Task 1
Small Group Discussion: How do I behave in group discussion?
Collective points:
- Being a facilitator
- Combining approaches
- Making space for others
Individual points:
- Listener
- Contributer
- Engage, reflect back, clarify, ask questions to help me fully understand other people’s contributions
This was a valuable way to prepare us for the group discussion element of the PGcert that we began to do more extensively from this session forward. We were discussing and clarifying good practice ourselves and we were going to be implementing it. Though many members of the cohort will be involved in facilitating group discussion amongst students it is a different role being a participant and distinct perhaps from the way in which we contribute and communicate in staff meetings. It helped us perhaps be sensitised to our own behaviour in a way we haven’t been in a while. Also allowing us to confront or challenge any unhealthy habits that had grown over time in ourselves or others, in an indirect and non-confrontational way.
Task 2
Large Group Discussion: What conversation games can we play online?
Collective points:
- Card Game – limited number of cards so you have to choose when to speak. I don’t know if this was clarified but I imagine the cards would also be a commitment to speak? Students have to offer up a point for each one?
This could be great to try with first years perhaps towards the first part of the year? Sometimes, a thing that can cause anxiety in when communicating is the free form nature of social interactions. So, this format could give a ritual that might feel safer and also the game aspects could be a distraction.
You could also perhaps use it to help first years understand feedback? A card each for a comment, a question and a suggestion. Giving you an opportunity to explain the value of each type of feedback. Could be done when they bring in objects and practitioners to share? Many icebreakers I use involve students making things together. This activity takes the pressure of in a similar way.
Task 3
Small Group Discussion: Vilhauer and two questions:
1.How do you monitor the degree and nature of your participation in the discussion?
2.How do you monitor others’ participation?
At the time, I didn’t fully appreciate the relevance of these questions to the Vilhauer piece and the first task. I think this might have been because I was feeling self-consciousness and hyper-aware already in the online discussion environment which drew my energy and attention away. My answers would be:
1.
- Asking myself questions: Have I contributed, Am I contributing too much? Do I understand what has been said?
- Checking in with others to see if I have communicated my meaning clearly
- Giving people opportunities to question or disagree
- Listening to other’s responses, for content but also tone, to see if what I have said is relevant or outlying
- Searching for ways to build on and develop the conversation
- Thinking of resources that might be helpful based on what people are saying
2.
- Listening
- Supporting others through positivity, enthusiasm and affirmation
- Articulating the meaning and value that I have found in what they have said
- Reflecting back what they say so I can make sure that I have understood their meaning
- Asking questions so that I can benefit from more from their thinking, knowledge and experience
- Seek out the views of people who have contributed less
Task 4
Small Group Discussion – Using the unit Learning Outcomes (and assessment criteria) to ‘measure’ the learning that is indicated on your blogs.
Our form is here: https://artslondon-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/m_elgon_arts_ac_uk/EYvtWSs2rPVLnoyKGH1mTTABWLF0S9Eufwzdru2JMOPQGw?e=1arR98
This was useful to do and interesting in terms of thinking about assessment literacy sessions. In my team, we do workshops with Year 1:
- Exploring the language around assessment,
- Identifying where the criteria will be evidenced in the assessment outcomes
- Mapping of criteria onto evidence – Self Assessment
There is meant to be an incremental increase in challenge as we move through the year. However, I hadn’t done this writing your own specific band descriptors before and this might prove a great transitional final workshop as they prepare to make the move a pass/fail system to a graded system in Year 2.
Task 5
Large Group Presentation/Discussion – The TEF Quiz Analysis
Getting us to complete the TEF using the form and methods of the TEF worked really well in helping us engage with what could have been quite dry, though vital figures, in an active and effective way. I felt like I understood more deeply because the facts were attached to actions. Also, the way in which it was possible to make a game of the game of TEF really underlined one of the points Lindsay finished on, asking ‘Is measurement a game?’
There was a great dramatic structure to this session and this was the final twist. From when you first hear the session title you think ‘ah we’re looking at opposites here’ and that was still the case when doing the prep work because the Vilhauer and TEF feel so different tone and communication methods. So, when I got to this point in the session the truth of what Lindsay was saying was very illuminating and satisfying.
Even earlier in the session it wasn’t clear to me the extent to which play and measurement were two sides of the same coin and I think that’s it’s because of the high emotional investment involved in measurement. It feels uncomfortable to me whether it’s a small or big form of measurement. When I was thinking this I realised that this shouldn’t surprise me because measurement is really a form of feedback and so the core tension of feedback applies:
In addition to our desire to learn and improve, we long for something else that is fundamental: to be loved, accepted, and respected just as we are. And the very fact of feedback suggests that how we are is not quite okay. So we bristle: Why can’t you accept me for who I am and how I am?
(Page 8, Thanks for the Feedback, Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen)
Also, personally for me, in terms of ‘wiring and temperament’ discussed in that same book, I think I have a ‘long sustain of positive’ and ‘slow recovery from negative’ feedback. This means for me feedback situations are ‘high reward’ and ‘high risk’. So always really important and valuable but also requiring more emotional management of the negative which hangs around.