I was interested to know if the session was content heavy. In the meeting, Fred noted that the session was designed to address gaps in areas that should be covered in other contexts.
In my practice, commonly, the academic team designs briefs unaware of what it takes to achieve the desired outcomes. As a result, students arrive at technical sessions lacking the necessary “academic” support for their projects. In this case, while the intended outcome for the students is to produce a film, I’m the only one on the teaching team supporting them. This reflects the general context summary and explains why it aims to fill gaps in knowledge and support.
I believe the suggestion to send some tasks in advance is a great idea. Providing the students with more time to complete them, rather than 3-5 minutes, they can think about them more thoroughly. This will also help make the session lighter, and editing it should be easier.
However, a couple of concerns come to mind regarding this. Students will not have the actual teaching for each task. Additionally, although I know it’s beyond my control, there are always some students who may not do them.
I think it’s needed to design and plan the pre-workshop tasks carefully.
When planning the tasks for my sessions, I aim to incorporate a trial-and-error approach known as “random generate and test” (Sweller, 2011). Given that our working memory is quite limited, we can only process a small amount of new information at one time. Therefore, I design the tasks to generate potential solutions or ideas, which can be tested. I utilise Padlet as a tool to help students organise the outcomes of these tasks in an “information store” (Sweller, 2011). Allowing students to tackle tasks without overwhelming their working memory, helping to embed knowledge into their long-term memory.
I also want the Padlet to be a live thing that students can make their own, and go back to if they need. If the aim is to create learning resources for students, involve them wherever it is needed (Aspery, 2023). At the end of the sessions, I try to populate it with other related sources, so it can become a repository.
I’m happy to hear that even with the heavy content, I managed to make the session welcoming and that the information didn’t feel inaccessible. In the feedback, it was mentioned that the mood of the session felt very light despite students not having their cameras on. I think this is a very important thing for me, as I mentioned in Case Study 1. I think it’s important to create safe spaces for students without needing to have the cameras on. However, I must admit that I feel reluctant to try breakout rooms unless I have a compelling reason, and a dynamic task prepared. In my experience as both a student and teacher, breakout rooms feel disorganised and chaotic.
In conclusion, I am very happy with the feedback I received. I found it useful and it prompted me to reflect on key points for reorganising my sessions and the tasks within them.
References:
Aspery, L. (2023) ‘How to co-create learning resources with students’, Times Higher Education, 29 November. Available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/how-cocreate-learning-resources-students
Sweller, J. (2011) ‘Cognitive load theory’, Psychology of Learning and Motivation. Vol. 55. San Diego: Academic Press, pp. 37–76.
Appendix:
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