications in major journals, blogging is a way of getting your ideas and research known to academics and the wider public. With the impact agenda becoming ever more pressing, especially for those in the arts, having a popular blog not only offers quantitative evidence that you are making an impact, it may provide qualitative evidence as well.

Let's say your researching something fairly obscure, such as passage advertisements in Scottish newspapers following the conclusion of the Napoleonic War. Sad to say, you are probably not expecting a call from Radio 4 to discuss your work. However, blogging about your project allows you to explain your research, and its relevance, to a wider audience. Once the media understand what you are doing and why, that phone call may come after all. (Note: If any Radio 4 producers are reading this, I am very happy to take your questions)

In another vein, it offers you the opportunity to workout your writing muscles on a regular basis. Writing that next article may seem daunting, but a quick 500 word blog post each week is much more manageable. While you aren't likely to post something particularly detailed, writing briefer pieces lets you test out ideas and elicit informal feedback. Think of it as the world's largest seminar series.

However, a note of caution must be made. Blogging requires dedication. If you can only post once a month, or every month, you are unlikely to retain the consistent readership you need to disseminate your ideas and start a fruitful conversation with your readers.

Microblogging (Twitter)
After a rather remarkably delicious lunch, we turned our attention to microblogging and its most famous provider, Twitter. This was probably the form of social media that received the most resistance from the delegates in the room (and academics I have spoken to in general). New to Twitter? Commoncraft's covered that too!

For those unable or unwilling to blog in the 'traditional' sense, Twitter may, in fact, be for you. By providing a very short (140 characters) commentary on your current activities, be they reading, writing, teaching or attending an academic event, you are making your thoughts available to the wider world and maintaining an active role in at least one stream of academic conversation. So, what are some good uses of Twitter for academics?

asking for reading suggestions or reviews "Any recent articles on...."
advertising a speaking engagement "In London? Come hear my paper on....."
searching for specialists "Looking for assistance with...."
finding a peer reviewers "Almost ready to submit. Anyone fancy a read of..."
locating the right room at a conference "#AHA2011 Where is Foner's panel being held?"
advertising an event, call for papers, or publication
facilitating an online discussion group in large lectures

There are, however, a few words of caution I must make about using Twitter in a professional context. First, if online reputation management is important to you, and it is to most of us, be careful of what you Tweet. Its very tempting to use Twitter as a soapbox or as a way to left off steam from one too many poorly written student papers. Just remember, once something is on the internet, chances are it will never (ever) be completely gone. Someone, somewhere--probably Google--will have archived that comment for posterity.

Second, try to remember that Twitter is much more and oral than a written format. It is best used for discussing what is rather than what was, expressing initial reactions than reflected thought. The latter is better suited for blogging, where you have the time and space to compose your thoughts. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't advertise your blog with Twitter.

Collaborative Writing Tools (Google Docs)
The next social media tool is probably well known to most of you. There are a number of collaborative writing tools available, but Google Docs is probably the most easily accessible. Google Docs allows your to store and edit your document, spreadsheet and presentation files online. While cloud computing is pretty handy on it own, the beauty of Google Docs is the ability for a large number of people to simultaneously work on a single document. Gone (hopefully) are the days of sending a document via email, only to end up with two, ten, or even hundreds of slightly different versions from your collaborators.

Google Docs is somewhat limited in its formatting capability, but does have a number of functions which make it worthwhile. In addition to simultaneous editing, it allows you to add comment bubbles to your text, text chat in the sidebar with any other editors who are currently online, and view a complete revision history of the document. If one of your partners (or you) accidentally delete your findings, you can simply return to an earlier version of the document and retrieve them.

Wikipedia
The last piece of social media discussed was the hero and Nemesis of so many, Wikipedia. Again, rather than re-invent the wheel, those new to the Wiki revolution should visit our friends over at Commoncraft.

So what does Wikipedia offer academic researchers beside heartache when marking student essays? As it turns out, a great deal. First, we must get over any lingering feelings of anger towards Wikipedia itself. While inaccuracies certainly abound, a recent study found that Wikipedia is actually almost as accurate the Encyclopedia Britannica. Of course, I wouldn't want my students citing the Encyclopedia Britannica in their essays either, but on raw accuracy, Wikipedia is doing quite well. The point is that it could do even better, with our help. Like blogging, contributing to Wikipedia can be for selfless or strategic aims. On the one hand, sharing your expertise by improving articles will help countless individuals who may never have the benefit of attending your classes or reading your academic papers. On the other, making your academic research more accessible to the general public will increase the likelihood that your research area will attract additional attention and funding. Just remember, it is against Wikipedia's policy to write articles about yourself or your organisation. Improving and expanding articles on your areas of expertise, however, is greatly encouraged. You may also want to join a WikiProject, to systematically improve articles in your field, or have students create and improve Wikipedia articles as an assessed project.

Conclusions
At the end of a long, enjoyable day of exploring social media, I cannot say I have come to any firm conclusions about their use in academic life. I have started to populate my delicious account and have seriously contemplated trying my hand at writing a Wikipedia article. In the end, though, I think the best advice given on the day was this. Here are the tools which are available to you; use what you find useful and leave the rest.

Helpful Links:
The Social Learning Handbook: http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/handbook/

Social Media: a Guide for Researchers: www.rin.ac.uk/social-media-guide

Pedagogical Pattern Collector: A Visual Interpretation of Your Teaching

2011-05-01T18:09:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune to be able to beta-test a new programme developed by the Learning Design Support Environment project team. LDSE is ESRC/EPSRC funded Technology Enhanced Learning project that aims to discover how to use digital technologies to support teachers in designing effective technology-enhanced learning. Part of this is the development of curriculum design tools, including seminar / session design tools. Their newest addition is the Pedagogical Pattern Collector.

The PPC has a number of aims and functions. The primary purpose, as explained by our host, was to provide an open-source repository of generic session plans that could be adapted to a variety of disciplines and contexts. Now, you may be tempted to stop here. When it comes to teaching and learning tools and resources, the word 'generic' is often the kiss of death. I assure you, however, this is not the case here.

When you follow the link, you are presented with a friendly welcome screen, which asks you for your name and, optionally, your email. If you provide the latter, the system will automatically email you with your completed designs.

You can then either view previously-created designs, or patterns, or create one of your own. There are quite a few examples up already, so I would suggest you start there.

You are now presented with some instructions and categories on your left. Being a historian, I went for Pattern 2, Example 1, which was archaeological in nature. Close enough. As you can see, you are presented with a generic, Mad Libs-esque seminar plan. Now you are free to adapt the pattern to your own needs by replacing, for example, 'the Altar of Pergamon' with 'The Civil War' and 'the origin, purpose, meaning, and references' with 'the causes and repercussions of' and so on. There you go. You have a seminar outline.

Not impressed? Well, I suppose Mad Libs loses its appeal eventually. The real beauty of this programme is in the design phase. When you click on 'Create a Pattern' you are brought to a new screen which allows you to reformat your existing lesson plans.

Now, if you browse the available samples for our archaeological template you will find that this seemingly simple text document is divided into a number of Learning Activities and sub-components. By reflecting on each component of the seminar, you can label them as

Read, watch, etc.
Investigate
Discuss
Practice
Share
Produce

and assign each a time and description. Once you've done this, you will see a lovely pie-chart to your right which will give you a visual representation of your seminar. Think your seminars are ground-breakingly student-centred? Want to put that idea to the test? Go ahead. Give it a try!

Once you've either confirmed or denied your feelings of pedagogic grandeur, click on 'Abstract into a Pattern'. Now is your chance to give something back to the LDSE team. Highlight all the specific section of your seminar plan and assign generic descriptions.

As you do so, the programme will colour-code your terms and display your 'generic' syllabus to the right. Once you are satisfied with your generic pattern, click on 'Preview your Pattern' to see how your seminar will appear to other visitors to the site.

Once you are satisfied with your design, click 'Submit' and send it on to the team. They will be vetting these designs for inclusion. If you have entered your email, a copy of your syllabi (specific and generic) will be forwarded onto you as well. If you aren't sure you want to send it on just yet, make sure you copy+paste the formatted version and the raw code ('Export'). The latter will let you re-input it another day.

Enjoy!

The Socratic Dilemma

2011-04-22T10:12:00.000+01:00

Are our teaching practices sanctioned by society because they are best practice, or do we define them as best practice because they are sanctioned by society?

I began to teach in UK higher education six years ago. As I began my PhD in history I knew that it was important, in a vague sort of way, that I obtain some teaching experience if I were to continue in academia. I approached the convener of the department's core first-year module, a survey of European History since 1500. After a few basic questions regarding my research background and my desire to obtain some teaching experience, I was offered two 12-student seminars. I was told that the students should do the required reading and I should facilitate a discussion of a pre-selected set of primary sources on that week's topic. I was told that I would be fine.

I have come a long way since that cold November afternoon. Years of seminar experience had honed my senses to be able to differentiate between lazy and struggling students and to understand the ratio of directed and open discussion needed to meet the module's learning outcomes. Yet, despite solid feedback from my students, these seemed necessary but insufficient indicators of excellent teaching. There remained a je ne sais quoi that surrounded excellent history lecturers; an intangible quality that I strove to obtain.

Over the past two years I have been employed by the History Subject Centre, working with new and experienced lecturers and tutors from across the country (indeed, the world) to better support and share best practice in history teaching. As I attended conferences and workshops, or settled down with the latest issue of Teaching in Higher Education, I came across an almost chaotic divergence in opinion on what constituted best practice. More importantly, I found that, like my Scottish emigrants, who strove to find an ideal new home, history lecturers were torn between their ideals--sharing their passion for history with students and helping to develop well-rounded individuals--and their obligations to a shifting set of standards. These came not only from regulatory bodies, who in truth often apply a light touch and are very accepting of input from practitioners on the ground, but from society at large through the speeches of politicians and the headlines of the national media.

Thus, I was left with the question: Are our teaching practices sanctioned by society because they are best practice, or do we define them as best practice because they are sanctioned by society?

In the end, as I sifted through the tangential and the exceptional, I found that our aims and ideals were not so divergent after all. Most of us, students, lecturers and regulators alike, continue to pursue excellent teaching because we see a genuine value in arts education that should be retained, even in times of economic and political uncertainty. I therefore dedicate this blog to the pursuit of teaching excellence and to the man who inspires my own teaching philosophy. Here’s to your Socrates. May we never stop questioning in our pursuit of knowledge.

The Socratic Dilemma

We've Moved!

Choosing their own Adventures: Exploring Historical Occupations in History Seminars

Social Writing: A Grand Experiment in Undergraduate History

Total Recall: The Shallow Learning Fallacy

Why I Think Google is Skynet: A Response to Google Calendar Appointments

Coming to Terms with Student Feedback

Helping Students Understand Argument Construction

Playing Devil's Advocate: Castro and Catcher in the Rye

My Experiment with Electronic Marking, or, Why heels, stairs and 150 essays don't mix

The Verdict on Exemplar(y) Student Essays:A Review of A.nnotate

Teaching v. Learning, The Eternal Struggle

Walking the Line, part 2: Authority

Walking the Line, part 1.5: Exhaustion

Walking the Line, part 1: Humility

X Marks the Spot (in the University Library)

Panic is Not an Option, or, How to Write a Lecture

The Morality of WriteCheck, or Why do we bother with door locks?

Managing Student Expectations: Etiquette and Examples

Managing Student Expectations of First Year

Explaining Seminars

Think, Pair and Share: A Reflection on Passing the Time

Discussion Boreds

Shoulder Angels or Snarling Devils? TurnItIn and First Year Assessment

Screencast-o-Matic: An Online Lecturer's Best Friend

Reasonable Expectations of Reading (Lists)

Dragon Dictation and Podcast Accessibility

Spoon-feeding or Setting a Good Example?

Reinventing the Wheel

Exemplar(y) Essays in First Year Modules

Prelude to a Conference: What do History Students Want?

Social Media for Researcher​s and Academics

Pedagogical Pattern Collector: A Visual Interpretation of Your Teaching

The Socratic Dilemma

Social Media for Researchers and Academics