It has been two years since I came up with the idea of the Mystory course as part of the Effective Course Design module on the MSc in Digital Education and a year and a half when I presented the very tentative course proposal at the IATEFL conference in Glasgow. I must admit I was not very hopeful at the time that I would ever be given an opportunity to run this course with real students. However, it has happened – I was given the green light just before the holiday break, rather unexpectedly and with little involvement on my part. Many thanks to my colleagues at the Language Centre of the University of Glasgow for this lovely Christmas present - if you read it you know who you are :-)!
So who are the lucky students?
I’m going to run the project with a group of international students undertaking a year-round pre-sessional course at Glasgow University. In terms of IELTS scores their level is around 6.0 across the skills and they are doing the so-called Syllabus 3, which is a bridge course providing an introduction to academic English and study skills. The main focus is on developing academic writing skills – the students get acquainted with types of essays and learn how to integrate sources in their writing. Even though the writing skill development is an organising principle of the syllabus, it follows weekly themes, such as learning styles, changes in life, culture shock or English as a world language.
On top of the writing and other skills classes, the students have two afternoon Supported Independent Study (SIS) sessions per week which aim to help them develop their language and study skills further by means of individual, pair and group activities facilitated by a tutor. As part of the SIS, the students also get engaged in an exploratory group project, at the end of which they give a poster presentation. It is the SIS classes that are going to provide a space to trial my project.
How does Mystory fit into all this?
Well, it seems to me all this makes the Mystory project fit in quite well with the aims and content of Syllabus 3 and so allows for a more seamless integration of the project and strengthens the rationale of implementing it. After all, such issues as language, changes or culture shock should provide good food for thought for a would-be post-grad student from abroad who attempts to make sense of their identity.
Of course, certain changes have to be introduced, the main one being the blended format of the course. Also, assessments have to be formative developmental feedback only. The final summative assessment has to be stripped as this would require the whole Syllabus to be revamped, a change that cannot be made easily, especially that the project is experimental. Hopefully, the fact that the project seems well aligned with the rest of the course in terms of aims and themes provides some compensation. The blended format and visible tutor’s and classmates’ presence should be helpful in maintaining good motivation levels. Instead of a final essay, they students will be asked to produce a poster, which is perhaps a better alternative. A poster constitutes a more natural way of combining text with visuals, perhaps more approved a scholarly output than a more experimental multimodal assignment. It lends itself better to Critical Response Process, a feedback format frequently used in dance and art education. I have explored it in my Online Assessment assignment where I claimed it might be a valid and useful form of evaluation in case of pedagogic activities asking students design multimodal texts. Lastly, creating a poster might present itself as a more suited kind of challenge than writing an essay, providing a channel to express creativity in playful and less formalised ways. It is also easier to present to the external audience.
What needs to be done?
Various things have to be done. I have had to duplicate the wiki and as usual the Wikispaces team have proved themselves to be helpful in that respect. The new site was live in a matter of hours and everything was working without glitches and there was a compliment as well from the team, which gave me the necessary motivation boost:
So who are the lucky students?
I’m going to run the project with a group of international students undertaking a year-round pre-sessional course at Glasgow University. In terms of IELTS scores their level is around 6.0 across the skills and they are doing the so-called Syllabus 3, which is a bridge course providing an introduction to academic English and study skills. The main focus is on developing academic writing skills – the students get acquainted with types of essays and learn how to integrate sources in their writing. Even though the writing skill development is an organising principle of the syllabus, it follows weekly themes, such as learning styles, changes in life, culture shock or English as a world language.
On top of the writing and other skills classes, the students have two afternoon Supported Independent Study (SIS) sessions per week which aim to help them develop their language and study skills further by means of individual, pair and group activities facilitated by a tutor. As part of the SIS, the students also get engaged in an exploratory group project, at the end of which they give a poster presentation. It is the SIS classes that are going to provide a space to trial my project.
How does Mystory fit into all this?
Well, it seems to me all this makes the Mystory project fit in quite well with the aims and content of Syllabus 3 and so allows for a more seamless integration of the project and strengthens the rationale of implementing it. After all, such issues as language, changes or culture shock should provide good food for thought for a would-be post-grad student from abroad who attempts to make sense of their identity.
Of course, certain changes have to be introduced, the main one being the blended format of the course. Also, assessments have to be formative developmental feedback only. The final summative assessment has to be stripped as this would require the whole Syllabus to be revamped, a change that cannot be made easily, especially that the project is experimental. Hopefully, the fact that the project seems well aligned with the rest of the course in terms of aims and themes provides some compensation. The blended format and visible tutor’s and classmates’ presence should be helpful in maintaining good motivation levels. Instead of a final essay, they students will be asked to produce a poster, which is perhaps a better alternative. A poster constitutes a more natural way of combining text with visuals, perhaps more approved a scholarly output than a more experimental multimodal assignment. It lends itself better to Critical Response Process, a feedback format frequently used in dance and art education. I have explored it in my Online Assessment assignment where I claimed it might be a valid and useful form of evaluation in case of pedagogic activities asking students design multimodal texts. Lastly, creating a poster might present itself as a more suited kind of challenge than writing an essay, providing a channel to express creativity in playful and less formalised ways. It is also easier to present to the external audience.
What needs to be done?
Various things have to be done. I have had to duplicate the wiki and as usual the Wikispaces team have proved themselves to be helpful in that respect. The new site was live in a matter of hours and everything was working without glitches and there was a compliment as well from the team, which gave me the necessary motivation boost:
@anzbau Max is pretty awesome! And we love your course wiki-- so well-designed! Let us know if you'd like to have it featured on our blog!
— Wikispaces (@wikispaces) December 23, 2013
I am still in the process of checking links, adding terms to glossary, Tech Help pages and EAP resources - a never-ending process to be honest - and will probably be just one step ahead of my students!;-)
I have made it my priority to help students develop reflecting and commenting skills and have located some useful resources on Youtube but I think I need to come up with models of reflections and comments to set high standards. In terms of digital literacy, there are various issues I would like to discuss with my students when doing the project, for example fair use of images, creative commons, safety on the Internet, protecting your data, leaving a digital footprint. I guess face-to-face sessions might become lively debates – I still have to locate resources and come up with activity sequences.
I am still not sure about my approach to introducing various online tools – at the moment there are a couple of video tutorials showing how to set up a blog. To what extent are the students going to be happy to experiment with the tools and learn with and from each other? I would like to have to put on a didactic instructor’s hat on who just tells them how to do things. I think I’d like to keep things easy for them, but always encourage those ones who would like to be pushed and learn more. Moreover, there will be consent forms to sign and constant feedback forms to fill in – I would like to document the process by means of not only me blogging here about it but also filming my students debating the Internet related issues, sharing their reflections, using the CRP for feedback and so on.
On a final note
I am excited but also anxious – is it going to work? Is it going to work for me but more importantly is it going to work for my students? Let's see ... Roll on Tuesday, 7 Jan - that's when I am going to see my students and introduce them to the idea.