My Unit 2 intervention was focused on the need for dialogic space, and it’s potential to open up a space for collaborative meaning making. Perhaps for the upcoming industry talks day, it is less about collaborative discussion, and instead on industry conversation as a means of confidence building, and students valuing their own voices.
Everything about the traditional ‘Industry Talk’ is geared towards reconstructing hierarchies of expert and novice. There is a given authority to the speaker, who comes in to share their wealth of experiences that can only be acquired over time. So here, the hope would be to bring the speaker back to being ‘one of the students’ So students can ‘see themselves’ in the speaker and vice versa.
A longer term aim would be to encourage students to recognise their ability to identify who would be the most relevant people for them to have the opportunity to connect with.
The talk also becomes an opportunity to turn their approach to industry research from passive to active; they understand that the onus is on them to research and define what areas of focus may be most appropriate.
I have a Guest Talks day scheduled on Nov 21st to accompany a Publications Brief. I am yet to confirm speakers. Ahead of this, I would like to better understand the student experience of guest talks so far. How can I design a set of survey questions to help draw this out?
I did some reading on Student Centred Guest Lectures, and how these kinds of interventions have been both planned and analysed.
Reading 1: Student-centered guest lecturing: A constructivism approach to promote student engagement
Using a case study from a pilot in the Uni of West Georgia a series of online lectures, this paper looks at how engaging students in each stage of the process, such as preparation, interviewing, and reflection can improve engagement;
Guest lecturing can be used to engage students, but its effectiveness is limited because students usually passively receive information in a traditional setting. This is place where constructivism can play an important role: students initialize the process by coming up with questions; guest lecture is done pure questions-and-answers format; students have chance to reflect their thoughts through discussion boards and essays; students work in teams during the process‘
The role of the teacher is very much as a facilitator here. The trick will be getting the balance between, seo setting a framework which allow students to then define the questions.
The instructor plays a critical role in this student-centered approach. The instructor needs to identify appropriate guest speakers for the class, set up clear expectations of students on each step of the approach, and closely monitor students’ behavior and activities. On the other hand,the instructor should avoid getting into a dominant role in each stage except selection of subject matter experts.
It was useful to see how evaluation for the project was conducted, through a combination of survey and open ended questions.
At the end of each study period, a Web-based questionnaire will be administered to the participants to measure their perceptions of engagement. Qualitative data regarding this approach will also be collected in the form of open-ended questions“
Reading 2: Student-centred guest lecturing in a crystallography class Shao-Liang Zheng et al.
While this was about an entirely different type of course, it had some useful models for planning Student centred approach.
the student-centred guest lecturing approach is designed as an active learning experience where students participate at each step of the process, including careful preparation, judicious implementation and effective evaluation (Fig. 1).
Communication between the course instructor and the guest speakers is important for improving the learning experience of the students (Lang, 2008; Leor, 2015; Wortmann, 1992). Guest experts who are not aware of the students’ level of familiarity with the material may speak over the students’ heads or will not draw from the examples that are relevant to what the students already know.”
Bearing this in mind, I think it would make sense for me to find Industry speakers who I have contact with, rather than approach unknowns, or get the students involved at this stage.
It gave me the idea to design a Post Event survey alongside a pre-event one, or even try some interviews to get student feedback after the event too.
Next steps
- To begin planning the Talks Day
- To create the pre event survey
References:
Shao-Liang Zheng et al. Student-centred guest lecturing in a crystallography class J. Appl. Cryst. (2018). 51, 909–914
Li, Lei and Guo, Rong, “A Student-Centered Guest Lecturing: A Constructivism Approach to Promote Student Engagement” (2015). Faculty Publications. 3608.