Continuing professional development
Contents
Continuing professional development¶
This is a reflection on my continuing professional development. In it, I identify gaps between my current practice and what I hopped to be doing. I set out plans for bridging these gaps and follow up reading that can help me along the way.
Gap analysis¶
So far in my career as a lecturer I have gained practical experience designing and delivering a range of subjects using a variety of formats (lectures, videos, lab-based, computer-based, field) [A1,A2,K1,K2,K4]. My journey through the teaching and learning literature, however, is relatively recent. Throughout this course, I have had the chance to read about current methodologies and best practices related to my discipline and how these are backed by pedagogical theory [V3,K3,K2,A5]. My teaching currently reflects some of these practices to varying degrees. Particular areas of improvement where I see gap between what I should be doing and what I have implemented so far are:
Design lessons around peer-instruction [Vickrey et al., 2015]: I currently make use of some strategies during practicals (think-pair-share, etc.) but this type of activity could be more widely used throughout synchronous and asynchronous delivery. An example would be asynchronous student-led discussion on a forum about a topic covered in a recorded lecture. For synchronous delivery, I need to allocate more time for these activities, as was identified during my teaching observations [A4,K3,K6,V3].
More frequent use of formative assessments [Wilson, 2019]: Ideally, each lessons should be designed from the start around a well-designed set of formative assessments. Currently, my use of quizzes and quick forms of feedback is sporadic and not as structured as I would like [V3,K5,K3,K2].
Short-term ction items¶
These are my SMART action plans for bridging these gaps in the near future.
Peer-instruction: Reduce the amount of content in live practical sessions to allow more time for peer discussion activities. Live sessions are between 2 and 3 hours. Currently, only around 20% of the time is left for discussion. This should be increased to 40% (or ideally 50%). This will require relatively small adjustments to the current content and moving part of practicals that are currently delivered synchronously to asynchronous (e.g., assign a follow-up formative assessment based on the more advanced content in a practical). Since these changes are relatively small, they could be implemented for the upcoming semester 2 of the 2021/22 academic year.
Formative assessments: Create short quizzes (multiple-choice, true or false, etc.) that can be used assess students’ mental models of the content. As a first step, my goal is to develop set of multiple-choice questions for my introduction to programming class (a 4-week long tutorial session for first year students). This will require breaking down the content I currently deliver into 10-15 minute sections and designing a quiz for each section. The main challenge will be coming up with wrong answers that have diagnostic power, allowing me to specifically address misconceptions and incorrect mental models. As a more labour intensive action, this will not be implemented in a single academic year. Instead, I will break it down into manageable steps. For semester 2 of 2021/22, my goal is to include one quiz per taught session (four total). These can serve as a foundation that can be expanded in later years. This is the activity where I’m most likely to struggle. To aid in their development, I will look to the literature for inspiration and evidence-based techniques (e.g. [Rice, 2017] and [Major et al., 2015]).
Further development¶
Over the last year, I have learned much from this module and the reading that was prompted by the writing of these reflections. Though much of the module content itself is theoretical and not immediately applicable without significant investment of time and effort, the discussions and topic awareness that stemmed from them prompted me to search the pedagogical literature for practical advice more directly related to my own field-specific needs. This knowledge has been crucial to identifying the gaps mentioned above and the action plans for closing them.
Because of obvious reasons, I have not attended any other type of formal training and development over the past year. I am hopeful that this will change in the future because multiple factors like the gradual easing of restrictions, having more time due to accumulated experience and teaching material, and attaining confirmation in my post (a significant source of anxiety and current demand of my time).
In the near future, I plan to engage more with peer observation within the School of Environmental Sciences [K5,K6,K2,V3,A5]. I have already completed the required training and would like to serve as an observer in other modules across the School. The Department of Geography and Planning has modules with content related to my own discipline delivered by renowned instructors. This is the activity from which I personally gained the most during ADEV700. I feel that serving as an observer and being observed yearly will be the most efficient way to continue my professional development, especially in these first few years of my appointment.
Over time, I would also like to evolve the peer observation within the School to a form of lesson study, a practice widely used in Japan where teachers come together to plan lessons, observe their outcomes, and then hold a post-lesson discussion. This practice has been found to be one of the most effective forms of teacher professional development [Doig and Groves, 2011]. There will be challenges implementing this in the UK higher education setting [Fujii, 2014]. If a core group of interested lecturers can be found, I believe that it would be a worthwhile goal. As a starting point, it would be interesting to do a thorough review of the literature around this practice as my portfolio contribution for the upcoming ADEV701 module.