teaching in practice – an educator by chance

very interesting blog post by @laikas a Dutch Clinical Librarian who blogs on her MedLibBlog - she describes how she became an educator by chance. Interesting reading.

teaching in practice – reflection on teaching session – recordings

Today in a 2.5hr teaching session with postgraduates, I was recorded. While the student did ask my permission, and I said yes, I don’t think I asked enough about this.

• what was the recording – just audio, or was there a camera too?
• what was going to happen to the recording?
  • would it be posted on the internet?
  • just for that student, or for sharing with the group?
• why was I being recorded?
  • was it a language issue?
  • was the student disabled in some way that I was unaware off?
• is there any university policy about “informal” recording of lectures?
• while I consented, there was quite a lot of discussion amongst the group during the session, which was undoubtedly recorded too – what about their consent?

So now I’m left wondering what to do.

I think I will contact the student who made the recording to ask about the purpose and nature of the recording, and where it’s going to end up. I might ask for a copy as well (though 2.5 hours of my own voice is likely to be too much to bear!).

But it also raises the question in my mind – whether I should be creating podcasts of certain aspects of my teaching sessions, so that I can ensure the quality of the recording is adequate,  and that the quality of the content is clear (I fear that my delivery of certain concepts to a faceless audience would be very different to my delivery when faced with a group whose body language I can try to read, and who can ask questions).

teachmeet – the morning after (well, a week later….)

well, it’s a week later, and we’ve had our first teachmeet! crickey – it felt such a huge flurry leading up to the day, and now a week has passed and I’ve only just got round to blogging about it.

I really enjoyed the whole process of working with Niamh, Katie, Chris and Celine – 3 of whom I didn’t know before they commented on my initial teachmeet post.

Just to prove I was really there, and really did contribute enjoy(?) the video of my 7minutes on Cephalonian inductions, and some photos (such as this one)

I was really please how the event ran – Celine did a marvelous introduction, and we had some very intersting presentations – full details at http://tinyurl.com/camlibthm, but we have presentations and evaluation via slideshare, photos on flickr, videos on youtube, and answers to questions raisedd on the night on the wiki – plus lovely comments on twitter (#camlibtm). And frankly, the glass of wine when we finally sat down for teacheat never tasted so good!

here are some reflections about the whole event (and these are entirely my own reflections, not necessarily those of the rest of the organising group)

Good:

• that we had fewer speakers than had signed up (illness of speakers unfortunately meant 2 had to drop out) – gave more time for change-over between speakers, even if we still didn’t allow questions as part of the evening. To allow for decent amount of networking time as well as hearing the speakers, might need to think carefully about the balance for next time (assuming there is a next time!)
• post-it notes – great to get the questions gathered up since we didn’t allow questions during the event. Also means we can allow full enjoyment for non-attendees,  and allow speakers to gather their thoughts before answering!
• names out of a hat – order of speakers was only announced one speaker in advance. great to make it fresh, and casual
• range of different speakers – perhaps some first-timers
• videos – perhaps have the flip positioned somewhere else next time (brightness of the screen meant speakers often in the dark) – very useful as a learning tool for me as a speaker to be able to see myself presenting for the first time!
• teacheat – good to unwind afterwards, great that people I didn’t know were there

Room for improvement?

• layout of the room – the venue was lovely and generously available for free, but depsite our best efforts the chairs were still effectively in rows. Perhaps have it in a pub function room next time, for truly relaxed unconference feel?
• lack of time for chat during and afterwards – maybe have longer session, but with longer break?
• timer – we had timers for the speakers loaded on powerpoint and visible to everyone, including the speakers. But my “one  minute face” to alert speakers to the passing of time seemed to throw one or 2 of the speakers, so while over-running is undesirable, I think finding a different method of keeping speakers to time would be good.

critical appraisal session – reflection

for 2 x librarians, 4 x Dr, 1 x OT, 2 x lay members of ethics committees

Aims:

To provide participants with a structured basis for critically appraising quantitative research papers.

Objectives:

By the end of the session participants will be able to:

•Understand the principles of critical appraisal

•Know about the resources that will help you

•Critically appraise a piece of research as a group

Plan of the  1/2 day:

• • Start with introductions & expectations – a bit of history about me, and a clarification that I’m not a statistician and that if it takes a statistician to understand clinical research then I bet there’s more than just me in hot water!, also disclaimer that I’m not a clinician, so I might skip over some aspects of a paper that are terribly interesting to the group from a clinical view point, but that from the point of view of the paper are perhaps not that important.
  • Go round table asking about experience, and expectations for the day (mix of drs & OTs & lay ethics group members)
  • Start with a quiz – mind gym after lunch to get them refreshing/thinking about research methodology and terminology
  • Work through quiz, getting people to suggest reasons for correct answers, and to suggest reasons why an answer might be incorrect. For the OR (odds ratio) section, draw a blank forest plot and ask group to draw on diagram where the CIs would lie, and therefore why a result might be significant or not. Trying to encourage theose with stronger skills to explain to those with more rudimentary understanding – helps them refresh, and encourages idea that I don’t have all the answers, and that colleagues and books might help
  • Break
  • Actually do the critical appraisal of a paper using CASP RCT checklist – small enough group that we worked through it as a whole group, rather than dividing into groups. They were already well socialised, and were happy to speak up and raise areas where they were unsure or unclear. We spent quite a long time on the first 3-4 questions, and so had to rush a bit through the final questions, but did manage to squeeze in final round up
  • Info on the other sources of help – websites, books , practice!

Reflections – 2^nd half was very rushed – I perhaps spent too much time raising areas for them to consider. Perhaps the group hadn’t read the paper so very thoroughly in advance, and certainly one had only received it on the day (late applicant)

Good things

• quiz
  • raised lots of issues early on, and encouraged group to share and discuss reasons for correct answers with each other. Lay member raised issue that sometimes the quantitative slant of the questions wouldn’t be the most important sort of research to help/influence patients – the qualitative stuff was just as important (sometimes more so) when considering hierarchy of evidence.
  • Interactive and engaging but not confessional – nobody knew who answered what, so it allowed people to discuss without shame/ embarrassment

• Critical appraisal
  • Again, very group oriented – lots of discussion and explanation from the group,
  • Questions raised from lots of different perspectives
  • Point raised later that having a mix of “dispassionate” reviewers plus clinical reviewers helped to tease apart some issues, helped focus the mind on the paper as opposed to the clinical issues which might actually just be a difference of opinion
• Flipchart
  • Liked that I drew diagrams to give visual presentations of some of the stats, rather than relying on verbal explanation
  • Liked that members of the group drew too, and contributed.

Bad things/ areas for improvments

• time – very rushed at the end – I’d spend too long asking them to look in more depth at the population
• fairly stuffy room – glad I put in a break half way through, but it could have been a little shorter, which would have given more time
• should have perhaps done a little more introduction to some of the main themes/terminologies before the quiz to (could use a prezi??) to soften the blow for those for whom it really was almost the first introduction
• should have remembered the clickything to move the powerpoint on, which would have meant I could have moved around or been sitting more (less of a teacher?), rather than standing
• didn’t refer to the books or get any of the group to look up the “answer” in the books, though a couple of the doctors were interested in the books we’d brought along
• given that some of the group were very much more “begininer” than I’d realised, so it was pretty harsh to drop them in quite so hard – so need to get much better understanding of who’s coming along to be able to pitch it at the right level – bit it did make it an opportunity for the rest of the group to test/demonstrate their understanding of p-value/confidence intervals etc – if you have to explain what it means, then it can highlight just how well you understand the topic!

teaching in practice – thinking points: what’s my role, what are my learning needs?

• What is my role as a teacher?
• How can I identify my learning needs as a teacher?

these are the thinking points in the first section of the Clinical School Teaching in Practice module.

What is my role as a teacher?

my first observation is that I do teach and train on a regular basis, but rarely seeing the same cohort of students more than once.

The nature of library training sessions (and I’ll come to my thoughts about the difference between training teaching later I’m sure, though not in this post) is that people turn up when they need some help, I help them (hopefully), and they go away again. There’s little change to develop a relationship over time, see understanding develop and improve, assess learning. So it feels a little bit that as a teacher I’m fire fighting – not nurturing skills which will grow over time. My contribution to the improvement in skills is hard to measure, and whether in fact the skills have become embedded and learned in a fundamental way, rather than just a surface skimming way is difficult/imposible to judge.

I work and collaborate with a group of NHS librarians, and we’ve developed a pre- and post-training questionnaire which we try to use in order to get a base-line measure of skills/knowledge/competence, and then send out 6 weeks later to try to test whether the learning was skin deep, or a little more ingrained. We take this pragmatic approach because the healthcare professionals we see are time poor, and previous experience suggests that requiring a commitment to attend more than one session is unlikely. So, these evaluations are a start, but still not a substitute for seeing the same cohort of students come back time and again.

It would be good to see the clinical students repeatedly, and to have an assessment of their information seeking skills tested in a formal way – like the Leicester University Librarians have a medline searching stage built into the OSCEs.  I wonder if information skills will ever be valued in Cambridge in the same way?

What are my learning needs as a teacher?

Now this is tricky – I don’t know what I don’t know, and even if I did, would I be able to change the way I deliver my teaching?  hmm – that’s a tough one. Being a very activist learner myself, I find it hard to adapt when I’m with with people with other learning styles (description of Honey & Mumford Learning Styles here and here) So learning how to adapt my teaching would be one need.

Also, I think getting some ideas about how to test understanding in the session itself would help me – since I mostly seeing people in a one-off situation, if I don’t get it right then, there are no second chances. Yes, delayed testing demonstrates that a deeper learning has taken place, but I’ll take what I can get!

Perhaps I don’t know what I need? so getting some peer observations of my sessions would be great – nerve wracking, but great.

In terms of the style of teaching – I’m probably didactic (pass on knowledge) or socratic (facilitating learning through awareness and raising questions) at best, and very unlikely to be reaching the dizzy teaching heights of heuristic or counselling… ah well, know your limits, eh? Could I change/develop?  Given the nature of the skills that I teach could/should/need I change? Maybe the peer observation would help?

teaching in practice

yesterday I went to the first session in a course on teaching in practice for clinical education. It’s an HEA accredited course provided by the Clinical School to help tutors improve their teaching skills.

I’m the only non-medic taking part. (can you hear the intimidated wail??)

As well as introducing education/learning theory there’s the need to keep a reflective blog, the opportunity for peer review of a teaching session, and lots of encouragement to reflect and critique my practice. This can all lead to a HEA qualification – the first teaching qualification I’ve had the opportunity to get! Considering the amount of time that I spend teaching this is ridiculous, outrageous and wonderful in equal measure.

so brace yourselves – there will be lots more hummings and hawings over the next weeks and months.

But I’ve already had the opportunity to put some of the theory into practice.

This morning, I had a 2 hour session with 7 pre-registration pharmacists. Normally, this would have focused on literature searching in embase (using NHS ATHENS)  and a brief introduction to the medical library. I was told a couple of days beforehand that this group would be receiving some embase tuition from another source the day before my session – this prompted me to suggest that we could use the session for any discussion/clarification of searching, provide an introduction to local resources and support, and perhaps offer some “quiet time” for work on the audit that each pre-reg pharm. had to complete. This plan was agreed by the organiser of the group, and they duly turned up.

After intrducing myself, I started by acknowledging that they’d had a session on Embase and searching yesterday, so presented them with a range of choices about how they might like to spend the 2 hours:

• refreshing embase searching
• working on personal audit project
• introduction to local resources
• general information resources on the web

 Each member of the group said what they’d like to spend time on, we agreed a sequence of activity (intro to local resource, refresh embase, work on own project), and set off.

I started off with the introduction to local resources, and encouraged them to search on the library catalogue themselves as I demoed it.

When we moved on to the Embase section, I tried to establish just what they knew/remembered about searching – working through a search and asking them questions about what the difference between different approaches would mean (diff no. of hits for freetext vs MeSH), what the different buttons meant (explode vs major), asking to tell me how they’d limit a search. We clarified boolean logic (I drew on a flipchart, and they completed the venn diagram).

It gradually became clear that they’d been give instruction that they’d found confusing yesterday, and I think(!) I was able to resolve the confusion – illustrating how finding the MeSH term could be more streamlined. The group asked questions and discussed amongst themselves about the approach I was suggesting.

I found it awkward to feel that I was contradicting the instruction of a colleague (who I don’t know, but would appear to be quite senior), but my main concern was that the group were more confident with searching and were as well skilled as possible to get the information they needed.

The 2nd hour was spent on self-directed work on their own pr0ject, while I stayed on hand to address any questions or queries.

10mins before the end I reminded the group that beyond this session I’d be available to offer support if they wanted it.

shame that: there was no chance to assess their learning – I’d not used the pre- and post-training questionnaires that have been developed for use by NHS trainers in the East of England. Maybe next time.

Deliberated, Cogitated and Digested…. and a bit of chin scratching

d’oh! wrong sort of chin scratching… meant it to be more contemplative… but, ah well….

thanks to mikeandanna

 

So, it should be week 7 reflection, but actually it’s week 10, and I’m in a flurry of catching up – exactly the wrong mood to do any useful reflection, I fear.

I have to say that while I’ve enjoyed doing Cam23, and have particularly enjoyed getting myself into the habit of blogging (a habit a weeks holiday quickly puts paid to all to easily, I’m afraid, but which I hope to carry on beyond the 23rd thing), the things we’ve covered haven’t been new to me. 

Which is fine - if I’ve got the audactiy to be delivering my own version of 23things, I would hope I’m already reasonably savy about web 2.0. But I would also hope that I’m always up for learning something new, looking at things in new ways, to have my (huge) prejudices challenged by the insight from more open minded colleagues.

Which is what has really made it for me -  reading other people’s blogs, getting to know a few more people in Cambridge (even if only via their nom de plum!), hearing that not everyone thinks that X, Y or Z is obviously great. The latter has been especially good for me – reminding me that just because a person doesn’t use a particular tool doesn’t mean they’re closed to all thing web 2.o (after all, I don’t like all the things on the list, by any stretch), and that just because I do use it doesn’t mean squat .  Easy on the web 2.0 evangalism!

But to a large extent I can’t help but evangelise about the possibilities of the sorts of tools/toys/treasures that Cam23 is talking about – the possibilities are endless, and even if we can’t see them, our users will

“all that glisters is not gold” 

If we (librarians) can’t show a good working knowledge of the main web 2.o tools out there, and also be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, sheep from goats, etc etc,  when it comes to discussing and recommending them (or suggesting a better solution) to library users, then aren’t we just ensuring that we will be become as irrelevant in the future as unfortunately some people already think we are?

I want a professional future and a future in the profession - and confidence in the tools that cam23 is spotlighting is included in the ways in which I think I can ensure that I have both.