Learning and Assessment with Social Media: A Case Study with ‘Manipulating Media’ #Durbbu
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“Sit still and listen!” Traditional learning approaches stress that the teacher is the source of all knowledge, that there is a fixed path to learning. “Stand up and join in!” Lifelong learning emphasises that educators are guides to sources of knowledge, which people learn by doing, in groups and from each other. Manipulating Media was a new course taken by all first year media studies students at the University of Winchester from 2011. After an intensive period of front-loaded teaching, students taking the course worked upon a number of live team briefs that presented problems that required the use of academic literacy to be solved. The projects made extensive use of collaborative online learning. Students produced and delivered work using a number of web 2.0 applications and platforms, including reflective blogging. The course proved very popular with students and there were clear indications of the development of academic literacy in students. Previously, academic literacy, which comprises the core skills of critical thinking, evaluation of sources, referencing, analytic and critical writing and self directed learning has proven a difficult and often unpopular aspect of introductory years for students in higher education. This paper explores one successful way in which a combination of social media and project based learning have been used to teach academic literacy to media studies undergraduate students at the University of Winchester, overcoming the sense of ‘disconnect’ between the substantive elements of a media studies degree and the ‘drier’ academic style and skills required.
![[http://manipulating-media.co.uk/]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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Learning and Assessment with Social Media: A Case Study with ‘Manipulating Media’ #Durbbu
- 1. Learning and Assessment with Social Media: A Case Study with ‘Manipulating Media’ Dr Bex Lewis, CODEC, Durham University @drbexl @codecuk #durbbu
- 3. Academic Skills The core skills of critical thinking, evaluation of sources, referencing, analytic and critical writing and self directed learning... researching, writing (including structuring, references), reading, note-taking, team-work, presentations, revision, career skills, etc.
- 4. Academic Skills academic 'excellence' soaks in
- 5. 1990s, courses on academic literacy integrated into the curriculum
- 6. 2000s, student support centres, disconnected from subject
- 7. action learning - skills taught within a constructionist framework
- 9. Front Loading: 6 weeks of Lectures
- 18. Twitter: @manipm
- 20. Project One:The Brief Each group will produce a short video promoting the value of going to university, in order to persuade prospective students that they should still seriously consider undertaking a degree. The video should be three minutes long. You should be as imaginative, engaging and persuasive as possible. It is up to the group to come to a consensus about content, but you might consider social, educative and/or economic values of education or the advantages over the alternatives.
- 21. Dealing with the issue of 'Groups’ Project Manager Researcher Content Production & Dissemination
- 23. Project 2:The Brief Using PowerPoint create a narrated presentation lasting no longer than 5 minutes that answers one of the questions detailed below. Your presentation should consist of slides & a recorded narration created in PowerPoint. You should include images & animations but no video footage in your presentation. Your presentation should be as academically rigorous as an essay but do not overload the viewer with too much information. The information you use should be supported by references and all your sources should be included in a bibliography on the slide at the end of your presentation. References and bibliography must be formatted according to the requirements of the Harvard Referencing System. Your audience are academics & students.
- 25. Project 3:The Brief Each group will produce four sample pages for a media themed magazine, these must include: The front cover A contents page Two further pages of articles, at least one of which must be a review appropriate to the style and content of the magazine. Consider: Content; genre; audience; technical aspects; delivery
- 26. Project 4:The Brief Each group will decide on a campaign aimed at changing student behavior in some way. The campaign could be a health message, safety & wellbeing, environmental or about student engagement. Ensure you have confirmation from tutors that your campaign is acceptable. The campaign should be multiplatform, and appropriate to your audience. The campaign itself should be visible on or around campus for at least a week before the final deadline…
- 31. What do the students get from it? Work goes out 'publically' Ownership Engagement Using the tools they are more familiar with? Ongoing feedback
- 32. Student Feedback Enjoyable, engaging ‘Real-world skills’ – especially teamwork Learnt from range of team roles, and from project to project Criticality Building an audience Time-management IT & Research Skills
- 33. Lessons Learnt Effective Facebook group = peer support successful Separate team roles with clear expectations Action learning rather than ‘sit and listen’ = higher engagement/grades Self-motivation identified the ‘stronger students’ who went above & beyond Developments Early interaction online – issues with formative rather than summative? Blogging: Earlier check-in? No progress without development? Catching the ‘poor’ students: required self- motivation? Uniqueness of different cohorts?
Editor's Notes
- 25 minutes inc questions… “Sit still and listen!” Traditional learning approaches stress that the teacher is the source of all knowledge, that there is a fixed path to learning. “Stand up and join in!” Lifelong learning emphasises that educators are guides to sources of knowledge, which people learn by doing, in groups and from each other. Manipulating Media was a new course taken by all first year media studies students at the University of Winchester from 2011. After an intensive period of front-loaded teaching, students taking the course worked upon a number of live team briefs that presented problems that required the use of academic literacy to be solved. The projects made extensive use of collaborative online learning. Students produced and delivered work using a number of web 2.0 applications and platforms, including reflective blogging. The course proved very popular with students and there were clear indications of the development of academic literacy in students. Previously, academic literacy, which comprises the core skills of critical thinking, evaluation of sources, referencing, analytic and critical writing and self directed learning has proven a difficult and often unpopular aspect of introductory years for students in higher education. This paper explores one successful way in which a combination of social media and project based learning have been used to teach academic literacy to media studies undergraduate students at the University of Winchester, overcoming the sense of ‘disconnect’ between the substantive elements of a media studies degree and the ‘drier’ academic style and skills required. Add something about “lessons learned” – what would/did you change for the following year or has fed into continuing practice. How did you assess work?
- So, we’re going back to something that I taught for 2 years in 2010/11 and 2011/12 (academic approaches to the ‘digital’ agenda) – was inspired by hearing others talking about e-learning, etc. and feel that this module was still (and would still be) pretty innovative! Media Studies degree, 30 credit module, Compulsory, Level 4 Replaced: 'Researching Media Studies’; 'Writing for Media Studies’ Accompanied by Key Concepts in Media Studies & Media Studies in the 21st Century Replaced 2 modules that were deathly dull… I taught on one and I found it hard going. Students weren’t engaging, therefore lots of marks in the 40s, and students changing course at the end of the year. Some of the content has gone into Level 5. NOTE: An interesting aside … this site is now down, as I’ve been gone 2 years, and the staff teaching it now have gone back to using the VLE, I’ve not managed to ask how they’re using it, but you may get a sense of what I’ve taken from teaching this module, as I teach on other courses up here that seek to use social media to support and enhance face-to-face teaching (not developed anything 100% distance, or have anything in the pipeline)
- This is the focus of the module… assignments were chosen which helped utilise/demonstrate these skills, rather than JUST because they are interesting/fun to do…
- Teaching and learning ‘theory’ - How it has been from the year dot, and probably still is in some universities. If surrounded by others doing ‘excellent research’ (however we define that), then being in the same ‘environment’ will filter down/through… Possibly osmosis (how ‘read’ my PhD books!)
- In the 1990s, courses in academic literacy began to be integrated into the curriculum, so it was seen as more relevant, but still a side issue to the ‘subject matter’.
- In the 2000s - universities looking for centralisation/more cohesiveness, developed student support centres… all students knew where to go, and not RELIANT upon academic staff (removes some of staff workload), but detached from the subject.
- Essentially providing learning by doing, so action learning within a constructionist framework The module seeks to offer opportunities for creation, construction & collaboration.. Learning is designed to engage with pre-existing experience of the student – they can bring (any) digital experience to the table – what we’re offering is direction and an emphasis on the importance of thinking & reflection… This kind of thinking is influenced by Jean Piaget (increasingly complex mental frameworks tied to age), Ernst von Glaserfeld (knowledge not passively received, but developed upon previous experience/organises experiential world), Seymour Papert (earth tech in education – learner is consciously engaged), John Dewey (engage with/enlarge experience, including reflection) , Nicole Buzetto-Moore (skills development, self-reflection and critical thinking) . We think that learners construct individual meaning - that IS learning, which means 1) we have to focus on the learner in thinking about learning (not on the subject/lesson to be taught): we need to remember that there is no knowledge independent of the meaning attributed to experience (constructed) by the learner, or community of learners.
- STUDENT ENGAGEMENT - TESTA PROJECT, funded by the HEA. This is one of the modules that was developed out of the TESTA process which was applied to the old modules –findings: i) students did not engage with the assignments and saw them as external to learning. Ii) students did not internalise or integrate the goals and standards into their own framework – even though they understood what was expected of them in an academic setting they carried on making their previous mistakes – they simply did not change their behaviour. This then developed onto another project, JISC funded, FASTECH (seeking technological options for pedagogical problems such as lack of continuity of effort, etc…), although TESTA is still the name that you’ll hear more often.
- The course was (and still is?) front-loaded with 6 lectures. The first is an introductory lecture, and uses interactive exercises to get the students talking to each other, and start them thinking about what their Media Studies degree means. The next four focus on each of skills required for each of the project roles (teams of 4), which I’ll come back to, and the final session on reflective blogging.
- E.g. One of the lectures to get them to think about how presentation, content, etc. affects decisions – so look at something familiar to them – university websites. 21 out of 30 off contributed (was compulsory!!) to blog comments…
- All had LOVED the blog in the first year, but in the second year there were calls to move some of the material (e.g. the core lecture notes) back to the VLE… as this was what they were familiar with elsewhere – and I think that’s why less use has been made of the blog, which has now been taken down…
- On the final week, were asked to start up blogs… we offered suggestions of software (WordPress, though many chose Tumblr) – not restricted, so long as it had the functionality we required (commenting without logging in, etc.) – publicly available to the world. Requirement was at least 1 blog post a week, of at least 300 words (this was part of their summative assessment, but this was hard to enforce). We stressed that they needed to talk about issues they had faced, etc. (as they would in ‘real world’) and needed to remember that this was ‘public’. This was designed after the session on reflective blogging so that they would feel confident (so maybe they didn’t). In order to ‘make amends’ we asked those who hadn’t managed it to write a longer blog post which reflected upon what they might have missed by not completing this… not sure that gave them as much to chew on.
- We offered a mix of encouragement and ‘this will affect your mark adversely’ … although we hoped that the students would enjoy what they were doing and write much more than many did (and many seemed to equate enjoyment with effort – had to disabuse them of this idea!) … but the intention was all about ‘coaching’ them towards a better outcome – so lots of formative feedback.
- Strongest students seemed to get a lot out of it…. Giving a sense of both qualitative and quantitative gains…
- We also created a Facebook Group (Fresh one each year) … worked v. well… although did force one reluctant student onto FB. Was designed to augment, rather than be central too, but was lots of extra activity so felt was missing out. We used to ‘poke’ in more bits of informal thinking, etc. especially as we weren’t seeing all students regularly….
- They all eventually joined, and whereas last year we’d kept sending emails via the forum, etc. this year – we’d get 1 of them to upload blog/Twitter details, etc. and suddenly a raft of others signed up too.
- Tried to encourage debate before the lectures… a handful of responses was a little disappointing, but we could always emphasize this more in future years, and encourage the students to think of questions…
- We also created a Twitter account … We had all these tools, but I think, having got a lot clearer about the kind of assignments that we have, that we could do a lot more active participation with this & I think would encourage the students to engage more. (New staff not using at all).
- We were able to post some of the in-class work to Twitter – opportunities to discuss further, or to use as revision notes… here they are seeking to measure which of these they would “trust” most. So… a quick look through the projects…
- Video to encourage going to university…. Hoped that they’d enjoy this & start to learn how to work together… and not be allowed to exceed the limits.
- Each brief 3-4 pages long… with pretty clear instructions for what was expected in each role, as last year there had been complaints (as, no we hadn’t thought it through)… Groups change throughout, and they get no choice in who they are with. PM: Responsibility for time management R: Academic research C: Extract a structure, etc. from R P&D: Find the right design/layout, and market So how do we deal with that tricky problem of group work? We have divided the teams into 4 roles (each student should only do each role once, although some groups may be required to have 2 of a particular role). If there are 2 in a role, we expect to see more work for that role. The roles are Project Manager (time management, managing group dynamics, keeping the group on task); Researcher (academic research/referencing, ‘how to’/’legally allowed’ type queries, feeding information to content, and final checking of facts); Content (drawing on the research material to define a good core structure, writes background essays/presentations) and Production and Dissemination (turns the content into something interesting – headings/visuals, etc. & encourages viewers, handles all media management tasks and public facing roles) Each of these roles has a category assigned to it in the blog which clearly lays out what is expected from those roles - it indicates clearly how performance of the role relates to the learning outcomes for the module, plus tutors tend to talk it through with students for each new project. Therefore, if the content person has built something on very little research – we can award marks for doing a lot with little… The first year THEY ENGAGED WELL WITH THIS BLOG CONTENT, the second not so well (so was this just down to the students?)
- 3 min video as an example… probably the best one, but it was a decent range, and most had put effort in. Watching it all together as a group & feeding back on each others made some of them embarrassed at lack of effort better than anything we could have said… We indicated that we wanted them to spend more effort on the concept, rather than the ‘production values’ …
- Early on – a more academic focused one – help with other modules also. Thinking about how to structure, write and then present on an academic topic – intended to encourage them into appropriate referencing, etc. & to use these in future assignments.
- Throughout this course – no further lectures, but in between issue of assignment/submission – series of tutorials with each group – about 20 mins per group each week – we asked them to set the agenda, but we sought to keep them on track…
- No examples of this work as encouraged them to understand that ‘for academic purposes’ can use all kinds of images … but not in the public domain… They enjoyed this a lot, but this was one of the lowest marked assignments as they didn’t really think about the brief, just enjoyed putting lots of pics together!
- Final brief – comments indicate that they did ENJOY this one the most, but also put a decent amount of effort in – and in starting to share their ideas, spurred each other on to do ‘just a little bit more’…
- We continued to encourage them on Facebook… (believing that thanks helps people to do more of the same).
- An example of a video… one of the first to do something truly creative… inspired many of the others…
- They put time, money (although don’t want ££ to sway anything), effort in .. And it paid off… in 250 likes in under 3 weeks… comments/activity on FB…
- Throughout we continued to have a frustration that they have gone for the easy skimming option in research – usually online … but it does help to distinguish students who are eligible for a 1st – having used books well… we questioned whether there was ways that we should make certain types of reading compulsory, or exercises set in the library, etc. (although as a ‘digital educator’, I’m not sure I’ve been to the library that often myself, as JSTOR, etc. bring much of it to me).
- This is what we expected the students to get out of it… Their work goes on public display, so there’s the chance they might get picked up outside the academy, and hopefully that they will put more care into what they produce. Chris Horrie (Journalism lecturer) – we can tell them it’s rubbish, they won’t believe us, someone outside tells them that via a blog comment, and they realise… They are clearly given responsibility for what they are doing from the first, and sidesteps (e.g. I wasn’t there but can you mark me in anyway) are given short shrift. They are also responsible to each other, and so it’s not just about getting the mark (we hope!) They get to work with topical material which is (or should be) of interest to them, but demonstrates how the ‘media is manipulated’, so they engage with it far more. Without getting drawn in to the digital native debate (I prefer Dave White’s terms of Digital Resident/Visitor), arguably these are the tools the students are more familiar with… we gave them an overview of Twitter, Facebook and Blogging in one of the 6 lecture sessions, and they are getting to grips with them on differing levels, some better than others.
- … and this is what they said… The first year it was all feed-forward, no feedback. The second year, we gave extra feedback, they all said it wasn’t enough – can’t win – but had we emphasized so much how special this was?
- So what do you think – have you done anything similar? How might you scaffold it?