Workshops and Short courses
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WorkshopsTeaching Toolkit
This teaching toolkit is for anybody who teaches or supports students. It will give you some tips, tricks and technique.
How you engage students in their learning is a vital skill. Having a variety of tools and techniques will help you to keep the students on task and will provide a range of learning experiences.
Having a plan for your lectures/seminars/workshops will give you confidence. Think about the structure using the following:
List of teaching craft tools accordion
These are really important for new groups of students to help provide that sense of belonging.
This series of Guides from Oxford University’s Centre for Teaching and Learning provides a helpful starting point.
Key Steps for Inclusive Online Teaching
One of the main challenges is getting students used to talking in front of their peers.
Group discussion strategies that engage all students
Tips for managing classroom discussion
There are a number of models to help with student engagement and combine some of the ideas above:
1. TTT: Test, Teach, Test
- You could a Menti/Kahoot quiz at the beginning and the end of a session.
- The first test could show you any prior knowledge that the students have or help them remember a previous session
- The last test helps them consolidate the learning from the session but also shows you if your teaching was effective.
2. PPP: Present, Practice, Produce
This is a common technique in language learning but has some wider uses. Firstly the lecturer presents some material, students then practice then produce their own version. Wider uses here could be in STEM, Management, Health, and Arts subjects but could also be applied to assessment tasks such as podcasting or presentations.
3. Think-Pair-Share
This is a good way to get the students discussing their thoughts with each other. You could give 5 minutes for solitary thinking, then 10mins for pairing up and discussing their ideas and finally 15mins for sharing with the wider groups Think-pair-share: how to structure online classes
See also ‘Small group teaching: a toolkit for learning | Advance HE’ and ‘The Teaching More students project’ for more ideas
Takeaways
Think about how you finish a session:
- You could ask the students to reflect on their learning and share one thing they have learnt.
- You could use Menti and ask students to ask a question for next time you meet.
- You could also link your current sessions to the next one?
Useful resources
- The AdvanceHE #52etc - a toolkit for student engagement is a toolkit with 52 ideas that you can use with your students. It's based around a series of cards with each card offering a different activity. Use it to spark your imagination and inspire your students.
- This series of podcasts is created by Times Higher Education. This one is all about tips for teaching. THE podcast: teaching 101 tips from your peers
- ‘In at the Deep End’ This is a Guide from Heriot-Watt University and contains sections on Lectures: Large Group Teaching; Tutorials, workshops and small group teaching and Assessment and Feedback.
- For lab sessions have a look at this Guide from the Engineering Subject Centre.
- ‘Ready for University LU guide’ Ready for university | ASK - Lancaster University
Large Group Teaching/Lectures
- For underpinning theory around teaching large groups see Lectures: Pedagogic Advice and Guidance
Marking student work is a large part of an academic role. In order to be able to mark work you need to be able to judge against a standard. This is commonly done with assessment criteria/marking scheme or marking grids. These often give the weighting of importance so, as a marker, you have a better idea of what you are looking for in a particular assessment. These criteria will be different for different assessment types as you will be looking for different levels of skills and knowledge.
When you are allocated marking, as well as the assessment criteria it is best practice to have a standardisation meeting. This is where all the marking team mark 3 or 4 assessments then get together to discuss their thoughts. This helps to iron out any issues with different interpretations of the criteria. The module convenor may act as a moderator so will look at any borderline, fails or just assessments you are not sure about.
You could ask to see the work from the previous cohort. This would be useful for seeing what level, type and amount of feedback is usually given.
For some ideas see Susan Armitage’s video on marking and feedback
Unconscious bias
Unconscious bias can happen when we are making quick judgements. Biases are influenced by our backgrounds, culture and personal experiences. The ‘Halo’ effect occurs when a markers judges an assessment too harshly because of a small irritating mistake. This can also occur in reverse and marks can be too high based on a pleasing use of vocabulary, for example. Often if you are marking lots of the same assessment, you can change your judgement so the 30th time you have seen the same example is marked differently than the 1st.
To mitigate this, we can use anonymous marking or double marking and is why we have internal and external moderation. We also would advise that you mark in small batches.
AdvanceHE: Unconscious bias literature review: bias in assessment
Standardisation Project
Using Standardisation approaches to support effective team marking: Susan Armitage and Simon Allan
‘Calibration within the higher education sector is an approach that aims to ensure consistent standards for judging the quality of student work. A ‘calibrated’ academic is able to make grading judgments consistent with those of calibrated academics in other institutions across the UK. The aim of calibration is to achieve comparability of academic standards across institutions and stability of standards over time.’ (Bloxham, S., Reimann, N. and Rust, C. 2018)
Standardisation approaches aim to harness peer discussion in order to reach a common understanding of standards and thresholds among markers. It is a process of calibration conducted internally within an institutionally defined marking team, and is distinctive from moderation practices that typically take place at the end of the marking process. Standardisation practices are based on the whole team marking a sample of live or historic assessment artefacts in a semi structured environment, prior to the process of marking and moderating the full cohort.
This project explores the notion that a shift from moderation towards standardisation and calibration is a means to reduce variability in making standards judgments. (Sadler, 2013) It builds on research on related practices that offer some evidence of decreased variability, and indicate improved marker confidence in making reliable judgements about standards. (O’Connell et al, 2016)
There is also evidence to suggest that student involvement in standardisation exercises has the dual effect of achieving common understanding of standards amongst markers, and heightening students’ understanding about how standards judgements were being applied to their work, improving their confidence in the marking system. (Bamber, 2014)
Our investigations suggest similar benefits across a range of contexts. In this session we provide insights into several standardisation practices that are being used by colleagues at Lancaster University, and discuss the effects of such practices on:
• The robustness and transparency of marking decision making.
• Any reduction in variability or inconsistency in making standards judgements.
• Consistency relating to feedback and marking team practices.
• Staff and student assessment literacy pertaining to academic standards.
• The impact on overall marking and moderation workload.
Video: Using standardisation approaches to support effective team marking
The Lancaster University Education Framework contains the following statement about Feedback:
Feedback on assessments must be timely, specific and actionable, enabling students to understand their progress and guide their ongoing learning and development.
Giving Effective feedback to students is a crucial part of the teaching role. It is important that students read, understand and act on their feedback to help them improve their academic work. You can help your students understand their feedback and improve their literacy. The Education framework also talks about formative activities:
Programmes must include formative activities that advance learning and prepare students for summative assessment.
Feedback (comments on summative or formative work) is vital for students to know what they are doing well. Feedforward will help the students improve future work. You should have a combination of both feedback and feedforward in your comments. Feedback can be written or audio – students often prefer audio as they can hear the nuance and emphasis in your voice.
It is key that feedback is consistent across a module so talk to the module convenor about how much feedback you should write. Ask if the module uses a feedback model or template. There should be Programme consistency too in the Programme Feedback strategy.
Useful Resources
- Advance HE On Your Marks: Learner focused Feedback Practices and Feedback Literacy
- JISC guide Feedback and Feed Forward
- Feedback for students should be clear and constructive
- Take a look at these learning development resources to see the advice given to students about feedback Making the most of feedback and Understanding assessment.
Teaching theories an overview (by Dr Ruth Mewis)
What is teaching? (by Dr Ruth Mewis)
Students need to be ‘doing’ rather than passively listening. Think about flipping your activities. Some of the lessons we learnt teaching online during Covid translate nicely to an in-person learning environment. Provide the students with pre-prepared material and make it clear what you expect them to do with it, and always include a task.
For example:
Activity: Watch this 10 min video on making wine
Task: Identify two main features of successful wine production
Can you use Mentimeter or Kahoot to enhance your teaching? The word cloud on Menti is particularly effective and it’s a great way to get anonymous questions or anonymous answers.