Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) were very happy to have external speaker Dr Emily McIntosh (Director of Learning, Teaching and Student Experience at Middlesex University) present for the DARE To Transform network on the topic of ‘Realising relational education: Integrated spaces to promote scholarly pedagogic enquiry and impact.’
The webinar discussed the importance of the third space (Whitchurch, 2012) in promoting the work of teaching professionals, pedagogic practice, scholarly enquiry and impact in higher education. In this talk Dr Emily McIntosh presented the third space as the place of crossed boundaries, where colleagues from professional services or industry experts undertake teaching and/or research, and overlap with the academic sphere.
Dr Emily McIntosh presenting her webinar.
This insightful talk considered how promoting a culture of third space working can impact positively on scholarly inquiry and help to explore, reflect upon and champion the scholarship of education. Colleagues found this a very rich and thought-provoking discussion, where McIntosh was able to give a contextual background with which to identify.
Dr Emily McIntosh unpacked what it meant to work within the third space by drawing on the works of traditional Freirean philosophies of pedagogy and other models of relational and relationship-rich education, which think about learning in contexts that extend beyond the boundaried nature of traditional disciplines and teaching spaces. The presenter then considered the occupation of this third space to the following four dimensions: (1) the relationships nurtured, (2) the space occupied, (3) legitimacies held, and (4) knowledges developed (based on Whitchurch, 2013).
While the growth of the third space brings challenges to secure identities, clear career trajectories and respect and understanding within HE community, it also provides exciting opportunities. McIntosh’s talk highlighted some of the opportunities that exist within the boundary-crossing third space as she promoted her new bookThe Impact of the Integrated Practitioner in Higher Education (Routledge 2022) and welcomed colleagues to contribute to her blog:Third Space Perspectives.
In 2022 the Active Learning Network, with the University of Sussex, Anglia Ruskin University, University of Glasgow, the University of Coventry and other key universities, hosted the second Global Online Festival of Active Learning. The Active Learning Network is a global community supporting the development of teaching and assessment practices that encourage students to take active approaches to their learning. The festival itself is a chance to celebrate playful and innovative strategies for active learning and to showcase approaches to teaching and assessment that others can adopt in their own teaching context.
The festival was attended by over one hundred and eighty participants from seventy different institutions. Feedback was overwhelming positive about the event and comments included:
I am loving this festival and want to thank the organisers, other presenters, and participants. Such a great community of practice. So inspiring!
Really impressive and imaginative use of synchronous and asynchronous modalities.
Fun and engaging as well as meaningful.
Like last year, the festival ran ‘breakfast’ sessions between 9am and 10am and ‘tea time’ sessions between 5pm and 6pm. The idea of these times is that UK participants can join the sessions without interrupting their work day; to encourage people living in eastern nation timezones to join our morning sessions and people living in western nation time zones to join our evening sessions. This idea has been very popular with attendees with over one thousand three hundred sign-ups for different sessions.
Technologies
The festival made extensive use of ‘free’ social technologies, which allowed easy sharing and re-use of texts and materials. For example, contributors to the festival built their slides to create their submission, which then formed part of the programme. The technologies included Eventbrite for booking, Google Slides for the programme, Google Forms for feedback and Wonder.me metaverse for networking and socialising. The University of Sussex Zoom account was used to create ‘Jamming tents’ for the sessions.
Sessions
The online festival ran two types of event: synchronous ‘Jam’ events where we all met together to engage in activities, discuss and build artefacts, usually co-creating digital resources, and asynchronous ‘Moshpit’ events where we engaged in activities and built artefacts in our own time throughout the week.
The ‘Jam’ events
There were twenty-six ‘Jam’ events (including the launch party and closing finale) and there were two or three parallel sessions running at one time. All the sessions were highly interactive with many collaborative writing activities, collage creation and role play.
Many active learning tools were introduced with the technologies that supported them. To name but a few:
Jamie Heywood from Anglia Ruskin introduced the use of social media in teaching.
Adam Tate, Bianca Fox and Sandy Cope from Nottingham Trent University used Google Jam Boards so participants could mindmap the challenges of training new members of staff about the use of active learning approaches to their teaching.
Helen Walmsley-Smith and Matt Coombe-Boxall from Staffordshire University asked us to consider leading teaching through the medium of quizzes and multiple-choice questions (MCQs) created by the tutor and students.
Alison McCandlish from the University of Glasgow introduced Freemix for creating collages.
Many sessions used Padlet and Polleverywhere such as Brena Collyer de Aguiar and Lucila Newell from the Online Distance Learning team at the University of Sussex who used them to discuss the solutions and challenges of delivering distance education. And many used Google apps to co-create documents such as Mary Jacobs from the Aberystwyth University who had us Designing Active Cognitive Tasks and Tab Betts from the University of Sussex in his co-writing session creating a Manifesto for Inclusive and Accessible Education. Environmental sustainability was a theme too with Beatriz Acevedo, Romas Malevicius, Hassiba Fadli and Carmen Lamberti from Anglia Ruskin in their ‘Love, Think and Act project of art and education for sustainability’ and Russell Crawford and Jake Causely from Falmouth University who used a ‘Diamond Nine Curriculum Ladder’ for us to co-create a priority list for embedding environmental sustainability into university curriculum. There was Lego building too and many sessions of ‘Kicking the Hornet’s Nest’ where controversial ideas were presented and discussed.
The ‘Moshpit’ events
There were five asynchronous moshpit events that participants did in their own time. These activities included:
A ‘Put Yourself on the Map‘ activity which gave a visualisation of where we were connecting from (and where they wanted to be)!
A ‘Walking Tent‘ where participants were invited to go on a daily walking adventure – centred around an Active Learning challenge.
An ‘Art Tent‘ where participants contributed their artistic creations.
A ‘Food Tent‘ where participants shared what they were eating and related it to active learning.
That week, lunchtimes became a hive of creativity and celebration for festival attendees.
Summary
The Global Online Festival of Active Learning celebrates teaching strategies that encourage students to actively engage in learning content we are delivering. The TEL team at the University of Sussex, in line with our 2025 strategic framework which foregrounds kindness, integrity, inclusion, collaboration and courage, supports the Active Learning Network and its endeavours to support active learning approaches. Please visit the Active Learning Network website to find out more about the organisation and sign up to the mailing list.
Several years ago we blogged about the apps that the members of the TEL team keep on their phones. Since then the team has changed, apps and phones have developed and we’ve all found ourselves in a pandemic. So as a fun ‘end-of-term’ activity we have looked again at how some of us use our phones.
April and May saw the return of in person events for Technology Enhanced Learning. The three events below highlight just how diverse the work of TEL is, from Online Distance Learning, to Playful Pedagogies, via Digital Personas, there was something for everyone. Don’t forget to keep an eye on our website for future events. It’s been a real joy getting back to in person events and we hope to see more of your over the coming months and the next academic year.
The new empty Canvas sites for 2022/23 modules are now available to University of Sussex staff. TEL have provided guidance on how to get them ready for the new academic year and here is a top ten of things to remember.
Do you know which sections of your teaching content students are engaging with the most, (and perhaps perceive as the most valuable) and conversely, which are often neglected? Do students return to specific pages or even particular sections of a recording when they start revising for an exam? How can tracking weekly online participation and average course grade analytics help tailor the way you structure and deliver effective online teaching resources? This blog will take you through the benefits of using learning analytics.
During the summer of 2020 the University of Sussex Business School worked with a team of student connectors to co-create a series of new marking criteria for each level of study. The project sought to ensure quality and provide consistency, using wording that was accessible to students. You can read more about the project in our past post – Co-created marking criteria.
Collaboration is an essential part of learning so, this blog post will explore four tools you can use at the University of Sussex to facilitate digital collaboration.
We are the Educational Enhancement team at the University of Sussex. We publish posts each fortnight about the use of technology to support teaching and learning. Read more about us.
