Another interesting feature of the Kindle's size is the capacity to do what we describe as surreptitious study. This is study which takes place when others are present, but do not know what the student is reading. Most commonly this was reported as taking place at work, but also in the home environment:
It is small enough to be discreetly used (I can read it in waiting rooms/in a quiet part of office). (D2)
I would have been uncomfortable reading a text book at the hairdressers however the kindle is inconspicuous and nobody questions it. They simple[y] assume you are enjoying a good book - which I am! … In fact this week it has been easier for me than a text book, which would have made me feel conspicuous in a public place. (S3)
One tutor also appreciated this feature of the Kindle:
…nobody in public has any idea of the subject matter you are reading (unlike a book which has a cover and a title)…therefore you can concentrate safely in the knowledge that no-one beside or close to you is aware of the content. (Social science tutor)
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Let Me Demonstrate: Towards a web-based application to encourage critical reflection amongst computing students
Graeme W. Coleman, Chris Martin, Janet Hughes University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland
ABSTRACT: The Higher Education Academy-funded Let Me Demonstrate (LMD) project involves the design and development of a student-driven, video-based, proof of concept application to encourage students to share the results of their learning with their peers in a safe and secure environment. The overall goal of the project is to investigate, from the perspective of students, the potential benefits and drawbacks of using video as a means of assisting students to communicate and critically reflect on their learning achievements, and to build an awareness of the importance of transferable skills as well as subject specific skills. The aim of this paper is to present some studies which led on to the design and development of the LMD prototype application. Longer term, given the knowledge sharing potential of the application, we intend to investigate the extent to which the application supports peer mentoring between students.
1 Introduction
Over the past fifteen years, Personal Development Planning (PDP), a process in which students are encouraged to monitor, record, build and reflect upon their personal
development (QAA, 2009), has continued to establish itself within UK Higher Education.
Indeed, evidence suggests that PDP should be embedded into the curriculum from an early stage so that its benefits can be recognized by students almost from day one (Miller et al, 2008). Consequently, many formal approaches to embedding PDP within the curriculum and within a wide range of disciplines, as well as the received benefits and drawbacks of these approaches, have been proposed within the literature, including web-based portfolios (e.g.
Gush, 2006), the m-portfolio (Cotterill et al, 2006), as well as modules specifically geared towards PDP practice (e.g. Graham and Westwood, 2005).
Yet, in a recent study of PDP across three disciplines at Scottish HE institutions, Riley et al (2010) noted that critical reflection was more clearly evident within education and law courses, in which students were often required to provide evidence of their reflective process, than in computing courses, in which there were comparatively fewer requirements to incorporate critical reflection into modules. Instead, coursework assignments in computing have traditionally involved the submission of working code, and perhaps a brief explanatory report. As a result, it is entirely possible that some students will submit code which, while functioning, they may at best find difficult to explain to others (while also getting few opportunities to formally do so) or, at worst, simply do not understand, as the content may be the result of hacking together different code fragments until their program works, or through assistance from their peers. We find this particularly concerning, as many of our computing graduates enter the creative industries, in which a proliferating skill set that goes beyond mere technical competence is increasingly viewed as an essential requirement (Simpson et al, 2009), while others (e.g. Thomas, 2013) argue that continual technical innovations and structural changes within computing require constant (re)learning, and therefore promoting this mindset is vital.
As a result, we are continuing to identify and evaluate different approaches that can help students to evidence, document, and communicate the results of their learning over time.
One approach we are beginning to take is the use of reflective videos, which we believe represent an ideal medium for this purpose. Video offers the potential for encouraging students to demonstrate their knowledge and to help them to gain presentational skills, both of which are obviously extremely valuable graduate attributes, in a novel and engaging way.
Of course, the use of video in academia is not new, as evidenced by educational channels on YouTube, iTunes U and so on, not to mention sites such as the Periodic Table of Videos (www.periodicvideos.com) which intend to introduce sciences to the masses. Yet, while anecdotal evidence gathered through informal feedback suggests that our students enjoy the process, the potential benefits of video in terms of critical reflection appear less clear cut.
The specific research questions that this project seeks to tackle are therefore as follows:
To what extent does the medium of video help to develop an awareness amongst our students, from an early stage of their degrees, of the significance of transferable skills relating to employability (such as critical reflection and the ability to communicate complex concepts) in addition to technical skills (such as the ability to use a particular programming language)?
To what extent do students themselves accept the medium of video as an approach to critical reflection?
Longer term, to what extent can the critical reflection of one student benefit other students - does the application act as a bridge between PDP and peer mentoring?
We begin with a summary of the results from a short questionnaire, followed by a discussion of two projects involving the use of video within two separate first year modules, before documenting the student-centered design and development of the Let Me Demonstrate (LMD) application.