Supplementary end of year comments from students

In addition to the end of unit student questionnaire feedback, learners are always keen to let us know how well we have done throughout the year, by sending us cards, e mails and letters. A snapshot of what some of our students have said about us are noted below.

1. I find that teachers like you are a rare breed, only met a few truly great teachers, that care for their students and their job. I've not had the greatest track record with teachers in the past, so I'm really grateful for your help. Especially when a teacher gets me interested in learning. Thank you once again, I have really enjoyed being in your classes.

2. Thank you very much also for your kind words and advice -  your understanding and encouragement (towards everyone) has been something that I have really appreciated these past nine months, in addition to your enthusiasm and the supportive and engaging environment you fostered in the class room - It was apparent (and greatly heartening) from day one how clearly invested you were in our learning.

The group discussions were particularly enjoyable, as (surprisingly!) were the presentations -  And I know that because of your class in particular, I am now more prepared and indeed more confident to embark upon higher education.

As I wrote in the "getting to know you" essay at the beginning of the year, the opportunity provided by this course - to legitimately revolutionize my life by providing potential access to university -  is something that I really do value more than I can say and that I have not once taken for granted –  it is perhaps this, that has made me slightly overly neurotic in relation to my course work (and indeed everything else) and created a sense of performance anxiety that in turn fuelled my tendency towards procrastination.  

The fact that you seemed to recognise and understand this and never once pressurized me but instead provided reassurance and encouragement through positive reinforcement and constructive feedback, not only greatly decreased my anxiety level but fuelled my determination to succeed and to always do my very best.

(I do think that next year once I am firmly ensconced at university I will be considerably more relaxed- as it will then be a concrete reality as appose to a distant prospect still yet to be achieved.)

I am sorry that this is so long - hopefully you are still reading- but I really wanted to communicate my genuine appreciation for everything that you have done and to say that for you (of all people) to be made redundant, is not only a disgrace but a profound loss to the teaching profession- good teachers have the capacity to change lives and you have certainly helped to change mine- so thank very, very much.  

All the best for everything – hopefully after a well deserved rest (possibly somewhere tropical?) you will decide to make your way back to the classroom –I sincerely hope that you do.

Good Luck! - And once again, thank you so much - you are a great teacher. 

3. Thank you for your fun classes, where we always had interesting dicsussions and more importantly a laugh! I will remember your classes as providing me with a very positive step on the way to university, and hope that it will still continue for many years to come.

4. Just a wee card to say a massive thank you for all your support during this year. I wish you all the best for the future and please continue to be a great lecturer wherever you decide to go next. The college must be mad to get rid of Senior Lecturers and I know that their loss is another institute's gain. Thank you so much.

In the market for further presentation success!

The Senior Lecturers for Business and Communication/English have worked on a number of collegiate projects over the years. In semester two they collaborated again to devise a brief for the NQ Business (January start) cohort. This group is made up of some of the learners from semester one involved in the Dragons' Den project (http://www.candeatsce.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/dragons-fired-up-by-student-business.html) as well as some excellent new recruits.

The two Units that were integrated were Oral Presentation Skills and Marketing: Basic Principles.

For the Marketing unit, students were asked to write a report covering two distinct areas:

1. Apply the marketing mix to the marketing of a specific product or service.
2. Apply the concept of market segmentation to the marketing of a specific product or service.

For the Oral Presentation Skills unit, the students were asked to:

1. Deliver a formal presentation where the student analyses information and/or issues. 

The key word in the criteria for Marketing is apply and for OPS the watchword is analyse.

Both SLs agreed that the students could benefit in three distinct ways: develop their writing and literacy skills by writing a formal report, increase their research methodology skills and demonstrate their knowledge of marketing principles by delivering an oral presentation on their chosen product or service.

The students were asked, for the presentation delivery, to pick out elements of their report in a structured manner, including concepts such as: segmentation (geographical, demographic, psychographic, bahavioural), the four 'Ps' - product, price, place, promotion and comment upon how effective they felt the marketing mix for their product or service was.

There was no doubt that the knowledge gained in the Marketing class was applied to an extremely high level in the oral presentation deliveries, and the students were able to anchor their learning in a structured manner.

The standard of presentations were outstanding and just three examples are noted below as way of working example. Other products analysed in report and presentation format, but not showcased in this post, included Nutella, Desigual (a Spanish fashion retailer), VW Golf 7 and Mercadona (a Spanish supermarket chain.)

In the feedback session the students said that they really enjoyed researching, writing about and presenting their findings, all seeing the benefit of the integrative process. The talks were pitched at SCQF 6 (Higher) level and everybody (presenter, audience and assessor alike) learned a great deal from the session.

It is anticipated that the same brief will be utilised in the 2013-14 academic session, as the educational rewards are there for all to see.

Example one smirnoff from Mark Hetherington

Example two walkers from Mark Hetherington

Example three kubus from Mark Hetherington

External Externally Verified

As a teaching team delivering many Units cross college, we are familiar with rigorous verification procedures, whether they be internal or external by nature.

Such are our close links with colleagues at the Sighthill campus, we have just heard of an External Verification visit to the HNC Nursing course. 

The lead lecturer from the Nursing cohort passed on the news that their EV had identified our HN Writing Skills half unit as an example of best practice because of its integration with other course content.  He also highlighted as best practice the use of the Dropbox for the students' written submissions.

Congratulations must go to Isobel for her hard work in ensuring that yet again, quality has been assured within our teaching team.

Trained to perfection - reJoyce!

The teaching team is dynamic by nature and recently we won a contract to deliver a short course on Oral Presentation Skills to a small group of train drivers in Edinburgh. Our resident Commercial Facilitator Joyce took this on, on two slots on a Thursday, in the morning and in the evening, no mean feat by the way!

The course content was varied and covered areas such as presentation skills, interview skills, introduction to PowerPoint, picture manipulation and Windows Explorer. 

Self-reflection

When Joyce was asked by the Scottish Fund for Union Learning for her reflections on the Programme, she noted that It was good that participants could influence the content of the course themselves.  Some wanted to improve their computer skills, all wanted to develop their confidence orally.  No-one wanted to develop reading or writing skills.  Thankfully, not having to follow a certificated course allowed me the freedom to target materials more specifically. We were also able then to look at the complete model of Communication.

So what did the learners say?

Content first:

Everyone who made a presentation (and some completed four) said they had benefitted from the experience.  One said he felt “ten feet tall” for the rest of the day after getting positive feedback from other participants.

Most came to appreciate that there was much more to a talk than they had first imagined – particularly structuring and developing their ideas.

Interview skills were also considered useful.  We analysed job descriptions, predicted questions, and prepared possible answers before rehearsing an interview scenario, and providing feedback.

One participant used some of the time to prepare a short presentation to the union, and came back with much enlightened, and able to reflect well on what had gone well, and what might have been improved.

Another decided that this would be a good opportunity to prepare a talk which he planned to deliver, about his experiences working in both the railway and in the aviation industry, so the range and level of talks we dealt with was vast.  

Lecturer commentary:

All participants developed their computer skills.  They learned to use file management software (Windows Explorer), and developed computer skills using PowerPoint.  These included handling pictures, re-sizing them, adding design features.

Had the course been 40 hours instead of 20, I am confident that I would have been able to put the participants through the full SQA Oral Presentation Skills Course, and they would have been certificated at Higher level.

Shift-working:

On the (slightly) negative side, shift patterns and external training sometimes made it impossible for participants to attend some weeks.  It was therefore impossible to predict which combination of participants would arrive to what sessions, but we coped with that – even if it meant sometimes only one person turned up to a session.

Organisational matters:

It wasn’t clear to us at the start that the same teacher was required for both groups, and I must thank my Head of Department for re-arranging my timetable at short notice.  In the end, it was clearly a good idea for the same teacher to be there to maintain some continuity.

Neither was it immediately clear that I was expected to work through holidays.  I was happy to do this in the February break but had holiday plans for the last week.  To compensate for this, I added 15 minutes to every class so that I can confidently say I covered the full hours required (and often much more sometimes).

Finally, I was surprised to discover that the sessions were timed quite far apart (morning and evening) effectively creating a split-shift.  This created a very long working day for me – especially when I added travel time.  However, I have to say I came to like this “gig”, and didn’t find it a real problem. (Other teachers were reluctant to take it on though because of the difficult hours– just to make you aware of that.)

 

Reflections - Access to Languages (preparing for HE study)

The Access to Languages Programme has been running for many years at Stevenson College, currently Edinburgh College, and the teaching team provide servicing for three single SQA units and one double unit, namely Introduction to Literature, Literature One, Oral Presentation Skills and Communication Four.

As part of the team's commitment to providing an excellent teaching and learning service, the A2L students filled in a short questionnaire recently to outline their experiences on the Programme. The information below concerns the teaching of Oral Presentation Skills and Communication Four.

Supplementary to the discursive commentary noted below, a short reflective session was delivered by the lecturer to ascertain what the students had gained in terms of personal improvement, confidence building, suitable scaffolding for entry into HE, level of discourse, development of writing, research, referencing, application of theory to practice etc. That PP can be seen at the end of this post.

In addition to the very positive comments about the learning experience, organisation of lessons and levels of quality feedback, learners answered the following four questions and their responses are noted below.

When you first found out what Communication Four and Oral Presentation Skills involved, what were you hoping to gain from the teaching and learning of this subject?

• At first I was quite scared of the amount of things and skills we would have to learn! It wasn't long though before I knew that the lecturer was supportive and that the skills we would be learning would be of great help to me.
• I was hoping to improve my English skills, in particular writing.
• A better understanding of how to structure arguments in an essay format.
• The ability to gain more confidence in groupwork and presentations and to test my abilities.
• Better public speaking skills.
• Better written and spoken debating skills.
• A place at University.
• Better communication skills that will help me in my future.
• To pass the assessments and gain the Units that will help me for University entry.
• To master the ability of written arguments, structure my work effectively and develop my aptitude for investigation and presentation.
• Cohesive analysis of written work.
• To develop critical and analytical skills when dealing with any kind of communication.
• An opportunity to refresh and practise my analytical skills and develop public speaking.
• I wanted to improve my listening skills.
• I was hoping to learn about different methods of communication, that would be tested and in turn develop my abilities by working with the lecturer.
• Learning different ways how to communicate critically, to evaluate and expend my own skills and knowledge.
• How to structure my thoughts and arguments, sources of information.

To what extent did the Units and teaching fulfil these expectations?

• Gave me guidance and formulae to construct my presentations and arguments.
• The teaching introduced me to new methods of learning.
• Very good teaching helped me build my confidence.
• I feel my confidence has really grown thanks to the teaching and also the assessment content which was varied and relevant.
• We received detailed instructions regarding the assessments. We knew when the assessments would be and the feedback was quick and effective.
• I now realise that I am not as bad or insufficient as I first thought about my ability to perform tasks that are sometimes out of my comfort zone.
• Fully!
• I fulfilled and surpassed my expectations, thankfully!
• This helped me greatly.
• Presentations and general oral work improved the most. Essay writing has become more concise.
• My analytical skills have improved.
• I'm very happy with the course and the variety of subjects covered.

What was the best aspect of the Unit(s)?

• The people in the class who demonstrated excellent presentation skills on lots of different subjects.
• I really liked the film reviews, however I feel the best aspect was the variety of source materials that were used. It was never dry and highly entertaining!
• I most enjoyed the discussions we had in the class on a wide range of subjects. I found it helpful to bounce thoughts and ideas off other members of the course. The lecturer was really good at getting us to think creatively and independently and to think outside the box whilst remaining focused on the task in hand.
• Discussing work with the class and then being able to reflect on those opinions and use them to develop your own.
• Presentation skills. It helped me overcome my fears of public speaking and I really liked analysing the TED talks that the lecturer showed us. I always felt that my opinions were valid and the lecturer provided a forum to debate things that were appropriate to the topics we were analysing.
• I liked film reviews and presentation delivery.
• The interactive quality of the lessons. Participation was always encouraged and you were always made to feel as though your opinion was valued.
• Listening to other people's talks.
• To actually know that I can write effectively, listen, understand and communicate well in a second language.
• Really enjoyed the discussions and being introduced to the wonderful TED website!
• Comm 4 kept the learning interesting from the beginning. Good formative work that prepped us nicely for the assessments. The lecturer really put himself out there and gave us lots of sample answers, opinions and was happy to field any questions, either in class, via the blog or by e mail.
• Analytical skills.

Is there anything about the Units that you would like to see changed?

• No. Keep up the great work and thank you!
• I would like to see a better choice of films for the film reviews.
• Don't change anything and don't change your teaching style, you are inspiring and engaging.
• Nothing, and I want to thank the teacher of course for the amazing work and for helping me towards my University life.
• No 9am starts please and let us drink coffee in the class! The lecturer was a real stickler for both, which is fair enough I guess!
• Better rooms. Occasionally I felt like I hadn't been criticised ENOUGH in my work but this also built my confidence as I trusted the lecturer's judgement thoroughly. Perhaps on reflection I was underestimating my own ability!
• Nothing comes to mind as I thought the course was great, thank you.
• No, this course has been beneficial in my preparation for Univeristy.
• I would possibly like to see a couple more assessments done in semester one. I think it IS possible and would maybe take the pressure off the last 8 weeks.
• Nothing, thank you for a very enjoyable learning experience.

Reflections of our learning from Mark Hetherington

The 'buzz' of putting student magazines together, with banter and blether assured. Come in and have a wee peep...

Over the last couple of years the team has been involved in putting a number of student magazines together (usually with the CPC, P4W and GR4W groups). As a result, there have been a great deal of wide ranging, wonderful and witty submissions from the learners and a few of the topics are noted towards the end of this post.

Part of the process has been to introduce the idea of putting a class magazine together, and so far not one student has objected to the proposal. We cross-refer to a variety of different magazines available commercially and discuss the types of articles that might interest the writers (and the readers)!

Not only do the students get to write an extended piece, or one substantive submission plus some smaller articles, but they are credited for the work as part of their Core Skills (Communication) Writing task which they thoroughly appreciate!

When we put the magazines together, one of the things we do is ask the respective groups what they would like the publication to be called. A list of possible contenders are offered, such as: Interact, Network, Dis-course, Scribble, Extracts, Articulate, Lexicon, Blurb and Digest, but in the end the students have always decided on what they would want their magazines to be called.

So, democratically, the magazines have been called: The Banter, Blether, Peep, The Voice and Buzz!

Some of the topics that have been covered in past  and present publications include being a young mother, joining the army, the perils and powers of social media, film, theatre, gig and album reviews, raising money for charity, supporting the Edinburgh Capitals ice-hockey team, editing videos and running a small business, representing GB at judo at the paralympics, training Siberian Huskies, lowering the vote for young adults in the UK, a memorable trip to T in the Park and raising awareness to support local bands, to name but a few.

The Communication lecturer acts as the editor and works with the DTP section (the wonderful Chelsea and Nick) and the end product is a beautiful colour, glossy magazine for each student and tutor to keep as a memento. All magazines, yearbooks and other student work, as always, are kept on the shared drive in a clearly labelled folder.

Not only do students enjoy reading the articles, but parents, partners, grandparents and guardians too.



 

Skills for Broadcast Media

One of the cohorts that we have taught extensively in the recent past is NQ Broadcast Media. To freshen up the servicing input from the Communication side, the Senior Lecturers from the respective curriculum areas held a couple of meetings to discuss the best way forward. As part of the team's commitment to delivering a Communication curriculum that is fresh, engaging, challenging and vocationally relevant, for the speaking task at level 5, we asked the students to  deliver a presentation where they considered one or more of the following subjects familiar to them:

• Editing
• Camera
• Scriptwriting
• Radio
• Sound
• Digital Media

The summative brief was flexible enough that the students could shape their own talks, demonstrating their interest and level of expertise. Students were encouraged to deliver their talk on jobs that would be suitable for them in the future. Skills development in the following areas were analysed:

• Storyboard Artist
• Production Assistant
• 3D imaging
• Website design
• Commercial video production
• Post production sound
• Photographer
• Image engineering
• Lens based media

The students reported back that they enjoyed presenting on these topics and didn't feel like it was an actual assessent in a sense, as they felt they were doing a "fun" and "what we like doing anyway" type of a project. Rest assured though, the criteria for assessment was rigorous, valid and pitched at the correct level for these students' learning abilities and the results were very good indeed. Some students were assessed at Level 6 as a result of their industry.

 

Feedback sessions with input from student, peer and lecturer enhanced the learning experience considerably. A selection of presentation topics from the students can be seen below as way of evidencing the quality of the work. This is a brief that we would hope would be built upon for future students on the Broadcast Media curriulum area.

Subjects delivered

As the students looked at the brief, the following ideas were created, resulting in a great variety of topics, such as: work experience at the Scottish Media Academy, pitching a script for a screenplay written by one of the students, radio: past, present and future, online journalism and the part social media plays in news gathering, reflecting on work experience in the field of Broadcast Media, how the WHALE access course bridged the gap from raw ideas to meaningful application of vocational skills.
 

 

 

Example 1 from Mark Hetherington

Example 2 from Mark Hetherington

Ciao Roma!

Below is the programme that was followed for a recent Comenius European funded educational trip to Rome (6-10 February 2013). Students at Edinburgh College currently enrolled on the NQ Science, HN Events Management and HN Interactive Media Programmes earned the right to attend and present their findings as they won local competitions run by a variety of lecturers as part of their respective curriculums of study.

The theme of this two year project was simply entitled 'Good Food, Good Mood'. Students were asked to interpret the brief within their respective fields of study and this was achieved with great aplomb. GFGM follows the two previous European projects entitled 'Science Heroes' and 'Sustainable Solutions'. It was gratifying to see the involvement of Science, Events, Interactive Media (Computing) and Sports Science (who will travel to Stevenage) students this time around, proving that the project is evolving and developing at great pace.

A link to the information discussed at the planning meeting (October 2011) can be found here: http://candeatsce.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/collaborative-approaches-to-our.html

As you will see, the presentation content was wide ranging and everybody gained a great deal out of the exchange. There was plenty of time for some cultural learning too and some photographs have been included to represent the experience visually, both in work and pleasure.

In total, twelve delegates travelled to the IPSIA CATTANEO School in Rome, made up of nine students and three lecturers. All learners, teachers and senior managers from both Institutes heralded the experience as extremely rewarding and beneficial to their learning and offers great scope for future projects. It is hoped that there will be funding in place for a similar project to Sweden and Germany in 2014.

Delegates were really grateful when the Italian students organised two cultural and historical tours of Rome on the Thursday and the Saturday and thankfully the weather was very kind to us. The fact that the Pope resigned from the Basilica the day after we left Rome was purely coincidental it has to be said!

We were humbled when the headmaster of the Italian School told us he would like to write to the Principal of Edinburgh College directly to say how much he, his colleagues and their students had enjoyed the talks. We await confirmation from Mandy Exeley on that matter in due course as we know the message has been sent and a reply to Rome has been received.

The agenda below was assembled in conjunction with the two partners and the photos can be magnified by clicking on them.

 

The introduction to the talks was delivered in Italian by Mark where he thanked the hosts for their hospitality and the conclusion and round-up was also partly delivered in Italian by him. It is not known just how much of the presentation was understood, but at the very least it was well received! Below are stills from some of the talks delivered in Rome.

A few photographs from the tours organised by the students from Rome.

Below are examples of just three of the presentations delivered by students on the Science, Events Management and Interactive Media Programmes, demonstrating the diverse nature of the Good Food Good Mood project brief.
 

Judyta blaszczyk from Mark Hetherington

Magda mazur from Mark Hetherington

Jonny nisbet from Mark Hetherington