Evaluating student knowledge about sexual exploitation using an interprofessional approach to teaching and learning

The aim of this study was to qualitatively assess student perceived impact of a novel interprofessional approach to delivering education on sexual exploitation (SE). This article reports on research that we designed, delivered and evaluated to develop an interprofessional community of learning, enabling SE to be discussed with second-year undergraduate students. Participants came from a broad range of specialties. Following the study, students reported an increased level of awareness, understanding and confidence when working with SE. This interprofessional education session has since been incorporated into the nursing, midwifery and allied health programme in a local university and is part of a second-year undergraduate module on knowledge and skills for safe practice.

Exploring online learning interactions among medical students during a self-initiated enrichment year

Introduction: A novel initiative allowed third year medical students to pursue experiential learning during a year-long Enrichment Year programme as part of the core curriculum. ‘connect*ed’, an online virtual community of learning was developed to provide learning and social support to students and to help them link their diverse experiences with the common goal of being a doctor. This study examined the nature, pattern, and content of online interactions among medical students within this community of learning to identify features that support learning and personal growth. Methods: This was a quantitative-qualitative study using platform data analytics, social network analysis, thematic content analysis to analyse the nature and pattern of online interactions. Focus group interviews with the faculty mentors and medical students were used to triangulate the results. Results: Students favoured online interactions focused on sharing and learning from each other rather than structured tasks. Multimedia content, especially images, attracted more attention and stimulated more constructive discussion. We identified five patterns of interaction. The degree centrality and reciprocity did not affect the team interactivity but mutual encouragement by team members and mentors can promote a positive team dynamic. Conclusion: Online interactions that are less structured, relate to personal interests, and use of multimedia appear to generate the most meaningful content and teams do not necessarily need to have a leader to be effective. A structured online network that adopts these features can better support learners who are geographically separated and engaged in different learning experiences.

Learning analytics in higher education: a preponderance of analytics but very little learning?

In a context where learning mediated by technology has gained prominence in higher education, learning analytics has become a powerful tool to collect and analyse data with the aim of improving students’ learning. However, learning analytics is part of a young community and its developments deserve further exploration. Some critical stances claim that learning analytics tends to underplay the complexity of teaching-learning processes. By means of both a bibliometric and a content analysis, this paper examines the publication patterns on learning analytics in higher education and their main challenges. 385 papers that were published in WoScc and SciELO indexes between 2013 and 2019 were identified and analysed. Learning analytics is a vibrant and fast-developing community. However, it continues to face multiple and complex challenges, especially regarding students’ learning and their implications. The paper concludes by distinguishing between a practice-based and management-oriented community of learning analytics and an academic-oriented community. Within both communities, though, it seems that the focus is more on analytics than on learning.

Fostering Group Autonomy Through Collaborative Learning in an Online Environment

Learner autonomy is recognised as being associated with effective and successful learning. Whilst significant scholarship has focused on individual learner autonomy, a review of the literature indicates that the interdependence and social dimension of learner autonomy are largely under-researched. The primary objective of this study is to examine how learners engaged in a collaborative inquiry outside the classroom utilising an asynchronous online discussion forum and to what extent the collaborative task fostered group autonomy. Employing thematic analysis, postings of 20 students in a peer-moderated online discussion forum were analysed. The results revealed that the process of knowledge co-construction advanced and deepened the learners’ understanding of the subject matter. Furthermore, the collaborative inquiry helped establish a community of learning whereby students supported each other emotionally and cognitively, and they wanted to achieve well collectively. The study concluded that a well-designed collaborative task is key to fostering the social and interdependent dimension of learner autonomy.

Telling Small Stories With Power Point As Video In Lockdown

The 2020 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns came as a shock nationally and internationally. As a result, the change in approaches to teaching for many was fast and absolute. One minute the face-to-face ethos was humming along as 'normal', the next it was fully on line and taking teachers and students into a story many would never have considered. This brought with it the challenge of continuing to build and maintain relationships with the students in order to support their road to success. Storytelling has always been an important part of my practice in developing relationships through sharing my own experiences and encouraging the students to share theirs. In this way, we co-construct understanding of the class content and get to know each other. Going into fully online teaching would potentially change this. Given the speed of the changes required, this project was never meant to be overtly innovative but was designed to allow me to continue using narratives of content and practice to build communities of learning in the online environment. As a teacher, Power Point was familiar, so I started there and simply changed to saving them as mp4 files. The presentation plots this journey as a teacher taking storytelling from a face-to-face classroom across the lockdown in a way that continued supporting relationships and learning. The first attempts showed me that online stories are not the same as class power points where I physically created the narrative that linked the slides together. As I viewed my first attempt, it became clear that I was trying to tell a story that was in my head but not translated to the screen and I needed to adopt an approach that clearly spoke to a listener/audience i.e. my community of learning. I learned that, up to this point, I had used power point as a guide as I wove a story around the weekly content in a face-to-face classroom. In other words, the whole thing was heavily dependent on me. In this new environment, the story had to be told in a different way. It had to stand as a discrete artefact on its own, speaking to anyone that logged on, enabling me to reach out to that other human being without the unique connection that develops between story-teller and listener in the face to face world. Through three more cycles of research, I found that this new kind of story depended on a delicate balance between visual and oral, the context, content and the affective and how each was portrayed. Ultimately, the focus had to remain on the relationships I could build and the impact they could have. Therefore, this project came to be about keeping storytelling, whether face-to-face or online, “a uniquely human experience through which people make sense of past experience, convey emotions and ultimately connect with each other” (Christianson, 2011, p. 289).

Reforming Pre-Service English Language Teacher Training Using Professional Community of Learning

In the English language teaching context in Nigeria, teacher training-institutions often use theoretical and outdated curriculum with little emphasis on the acquisition of communicative language teaching (CLT) skills or content mastery. This does not adequately prepare teachers for work in basic and secondary schools. This chapter focuses on the potential of using professional community of learning to train pre-service teachers of English in CLT approaches. Two groups of teachers with similar pre-service training were evaluated during teaching practice, with one group being exposed to CLT approaches. Results suggest that pre-service teachers that were exposed to CLT approaches performed better in class than those who were not. Following these results, the potential for replication and integration into the national teacher-training curriculum in Nigeria is explored.

Safeguarding children under Covid-19: What are we learning?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify and share learning about safeguarding children under Covid-19 drawn from a series of webinars held by the Association of Safeguarding Partners (www.theASP.org.uk). The learning is relevant for health, police, local authority and other relevant safeguarding agencies and includes sharing information about both the challenges and opportunities presented during the Covid-19 pandemic. By creating a webinar lead community of learning, lessons can be drawn that will help safeguard children during the remaining of the pandemic and during the release of lockdown as it emerges. Design/methodology/approach This paper summarises themes from discussions within three webinars run by The Association of Safeguarding Partners (TASP) (www.theASP.org.uk). Each webinar was attended by between 60 and 80 participants, sessions involving presentations and discussions on topics such as “managing safeguarding reviews at a distance”, “the impact on early years’ provision” and “how work with families and children has changed with remote working methods”. With the participants’ consent, webinars were recorded, and these can be viewed on www.theasp.co.uk. Webinars were supported by an on-line programme: “meeting sphere” capturing comments in a “chat” facility and providing capacity for participants to collectively code comments into themes. Findings Findings from the webinars note concerns about continuing and undetected abuse of children within and outside of the home; about the changing nature of criminal exploitation; and about the strains created by social distancing on children in families experiencing problems with poor mental health, drug and alcohol misuse and domestic abuse. Findings include some important lessons, including the discovery of innovative ways of working, the rapid collation of data across partnerships and about different methods of engaging with children, young people and families. Findings include suggestions about the impact of changes on the future safeguarding of children. Originality/value There is little published discussion of the implications of Covid-19 on practitioners working on safeguarding children. While some research is emerging, there have been few opportunities for practitioners to listen to emerging practice ideas under Covid-19 or to discuss in an informal context how to address the new and emerging problems in safeguarding children. This think piece contains original material from webinars held with safeguarding children practitioners and is valuable for those working to safeguard children during and post Covid-19.

When professionals listen: parents as co-producers of knowledge

Many professionals I have taught in the past twenty years complained that classes are too theoretical and far removed from reality. They were generally correct in their assessment. Frustrated by my active participation in the pedagogical status quo, a few years ago I decided to rapture the cycle of pedagogical passivity by engaging parents as active participants in conversations with students. These intermittent attempts have now developed into an eight ECTS study-unit that will create a community of learning and practice committed to welding critical reflection with action.