Transformational Conference Feedback

The first pass on the evaluation of the conference.  We put the words from the forms through Wordle.  This gives a good idea of the quick thoughts of the participants.  In the main it seems to have been a positive experience.  We will post more detailed analysis of the evaluation up on the blog shortly.  In the meantime if anyone who was there would like to comment on this, please add a comment to this post.

Thanks

Kenny

1. Distinction between TL as peak moments of personal insight or intense change in thinking and perspective (literally transformational) and TL as continuing and continuous shift in position as a consequence of learning (perhaps transformative).
2. Quasi-religious nature of terminology/ discourse reflecting spirituality, emotionality and holistic basis for much of the discourse about TL.
3. Difficulties in defining, measuring and assessing TL (& therefore establishing standards of quality or competence and related to this educational interventions producing intended outcomes or impact).
4. Link to ESD but concern for growing pressure in HEI to commodify knowledge, introduce instrumental managerially and wreck many of the values and ‘requirements’ necessary for TL.
5. Unanimous agreement about the issue of resource linked to the previous point.
6. Need for mixed methodologies as well as qualitative methodologies in developing an understanding/ new accounts of TL. There was a view that perhaps ‘participatory research’ was a requisite for appropriate research design in work with TL.
7. TL at the moment is an elusive slippery construct which some felt will by definition always be so given its inclusion of a need for emotionality and affect as key aspect of what it is that we recognise as transformational (linked too to learning that converts self-reference and personal identity).
8. Student empowerment – is it a neccessary pre-condition for teachinng TL? Case examples given of intended transformational learning in a curriculum for media studies in the UoG were contributed (several related to trips, re-location, removal from established comfort zones); ditto with a comparative research project funded by PRSI involving early years team in education (UK-Sweden).
9. Possibilities around organizational learning, institutional change and TL – need for research and more work with the ideas of TL and learning communities within the institution?

Please leave comments below.

Kenny

'Building a Wall' by Brenda Anderson

conference went ahead yesterday and seemed to engage the participants in some animated and enthusiastic discussions.

We have captured quite a bit f the discussions in a variety of formats in both digital (video, image and sound recordings) and analogue (post-it notes, doodles on tablecloths, and evaluation questionnaires) formats.  Our challenge is going to be to convert the analogue to digital and to convert the digital into a meaningful and navigable set of resources to explore and respond.  We will try to use this blog as a the main portal to this material, though it may also be stored elsewhere.

Please check back over the next couple of weeks.  You will see this blog develop and grow.

Kenny

The delegate packs are complete, the bookings are made and the keynote speakers are arriving in Cheltenham.  All is now set for the conference.  This blog is the PRSI blog and we hope to use it over the next few weeks to continue the conversation, share some ideas and resources with participants and others.

Over the next few days, we will share some of the conference materials here and allow you to comment on them and on the conference, make suggestions and link to other useful websites.  We hope to capture some of the discussions on the day to share them here too.

We look forward to continuing the conversation.

Lindsey, Glenn & Kenny

Conference Organising Committee

resources.glos.ac.uk.  There is a very good reason for this related to the consolidation and presentation of the university’s image online, which I can’t quite remember in full.  However, this means that if you bookmarked or linked to important web content on our site, such as the PRSI website, it has moved to http://resources.glos.ac.uk/tli/prsi/index.cfm

Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.  I hope you find the pages again.

I am still working on the web content, such as recordings, video, posters.  This should be readsy shortly .

WATCH THIS SPACE

Kenny

Are we in it for the distance?

As I have said in previous posts, PRSI put an investment into the Forum because we believed that ithis would be the kind of meeting that could catalyse activities. There is anecdotal evince that our instinct is being proven correct, but wed be really grateful if people could post some comments logging any initiatives, or conversations or any other activities however, tentative. Evidence of this appearing may encourage more ‘green shoots’ (a prompt for a future blog picture, perhaps!).

For example we understand from Daniela Tilbury the Director of Sustainability here are Gloucestershire that there are a umber of Forum participants who will be meeting inforally at a conference in Plymouth over the summer. If you are going can you post some details in a comment? Is this the All Our Futures conference in September?

Any others?

Kenny

The picture is called ‘il mondo occidentale‘ and was taken by Paolo Margari and posted to flickr. It is covered by a Creative Commons License: attribution, non-commercial, no-derivatives. It was found using flickrcc

We started the day with discovering that the projector in the main hall had gone and had to be replaced, then we got word that there was a major accident on the M5, suggesting that some of the participants may be delayed.

However, most of the participants registered turned up and a few extras for the University of Gloucestershire were able to get away from their commitments for part of the day.

Prof Patricia Broadfoot, Gloucestershire VC, opened the conference commending the Forum participants for our commitment to the research of teaching and learning because she described this as providing the evidence base for addressing a major challenge of 21st universities.

‘Learning is not … Listening’

… it is so many other things which she went on to discuss.

We were very pleased with the interest in the active approaches we designed into the days events.

In the morning presentations the presenters and chairs did remarkably well in keeping to our almost impossible restrictions of 5 minutes and three slides per presentation in the morning sessions. We hope to post some resources from these presentations in the form of audio or video or Powerpoint presentations shortly. If you took part in these discussions, please post a comment if you didn’t get the chance to be heard on the day – or even if you did. I was only able to attend the Diversity session, but would really have liked to attend the others, so would be interested to hear what people said.

The ‘speed dating’ session went extremely well. Some people clearly met their ideal research partner because they seemed reluctant to move on to another date!!

The lunch was enjoyed by everyone. This was done by outside caterers to the university (see previous post). We would welcome any feedback if you were there.

The Learning Cafe created quite a buzz in the afternoon. We have collected in the table cloths and post-it notes and intend to collate this information and make this available online shortly. Please watch out for this and comment if you feel the urge. In the meantime, I typed up the main bullet points from each chair as a separate post. Please have a look at these posts that I typed up as the Table Hosts were feeding back to the Plenary and post a comment:

• 21st century universities
• Academic Leadership in HE
• Technology Enhanced Learning
• Engaging Diverse Communities
• Internationalising the curriculum
• Linking Research Teaching and Practice
• Education for Sustainable Development

We would really like this Forum to result in a number of collaborations – otherwise it was just a nice day and a ‘talking shop’. So please keep us in touch with anything that results and let us know if we can assist. Lindsey suggested in the summing up at the end of the Plenary that PRSI has some activities, such as seminars, writing initiatives and so on that we would be keen to share with other institutions. Please get in touch and let’s see if we can achieve something from this.

During the course of the day I spoke to a number of people who had met other participants with common interests or in some cases were working on projects that were remarkably similar. We hope that these meetings and sharings will result in networks for some, collaborations for others.

So is this the end or is it the beginning? Can we continue the forum discussions in some way that will result in tangible outputs? How will this work?

Kenny

The image is ‘Finish Line‘ by ptufts made available under a Creative Commons license, found using the image search on Creative Commons

Lots of exclamation marks & question marks appear on our on the tablecloth! (??)

The discussion covered different kinds of research – how useful is it in teaching-led institutions post-RAE

• further longitudinal studies are needed with students not just on students;
• mentoring;
• who teaches the teachers? – particular those people who may be reluctant/hesitant to engage with these issues; how to inspire colleagues to join us on the journey.

During the the Learning Cafe we found the words ‘grow’ and ‘growing’ were important to the discussion – projects could be small flowers or saplings, as much as they could be large oaks.

• “Academic leadership is learning to lead for leading learning”
• change – is all change good? How does leadership link with change for good
• challenge – is it good, how do we face it/deal with it?
• exploring ‘concern’ – leadership & management should be about people, but change can bring about concern

• there is a need to identify barriers to accessing or using technology for learning, not just for preventing use, but restricting the use of the technology
• student expectations of technology is important – are we reinforcing students expectations to be ‘spoon-fed’ learning

Research questions:

• curriculum design – researching the effectiveness of the design of curriculum across institutions and the sector as a whole
• web 2.0 technology – are these student-led or staff-led?