Assessing the impact of students facilitating workshops within the context of a collaborative cross institution project

Assessing the impact of students facilitating workshops within the context of a collaborative cross institution project

Grant Petrey

Abstract

This research was conducted to evaluate the impact that situated collaborative learning projects can have on the experience of students who lead workshops as student facilitators. Following the ‘Communities of Practice’ work of Lave and Wenger (1991), this cross institution project was developed in conjunction with the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) in Kent, and Turner Contemporary, Margate, and Charles Dickens School. Secondary school, further education and higher education students produced animation work from source materials obtained from the Margate Community in a series of short workshops. These workshops were facilitated by mixed stage student volunteers from the BA (Hons) Animation Arts course, School of Fine Arts at UCA. The impact of this project on the student experience as a strategy for enhancing critical skills and improving self-efficacy is considered via qualitative research yielded from student feedback. The results revealed the approaches used by the student facilitators in managing the learning of others and a range of cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies which they deployed, including evidence of scaffolding.

Keywords

Peer Assisted Learning; scaffolding; student facilitation

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The Journal Enhancing the Learner Experience in Higher Education can be found at: http://journals.northampton.ac.uk/index.php/elehe/index

‘Years after the course’: dialogues with mid-career practitioners about the resilience of professional learning from a higher education CPD programme

‘Years after the course’: dialogues with mid-career practitioners about the resilience of professional learning from a higher education CPD programme

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14234/elehe.v2i1.16

Joy Northcott

Abstract

This article discusses a small-scale qualitative research study which examined the mid-career reflections of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers about their earlier training on the post-graduate in-service Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults (DELTA) programme. Participants offered observations on their experience which varied from extremely positive to highly critical, but most were able to testify to at least some continuing value of their earlier professional training. Some continued to make extensive use of techniques originally learned on the DELTA, decades later, whereas others were less convinced about the long-term value of their training experience. In this article four key factors are identified which appear to be associated with greater resilience of learning: the kind of motivation which participants brought to the course; the capacity of students and tutors to generate a “community of learning”; the course as a fully integrated learning experience; and post-course consolidation.

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The Journal Enhancing the Learner Experience in Higher Education can be found at: http://journals.northampton.ac.uk/index.php/elehe/index