Reflection on Action

In conversation about this week's progress it's coming to me that I am working backwards to find the way forward. This is fine because it was the act of looking back that gave me the idea to improve my group work so that our Shops can be planned more effectively by the students.

What has bothered me this week is the fact I am having difficulty figuring out how to consciously recognise any progress in my professional development.

As I was talking to Des (lecturer Diploma Culinary) this morning it came to me that conversation is where I articulate a lot of what is going on in my mind.

I know that I think better out loud and that through conversation a lot of good ideas come up. Then I go away and work them out, which is exactly how it went this week.

By spending time looking, talking and thinking about what, how and why I needed to change things, when I finally sat down to work on those changes, they really did flow fairly fluidly onto the screen.

This allowed me to achieve some of last week's goals
1.  I am finding activities to help introduce and hopefully motivate solid group work next Trimester. The Shop assignment is updated and I have completed both a production plan and a task list for the students to work from.
2. Adding milestones is kind of done - just need to add in the class dates - the lesson schedule will be confirmed this week which will help with that.I'll put into the class calendar as well so there is complete clarity.
3. the story board made way for Canvas, I spent a frustrating Sunday afternoon working on it - I don't enjoy learning new systems especially when I'm told it's so easy! I have such clear visions of what I want I get on my own way when I don't see how to achieve that straight away.However, by yesterday morning I was a whole lot happier about what I had accomplished. After a night's sleep I saw that it will be quite good. Now to work out how I want to do the group and individual collaboration files.

So what am I learning about my teaching practise? Looking further back at my action plan I realised a lot of points were covered by the end of the day's work, and that once I organise some good tactics to introduce improvements to group work. Above all I want to avoid this!:

I think then with this hindsight, part of my plan would be to be more mindful of the impact of our expectations on our students. While talking with Des I realised that a lot of the time as lecturers, we are 70% there in our heads and don't reflect enough on how it will look to the student - where do they start from and where will they end. I know I wrote about this in my reflections on the Special Topic and Research, but I still have more to do getting this to be a part of me so I think back in better detail and get the consequences in front of me ore effectively. This meta-cognition takes time and effort, unfortunately I don't always want to listen to those voices that tell me (they can be very quiet and I can be good at putting them aside until the consequences SCREAM at me - by which time I have to RUN!) to make improvements.

Time for some story boards - I seem to be avoiding it yet I am fairly sure it will help to keep my focus so off I pop!

Further into Action Land......

Well today I decided to work from home- it really is a privilege to be able to choose that for my non-teaching days. I thought I had a modest goal in deciding to concentrate on the shop assessment and then spend the afternoon working on my new Canvas course - we are shifting from BlackBoard to Canvas and we were just told that for our Faculty that will kick in wit the new Trimester starting on Sept 6th. So that really put the wind up me as I am supposed to support my peers with this new thing, and I'm not yet confident myself.
I haven't been into Canvas yet so will do that next week. Instead I re-worked our Daily Observations into 2 parts - one lecturer version into Excel so we can keep tabs on professional practice. It's more work for us but there is no other way - at least this one will do the adding for us! The other one is a tweaked version of what the students currently have to write for their weekly reflections; better sample text and I've taken the scoring back - it was a nice idea but students aren't ready. Comes to mind I still need to see that we are marking what is written not what is produced! That's been the rub the whole time and it bears proper thought to be effective. So with all of that what am I learning about my own practice? I think the iceberg is shrinking!

I really have to keep the direction I want to take in front of me. I went all the way back to the Course Descriptor and Learning Outcomes to start a fresh and I'll need to take another look on Friday to see if I kept to that - it's so easy to put in what you WANT to put in as assessment criteria! Alignment is so important, it pays for me to keep looking at what is to be assessed. David Boud on reflective writing and Ken Bain on successful teaching both remind me of that need. There is definitely more now,  on the product quality than I had before - hopefully I am also formulating in such a way that the students will write what  am looking for! I needed to have more of "explain how" esp in the second shop. This time I want the Artisan (1st Shop) to have a lot more milestones and guesswork removed, and the second shop for Proficiency, to be more independent.  
I'm learning also that I really can get something substantial done when I put my mind to it, I'm very pleased with how far I got today.
Looking at my action plan though, a lot of attention needs to be given to the actual process by which to facilitate the group work. I plan on making the philosophy behind group collaboration more clear so the students have a more vested interest. Fink's resources may also help me to work out an enticing way to  encourage better teamwork. I think already taking on leadership and having tasks allocated will take out a lot of the guesswork. Students just need to rock up, get their task, start on them and then check on each other for progress. Hopefully that will allow them to focus more quickly on the task which is to produce goods!
Here's a video link to what we do:
Baking at Manukau 2016

Goals for this week:
1. work out a strategy to introduce group work
2. make a milestone map with dates and meeting  times that can be used and checked off - that should be a part of the Canvas calendar too so it pops up to the students 
3. work on the excel sheet story board so I can get started on that in the weekend!

I feel as if I have finally put some of those words into action and that if words are wind, words are getting me underway!