Higher Education Academy Project Update – 26th February 2013

Just a short update on the progress of my HEA teaching development grant project. As mentioned in the last update, I presented at the joint HEA / SHEEF conference ‘Disseminating Innovative Practice‘ at the Radisson Blu hotel in Edinburgh on Tuesday 19th February. There were some pictures taken at various times during the conference, but no video that I could see, and so I decided to video a little recreation of the paper I presented. Due to memory restrictions on uploading videos I had to compress and split the video into two parts, but in any case, here is my presentation:

Disseminating Innovative Practice 1

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Part One

Disseminating Innovative Practice 2

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Part Two

The quality of presentation was extremely high on the day from all of the presenters that went before me, and to be honest I was somewhat nervous as a result when it came time to carry out my own presentation after lunch (always prefer to present before lunch so that it’s not hanging over you and you can enjoy eating more!!). However what I presented seemed to go down relatively well as I was asked a number of questions following the conclusion of the session.

In the run up to the conference, in the two weeks prior to it, I managed to carry out the final focus group with the student participants on the project to complete phase one, the practical stage of the project. The group was well attended, with nine of the twelve students attending (this was exactly the number I expected), and there were very good levels of contribution from all present. The session was recorded to allow for a proper transcription and to ensure that conclusions and emerging lessons / indications can be drawn in an accurate context. This will hopefully allow for at least one further interim dissemination, whether written or oral, to be drafted in the coming weeks.

Finally, I managed to complete my interim report (circa 2,500 – 3,000 words), which had to be written and forwarded to the HEA by the 18th February, and surprisingly I managed to get this finished and submitted by the 14th. Unusual to not be still writing on deadline day!!!

So now it is on to phase two of the project, and to be honest I don’t think I will have too much to report on relating to that until close to the end of that, but I will of course note anything of interest as and when it crops up.

At this stage I would like to go on record as thanking a number of people for their contributions and help to date, and I feel that having completed the first phase it is an appropriate time to do so:

Professor Angus McAllister – now Emeritus Professor of Law, UWS, who gave me great support relating to my taking on the project prior to his retiral earlier this month.

Mrs Valerie Finch – now retired former subject leader for law, UWS, who allowed me to take on the project in the first place and gave me space in my activity plan to do so prior to her retiral late last year.

Dr Julie Thomson – from the Innovation and Research Office, UWS, for helping me get everything officially set up to run the project and approved at the outset.

Mr Ron Livingstone, head of the business school, UWS, who gave support to the project and said that it was exactly the sort of thing that he was happy for staff of the business school to get involved in.

All of the students who volunteered, successfully or otherwise, to take part in the project. Without their input, the project would have been impossible to get off the ground. In particular, the levels of engagement of many of these students has been absolutely superb and has helped enormously with being able to draw valid indications and conclusions thus far.

Patricia Meiklejohn and Graeme White from Paisley Sheriff Court and Hamilton Sheriff Court respectively, both of whom were so welcoming to myself and the students taking part in the project. Patricia in particular really helped by spending some time with the students on their first court visit, explaining various aspects of the court and personnel, as well as answering student questions. This was very much appreciated by both myself and all of the students.

The various other personnel of the courts, many of whom took the time to come and speak to the students including at times the fiscal depute on duty, defence agents, clerk of court, court officers, police officers and others.

The HEA and all of the hard working staff there. Without their hard work (and money!), projects like mine would be unlikely to exist. In addition, the events and conferences that they organise ensure that results and indications can be disseminated to a number of relevant people, which of course helps enormously.

And finally, anybody else that I may have overlooked in the few minutes I have been typing – if you have helped, then I am grateful, and apologies for not mentioning you by name. I would also include here anybody who has taken the time to come to this blog and read / watch the videos of my ongoing progress, hopefully you have found something interesting on your visit.

As mentioned, I’ll of course make further updates as and when necessary.

 

HEA Project – Phase One Dissemination

A happy new year to all. This is just a short update on my ongoing HEA teaching development grant project: (Legal Education – academic or practical? The use of flexible learning to compare undergraduate students observing professional practice with those learning in a traditional academic setting).

The focus group which officially ends phase one of the project was delayed slightly so as not to interfere with the exam diet for the students who have been taking part. This has now been confirmed as taking place on Tuesday 12th February 2013.

February will be a busy month for working on the project as in addition to the focus group and (immediate!) transcribing and analysis of results, the official interim report is then due to be completed and sent to the HEA by Monday 18th. Immediately following the submission of the interim report I am presenting the activity and results of the project to date at a conference on Tuesday 19th.

The conference, which is being hosted jointly by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) in conjunction with the Scottish Higher Education Employability Forum (SHEEF) is:

“Disseminating Innovative Practice“
Tuesday 19th February 2013
Radisson Blu Hotel,
80 High Street,
Royal Mile,
Edinburgh

My presentation is simply titled “Learning via traditional academic methods versus learning by observing professional practice” and will last fifteen minutes followed by five minutes of plenary questions.

Hopefully this all passes without any major issues and I will update with a further blog toward the end of the month.

 

HEA – Teaching Development Grant – Update December 7th

This is just a short update on how the HEA project (Legal Education – academic or practical? The use of flexible learning to compare undergraduate students observing professional practice with those learning in a traditional academic setting) I am leading has been going.

Thus far, as suspected, of the participants there have been a few students who have been inconsistent in terms of attendance, but on the other hand at each of the two locations (Paisley and Hamilton) there have been a core group that have attended either all sessions, or indeed missed a maximum of one. The students that have missed sessions have all indicated that they will (or in some cases have) voluntarily attend an additional court session to ensure that the total number of hours spent in court will reach the minimum threshold to ensure fair comparison across all participants.

As of the end of today (Friday 7th December) there will have been ten court visits in total, to a large range of court types including:

- Solemn trial (Trial with judge and jury)
- Summary trial (Trial with judge alone)
- Custody court
- Summary court (where accused has pled guilty)
- High Court of Justiciary (Trial with judge and jury)

At both Paisley and Hamilton there have been cases with witnesses giving oral testimony, and also physical evidence presented. In at least two sessions there have been objections lodged by one of the counsel based on the evidence being presented.

From my own observations, it would be possible to have answered a number of the questions the students have been asked to attempt to answer, whilst there have been other areas that a limited amount of information might have provided an indication, for which a student may be able to find the answer with a little investigation. There are other questions which I would not expect the students to have been able to answer yet unless they have taken the initiative to source answers elsewhere.

There has been some adaptation to the original research plan as initially there were seperate days scheduled for feedback sessions, however due to time constraints this was restructured to instead seek feedback and ask questions directly after each court visit. In many cases there have been questions to clarify what has been observed, or probing questions to lead on from questions raised during the course of the session.

The final court visits will be next week (week beginning 10th December) with a final focus group (to be filmed) thereafter. It is expected that an interim publication will be possible in January following the observation of the focus group and analysis of student responses to set questions. A further update will be made on this site prior to the end of January.

 

Higher Education Academy Individual Teaching Development Grant Project 2012 / 2013

As I wrote a few weeks ago, I am now in the early stages of a research project funded by the Higher Education Academy (HEA). The project is as a result of an application submitted in early summer containing a lengthy proposal, and having commenced last month, will run until August / September 2013. It is anticipated that the results of the research project will be both published in relevant journals and presented by way of at least one relevant conference. There may be the possbility of an interim publication following the first phase of the project, but this is tbc. Below are two videos that comprise the introductory lecture given to research subjects, presenting more information on the project.

HEA Project 1

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HEA Project 2

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Slides from the presentation: HEA Project Introduction

Further updates relating to the project will be made here throughout the year, if anybody has any questions about it feel free to ask.

 

September 2012 End of summer update

Well it’s been a while since I updated this, and there are various reasons why this is the case. There have been various changes within the department at UWS as the subject leader for the law group, Val Finch retires this week, and the Professor of the department, Angus McAllister has also announced he will be retiring at some point during the upcoming academic year. Law teaching at UWS has been under review for over a year with various changes and proposed changes that I will not bore you with the ins and outs of, but suffice to say there has been an administrative workload that has gone along with this, as would be the case with any departmental review or change.

In terms of my own workload I have been particularly busy as I have been working at the University of Westminster in London three times over the course of the summer months, and have also been appointed as an external examiner for Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen where I’ll have to visit at some point in October. I was also incredibly happy to find out that I was successful with a £5,500 grant application I made to the Higher Education Academy early summer having spent a substantial amount of time putting together a proposal and research plan, and as such will be commencing on a 12 month research project in the next couple of weeks, which I will post more of in an individual blog at some point in the next day or two. I’m glad to say that UWS have been very supportive of my application and also the time that I will need to carry out the necessary work in order to generate the future results.

I am looking forward to the next academic year of work at UWS, even if there are massive departmental changes ahead in terms of both personnel and indeed complete organisational change within the business school as a whole.

For now that’s all I wanted to write; a quick update, there will be some more updates as mentioned over the coming days and weeks.

Allan

 

Update to close 2011

Apologies for the lack of recent updates, the last couple of months have been the busiest of my working life to date and I simply have not had the time to dedicate to keeping the blog up to date. To give you an idea of the activities I have been involved in:

• Assisting in the drafting of a new LLB programme (which ultimately has been put on ‘pause’ for the time being unfortunately).
• Starting as an external examiner for 6 modules across 4 different undergraduate LLB degrees with the University of Westminster in London.
• Presenting at the Higher Education Academy 3rd Annual Scottish legal education conference in Edinburgh.
• Teaching and assessing for 3 modules across 2 different campus, not helped by the cancelling / rescheduling of classes due in the first instance to bad weather and the second when I had to undergo minor surgery.

This in addition to other usual workplace meetings and issues. I am looking forward to 2012 allowing me some more time to dedicate to my own research and maintaining this blog a bit more regularly as I have a reduced teaching load in comparison to the past trimester, although I am commencing with the use of some innovative assessment methods for the first time that may require a bit more attention than usual to ensure it all runs smoothly.

For the time being, I hope you all had a fantastic 2011, and looking forward to a happy and prosperous 2012.

Allan

 

Is teaching ‘better at school than university’?

So today an article has been published by BBC News Education Reporter Hannah Richardson that points toward pupils / students believing that ‘teaching’ was better when they were at school as opposed to when they were at University. The statistics come from a study of a thousand final year university students commissioned by the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC), so immediately we can ascertain that being not independently commissioned already casts doubt over the legitimacy of the results and / or agenda behind the study.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-15150382

As usual, the general rule with these studies is that what is reported is almost purely quantitative information. I would like to point out some fairly simply facts that I learned whilst studying at postgraduate level the subject of research methods. Quite simply – quantitative research tells you only about the existence of a phenomena in anything remotely sociological in nature. To ascertain the reason for the existence of that phenomena you absolutely require either a mixed methodology or the use of qualitative research, where people are required to qualify the answers they give to questions. This way, answers given on irrelevant grounds, misunderstanding of the question or in response to emotive motivation etc. can be weeded out more easily.

In other words, the facts and figures discussed in the BBC article actually tell you very little at all that is actually useful. As such, in my opinion the only completely useful information is contained at the end of the article when Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of Universities UK said that comparing teaching at school to teaching at university is “nonsensical”. She went on to say:

“Higher education is about students interacting with tutors, lecturers, researchers and their peers and being encouraged to think independently. Teaching excellence at all UK universities is what makes them so attractive not just to UK students, but to students from around the world.

“We agree that high quality teaching in schools can have a profound effect on whether a young person enters higher education. Nonetheless, the different but complementary roles played by the schools and universities do need to be recognised.” (Richardson, H; Teaching ‘better at school than university’ – survey, 4th October 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-15150382)

This is the reality. The rationale behind teaching at university is completely different from the base level up at univerisity, hence the fact that there are different teaching qualifications for school teachers than there are for lecturers. The main role of University teaching is in my opinion to gradually develop and foster independent thought and opinion based on underpinning theory and facts relating to any given issue. The ability to be self disciplined, to learn how to study more effectively and to actually synthesise information. It is a step up from school teaching whereby teaching is to equip pupils with basic knowledge and understanding, and general problem solving skills. There is a gradual move away from the ‘teacher’ giving all of the information to the pupil then read back to them through class tests and exams, towards the student taking more responsibility and ownership of their studies, preparing them for the real world beyond education.

As such, I personally believe the two areas are utterly incomparable, and studies like the one cited by the BBC of little relevance or usefulness to either educational sector (School or University).