Planning with the “Learning Designer” Tool

Posted on 05/07/2012 by elenizazani

Lesson plan for “Your digital footprint” Planning my Micro-teaching activity

The last few weeks have been extremely busy! One of my tasks to complete was the microteaching activity for the “first steps” MOOC. The actual Microteaching presentation took place last Friday, the 22^nd of June, and since I am still reflecting on the experience, I thought it’s not too late to post my thoughts on it.

For this activity I chose to design a lesson plan for a session I would like to deliver to my students in the coming academic year, entitled: “Your digital footprint”. I may modify the title a bit to capture the students’ attention but the aims of the session will still be to

Provide a space to the learners for reflection around their digital identity and the trails they leave in cyberspace;
Introduce the idea of the level of control learners can have on what exists on the web about them and how to deal with the uncertainty.

Up until now, I would jump straight to the PowerPoint to use it as a blank canvas for inspiration while designing an Information Literacy session. Ideas, activities and structure were gradually shaped as I was filling in the slides with images, activities and colours.

In this case I decided to do things differently and experiment with a tool called the “Learning Designer”. I had the opportunity to attend a workshop delivered by Patricia Charlton and Liz Masterman, in which all participants brought our thinking about learning designs and lesson planning, and of course used the “Learning Designer” tool (LD in short).

Why I opted for the “Learning Designer” tool

Pedagogic Approach

Despite my long experience in helping Higher Education students to become information literate citizens, I consider myself as a new professional in teaching, mainly because I haven’t been trained to be a teacher. The tool helped me to ensure that the learning activities were designed with pedagogies in mind. It kept me focused on designing with pedagogy theories in mind.

Structure

The tool proved to be very useful for designing a lesson plan in a more structured fashion. I need to admit I like structures because they make expectations and processes clearer. Librarians have been debating on modelling and whether the provision of Information Literacy structures and models is useful or not. The tool’s aim is designing for learning.

Designing for Learning

This tool helped me retain focus on the learner throughout the design of the session. Instead of only thinking how I am going to teach something, my starting point was how the learners will learn and what kind of activities will ensure that they are learning.

Aligning goals, activities and reflection

While keeping the learner at the centre of my session design, one of my main considerations is how to ensure that my anticipated learning outcomes will be met. The tool helped me align these outcomes to activities that would offer a fertile space for reflection. For each of the activities the tool provided alternative ideas, enhancing the balance between acquisition, inquiry, practice, production and discussion.

For example if my initial thought was to provide space for a group discussion, the LD would explain where the emphasis is and how students would use digital tools to get the most out of the activity and interact with digital literacies.

I also realised that a good way for the learners to feel that the designed session was made for them and therefore it’s up to them to get the most out of it, was to provide opportunities for reflection even if that meant we needed to reduce the amount of content.

Get a visual representation of the final product

It is obvious I am in favour of visual aids. I found it very useful that the LD provides a separate screen called “Analysis” where you can see a visual representation of the learning experience.

The “Analysis” provides a graphic representation of the amount of opportunities for acquisition, inquiry, practice, production and discussion the whole session offers the learner.

Visual Analysis of the Learning experience for the “Digital Footprint” lesson plan

While designing various activities I kept checking whether the opportunities for inquiry and practice were not enough so that I could go back and modify the session by adding more interactivity and space for production (in this case production is the reflection worksheet).

I realised that in order to push the “one-size-fits-all” part to its minimum, I needed to increase the opportunities to bring learners together in groups (social) and for them to practice individual activities. In theory, it does make sense but how can I minimize the grey “one-size-fits-all” area to meet the needs of mature students who are less confident in group discussions and expect to learn through more didactic approaches of teaching?

Another interesting area was estimating the teacher’s preparation time. The LD can estimate how much time the instructor needs to create the session from scratch and how much they may need if they reuse learning materials. In my “Digital footprint” example, according to the tool I would need 38 hours 12 minutes to prepare everything from scratch or 5 hours and 48 minutes if I was reusing learning materials.

I have to admit that this is another grey area. What do we mean by “reusing learning materials”? Are these our own materials we recycle to serve our purpose or are they OER (Open Educational Resources) which we need to find, evaluate, repurpose and reuse?

If the latter is the case, I actually needed more that the estimated 5 h 12 min to find, repurpose and reuse OER for the specific lesson plan. I also needed more than the estimated time to create the lesson plan from scratch and I am still in the process of refining it. To be honest though, I spent some of my time to get familiar with the software and make sense of the terminology.

Engaging with Open Academic Practice

The LD is an Open Educational Resource (OER) and one of the aims of the creators was to enable educators to share Technology-enhanced learning (TEL) designs and to “complement the value of Open Education Resources”. I am not quite certain how I can share the design of my lesson plan via the LD community but I would like to release it as OER, as a contribution towards my short-term SCORE fellowship.

Designing technology-enhanced learning (TEL)

Talking about digital footprint and digital identity I wouldn’t of course plan a session without engaging learners with digital literacies and technology!

Some of the TEL activities I included are:

Web-based e-voting activities with the polleverywhere.com

A web-based reflection worksheet on Google docs

A wed-based bookmarking platform for websites only2clicks . Learners will be given a link to visit an online platform where I have saved a collection of website for them to start searching their online identity and footprint.

only 2clicks Bookmarking platform

Detail of plp website for Learners to search their Digital Footprint. The note pops-up when they hover their mouse over the sitcky note icon, to explain why this site was chosen for.

The content will include:

YouTube and TED videos,
Flickr images, and
other case studies from online newspapers,
infographics shown statistics and
tutorials explaining privacy settings.

What to pay attention to:

The current version was designed to serve the needs of the Further Education (FE) curriculum. Although I practice in Higher Education (HE) I found the tool very useful. You can specify the level of the session you create on the properties screen and choose your desired one from a scale of 1-8. For my Lesson plan on “digital footprint” in the HE context, I chose a level 4, bearing in mind that some of my students will be undergraduates in their first module of studies, without necessarily any prior experience in HE studies.

To open the .exe file and use the tool you need to navigate where you have saved the file and find the actual .exe within a folder called bin.

For example:

C:\Documents\Learning Designer\ldfev1.0.2.0419.10.windows\ldfev1\bin

You will need to download two more files in order to export your lesson plan as a word document. Make sure you save both files inside the “bin” folder.

To use the LD tool make sure you regularly save your work and at the end you export your file before closing the application. (This will have an extension .ldse)

In the “Downloads” page of the Learning Designer Support Environment there is an important disclaimer in bold fonts; the tool is still in prototype form and some of the elements may not work properly. In my case, I lost the actual Lesson plan of my session or for some reason the application cannot open it. I was lucky because I had exported the plan in a word document and had taken many screenshots for my microteaching presentation. It would be fairly easy to re-model my plan by transferring data from my document. So I would personally say that it’s definitely worth playing with the tool but as the Project team advises don’t “use it for any work that you can’t afford to lose.”

In my next post I will be talking about the actual microteaching experience and the feedback received from participants.

Resources and further reading:

Rebbeck, Geoff; Charlton, Patricia . Reflect – ePortfolio for the Learning Designer Tool. . Accessed: 5 July 2012. (Archived by WebCite^® at http://www.webcitation.org/68vgQzTwo)

The LDSE project team. Learning Designer Support Environment. Accessed: 5 July 2012. (Archived by WebCite^® at http://www.webcitation.org/68vg2lmd3)

Zazani, E. 2011. Trends on Information Literacy discussed at LILAC 2011. Journal of information literacy, 5(1), pp 91-94, http://ojs.lboro.ac.uk/ojs/index.php/JIL/article/view/CC-V5-I1-2011-2

Filed under: #fslt12 Tagged: "Digital footprint", "Digital literacy", "Google Docs", "Open Academic Practice", "SCORE Short-term Fellowship", "student-centered design", "technology-enhanced learning", "The Learning Designer", "YouTube", #fslt, #infolit, Applications, e-voting, flickr, Information literacy, Lesson plan, OER, Open Educational Resources, SCORE, technology, TED, TEL, tools

Proud MOOCer in the time capsule!

Posted on 27/06/2012 by elenizazani

#fslt12 proud MOOCer

Last week’s live microteaching showcase called the end of the “first steps in Learning and Teaching”, Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) developed by the HEA/JISC funded OpenLine Project and delivered by Oxford Brookes University.

The Tutor team thanked all the participants for their contributions and I felt like a student at the end of the school year, feeling nostalgia already.

It is interesting because the nostalgia I felt, didn’t take me back to my adult studies and the end of the academic year but in much earlier days when I was a pupil… Being puzzled myself with this feeling from that period, I realized that it certainly relates to my reflecting journey; it took me back to my first schooling experience, especially when I was thinking for the first time what learning is for me and what makes a good teacher.

Going back to these memories I could see myself feeling somewhat relieved and free from studying responsibilities, ready to store my books away, close this chapter and go out with other children in the neighborhood to play for the rest of the summer. Neither can I forget the nostalgic feeling when the teachers were waving goodbye, wishing us a restful summer. One more year had ended and nothing could turn back the time.

The MOOC proved so very rich experience for me that I feel, even less than a week after, something is missing. It certainly exceeded my expectations. In the next few posts I will be blogging about my expectations and my microteaching online experience.

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Image Credits:

“The Proud MOOCer” is derivative work created by Eleni Zazani and shared under a Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-SA. The original, “Scholars in Pyjamas” shared by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com under CC-BY.

Filed under: #fslt12 Tagged: #fslt12, microteaching, mooc, oxford brookes university, reflection, schooling experience, teacher training course

Learn and unlearn …. the Annotated Bibliography

Posted on 11/06/2012 by elenizazani

contemplating about an annotated bibliography

Contemplating about how to write an annotated bibliography vs. the ISO guidelines for documentation

Image credits: The background image was taken by me with Canon Powershot SSIS in the jardin du Luxembourg in Paris, a week ago, but the sophisticated blogger was taken and adapted from Mike Licht’s photostream who shared it under CC-BY. The derivative work was produced with Gipm2

Filed under: #fslt12 Tagged: #fslt12, #infolit, abstracts, Academic writing, Annotated bibliography, documentation, Information literacy, ISO 214:1976, iso guidelines, jardin du luxembourg

Information obesity, media and other teaching successes! [4]

Posted on 10/06/2012 by elenizazani

All the previously mentioned questions helped me to engage with the students in a reflective conversation brought up by a “unique and uncertain situation”. With their answers, I managed to gain confidence, enrich my understanding on the situation and build an atmosphere of trust. As the students had already been in a presentation situation, they knew how it feels to stand in front of an audience and try to manage a situation that didn’t start as planned.

It was very interesting for me to see how their answers helped me re-design the first part of the session. The fact that this “unique” situation helped me to engage with them in a dialogue and turn a passive lecture into a lively discussion was the most valuable experience.

During the session I kept asking myself:

Do they learn anything from this situation?
Do I help the students take charge of their own learning?
Do I challenge their expectations enough so that they reflect on their assumptions?

One of the things I pay particular attention to is the body language. While asking the above questions, I was trying to figure out whether a new meaning occurs through observing the body language of the students.

One of my favorite activities is when all students search Google for a specific term and it turns out that every student gets a different number of results. In this case the whole class tried their luck while searching for “racism” and initially felt happy with the wealth of results at their disposal, and overwhelmed at the same time. All of a sudden these emotions were replaced by frustration and disappointment!

Can you imagine how it feels to be studying about equality, only to realise that there is no equality in the Information provision! The students couldn’t believe their eyes and were flabbergasted. They kept looking at their screens again and again and then at the screens of their peers. One of them asked:

“Why am I getting different results from others? Does this mean that there is no equality?”

I felt my job there was done!

This drawing on the whiteboard replaced the glossy image of the PowerPoint presentation. Its aim was to explain to the students the concept of the “Deep Web” and the vast amount of information hidden by mainstream search engines.

One of the strong points of the PowerPoint presentation is the use of images aiming to help students imagine, think creatively and to also provide a visual aid to more complex points.

I realised that this situation was not entirely unique. When I prepare a session I always think through all the possible “disasters” and try to have alternative plans. The norm is to experience certain technological difficulties. I need to admit though that I wasn’t prepared for this one. It happened so abruptly that even the technician couldn’t find the corresponding log recorded on the computer to identify the error!

ShÖn argues that a “unique and uncertain situation comes to be understood through the attempt to change it, and changed through the attempt to understand it”. (ShÖn, 2009) During the session, I tried to acquire a new meaning with the students in order to change my pattern and to also change a bad day into a successful teaching and learning experience. Would the lesson to be learnt help me change my patterns?

I recall discussions during the SCORE residential course when we tried to identify what makes a good OER (Open Educational Resource). One of the things that struck me was the fact that we don’t need to try to do a perfect job all the time. OER can be imperfect. The judgement stands to whether it fits to our target audience. It just needs to work for us and the situation. I was surprised by this point as I tend to seek perfection in materials I create and obviously this is something I may need to look at a bit closer.

Thinking about this moment retrospectively, I felt that students paused for a moment when I mentioned that there is no perfection! What would that mean for their assignments? Would they acknowledge the fact that there is always space for improvement and it is OK if we don’t write the perfect essay? Would they have understood that the learning process was meant to make us uncomfortable and it is OK to feel so?

Did they feel that I am also learning?

I was also very pleased to see students taking notes and drawing in their note pads the “information Iceberg”. I have recently noticed that PowerPoint presentations don’t encourage students to note down points of significance to them, although I always encourage them to do so.

Despite this “unique” situation I have decided to push my luck a bit; when I met the lecturer of the Sociology group and after I explained my misfortune, I asked her if she could observe my teaching and give me some feedback. As I don’t get the chance of being observed by peers, I saw this occasion as a good opportunity to identify any areas for improvement based not on my assumptions but on the views of an experienced colleague.

The lecturer found the way I turned this situation into a positive learning process very interesting, as well as the way I was paying attention and was listening to the students.

Some conclusions:

Reflecting in-action helped me be more conscious of the present situation. I feel that the ability to observe oneself while fully participating in the learning and teaching process is an art that can be learnt and mastered. It feels as if I had an extra pair of eyes which were objectively (to the extent that this is possible) observing myself and the class.

I also believe that this was the most fulfilling class-experience I have ever been in. The students were totally engaged, talked and reached new meanings.

Due to the pre-during and post reflection process, my experience as a whole was richer and I feel I learnt a few things that I need to work more on, such as:

Perfection is just a situation to remind me that there is always room for improvement and indeed, it is really rewarding when after a period of time I can go back to the materials and be able to identify what can be improved.
I need to explore how I can make other sessions as interesting as this one, without having to go through a similar stressful situation. In other words, what can I do to connect with the learners so effectively?
This session was exceptionally delivered in the morning, whereas all my sessions ran during evenings. I noticed that students respond differently between these different times. In this case they came fresh and ready to exercise their brains, whereas in all the other occasions the students rush into the sessions at the end of their day with their minds trapped within the complexity of their life.

The overwhelming volume of the Educational theory

click on the image to visit the original place of the photo

What can the learning theories offer to my understanding? For one more time, I realised my urgent need to explore theories but just as I started scratching the surface, I felt overwhelmed by the vast body of knowledge. I don’t know if I should start with early theorists and then explore modern ones so that I can understand the context in which all these theories became important or alternatively start with the ones that interest me. The problem with the latter approach is that all modern and current theorists base their arguments to their predecessors. What would you recommend?

References:

Schon, D. A. (2009). The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. Aldershot, Ashgate.

Image Credit: The last image above is a link and not an actual file. It was enitled by the artist Anka Zhuravleva as “the volume with clouds” The link appears on deviantART website.

Filed under: #fslt12 Tagged: #fslt12, body of knowledge, Deep web, Google, Information literacy, information obesity, Invisible web, OER, Open Educational Resources, reflection, reflection in-action, reflection on-action, SCORE, search engines

Information obesity, media and other teaching successes! [3]

Posted on 05/06/2012 by elenizazani

I started the session by asking the students a similar question I posed at the beginning of one of my previous posts.

Interestingly, all students had a similar experience. Initially, they were puzzled by my question but then one by one started talking about their experiences.

I then continued by saying that I was asking this question because this is what happened to me that morning.

They exclaimed and opened their eyes widely when they heard about my disaster! I could see they could connect with me. I then told them that when something goes out of plan, I always wonder what the lesson is for me and then asked them if they learnt anything from their own similar experience. Most of them focused on the dependency on the digital medium, so their lesson was to keep a printed copy of everything.

Certainly, this solution would only have helped me to remember the examples I had prepared for them but wouldn’t have solved my problem in its entirety…

While reflecting with them during the discussion, I told them I was still trying to identify what my personal lesson here was, and that the only thing I could probably pay attention to is that there is no such thing as perfection!

My computer crashed while I was looking for perfection in the visual effects I was adding to the content.

I let us all think about this for a few seconds before posing one more question:

The students said that we were there to talk about finding books and journals.

I told them that I was there to demystify the assignment process and make their lives easier with finding information. But, I would need their help to make the session interesting since I didn’t have a presentation. In full honesty, I told them I totally rely on them to make the session interesting and enjoyable.

I also encouraged them to tell me at the end if the lesson had met its objective and if the assignment process was indeed demystified. They all agreed with enthusiasm and I was ready to start the session rolling!

(to be continued…)

Filed under: #fslt12 Tagged: #fslt12, #infolit, Birkbeck, finding information, Information literacy, information obesity, personal attributes, personal lesson, personal qualities, reflection, reflection in-action, teaching, technology

Information obesity, media and other teaching successes! [2]

Posted on 05/06/2012 by elenizazani

I headed to Bloomsbury thinking about three things; first the example that Lord Putman gave during LILAC 2012 that if you put a “surgeon from 1912 and transport them to the operating theatre of today, they would be completely unable to participate in the work, only stand and stare. Whereas a teacher from the same period, transferred into today’s classroom, would more or less be able to teach a lesson using their skills from that time”*.

This thought gave me the courage to head to the lesson. I knew that if I can teach, I can do so without the medium.

The second thought was about honesty. Adult learners want to be treated as adults and being honest with them is one of the ways to do so.

I also remembered that less than two weeks ago, I was reflecting on the personal qualities my good teachers possessed and remembered they would not try to hide their vulnerabilities, not even during their bad days.

Last but not least, I kept thinking of some fragments of Tara Brabazon’s keynote speech she gave during LILAC 2012. Tara posed to us a few questions, such as:

What if less is more?
What if fewer media create more meaning?
What are the benefits of using our senses in a different way, to create alternative ways of thinking?

Tara also proposed a few strategies to achieve a “digital detox”, one of which was to reduce the dependency on learning materials that move through time and space.

In my case, what if the lack of PowerPoint (medium) makes them pay attention to what they hear instead of what they see, and engage with information in a different way?

What if the lack of presentation engages them in note-taking by selecting what is more important to them? Hearing Tara’s suggestions, I experienced conflicted emotions, because I knew that what she was saying is true but would these strategies be effective in adult learning? Would different sensory stimuli be able to cater for different learning styles?

(To be continued…)

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* Note: The quote is coming from a transcribed recording from Lord Puttnam’s keynote speech.

Filed under: #fslt12 Tagged: #fslt12, #lilac12, Birkbeck, digital detox, Information literacy, information obesity, LILAC, Lord Putnam of Queensgate, personal attributes, personal qualities, reflection, Tara Brabazon, teaching

Information obesity, media and other teaching successes! [1]

Posted on 29/05/2012 by elenizazani

What if you have spent 6 hours to update a presentation and when you were ready to transfer the file in your memory stick and head to class, your computer crashes and stubbornly denies to start-up?

Well…, that was the case for me yesterday morning, before heading to Bloomsbury to deliver a session to Sociology students.

OK, things happen..

What did I do wrong?
How am I going to deliver the session without the presentation?
How am I going to convey the message to visual learners?
Are they going to learn anything?
Am I going to deliver a boring session?
How am I going to mention this catastrophe to the students?
How am I going to meet their expectations for handouts without handouts?
Anatomical reflection
How am going to touch upon abstract topics without any visual aid?
Are they going to hear what am I saying and think beyond what I am saying or are they going to engage with exhausting and exhaustive note-taking?
How will I spark their imagination without pictures?
Is there any lesson here for me?
What if my computer is dead for good…
That is a catastrophe! I have all the evidence of my Chartership stored in the PC… and pictures… and my latest report for LILAC (Librarians Information Literacy Conference) in which I will base the training session I will deliver to colleagues….
OK, let’s think about it later… what am I going to do with the students in 2 hours from now…
I had prepared nice examples to work around finding information on racism, homophobia in education, sexism in the UK society, etc. I don’t remember the worked examples…
Is their lecturer going to panic when I tell her that I have no presentation?
Is she going to book a session with me again?
Are students going to trust me?
Am I going to be seen as unprofessional in front of their eyes?
I was looking so much forward to delivering this session….
I had incorporated all my recent reflections and understanding in this presentation… what a disaster!

(to be continued)

Image credit: “Anatomical blogger, after Andreas Vesalius” by Mike Licht shared under CC-BY

Filed under: #fslt12 Tagged: #fslt12, #lilac12, Birkbeck, Information literacy, information obesity, LILAC, pictures, reflection, teaching, technology

Are any other values you feel are significant to you in teaching?

Posted on 27/05/2012 by elenizazani

A former colleague decided to make a career change and followed a teaching career in secondary education. Discussing her transition, she shared with me her disappointment that had to do with the teachers’ resistance to engage with technologies. Interestingly, I noticed a similar culture amongst Academics; I must admit that I would like to try different approaches but I don’t feel they share my motivation.

Approaching this issue not from the core knowledge perspective of using learning technologies but from expanding on the first professional value, we may need to pay more attention to the challenges our students face nowadays. Engaging with technologies may help us make better sense of these challenges.

On a different note, while trying to introduce to my colleagues the importance of engaging with Open Educational Resources (OER) I felt alone. Should Open Academic Practice be an integral part of our professional generosity and hence part of our professional values? As a teacher-librarian I feel that it should…

Filed under: #fslt12 Tagged: #fslt12, professional value, teacher librarian

Acknowledge the wider context in which HE operates recognizing the implications for professional practice: Value 4

Posted on 27/05/2012 by elenizazani

The Higher Education landscape is a rapid changing environment and I feel that the new challenges of the 21^st century will continue to transform our practice.

I recently attended the 8^th Librarians Information Literacy Conference (LILAC) in Glasgow where Lord Putnam argued that oracy has to become an important element in our teaching as voice recognition technologies (e.g. Google voice, Apple’s Siri) will dominate in the future. He also referred to an expert panel that is currently reviewing the UK National Curriculum and acknowledges the central importance of spoken language to the new curriculum.

One my considerations is how I will persuade my students to talk more as I don’t have the luxury to meet them regularly to build trust. How can I beat the clock within the limited time their lecturers “sacrifice” from their lecture’s time in order for me to introduce them to the complex landscape of Information?

While the new fees era evolves, I keep myself alert towards new Institutional policies and business models and the implications they may have in teaching, learning and the students’ access to learning resources.

Filed under: #fslt12 Tagged: #fslt12, #lilac12, Apple Siri, assessment, assignment, C.B.E., Google voice, HEA, Higher Education, Higher Education Academy, Information literacy, LILAC, Lord Putnam of Queensgate, oracy, professional practice, Professional Standards Framework, reflective practitioner, uk national curriculum, voice recognition, voice recognition technologies

Use evidence-informed approaches and the outcomes from research, scholarship and CPD: Value 3

Posted on 27/05/2012 by elenizazani

One of the memorable research studies that influenced my teaching was the CIBER report. This study was commissioned by the British Library and JISC and one of its broader aims was:

“to whether or not, as a result of the digital transition and the vast range of information resources being digitally created, young people, the `Google generation’, are searching for and researching content in new ways and whether this is likely to shape their future behaviour as mature researchers?” (UCL, 2008)

The CIBER report made clear among other things that:

The new norm is skittering, meaning “move rapidly along a surface, usually with frequent light contacts or changes of direction” and flicking through pages as if “hoovering” content.
Fast information, skimming for fast answers, like fast food; this is what makes a fast food generation.
The younger people are the more they bounce from webpage to webpage
Click on the image to download the Briefing paper
Skittering impacts on horizontal thinking (surface) rather than vertical thinking (deep). Further research shows implications on people brains such as lack of critical thinking, of analysing information and of contemplating.
Skittering fast on the web makes us think fast and simultaneously act on many different things. Multitasking seems to be stimulating.
Older generations are catching up.
People want personalised and customised websites. Students being exposed to non customisable Databases felt that it was very quiet and lonely there without even a greeting message personally welcoming them back to the website. People like immersive environments, those which create a sense of being there.

All the above helped me make connections and understand why my learners like “shortcuts” and struggle to think deeply. I, therefore, needed to find new ways to slow down the research process and address learners’ attitudes so that students reach new meanings and, even better, transformative ones. How to foster vertical, deep, critical thinking is a great challenge for me.

The new understanding gained is important to me as a practitioner because it reminded me that personalised learning is not only one of the students’ expectations but a matter of special focus because we operate in the campus of another university and the students sometimes feel that they don’t belong there!

As a next step, I need to explore the reflection theories so that I help my students to step back and “learn how to learn”.

References:

Jones, Rosie., 2011. DN – Young people doubting information because Facebook saying it’s not true. [Tweet] 18th April Available at: https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/lilac11> [Accessed 20 April 2011]

University College London (UCL), 2008. Information behaviour of the Research of the future: A briefing paper. [pdf] London: UCL . Available at: < http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/downloads/ggexecutive.pdf> [Accessed 27 May 2012].