EH4102 - lesson 2

Last week was the second lesson for EH4102. I was unable to attend. However I was not particularly worried about my lack of attendance, I did not gain anything from the first lesson and was unsure I would gain anything from the second. As I missed the lesson I am required to write 500 words on the reading given to us for the lesson, I have not yet completed this but will do it this week. The consequence for not attending the lesson did make me think about how putting something like this in place will potentially improve attendance. I have been struggling to make specific my project question, I am now wondering if there is something around attendance and the theories for improving HE attendance, for example my colleagues and I were discussing only recently whether it would be fair to give a small percentage of marks over to attendance and contribution in lectures in order to encourage or tempt students to attend and contribute. I would be interested to know how many students choose to write a small amount of words rather than attend a lesson. Something to think about for my project perhaps.


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Guest Lecturers

Hi, last week was almost my final week of teaching, in Citizenship and Cohesive Communities I was due to be teaching abbot identity, instead of teaching this lesson I had a contact from Lancashire County Council who works with the travelling and gypsy community in Preston to bring a member of the community with him to give a talk and answer questions from my students. I felt it was particularly interesting as there has recently been a popular television show called 'my big fat gypsy wedding' which painted the travelling community in a particularly bad light. The students enjoyed the lecture and learnt about identity from someone with a very different identity to themselves. As a number of my students are Asian and Muslim, they found their cultures shared a lot of similarities, both expect females to take on similar roles, care for a family and not work. Both are concerned about young women and the things they can learn at school, both have males who take on a more dominant role. It was interesting to see how students responded when they realised they were similar to someone they had previously held negative pre-conceived ideas about. The students were really great, asked lots of really relevant and interesting questions and were able to explore the concept of identity by comparing their identities and sharing why it was important to them. In reflection as a lecturer, in the future I would prepare more for an analysis of the guest lecture, I had prepared some questions to ask, just case my students didn't, however I didn't need to as the students were very engaged. It would have been even more positive to explicitly link the guest lecture to the rest of the module content and the learning aims, this would have been easy but I think, as with other lecturers, I had thought if there is a guest lecturer, this is a lecture you don't need to prepare for.
The second lecture was a more normal lecture, I feel really comfortable teaching now. The students are responsive and engaged in what I am saying, I felt happier with my colleagues lecture, I had a little time to change it and make it suited to my style, this made me much more comfortable and I felt like I was a better lecturer.
Students are now beginning to become concerned about assessments, in the modules I teach on there are no exams, the students are required to complete a group presentation and an assignment. This leads to a number of issues, every year students complain as some of them inevitably end up in a group with students who do not put enough work in, other commitments prevent them from meeting groups and they all leave work until the last minute and expect extensions. To combat some of these issues I have given the students time to work together on their presentations when I am present, this means they are able to ask questions and I can see who has turned up. Although this can't affect their mark, it does seem to make students feel that they must attend which in turns leads to less complaining about disengaged members of their groups. I have been clear on my policy on extensions which is that I am very unlikely to grant an extension unless they have genuine and good reason. And I have trialled whether giving individual marks for a group presentation is a viable option. The next week is tutorials in which students have time to complete work and ask me questions and then the following week is presentations. I am looking forward to seeing how they turn out.



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Someone elses group

This week i covered my colleagues classes as she was off sick, I also gave my lecture in a module which is team taught. I really enjoyed giving my lecture on the team taught module, the module is called bullying interventions and talks about how schools and organisations deal with bullying, I teach the lecture on cyberbullying as it is something I have a particular interest in and have in the past attended a conference around and have written a paper about rape in online role playing games.
It is lectures like this one that makes me realise that I simply get paid to have interesting conversations with intelligent people about things I am passionate about, most of the students were unfamiliar with me and my teaching style and seemed to enjoy that I was asking their opinions and bringing relevant examples into the lecture. I went slightly off topic at points and facilitated discussions about the Internet in general, how social networking is used and some examples of the Internet being used in controversial ways, for example a case of a women being sacked via facebook after posting a negative comment about her boss. These incidents, although not directly cases of cyberbullying, served to help the students consider the negatives to social networking or how easy it is for people to view information or interact with you, even if you do not ask them to or give them express permission to do so. I found these conversations really interesting, there were some quite different opinions in the group and this meant the students were challenged and had the opportunity to learn from others, I enjoyed this, I was able to contribute and give them new ideas and suggestions to include and facilitate the discussion learning on to more relevant topics. During the class I also spoke about the legislation which could be used to prosecute for cyberbullying, although no specific UK laws are in place there are a number which could be used together. I had expected the students to already be aware of this information but they weren't and they seemed very interested to learn. This lecture really increases my confidence with teaching, I have learnt that I am much, much better and much more comfortable when teaching something I have prepared and am genuinely interested in. I am able to teach other modules and I think do them well, but given the number of problems I have faced in my teaching this year and that for the majority of my modules, I was only given the teaching load the week I started teaching I really enjoyed having time and energy to prepare for this one lecture.

The other subjects I taught this week were the subjects I normally teach in Burnley but due to my colleague being off sick I took over her classes in Preston while another colleague who lives in Burnley taught mine. The lectures went pretty well, the groups in Preston are known to be much more difficult to engage and tend to dislike interacting during lectures, instead preferring to be talked at. I found this to be the case but it wasn't as bad as I expected, the students took a while to respond but then participated in a really good debate about gun laws in the UK. I much prefer teaching my Burnley group but after successfully engaging a group of students who are notoriously difficult to engage I feel much more confident about my teaching ability and am looking forward to going in next week.


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