Case study 1

Learning and study styles - group work

School or Department

Nottingham Veterinary School

Institution(s) involved

University of Nottingham

Contact + Email

Liz Mossop Liz.mossop@nottingham.ac.uk

Gillian Brown gillian@medev.ac.uk

Date

12/04/2010

Tags

Study skills; Veterinary; Group work; Learning styles; Professional skills; Professionalism; PBL; UKOER; OOER; MEDEV; toolkit usability; toolkit v1

1. What is the curriculum context of the resource or resource collection?

The curriculum context is the undergraduate veterinary degree at the University of Nottingham. This document outlines a sample session for small groups of year 1 undergraduates. The session asks students to think about how they learn and identifies their learning style. It also asks the students to analyse how well they have been functioning as a group. It is therefore a useful session early on in a PBL curriculum, or a curriculum that uses extensive group learning.

2. What were the aims and objectives of the resource or resource collection?

After working through this resource the students should be able to:

Appreciate different learning and study methods - discuss different approaches to lectures and note taking

Identify their own learning type and study methods most effective for them using the VARK test

Understand the methods and advantages of working in a group

Explore study techniques that promote understanding and memory retention (active vs. passive learning)

Discuss different approaches to lectures and note taking

Explain the use of learning objectives/session summary sheets and how this can help the revision process

Identify the different types of MCQ questions (standard, EMQs, A/R, graphical).

3. How was the resource or resource collection implemented?

The resource comprises Microsoft Word documents which are used by facilitators running the session. Other resources utilized are referenced within this document.

4. What technologies and/or e-tools were needed to deliver this?

Questions and envelopes (guidance within document)

A useful addition to the session is a short video clip (mov format) of current students talking about their own experiences, and also some sample MCQ questions for students to view. These resources are institutional specific and therefore have not been uploaded; however the author is happy to share details.

TurnitinUK was used to confirm the originality of the resource (http://www.submit.ac.uk/static_jisc/ac_uk_index.html).

Visual Understanding Environment (http://vue.tufts.edu/) was used to construct decision tree maps for guidance package advice.

Open Labyrinth (http://sourceforge.net/projects/Open Labyrinth/) was used to create an online application to deliver the decision tree maps.

SurveyMonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/) was used to survey interested parties and collection data on their methods used in pedagogy and resource discovery.

JorumOpen (http://www.jorum.ac.uk/) was used as a repository to which this learning resource was uploaded to.

5. What guidance and/or support did you develop?

Categorisation guidance was followed and inputted into the MEDEV proposal system with as much information to hand as possible. It didn’t seem to like less than 1.0 credit being entered. This resource is equivalent to 0.2 credits.

Patient Consent guidance was followed but this WP did not seem relevant to this particular resource. Besides that, we found the questions were worded unclearly. For example, “is the provenance known?” may benefit from different wording, such as “Is there any information about the history of the ownership of the resource?”

The WP (3) is difficult to understand, as there is not a clear pathway through to a definitive ending so you know you have ‘passed’ the toolkit. It would be preferable to have something that says, “Stop. Don’t upload until you can complete this package”. It felt like there was no completion.

Also, the wording is not quite right for the veterinary context – patient consent is different (patient and owner). The toolkit needs to be spell-checked too.

IPR/Copyright guidance was followed but we felt there were questions missing. It did not ask if there was anything within the resource that was ‘appropriated’ from other sources. i.e. a couple of activities were taken from a teaching book (Stella Cottrell, Study Skills Handbook, Palgrave Macmillan; 2nd Revised edition) which allows photocopying the resources in there for teaching purposes, but does not allow publishing. Therefore, we removed the diagrams/tables and left the book reference in the document.

Also, the question(s) about using images/imaging is a little unclear. There was no clear guidance concerning images which are not owned by the author, or if present this was unclear. The whole image/imaging issue is not complete, it seems very focused on patient consent but not on other issues.

This resource was written 4 years ago and as time passes people forget where they got the idea or if they wrote the resource completely. Therefore, it was decided to run the resource through plagiarism software TurnitinUK before finally uploading it as it felt like ‘all the boxes had then been ticked’.

Institutional Policy guidance was not available. A conversation with a member of the BERLiN project confirmed that that the institution was very ‘pro-OER’ and a copy of Nottingham’s institutional policy states that the IPR of a University academic is administered by the University.

Internationalisation guidance was not available.

Pedagogy/QA guidance was followed and the survey completed. This toolkit was more straightforward and had a sense of completion. The order of the questions within the toolkit need looking at, as Q.18 asks “Will the resource be available on JorumOpen?” which seems a bit premature. Q. 60 is unclear so was not answered. Q. 67 mentions ‘IMS’, but it doesn’t offer an explanation as to what IMS actually is.

Resource Discovery/Re-use guidance was not available. The survey was closed.

Resource Upload guidance was followed and seemed straightforward.

6. Uploading and hosting resources.

Was the resource successfully uploaded as an OER? YES

Does the repository upload system meet your requirements? YES

Does the repository publishing environment meet your needs? YES – although retrieval of a resource seems ‘clunky’. Also uncertain as to how the number of people viewing the resource is monitored.

What is your role in the organisation e.g. Learning Technologist, Lecturer, etc.?

Lecturer.

7. What are the key outcomes of the resource or resource collection?

Describe the outcomes for learners, teachers, staff, the institution(s), employers, partners etc. How has it contributed to OER practice within the department/institution/sector? What has been the impact on learners and staff?

The outcome for teachers is the ability to access this session and implement it in their own institution should they wish.

The contribution to OER practice within this institution is currently small, as the University of Nottingham already has a clear policy and practice, running its own OER institutional strand. However, the pit falls and issues surrounding OER release have been highlighted on an individual basis.

8. What follow-up activity will be/has been carried out as a result of the resource or resource collection?

Give details of how you have disseminated the outcomes of the resource or resource collection and any follow-up projects.

A verbal report to the school management team on this process will allow the school to consider future OER policy.

Retrieval(s) of the resource will be monitored if possible.

9. What are the lessons learned from the resource or resource collection?

Give details of what you have learned from implementing this initiative, whether you believe this initiative was successful in contributing to OER development and what you might have done differently.

The toolkits within Open Labyrinth need a more defined pathway to gain a sense of completion. It is appreciated that these are mainly at pilot stage but it is difficult to expect upload when they are incomplete and do not give authors confidence in the system. This resource highlights the issue of uploading older material which has been adapted from other sources. It also raises issues around institution specific material such as sample MCQ questions.

Tunitin was used to check this resource as the author was not confident about the sources of some of the written material. This should perhaps be an advised policy in this situation, as it certainly improved confidence levels that the resource could be released.

The author has also uploaded resources to their institutional OER project (BERLiN) who checked the resource step-by-step through the Institutional Policy so the author felt more comfortable about uploading. This is obviously a time consuming process – but it may be that some kind of training course is necessary for academics before upload commences. Many academics are very keen to release material and without proper training around copyright they could unknowingly cause issues.