I've just come to the end of a 4-year tenure, redeveloping & teaching a flexible online first, textbook free, skills-focused and accessible first year psychology unit.
In this time, I've taught 5000+ students. I have opinions I'll roll out here, but ask me questions. #HPS111 1/n
In this time, I've taught 5000+ students. I have opinions I'll roll out here, but ask me questions. #HPS111 1/n
To start with, we chucked the textbook, lectures, and conventional readings, and replaced them with weekly video series (each video ~12 mins) with time specific overlaid links to primary articles using @H5PTechnology. That's most of the on-campus teaching gone, back in 2017. Why?
Why kill textbooks? Because they cost too much, are frequently wrong, and put students attention in the wrong place. I don't want students citing textbooks as evidence, so we modelled the use of evidence we want to see from them.
Why short videos? Because our students are time poor and increasingly parents/shift workers etc. This new format levelled the playing field for all students and let them time shift to suit their schedule. that includes binging the series if that's best.
Swapping lectures for videos also let us have the best possible lecturers give the best possible presentations every teaching period without interfering with their leave / research. Passion is contagious, having me teach dev. psych (🤮) would kill dev psych.
"Mathew, you said you set first years primary articles, will they understand them?" Not at first, so we teach them. This turns to our seminar/tute series, where we teach "skills for psychology". Reading, searching the literature, critical analysis, planning, drafting, & editing.
I hate that firstgen students are at a disadvantage, so we tried to counteract this. We spend the first 2 weeks in tutes teaching them to read a paper, and boy do we pick a doozy. I found a super hard article, so when we set them homework, it's easy by comparison.
Once student can read articles... they want to. So we teach them how to search for literature. Oops, we "accidentally" taught them how to do systematic literature searches by default.
By week 5 they've read about 10 articles... so we use that to teach them about critical analysis and that feeds the assignment due the next week, evaluating the evidence for claims made in popular media (newspapers/blogs). This assesses their ability to search, read and judge.
In the second half of the unit we start by teaching them how to plan writing essays, including how to deconstruct other people's plans, develop arguments etc. Then we teach them how to draft, by springing a #SUAW on them... in seminar 8. Good writing practices can be taught!
Students struggle to realise drafting and editing are separate, so we take what they've written and we teach them how to edit. We teach them the reverse outline, how to use a rubric, and get them to apply critical appraisal to their own work.
I skipped week 6, because they have an assignment due, we take the time to teach them something not assessable: how to deal with stress. We walk them through mindfulness, behavioural strategies, and cognitive traps and how to manage them.
Ok, 12 tweets to outline the unit, let's talk about opinions / lessons I've learned now. This section will probably never end... 13/♾
First year psych students are astonishingly capable, you just need to set them tasks that test their capacity and support their growth. Our students have regularly sent us unprompted literature reviews on things that interest them.
Skills training for first years can also teach your staff. Our tutors regularly report learning from our seminar series things that they then take into working on their PhDs/DPsychs.
Moving online is a good choice (when it's a choice) but you need to have a plan and you need to have time and resources. I did all the video editing myself, while the unit was being rolled out in T3, 2017. It was not good for my health.
The ability to deliver good teaching at scale is predicated on the supports you have. I could not have turned the tute ideas into actual activities without @michaeldo_19 who took vague outlines and made functional, workable classes. And then there's the tutors...
In T1, 2020, we started with 40 separate tute groups across 3 campuses and online, a team of 15 staff (mostly casual). That's too many moving pieces to micromanage, so we don't and they're amazing. This team also switched to online on 16 hours notice this year. No dropped classes
We rely so much on casual workers and they're so much better than they get credit for. This also applies to the 26 additional markers we had to have this year.
If you are not thinking about the accessibility of your teaching material constantly, you're only doing part of your job.
Being deliberate about your teaching is contagious. The things we did in #HPS111 have now spread to other units, and now I'm permanently broken and can't go back.
What I'm disappointed in is how white our unit still is. I know this is a cop out, but as an intro to psych unit it's stymied by how white the fundamentals of the discipline are. This is an access issue to me, along with the conventional domains, and the cost issues.
I promised more opinions!
Those casual workers... regularly more reliable than fixed term / ongoing staff I've worked with 🔥
Put 👏🏼 them 👏🏼on 👏🏼contracts 👏🏼
Those casual workers... regularly more reliable than fixed term / ongoing staff I've worked with 🔥
Put 👏🏼 them 👏🏼on 👏🏼contracts 👏🏼
Boring content is inaccessible content🔥
My videos are filled with videos of puppies, jokes... hell we introduce statistical inference to them by telling a joke in tutes (An astronomer, a physicist, & a mathemetician are on a train in Scotland when they look out the window...🐑)
My videos are filled with videos of puppies, jokes... hell we introduce statistical inference to them by telling a joke in tutes (An astronomer, a physicist, & a mathemetician are on a train in Scotland when they look out the window...🐑)
You can't hire only on research record and expect the dog and pony show. This redevelopment required research, app development, video editing, vector illustration, team management and teaching skills. Who pays for this? The people doing the work.
Use the technology the task demands, don't pick a technology and build your work around the vague idea of using it.
I had another!
Just as publishers have inhibited research through keeping it closed, universities have done likewise through IP controls stifling #OER. 🔥 Staff are what's critical to your institutions reputation, not the teaching materials.
Just as publishers have inhibited research through keeping it closed, universities have done likewise through IP controls stifling #OER. 🔥 Staff are what's critical to your institutions reputation, not the teaching materials.
Do past opinions and feels count? I need to relive some past glories now:
