Corey's Teaching

Session/artefact to be observed/reviewed: Software Engineering Course

Size of student group: 13

Observer: Mikolai Berg

Observee: Corey Ford

 

Note: This record is solely for exchanging developmental feedback between colleagues. Its reflective aspect informs PgCert and Fellowship assessment, but it is not an official evaluation of teaching and is not intended for other internal or legal applications such as probation or disciplinary action.

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Part One

What is the context of this session/artefact within the curriculum? How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity?

The students are learning software engineering. They need to think about planning their code using a type of diagram called UML. They are given a series of games and need to inspect the code and try to reproduce UML diagrams from this code. This is the third week teaching this group, as their main lecturer. 

What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)?

The students will complete a research task where they find different advances and place these together onto a Miro board – creating a timeline of types on the history of computer science.

Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern?

From what I’ve heard from colleagues they are a quiet class. I’m curious to see how this activity goes in terms of fostering student’s discussion. Attendance has been poor, and I pushed them to attend the class two days ago for a guest lecture, so I expect them to be tired at this point in the term.

How will students be informed of the observation/review?

I will tell everyone at the beginning. 

What would you particularly like feedback on?

Nothing, in particular.

How will feedback be exchanged?

E-mail.

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Part Two

Introduction

Session on Unified Modelling Language (UML) software engineering

13 students present

Pre-session

Corey informed me that the unit is quite delivery heavy in the first few weeks so students at this point (some weeks into the unit) may be tired and that’s an element to be mindful of in terms of participation, attainment and outcome expectations.

Session content and design

Timings

Intro to activity 5-10 minutes

1 hour for main task

20 minutes for follow up task

Group-based activities throughout the session.

The tasks

In the first task the students are asked to choose one of 5 computer games, classic ones such as ‘Snake’ and produce key words that correlate to create a code aligning with the structure of the game. They must also identify coding coherence between the three different stacks such as ‘dependents’ and ‘associates’.

In the second task they are asked to do the same but with a different game. This time the task is timed, and the timeframe is shorter.

Session delivery and resources

Corey introduces the task in an approachable way, providing thorough instructions and the planned activity process.

Once the activity has begun Corey provides further instruction to each group and where needed, re-iterating on a personal level with the student in question.

Whilst the students are working on the task, Corey takes turns with each group, following up on their progress, providing further direction for their WIP.

Once the first task comes to an end, Corey gets the students attention and introduces the second task, reminding them that this task structure could possibly be expected of them in their assessment, but in this setting, they will be asked to solve the task each by themselves.

At the end of the activity Corey provides the students with result sheets expressed approval of the students processes and outcomes. He finalises by providing information on the following session.

Resources

The physical resources used was the activity outline and information sheet and the results sheet. In terms of digital ones, a Miro board was projected over four screens presenting the different groups’ task progress.

Reflection and suggestions

The atmosphere of the session was not pressurised and the groups of students seemed well informed and started working on the task immediately after the activity outline. Developing their processes on digital post-it notes seemed to work well for the group progress. Corey’s attention to all groups facilitated the process and the hour’s task seemed to go very fast!

The Miro board worked well as a collective digital resource where students could see their own and the other groups’ progress, which possibly also served as a challenging and competitive element. I had not seen the Miro board in such use before and will certainly apply this to my own session in the future, as it was effective in many ways.

The group activity model worked well in this setting but I’m wondering if it could have been useful to apply an individual work approach in the second activity? I’m aware that the students were possibly tired due to previously demanding sessions but an alternative to the groups could have provided that additional challenge for the higher achieving students.

In our conversation after class Corey did draw attention to that some students in the groups seems to do the majority of the work, so applying the individual approach could possibly also challenge the less active students to work on their own. After witnessing the process in a group setting, they could have also found this approach less complex. Such a structure could also refine the newly gained skills of the more diligent students.

Another suggestion would possibly be to make the attention central again through the course of the session. As the Miro boards were presenting everyone’s WIP perhaps it could have been useful to share one groups’ process as an example to the whole class, at one point? Could this have been useful for the whole class and provided a small breather in their processes, as well as a moment for collective feedback?

Lastly, could it have been useful to allow time for reflections and possibly presentations of the process and outcomes in front of the class? Verbalising activity outcomes could have provided another element of reflection and engaged the attention of the group to the specific decision-making strategies applied.

Additional observations

At one point a student raised their voice aiming to get Corey’s attention. Corey did not respond immediately and provided just the right amount of attention to the student and by doing so re-enforcing necessary student/teacher boundaries.

Corey also applied an interesting digital-physical approach, using physical post-it notes that he’d stick on a student’s laptop with a fun symbol or a smiley face, ‘checking in/on’ with them in a humorous way. Very effective and uplifting!

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Part Three

Thank you for the generous and constructive feedback. I reflect on your comments below, prefixed with MB. My responses prefixed with CF. 

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MB: [Miro] “possibly also served as a challenging and competitive element.”

    CF: This is an aspect I hadn’t thought about with Miro, but naturally I suppose showing the work together at once will encourage students to ‘play’ against each other.  I wonder whether this is helpful for all students e.g. will quieter less competitive students feel pressure to perform? I might consider ways to use this to its advantage and make the sessions more gamified and competitive?

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MB: “I’m wondering if it could have been useful to apply an individual work approach in the second activity”

    CF: I agree! I noticed that the contributions to the board were unequal after class also, reflecting on the outcomes, and from some reading (see Blog Post 3) feel that having areas where individuals can show their contributions will be incredibly helpful.

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MB: “After witnessing the process in a group setting, they could have also found this approach less complex.”

    CF: This also makes sense, to scaffold the initial running of the task in groups for some peer-peer learning before leaving people to work individually. I will be adopting this sequence in future.

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MB: it could have been useful to share one groups’ process as an example to the whole class, at one point? Could this have been useful for the whole class and provided a small breather in their processes, as well as a moment for collective feedback?

    CF: This is a common theme in my feedback. I’m often corned too much with pace and keeping activities running, that I often forget to leave space for reflection. Focusing on one of the stronger groups will help to give examples to the others, again facilitating some peer-peer learning. I will try this in future.

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MB: could it have been useful to allow time for reflections and possibly presentations of the process and outcomes in front of the class?

    CF: I love to do this kind of thing in lots of my sessions. The challenge with this class is in their quietness – they generally don’t like doing presentations. That said, we have a session coming up after the easter break where each group needs to give formal presentations, and having this experience in this earlier class might’ve helped them to practice this skill and provided more structure to the session. Will be looking at ways to integrate this going forward.

Figure 1: A montage of ducks.

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Timed Session Plan

3 mins – Opening Mentimeter

2 mins – Introducing Genetic Algorithm (Flowchart Slide)

5 mins –  Iteration 1 with Ducks and Clay

5 mins – Iteration 2 with Ducks and Clay

3 mins – Closing Mentimeter

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Key Decisions

I decided to start and end with a mentimeter to assess current and later understanding – a known technique (Pierce, 2022). Mentimeter is used in lots of our teaching at CCI, and so I wanted to see what others would think of it as a tool.

The flowchart slide explained the genetic algorithm to set up the activity. I then planned for several iterations with the ducks: this was less structured so that I could react to the time constraints.

The use of ducks and clay was inspired by a previous lesson I’d done, where I hadn’t intended for students to use the two in tandem – however, the students decorated their ducks with the clay anyway! I wondered if I could capitalise on this for the microteach.

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Description of Session

The session started with Mentimeter and I discussed the feedback as it populated the word cloud live. I then introduced the flowchart.

Figure 2: Pre-session Mentimeter Results

Figure 3: Flowchart of Genetic Algorithm shown at the start of the session.

Next, I moved to the centre. I kept the table set up by Blythe as it felt more intimate and facilitated discussion so I mimicked the position.

Figure 4: Instructing to decorate the ducks.

I then instructed to decorate the ducks and line them up, shown below.

Figure 5: Lining up the ducks.

We had an informal discussion about the “fitness function” to decide which ducks get carried forward for the next iteration and placed the ducks into clusters. Here was where I think some of the most interesting discussions happened, with different ideas for how the ducks should be evaluated ranging from subjective opinions to more concrete ideas (e.g. hat size).

Figure 6: Clusters of ducks.

We then repeated the process, to show how the population of ducks changed over time. I ended by asking the same question with Mentimeter and discussed the feedback, shown below.

Figure 7: Post-session Mentimeter Results

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Reflection on feedback

The flowchart had a technical complexity to it, which was sufficiently challenging for the time frame without requiring too much skill to understand cf. flow theory (Csíkszentmihályi, 1990)

We did two iterations of the algorithm. I was surprised by how effectively the duck population changed – it was clear that the selection had made a difference. There was an opportunity here to explore the ethics of the algorithm more so. For example, the ducks could have evolved to expose how these algorithms re-enforce inequalities in the dataset. The teachers asked questions on this e.g. how does the fitness function work with demographic data. The post-session feedback also suggests bias selection was a key takeaway of the activity. In future, I will explore this to leave a more impactful impression, not immediately obvious when under the fun guise of playing with rubber ducks.

It was also clear that the ducks and clay created a fun atmosphere. The teachers asked me about the materials and seemed delighted when I told them they were essentially children’s toys. The teachers also seemed happy to take the ducks home with them – perhaps giving them a reminder of the session and an object to reflect on at home.

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References

Csíkszentmihályi, M. (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York, USA: Harper Collins.

Pierce, M. (2022) ‘Tweaking Your Pre and Post: Capturing Student Learning at the Session Level’.

Session/artefact to be observed/reviewed: Level 6

Size of student group: 10

Observer: Tim Stephens

Observee: Corey Ford

Note: This record is solely for exchanging developmental feedback between colleagues. Its reflective aspect informs PgCert and Fellowship assessment, but it is not an official evaluation of teaching and is not intended for other internal or legal applications such as probation or disciplinary action.

Part One

What is the context of this session/artefact within the curriculum? 

The session is for second-year computer science students, for the software engineering module. They will have just been introduced to the Agile software development process, which is followed by companies to organize their work, and very quickly introduced to the assignment (not formally released until 4 weeks time). The assignment is to visualize data from a model “smart home”: this is a cardboard house with lots of sensors connected for temperature, dust, air quality, and lights which switch on and off. 

How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity?

I had only taught them once before on Tuesday and delivered a lecture for a different module, focused on future technology. This module is more focused on skills they will use if they want to work as a software developer.

What are the intended or expected learning outcomes?

The intended outcome is for students to get a flavour of the different things that might happen in an Agile process, and to start to think about what they could do for their assignment.

What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)?

I’m trying an approach that my lectures in music composition used to do, where they would only give 1 side of A4 handout, and guide activities and discussion from this. Students will have to google ideas for the assignment in teams, following the steps of the agile process. This includes goal setting, presenting this in a quick “stand up” meeting, then collecting their ideas, and presenting their ideas. The sheet is attached for reference.

Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern?

Other lecturers have told me they are a quiet group, and from the previous session, this seems to match my experience. Any feedback on ways to provoke them to start to bring forth ideas is welcome.

How will students be informed of the observation/review?

I will let the class know when I start my session.

What would you particularly like feedback on?

Ways to engage the class in more discussion. 

How will feedback be exchanged?

E-mail? If this works for you?

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Part Two

Introduced me to the group.

“This is the topic theme….introduction – First Slide.

Daily Stand up – Slide 2

“Any ideas, what this is…

St. responds…

[Decoding the word…

[Moving away from desk….explained in context. Sat at front.

“What you did…

“What did you do

“What is blocking you…

“Everyone OK…? Yeah, yeah yeah? {Encouraging…slightly ambiguous…

St. no response..

[You encouraging…

[Explaining the activity…[layout of the room and groups distance from you]

“Here’s what we are going to do….the steps in the next hour…

“First thing getting into groups, 4 or 5

“Happy to join…[light-hearted…do you like these people…happy to make friends…]

“Do planning phase, have a discussion, set some goals. (Back to first slide)

“Go quickly, with enthusiasm…[Energising the room…]

[You move round the room and approach pairs and connect up small groups]

[You re-explain, ideas for assignment…

“How to do it…discuss! [Open instruction]

[You move over to the group at the back, and chat with them…

[Active in the room…positive technique, working with their choice of seats]

[This is a type of hovering, helicoptering, supervising or monitoring, etc…can be light touch; listening or intervening and active engaging in q+a and discussing.

[Listening to student groups around me, there is a combination of project and social talk, which is common in this scenario….sharing project thoughts and ideas..

You chat with Wengshu for a while to check-in as she leaves

[You return to group at the back

[Engage in Q+A with them…

“Is that OK…so now if you were all to ‘Stand up’ just to say what you were going to do, would you be able to do it?…yeah…ok?…

[You move to last group, and then back to the front, sitting on desk.

“Ok, people with me…

“I’m commanding the room, got it…

“Do you feel sufficiently planned…

“Can I make you do it with me, just to demo what the others…

“Stand up

You approach the first group on yr left

“Yeah, yeah…ask someone to do the thumbs..

St lots of thumbs up..

St. sharing, but in quiet volume, no one can here…

[You feedback to them…

“Ok so you’re going to research and ..

“Can you guys hear in the corner?

[they do/do not respond…]

St.Present {Goldfish bowl}

[You initiate clapping.

[Others join in.

“You got it to a place each 2 tasks and a potential barrier…[doing good teaching, timely, relevant on-task feedback]

“You ready, whose excited..

St hurray..

“I’ll put a timer up, the idea it’s a super short meeting, for 15 minutes

“Stand up, up…

People stay in groups and stand and feedback…

[learning opportunity for Goldfish bowl..?

[Listening to groups around me they are in mode of presentation, but the group behind ( at the back) have split in two, and only the 3 boys seem to be ‘active’ in the task…2 girls not yet speaking…

[You move between the groups.

[Girls took turns to say something, but was largely responded to by males; may need to consider the air time and gender arguments/evidence…

[You join and stand next to the females at the back but the boy in the middle, hoody, is the one who explains the (most confident?)

“If you had to split up and each person had a goal…[you structure a way of involvement…excellent practice]

“If you look at games…

“Different ways you censor [?..]

[You move to next group.

“If I said you had to do the project can you tell me what each one would be doing…

St. talking..

[You listen

“No, that’s good [encouraging and responsive

[You stood to listen to this group…

“If you had to….could you split into and would you each…?

[You move to the front check time..

“OK, you can sit down….

“Just super quickly…

“Who found that a useful thing…who thinks that standing up helped…?

St: Yes!! {biggest response of the session so far}

“You’ve got Miro Board….

[You explain task

[Group in the corner…getting attention…

[You continue to set task (short, about 10-15 seconds! – is this indication of your pace of speech, pace of energy, a control mediation or a natural thing…what does this pace do to focus…what does it do to energy in the room….) [Vary your pace]

[Pause in the session, as groups sit down and you re-orientate.

[You now start to move again anti-clockwise round the room to interact with students in groups.

Listening to group chat the social/work chat is about 60/40…until you approach, then its 100 work, then you move away, then it sounds about 50/50 and moving to 80/20 [These are very approximate impressions!]

[You sitting at front on desk, again allowing yourself to regroup and the student groups to get on with task…this is your observation post, nice technique.

[Degrees of convergence/divergence

[You allowed about 5 minutes for independent work, this is an interesting threshold to find in terms of independence; often its evident in the sound and type of sound of chat in the room…social (higher and faster paced?) work related more even and level (lower tones?) – in VERY general simplistic terms….(be good to empirically test this out of course!)

[Groups focussed again on work as you walk round…

[You allow another 5 ….

[and then you project group Miro Boards on the projector at the front [excellent! [This becomes a step up, in terms of student and group, and individual ‘presentation’ because each cursor has a trace, so in theory everyone is visible…]

“OK, it feels like people are nearly ready…[as you watch the on screen projections….

Pause for another 1 minute

“OK I think you’re good…in your projects you might have…you use some technical descriptions.

“Who wants to go first?

[You throw mic cube over….

[Group 1 present (of two, male speaks) and you /they move Miro board visuals to match presentation

[Group to yr right talking, you quieten them…

‘Don’t worry too much about that……tell me about those pictures…

St. from UAL website..

[You clap.

“OK, nominate a group!

[You play with the students and maintain a friendly empowering tone

[Quiet chat from group at back you move closer to them to quieten and add focus….

Group 2 they take turns to speak! And explain interesting ideas on lights/fridge/sensors

Group 3 they take turns, 2 guys from the front edge….(Group of 5 3/2 M/F)

“I want to hear about this picture…? I think this would be useful to look into more alright..

[Clap, etc.

Group 4 E. Asian student (female) explains for group…interesting variation

[So, you return to first slide.

“Plan

Build

Review. Now what? You had a weekend it was nice…

‘You act out the return to planning…pointing, moving from r-l across the from of the room to demo.

“Yes/no, remember with your thumbs…

St responds

“This time, stand up, review goals this time what would you do..[ interesting 2^nd time round…not full buy-in

St Silence….! Do they understand? Do I?

[Listening to the groups, they are talking work and projects for sure, group to my back left, boys still mainly ‘owning’ the work.

[You enlarge the three questions on the PPT to add focus, for sure….

[Half the room is standing half seating…interesting…

]They got the idea first time!

[I come up to the hour of OBs.

(16.40)

[You sit on desk again for plenary sum up and ‘fun’ -discussion…type of summing up..

You do an interesting short summary and make some key points and insights…a kind of acculturation exercise…interesting how we can use these spaces…

[Most full attention perhaps gathered in the room….students very attentive]

Explaining the week’s timeline.

How do people, feel….

Quickly wave at me…did you get a sense of the process…some sense of direction with projects…?

I’m here for next ….but you can leave

Look forwards to seeing you Tuesday

Summary & key points

You’re a great teacher! Very active, very observant, very good at ‘managing a room’ and classroom management as it’s sometimes trad. called.

You plan well, and able to be ‘light touch’ which suggests you have confidence, in yourself, in them as learners, and in keeping a basic structure and keeping things simple. This frees you up to interact and them to work independently.

Issues to explore, lots of data on this, but proved in this case, males tend to get or take more air time then females, more activity time, feedback time and are more interacted with than females by their tutors. Why is this the case, in general, and how can we mitigate against this being the norm. The spokesperson on the RH side group [facing you] was the exception of the confident female voice, why is this the case, how did she manage to escape the paradigm? What can you do to address this issue?

You do, as anticipated, sometimes overuse the single open catch all question!

How’s things? All good? Any questions? Etc etc. How can you utilise the incredibly dynamic and investigative, curious and creative power of questions and questioning? Your one good variation on this was the thumbs up feedback…but I know (from microteach) you also use feedback tools for live feedback; and cleverly, used the live miro board visuals to see cursors moving – all great ways of getting the feedback we need as tutors from questions to the class. Step one, what is it we really want or need to know in that specific moment and how can a more complex worded question or questions help us find that out?!

The students were engaged and increasingly responsive as a group. The session “worked”. So well done for that. They learnt a couple of good takeaways for their creative and planning and communication process. Excellent.

Group tasks. Techniques.

Layout of each group in the room – rearrange spatially so they can hear/see each other

Goldfish bowl.

Cards for roles

Feedback options for each person

Signals and shortcuts : was this productive/active/useful/enjoyable

One sentence summaries, two sentence summaries

Bullet point feedback

Group exchanges

Etc.

You have a great playful and engaging manner which works really well with the learners, I am unsure how you might hear individual stories, unless people can tell you. And how idioms might go down with those less familiar with English language idioms, maybe. Although, your observations and use of teacher presence, proximity, is a great form of classroom control and management and {shows your experience and insight and understanding] also engages with those shyer to share to a whole group.

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Part Three

Thanks for the insightful and constructive feedback, which showed me many aspects of my teaching practice which I hadn’t previously observed. I am responding to your feedback below. Your comments are prefixed with TS, my reflections are prefixed with CF.

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CF: As we discussed in our follow-up meeting, I’m not too worried about social chat creeping in. Our students tend to come to High Holborn and only chat during class time, then travel home, so including some time for social chat and bonding is welcomed to help build a tighter cohort. This said, having ways to ensure that the necessary learning is still occurring will be helpful to ensure that I get this balance right and I will be exploring different ways to collect feedback we discussed (e.g. sentence summaries) to make sure that I get the balance right.

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TS: “St. sharing, but in quiet volume, no one can here…”

TS: “learning opportunity for Goldfish bowl..?”

CF: I followed up on the Goldfish bowl technique with some reading (link), and I think that this will be very helpful in classes to engage people in listening to each other’s feedback. I reflect back on a previous class where we brought students all to one table for discussion, and I found that this was far more constructive and balanced than when the students were each at their own tables and groups, feeding back with the microphone. The goldfish bowl might help to emulate this effect without the need to set up one table or focal point each time. I will certainly be using the goldfish bowl in future classes.

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TS: “males tend to get or take more air time then females, more activity time, feedback time and are more interacted with than females by their tutors[…] what can you do to address this issue?”

TS: “only the 3 boys seem to be ‘active’ in the task…2 girls not yet speaking…”

TS: “Girls took turns to say something, but was largely responded to by males”

TS: “[You join and stand next to the females at the back but the boy in the middle, hoody, is the one who explains the (most confident?)”

CF: This was a fascinating insight and one that I hadn’t noticed before! Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I think this likely has grounding unfortunately in Computer Science as a discipline and I know that there is a wealth of literature on women in Computer Science, which I plan to engage with going forward. So far, I have spent time observing this in the following classes and had two instances where students were asked to move around the room, and quite literally split into girls on the left and boys on the right! I have also spoken to some female colleagues (and recent PGCert graduates) about methods and techniques for ensuring more equal contributions, such as allocating girl and boy pairs to tasks (whilst being mindful of inclusivity and alienation effects) – I will be implementing these techniques into my teaching for next semester.

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TS: “Who found that a useful thing…who thinks that standing up helped…? St: Yes!! {biggest response of the session so far}”

CF: I was similarly surprised by the enthusiasm of the response here, which indicates that the technique works. In the upcoming classes, we return to this technique (which they document for their assignments), so I’m glad this was received well by the students.

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TS: [You continue to set task (short, about 10-15 seconds! – is this indication of your pace of speech, pace of energy, a control mediation or a natural thing…what does this pace do to focus…what does it do to energy in the room….) [Vary your pace]

CF: Varying pace is something I will observe more closely in my teaching. At points, I feel that my strengths are in encouraging fun, but notice that this can disadvantage students who prefer to work in quieter atmospheres. On focus, I observe that towards the end of the session, this can reduce students’ brain power (perhaps why the second check-in of whether the stand-up was helpful was less enthusiastic). From the workshops, I found that the meditation exercise you guided us through helped to re-center the room and bring focus, adding a nice variation of pace, and I want to try this in my teaching soon. I also plan to read more widely for other techniques to see if this focus can be sustained and to better differentiate my teaching practice.

–

TS: “catch all question![…] what is it we really want or need to know in that specific moment and how can a more complex worded question or questions help us find that out?!”

CF: From our discussion, I look forward to using techniques such as giving different feedback options for students, testing one/two sentence summaries, or closing opportunities for bullet point feedback. I have often used Menti-meter exclusively throughout the course to gauge understanding, but have found that students tend to dislike Menti (particularly if I’ve overused it across sessions), mumbling and groaning. The techniques we discussed I hope will mean I can bring more variety to these check-ins and gather more targeted feedback from students more regularly.

Summary of Experience/Resource

In this post I reflect on “Home sweet home: achieving belonging and engagement in online learning spaces” (Leewis and Ross, 2022). The authors describe using Miro to create a digital space where students work together and co-create work – supporting their connection with one another throughout the course. Their context was an online course in Design. Leewis and Ross (2022) suggest several techniques for creating a “shared world” for the students, using Miro to mix personal and communal. By balancing the teacher-student, student-student, and student-space, relationships, they also connect their use of Miro to students’ autonomy cf. self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci, 2000) and placemaking (Tibbitt, 2017).

Reflection on its Relevance and Application to Context

I use Miro often in class; many students request to use Miro instead of pen and paper because it is “easier”. However, in my teaching, I find that Miro doesn’t help to foster connections amongst the students as Leewis and Ross (2022) suggest. A key difference is that I use Miro for in-person classes, projecting students working in groups onto the whiteboard. I usually mimic the table room layout in Miro, so that students in physical tables can work on their digital table together. I suggest that this approach with Miro actually makes students work independently, within their group, without engaging in wider discussion – instead communicating through board contributions. Specifically, I think back to a recent class, where I noticed long periods of silence in the room, not discussing their work. I observed that some students quietly performed contributing to the Miro, leaving the work to a group “leader”. This is supported by logs of the Miro where one member of each group has approximately 5 times the number of contributions to the board than other members.

Next Steps

One technique used by Leewis and Ross (2022) is to hide parts of the board and reveal them through the lesson, adding mystery and intrigue. I will try this approach as creating opportunities for curiosity might help to spark quieter students to engage and contribute to the board.

Leewis and Ross (2022) also included a “hot off the press section” where each student has their own private space in Miro to add their ideas and shape them to their personality. I will add a similar area for my activities to give all students the opportunity to contribute their unique perspectives. This will also make their unique contributions visible in the group work context to encourage engagement. Furthermore, this allows them to co-design their own space (Tibbitt, 2017) and shape the Miro board to their liking – supporting their autonomy cf. self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci, 2000).

Lastly, I will be reading more about ways to encourage quiet students in group working settings, to better understand their own thoughts and feelings. For example, to find ways to mitigate their reluctance to share, or their having to perform sociality even if introverted (Medaille and Usinger, 2018). I will also experiment with Brechtian techniques (Demirdiş, 2021) – perhaps by exposing Miro’s contribution log to students – as discussed in my other blogpost (link).

References

Demirdiş, M. (2021) ‘Bertolt Brecht’s Theatrical Techniques’ Connection with Critical Pedagogy and Their Usability in Learning Environments’, in. Available at: https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:252019494.

Leewis, L. and Ross, S.L. (2022) ‘Home sweet home: achieving belonging and engagement in online learning spaces’, Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 5(1), pp. 71–81.

Medaille, A. and Usinger, J. (2018) ‘“That’s going to be the hardest thing for me”: Tensions experienced by quiet students during collaborative learning situations’, Educational Studies, 46(2), pp. 240–257. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2018.1555456.

Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L. (2000) ‘Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being’, American Psychologist, 55(1), pp. 68–78. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68.

Tibbitt, J. (2017) ‘Placemaking and the University – Opening the University to the Community’, PASCAL International Observatory [Preprint]. Available at: http://pascalobservatory.org/pascalnow/pascal-activities/news/placemaking-and-university-%E2%80%93-opening-university-community.

Contextual Background

In this case study, I reflect on two Level 4 modules across UAL’s Computer Science degrees. The first module is the “Introducing Computer and Data Science module” (IC&DS), which teaches introductory programming skills. The second is “Introducing Human-Computer Interaction” (HCI) which is more design skills based. I reflect on two issues relating to student diversity in the classroom and consider ways to differentiate (Eikeland and Ohna, 2022) learning accordingly: diversity of technical skills and diversity in hyposensitivity.

Evaluation

:::DIVERSITY OF TECHNICAL SKILLS:::

In IC&DS, students join from a variety of backgrounds and have varying levels of starting programming skill. My pre-course survey captured in week 1, for example, shows that ~75% of the students were unfamiliar with the technology we were teaching, but ~25% very familiar. I observed that this impacted levels of engagement in the class. Course feedback from student reps also reflected discussions with stronger students wanting to engage in more complex programming tasks, already largely familiar with the basics.

::: DIVERSTIY IN HYPOSENSITIVITY :::

One of my HCI lectures focused on using sketching and low-fidelity prototyping skills to explore design. I had run several, fast-paced mini-tasks. For example, seeing an image of some software and having 1 min to sketch it, or to create a paper prototype of a watch in limited time. I even added music for them to create to and felt that the students overall demonstrated lots of energy, were in continually conversation, and overall had a fun learning experience. However, at the end of the session, one student came up to me saying that the found it difficult to focus during the lesson, that there was a lot going on, and that they preferred quiet time where they could look at materials in a more independent way to observe and take in the content.

Moving Forwards

Moving forwards, I want to employ more strategies for differentiating my teaching practice. On technical skills, I had offered more difficult extension tasks to students in the class but found that many students simply ignored the extension task – comfortable in having completed the minimum required for the course. In future, I believe that exploring more intrinsically motivating project-based tasks for students to continually build their own skills would be beneficial cf. Pucher et al. (2003). I also want to explore more individualistic approaches to supporting students, to ensure that students are rewarded for increments on their skills. I’ve been reading about ipsative learning approaches (Gwyneth Hughes and Kitagawa, 2014), where baselines for students are established and assessment builds on their current skills. In particular, I want to discuss this next time I meet with course leaders to ensure that ipsative learning could occur as student’s progress at each degree level – for first-year students it’s hard to establish the level of their prior learning (ibid.).  

Regarding diversity in hyposensitivity and hypersensitivity (Stevens and Stegemann, 2016), I tried to organise future sessions so that students could use both classroom and its communal areas. Students preferring a quieter atmosphere would be able to find a quiet space to nurture their learning, whilst students who need more stimulation could decide to stay in the busier environment. I plan to follow up with students later to identify whether this approach has been effective. Here, I also want to explore more sensory modes of learning e.g. (Sensory Studies, 2025).  

References

Gwyneth Hughes, E.W. and Kitagawa, K. (2014) ‘Use of self-referential (ipsative) feedback to motivate and guide distance learners’, Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 29(1), pp. 31–44. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02680513.2014.921612.

Pucher, R.K. et al. (2003) ‘Intrinsic motivation of students in project based learning’, Transactions of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers, 94(3), pp. 6–9.

Sensory Studies (2025) ‘Sensory Studies’. Available at: https://www.sensorystudies.org/.

Stevens, N. and Stegemann, K.C. (2016) ‘Curriculum Planning: The Need for Sensory Regulation Methods in Initial Teacher Education Programs’, Teacher Capacities: Knowledge, Beliefs and Skills, p. 569.

Summary of Experience/Resource

“The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.” (Audre Lorde – New York — 1980s)

In this post I’m reflecting on a quote presented in workshop two which sparked me to reflect on my teaching philosophy, and how my “persona” as a lecturer could be enhanced to provoke reflection in my own students.

I especially thought back to my experience teaching a ‘crit’ style module in Human-Computer Interaction (1^st Year BSc Computer Science students). Students had to present an interactive system to encourage people to think about decolonisation in their everyday life working at High Holborn.  Emphasis here was on everyday use of technology, which is unobtrusive. I recall one group who wanted to use virtual reality, and my feedback consistently in crits was that this required people to use the headsets, creating a barrier for every day, unobtrusive use. Their final report submission on this project did incredibly well: the VR was important to them; they had crafted strong arguments for its use; and pushed back on my expert critiques.

Reflection on its Relevance and Application to Context

The notion of sparking learning like a riot reflects something important to my teaching – for students to think for themselves, identify their interests, and intelligently argue their point of view. A challenge of the crit method is that often my own expert design knowledge is given to students – power imbalances often lead to my own feedback being taken as always correct (McDonald and Michela, 2019). Furthermore, I felt as these crits were centred on considering decolonisation, that my own background as a White British male lacked insight from lived experience and more so my domain knowledge.

The quote made me consider a concept in the performing arts of Brechtian alienation – where audiences are exposed to the façade of on-stage action to spark their reflection. Considering lecturing as a type of performance (Street, 2006), I wondered whether there was opportunity to alienate myself, self-critique, and draw attention to the power imbalance. Would this encourage student’s critical thinking and provoke them to push back on my suggestions? Would this encourage student’s reflection on what they are being taught in the curriculum, and spark meta reflections on what they’re learning? To push back and create work they are truly interested in and proud of, instead of demonstrating performative learning without deeper insight (Draper and Waldman, 2013).

Next Steps

To explore the potential here, I will explore literature applying alienation techniques to education. For example, Demirdiş (2021) suggests that teachers could have students roleplay different perspectives to defamiliarize them and spark unique reflection, or to illuminate power imbalances by engaging students in discussion on this.

One simple first-step I will take in my next crits, discussed with colleges in the workshop, is to present my own background and biases before crit’s – to expose my own background, assumptions and influences. Students will then be more aware of my own positionality and might be able to consider and write about this more concretely when reading my feedback.

References

Demirdiş, M. (2021) ‘Bertolt Brecht’s Theatrical Techniques’ Connection with Critical Pedagogy and Their Usability in Learning Environments’, in. Available at: https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:252019494.

Draper, S. and Waldman, J. (2013) ‘Deep and Surface Learning: The Literature’. Available at: https://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/courses/archive/CERE12-13-safari-archive/topic9/webarchive-index.html.

McDonald, J.K. and Michela, E. (2019) ‘The design critique and the moral goods of studio pedagogy’, Design Studies, 62, pp. 1–35. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2019.02.001.

Street, P. (2006) What a performance! recognising performing arts skills in the delivery of lectures in higher education. PhD Thesis. University of Greenwich,.

Summary of Experience/Resource

In this post, I reflect on Addison (2014). Addison describes the history of learning objectives (LOs) and their goal of (supposedly) adding transparency in university teaching. In line with the framework of constructive alignment, LO “enables students not only to know what they have to achieve[…] but also how and when they are to be assessed.” (pg. 314).

The teaching context is preparation of a new Level 5 course for Computer Science students, titled “Global Perspectives on Computer Science’’. The module’s concept is to invite many guest lecturers to cover various computer science topics, fostering student’s curiosity across the subject, and to consider the variety of ways technology can shape the future. In designing the curriculum, I’m using LOs set by the course leader, two of which I reflect on below:

• LO1: Practice sociotechnical optimism in your work along with humility, vulnerability, and a sense of curiosity
• LO2: Evaluate the efficacy of historical, current and future international computing trends considering inequalities and diverse, complex practices, concepts and theories.

Reflection on its Relevance and Application to Context

Addison’s (2014) suggestion that “once published, it is almost impossible for teachers to revise outcomes to meet immediate needs militating against development” (pg. 317) resonates with my experience.

In workshop 3, we discussed how, as phrased, LO1 is challenging to assess: it focuses on personality characteristics and not student’s work (Furnham, Nuygards and Chamorro-Premuzic, 2013). As I can’t change LO1, I;ve asked students to blog for each guest talk, to steer assessment towards their reflection on moments they found meaningful in talks. How to connect this to the LO1’s emphasis on and curiosity whilst retaining inclusivity is an open challenge. Next Step: I plan to run an activity with the students to co-create the assessment rubric for LO1 cf. (Queen Mary Academy, 2025). I reason that a mutual understanding of what the criteria means across the class will help to ensure inclusivity in the assessment of this criteria, despite its focus on personality.

With LO1 aspiring to spark curiosity, I sourced several guest lectures: from space-craft design to robotics. Whilst I considered students interests, the talks were restricted to concepts I felt would spark thinking on LO1. Given the breadth, it is impossible that all the talks will spark student’s interests. How to retain student’s engagement across talks is an open challenge? Next Step: I plan to assess students for each blog post individually, so that posts which they are more naturally curious about will be balanced by the others where they might feel be less engaged. I will also steer the rubric design to allow for students to reflect on connections to their own interests, awarding them for reflection on their professional identities.

For LO2, students must think about each lecture in the context of computing history. LO2 is very broad: it is difficult to cover a complete history within the module’s scope. I’m concerned that students might spend time not reflecting or following their curiosities, instead continually revising their understanding of different areas of computing history. Next Step: I will run a student-led activity where students co-create a timeline of computing history (see Blog X). Viewing the timeline as an object-of-learning (Hardie, 2015), the students could references this in their blogs instead of having to conduct vast independent research.

References

Addison, N. (2014) ‘Doubting Learning Outcomes in Higher Education Contexts: from Performativity towards Emergence and Negotiation’, International Journal of Art & Design Education, 33(3), pp. 313–325. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12063.

Furnham, A., Nuygards, S. and Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2013) ‘Personality, assessment methods and academic performance’, Instructional Science, 41(5), pp. 975–987. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-012-9259-9.

Hardie, K. (2015) Innovative Pedagogies Series: Wow: The Power of Objects in Object-Based Learning and Teaching. York, UK: Higher Education Academy.

Queen Mary Academy (2025) ‘Co-creation in assessment and feedback’. Available at: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/queenmaryacademy/educators/resources/assessment-and-feedback/resources/co-creation-in-assessment-and-feedback/.

Contextual Background

In this blog, I focus on formative feedback I gave in crits for first-year computer science students on the Human-Computer Interaction module. The students were asked to design a system which sparks people to reflect on decolonisation. In weekly crits, each group of students presented at the front with all other groups watching, and I provided written feedback for each presentation, sent out to students by e-mail at the end of the crit. They directly respond to quotes from this feedback in the next crit presentation.

Evaluation

Based on the guidance discussed in the workshop, particularly the Arts SU guide for crits (Arts Students’ Union, 2024), an issue with my approach is that it emphasises my own thoughts as key assessment criteria. Many students might perform learning and simply agree to my suggestions, as opposed to developing critical thinking skills. Instead of “championing multiple ways of knowing” (Arts Students’ Union, 2024), the power-imbalance of myself as an expert in crits might lead to students “internalis[ing] the objective knowledge, routines, techniques and attitudes of the expert” (Rose, 1996, quoted in Barrow, 2005, pg. 260) as opposed to using the feedback as a structure to “negotiate with” (quote from Design Student Nicholas in Barrow, 2006, pg. 369).

Moving Forwards

An implication from this issue is that students need to be encouraged to exercise their own critical thinking skills – to reflect upon, and perhaps even argue, with my expert feedback.

One idea from the group discussion in class I will try is for myself as a lecturer to play a more passive, almost invisible role, with the students leading the writing and giving of feedback. Through doing, the students then start to build critical thinking skills and develop the craft skill of giving and receiving feedback – ‘reflecting-in-action’ on tacit knowledge built (Schön, 1983) whilst writing the critiques. By being able to steer their own design explorations towards their personal interests students might also “engag[e] in activities which… tell them something about themselves” (Mann, 2001, quoted in Barrow, 2006, pg. 358) and, in following their own interests, might be more intrinsically motivated (Pucher et al., 2003) to engage in critical thinking on their design process.

A challenge here – particularly, I think for first-year students – is that they might not yet developed the necessary design knowledge to be able to offer critiques on expert knowledge which they haven’t been exposed to. They might also not have the necessary vocabulary to be able to frame and offer constructive criticism.  Going forward, I will make my own expert feedback more differentiated (Eikeland and Ohna, 2022) by asking what student’s would find most useful in terms of feedback in advance of sessions. I can push them to then think critically about their own intrinsic motivations in relation to new ideas they may not have heard of – both exciting their intrinsic motivators whilst offering new opportunities for critical thought. I plan to adopt a more gradual approach across the crit iterations might also – from myself giving feedback in early iterations as an example for students to mimic themselves in later sessions – to strike a balance between student-led learning and the building of essential domain knowledge.

References

Arts Students’ Union (2024) ‘Crits and Inclusive Learning at UAL’. Available at: https://www.arts-su.com/news/article/6013/Crits-and-Inclusive-Learning-at-UAL/.

Barrow, M. (2006) ‘Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect’, Studies in Higher Education, 31(3), pp. 357–372. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600680869.

Eikeland, I. and Ohna, S.E. (2022) ‘Differentiation in education: a configurative review’, Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 8(3), pp. 157–170. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2022.2039351.

Mann, S. (2001) ‘Alternative perspectives on the student experience: alienation and engagement’, Studies in Higher Education, 26(1), pp. 7–19.

Pucher, R.K. et al. (2003) ‘Intrinsic motivation of students in project based learning’, Transactions of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers, 94(3), pp. 6–9.

Rose, N. (1996) Inventing ourselves: psychology, power and personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schön, D.A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. London: Basic Books Inc.