I'm taking a CSTD course entitled: "Mini Postgraduate Certificate in Learning, Teaching and Assessment for Experienced Staff" it promised:
"This two day workshop is aimed at experienced academic staff who would like a thorough grounding in the principles and practices contained in most Post Graduate Certificate HEA accredited modules without having to attend and pass a two year programme."
After the first day I am not sure it is going to meet that promise.
We started off by setting out what we were interested in, perhaps at that point I should have raised the issue of meeting what was put in the advertising blurb, but I rather took that as a given.
Anyway it started as a discussion that engaged us in considering what our expectations of students were. We were also asked to consider what students expected, however our views were not directly sought. Instead we spent time from coffee until after lunch following a somewhat circular path about someone's research that showed most students expected to come to university to learn, and when pushed further to "learn knowledge" and that they thought knowledge was facts, that where either right or wrong. While the minority of students realise that knowledge is more related to arguments. I reached a point where this was really irritating me, the workshop leader was adopting a monotone voice and asking participants for their opinions. So I suggested that we were cycling round and that we would be better talking about solutions, rather than the problems.
Things did then pick up and we looked at research on attention and receptiveness, and ways in which drops in attention can be overcome.
We then moved on to a session on what we wanted to see in an ideal graduate of our degrees, this was easy, because I know a number of these.
We finished with the "did you know?" video (most recent version at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U) – which I really like and I wondered whether we should have had that earlier (say before lunch).
Will I go back tomorrow? I think so – there were good points, and if my attention wanders I'll know that not all the techniques the workshop leader suggest really work!
Shirley Williams 