Teaching, Learning and Assessment Newsletter Sharing ideas and best practice Spring 2014 Through these regular newsletters we aim to share examples of best practice, identified both at individual and team level within the college, which can inform practice across the college and support continuous improvement. In this edition we highlight: evidence based Teaching and Learning Improvement a range of frameworks to assist learning improving the effectiveness of demonstrations through video two examples of new ILT software
Teacher Research: evidence based approach to improving teaching and learning The keynote speaker at the Conference held at the college on the 7th March was Mike Bell. Mike referred to research findings published by John Hattie as to what works best for learning and to the work of Geoff Petty (more information can be found on Hattie’s Visible Learning website: http://visible-learning.org and at: http://geoffpetty.com/). We all are aware that students need to revisit ideas a number of times to develop their understanding and recall but one of the many useful findings is that students need to re-use information 6 times before they remember it. Each re encounter can however be very brief (this rule might be used as the basis of a poster display in classrooms to inform students). Methods of teaching that provide opportunities for this repetition, such as those discussed in the next section looking at examples of frameworks, should be built into schemes of work and/or lesson plans.
Hattie’s research found that students acting on feedback has the highest impact on learning. Peer assessment is one model of feedback that is particularly effective, in circumstances where students are less confident this activity can really improve their learning. A simple mechanism is to give students some questions which they answer. You collect in the answers and then give them out randomly. Then give out the assessment criteria and get them to mark it. Then collect in and give back to the student. This works because they then are asked to check through their answers to try and catch out the peer marker engaging them again with the assessment criteria. This provides repetition, they've covered the work 3 times (out of the 6).