Category — (7) SoTL Leadership Presentation and Reflections

In this page you will find the video of my presentation,  peers’ feedback, and my reflections. I must add that the video was prepared well in advance of the presentation and the feedback provided is for the actual presentation made during the cohort meeting on 30th March 2012.

7.1  SoTL Presentation and Feedback

Here is a link to my SoTL presentation  Video

I received feedback on the  in-class presentation I made on 30th March, with the same slides as in the video above.

Before I proceed with reflection,  the feedback is summarized below.  The three numbers in each row following the Question  are mean, standard deviation, and mode, respectively.

Question

Mean                       S.D.                  Mode       N= 12

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Presentation material was interesting and varied                      4.6                         0.7                          5

The presentation pace and timing                                                    4.3                         0.6                          4

The presentation was engaging                                                         4.4                         0.5                          4

I learned from this presentation                                                       4.5                         0.5                         4

I will be able to use some things from

this presentation in my teaching and learning                              4.3                          0.8                        5

My overall rating of this presentation                                               4.7                        0.5                         5

The detailed feedback from the peers is given here: Peer-Feeback-on-Presentation

7.2  Reflections

This is the first time I stepped well outside of my comfort  zone and ventured into a completely new topic on education, teaching, and learning. How does one identify and describe a research problem in a new area? Like in all fields one has to bear the burden of ‘received wisdom ‘ and yet forge a path of one’s own (however difficult it may be) to formulate a research question and pursue it to its logical conclusion in order to avoid the risk of parroting. One must also control the urge to rush to embrace the fashionable idea  of the moment. As the old proverb goes, fools rush in where wise men fear to tread.  I decided to pick a topic on reflective learning and examine it in the context my current teaching practice in a large core course in mechanical engineering. This decision to focus on reflective learning was arrived at after a lot of mulling. Still the ideas presented, in my opinion, are preliminary and indicate the work ahead.

I approached this presentation very cautiously as I am a novice researcher learning my ways through teaching and learning literature. Thankfully, sufficient number of engineering journals focussing on education exist which informed this presentation. While the literature (and the glossary of terms given early in this program) contain ample pointers to learner-centered teaching and teaching-centered teaching metrologies and their pedagogical underpinnings, scant literature exists on subject-cenetered teaching where the focus is not so much on teacher or learner but on how effectively a relationship between the learner and subject is nurtured. A possible window into this complex aspect may be provided by the reflective learning journal. Experience, particularly within the classroom, forms the basis for reflection.  If not anything else, penning down one’s thoughts  will help clarify mind and activates cognitive skills that go beyond those required for good grades. In the end, higher education–especially at the university level–is likely the last formal educational environment that one goes through and I believe that  it is important that the learners learn how to learn on their own and construct their own life-long learning environments.

I benefited a lot from the discussion that followed with the cohort members following my presentation. The discussion helped me narrow the focus on the research questions. I gather from the feedback I received and the discussion that there is general interest in the use of learning journals to promote reflection diverse learning environments from the responses for the questions “I will be able to use some things from this presentation in my teaching and learning.”

Overall, I enjoyed this component of the program and hope to continue the interaction with my peers in the near future as I explore this project in more detail. I see this as a new beginning as far as my teaching practice is concerned.