The Academic Intervention Project aimed to collaboratively identify strategies to support underperforming students through playful and creative academic skills sessions. University librarians, academic skills tutors, and college partners worked together over several planning meetings and sessions at Northern College. They developed activities like writing boot camps, referencing games, and analyzing journal articles through collage. Student feedback found that the playful theme increased engagement and created a safe space for learning. However, some sessions were less flexible and confused students. Organizers plan to further evaluate and refine interactive, playful sessions covering a wider range of topics.
1. The Academic Intervention
Project
A playful academic skills collaboration
Andrew Walsh, Teaching Fellow @andywalsh999
Jess Haigh, Subject Librarian @BookElfLeeds
University of Huddersfield
Photo from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vsanderson/7651717898
2. About the project…
Aim: To work collaboratively with Consortium
colleagues and their students, to identify strategies
that support students in the lower grade bands
and on borderlines, in order to raise achievement.
Mainly BA Education and Development students.
LibrariansUniversity
Academic
Skills
Tutors
College
Partners
StudentsLecturers
With a little bit of money from:
3. What we did… the planning.
All about the collaboration….
So lots of us in:
• 2 group meetings in Huddersfield
• 2 days (and an overnight) at Northern College
5. Ended up with a playful, creative,
constructivist / constructionist
approach.
Pedagogical approach matched
the desire to deal with lack in
“problem solving and critical
understandings” identified.
As well as being what the
students on the group thought
would work!
6. The content…
Writing Boot Camp
SEEK!
Building essays with Lego
Referencing games
A leap of confidence
Time management
Analysing a journal article…
… through collage.
7. What we found…
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002695269/ Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
Easily identifiable theme encourages
“playful” atmosphere
• Increases engagement
• More “open” to joining in, even if
they initially do not understand the
tasks
• “safe space” “liminal space”
8. What worked?
Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
hbp_pix
Students were involved in
requested/designing sessions
Academic skills tutors/lecturers and
librarians working cooperatively
Flexible lesson planning/design!
9. When you have to frog it…
This working depends on commitment to the
theme-without a ‘story arc’ the sessions do
not knit together
Some of the sessions did not ‘match’ the
others in terms of flexibility and style-and
some just confused the students!
Being a project we have worked on over time,
and being a flexible safe space allows us to rip
up sections and start again without fear.
10. Confused? You will be…
Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
Matthew Nelson
11. Our plan is to evaluate the whole
project during Summer 2016
To continue to think about more
interactive and playful sessions for a
greater range of
information/academic skills
Use the materials for other sessions
12. Andrew Walsh, Teaching Fellow @andywalsh999
Jess Haigh, Subject Librarian @BookElfLeeds
University of Huddersfield
Slides are at: http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/27187
Questions?
Other stuff from Andrew
http://innovativelibraries.org.uk/
Some of my books on the right…
Other stuff from Jess
https://jesshaigh.wordpress.com/
Hinweis der Redaktion
Comments from NSS that suggested they couldn’t see where problem solving and critical understandings of topics were happening during the BA in Education and development course.
External examiners had noted that the course needed more targeted interventions to improve “academic techniques and strategies” for lower achieving students.
Made the course team consider these two groups overlapped and that lower achieving students perhaps needed something clearly flagged up as a chance to improve their problem solving, critical thinking, academic and information literacies…
As this course is delivered across a consortium of colleges (with content led by the uni), they submitted a bid to the Consortium for a small pot of money (enough to pay for catering / a night at Northern college!) and more importantly, “implicit approval” to try something that could be delivered across the consortium.
All the peeps!
2 group meetings to sketch out what we needed and structure of the events – involved all the people, including students…
2 days at Northern to flesh out full details based on what we’d discussed in the group meetings
Most of the planning was done beforehand, but training materials were worked on individually or in small groups at this small FE college in Barnsley. But with supportive colleagues on hand to help.
By the end we had materials in prototype form to use!
Waffle on about theory and that? Rather than having a separate slide?
So what did we end up with?
A table of many delights (think this was at an ECIL conference? Dubrovnik… or Istanbul)
Then show the video of the photo montage
Show Magisto? https://www.magisto.com/album/video/MXd_WlADGlsjLCwEDmEwCXh3?l=vsm&o=i&c=e?utm_source=magisto&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=producer_shared_movie
Having it more ‘playful’ meant participants are more open to join in (safe space) and subsequently more engaged. The theme contributed to this hugely.
As it was also informed by the student voice it meant we were confident we were provided what the students themselves wanted
See Mayer and Land (2003 and others) for more discussion of liminal spaces within learning.
Pic from Jane
Students were involved in requesting/designing sessions, which meant we know we were doing what they wanted us to do and fulfilling a definite need-this made sessions more engaging
All parties (us, academic skills tutors, lecturers) were working cooperatively-were aware of the lessons we were all providing and could adapt their own lessons accordingly. Planning as a tea, enables a better ‘fit’ of classes, and makes students see the library as part of the whole process and valued by their tutors-not just separate being you occasionally visit!
We came to them-we were in their classrooms/spaces and that made us integrated with the other skills offered-not separate
Lessons must be flexible as some activities were a little ad hoc! This allowed for us to drop/pick up stuff as the participants responded to it-and this was made possible by the relaxed “safe space” vibe of the sessions
The story arc of the sessions felt a bit disjointed as the theme did not fully run from one weekend to the next-there was also different students from different courses-should be more linear and the whole programme advertised across the School
Sessions could always be redesigned and reshaped depending on what worked/didn’t work in each workshop-reflexive practice-change yo self!
Some activities were a little confusing for the students-but learning should be confusing! Being in a fearful place allows for transitional learning/threshold concepts etc
This did lead to some anxiety within the students, but again the atmosphere of the lessons allowed this to be anxiety that was playful rather than painful, and led to greater learning in the end
We’ve been sharing the materials with other librarians to use in other sessions-including International Students in order to improve engagement and academic skills in this group of students who traditionally have not done this (?)