I feel that the majority of workshops that I do are of value to students. Most workshops I deliver relate directly to coursework or exams students will be doing, so students see their relevancy.
An exception
However, there is one series of workshops which I am experiencing some difficulty with this semester. These workshops are designed to help students develop numeracy and employability skills. The workshops have no formal assessment component to them. This I perceive to be an area of concern, as students today appear primarily concerned with doing work that directly impacts on their grades. With the series of workshops not counting towards student’s grades, I perceive that some students see the workshops as irrelevant. All students in the program are supposed to come to the sessions. I have discovered that some students are engaged in the workshops and are learning from the workshops, whereas others have chosen to not turn up or switch off from the sessions and are choosing to only engage to a limited degree. To be honest, when I was a stage one student I only went to classes that I could see were directly tied in with my course. If the sessions did not count towards my final grade and I felt they were not directly related to the course materials I was learning then I would not go to the sessions, regardless of their educational merit.
I gathered some feedback from the students which confirms that some are engaged whereas others are disengaged. I asked the students to provide some suggestions to improve the sessions. I mentioned that the feedback was for my personal use only, and that they could be honest and frank with their feedback. I advised the students that the feedback did not count towards me being evaluated. I felt that students would be more likely to provide genuine responses under these conditions, rather than provide a sugar coated response. I believe this turned out to be the case. Due to the conditions of gathering response, I feel that ethically I cannot divulge too much of their responses except in a very general sense.
Some students were happy with the workshops and provided feedback to say they had learnt from the sessions. However, two students rated the workshops poorly. Of these students, one stated that perhaps I should ask the students what they want from the sessions rather than talking to the lecturers to see what they perceive to be of value. One other student wrote in the recommendations for improvement that I should focus more on students who want to learn. This brings up the age old question, how much responsibility lies on my shoulders in terms of creating a motivational environment conducive to learning versus how much responsibility lies on the student’s shoulders in terms of being open to learn?
A session that did not work in this workshop series
I tried to deliver a workshop that contained an activity for students to do that utilised some of the concepts of constructive learning. I tried utilising the idea of self discovery, where students need to go on to the internet to find information they need to answer the questions for the activity. I gave them links to investigate to find the information they needed. They were put into two teams. The activity required students to build a structure, measure the angle of their ramp and roll a marble down the structure. They needed to work out the maximum velocity of the marble based on the angle of the ramp using the relationship between potential energy and kinetic energy. They also needed to work out that the velocity the marble reached was not based on the marble’s weight. I utilised the concept of competition to try to get them competing against each other to see who could get closest to the 5 metre mark.
I wanted to step back from the activity, to allow the students to discover the information for themselves, to act as a guide. Instead of getting involved in the activity however, some students chose to work on a PowerPoint presentation they needed to deliver for their class tomorrow, as this was of more importance to them as it counted towards their grades. Others wanted to just get on with making the structure rather than answering the questions on the sheet. I tried to get people working together and focused on the task but experienced difficulties in doing so.
The two teams did make the structure, but did not get full value from the session. I needed to tell them the two formulae for potential energy and kinetic energy and explain how weight was independent of speed. The teams also did not calculate the theoretical speed of the marble. I believe that some did not come out of the session with a better understanding of potential energy and kinetic energy.
Instead of getting the students to find out the answers for themselves, I could have put the two equations on the board and explained the relationship beforehand. This is a more old fashioned way of introducing the materials, but may have helped the students to understand the concepts better prior to doing the activity. To be honest, I feel that the students would have got more out of the session this way, as they did not seem interested in finding out the information for themselves. Those that did participate, wanted to get on with doing the activity. Perhaps in hindsight, I could have introduced the concept first, got the students working with an example that looks at the relationship between potential energy and kinetic energy first and then introduced the activity. I think this would have worked better.
Where to from here?
There are four more sessions left to be completed in the workshop series. I have thought of two possible courses of action. The first would be to run a tutorial class where students can work on the projects they desire, but would have me available as a resource that they can use. This approach has worked well in the past with physics students I support for another course. I could also provide exercises for those who would like to work on mechanics problems, that have enjoyed doing exercises in the past and having me available to ask questions and get assistance.
The second course of action could be to create facilitated study groups where the students decide themselves on the topics they would like covered in the remaining sessions. One of my work colleagues (Dana Karem) delivers facilitated group sessions. For these sessions, the group themselves come up with the topic to work on. The learning advisor acts as a facilitator for the session. I have set up a time to go and talk to Dana to get some tips on how to run these sessions.
In the next session I will put forward the two options and see which option they prefer. If they choose facilitated study groups I will then split the class up into groups of their choosing. I will get the groups to choose a topic that is relevant to their course. I will then get the groups to let me know what the topics are, some objectives they have for the sessions and will ask that they bring resources for the topic for the next time they meet. I will also gather some resources for the topics they have chosen. My goal will be to give them ownership of their own learning. For the remainder of the first session, I will then give them a choice to work on some mechanics problems that I have constructed for them or do work of their own choosing (as long as it is related to electrical engineering).
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