International Students
One of the workshops I attended was on the theme of 'Working with International Students'. This was particularly relevant to my work at the Centre for Academic and Professional Development as we have two occasions every year where we need to support international participants.
The first occasion is the ADEPT Summer School: every summer we run a week-long summer school, consisting of four days of workshops and one day of assessed group presentations. This can then be converted into a module for the CILT or PGCAP if students complete a second assessment. We accept students from within QMUL and outside QMUL, and usually have many students from overseas. The 2016 Summer School was attended by participants from Oman and China, and the 2017 Summer School is going to be attended by a delegation from Northwestern Polytechnical University, in Xi'an, China.
The second occasion is the visit by delegates from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, who will visit QMUL this spring. I and my colleagues in CAPD will be delivering several days of development workshops to this group of Chinese academics. We will do this for the first time in Spring 2017.
The workshop on 'Working with International Students' was therefore particularly useful to my work in these areas. One excellent point made by the tutor was that different national cultures incorporate different assumptions around academic hierarchies and classroom participation. In the UK, we assume that students who are not participating in classroom discussions or group activities are disengaged: they may not have done the reading or understood the work. However, students from South East Asian countries in particular may be less inclined to participate as they "learn by listening; they want to fully absorb and understand what is being taught." (Chuah, 2010). Students who do not volunteer to speak in class may therefore be fully engaged and understand the concept, but their idea of hard work is different from my assumption as a British person. Often students will want to wait until they understand fully before speaking up.
I will apply this in my teaching of overseas participants by making my assumptions explicit. When I require participation (for example in a group discussion activity) I will state that this is part of the learning process and they should contribute to group discussion even if they do not feel they have a full understanding of the concept at hand. As Li and Jia (2006) state, 'consciously creating a space of contribution' for international students helps them to speak up. I will therefore also make explicit the value of international participants' contributions, noting that it is useful to have a variety of cultural perspectives and to hear about how particular themes work in the Chinese higher education system. Hopefully this will be a signal to the Chinese participants (from BUPT and NPU) that their contributions are valued, and will encourage them to participate in sessions.
References
Chuah, Swee-Hoon (2010). 'Teaching East-Asian Students: Some Observations.' Economics Network Online Resource. URL: https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/showcase/chuah_international Accessed 6th January 2017.
Li, X., & Jia, X. (2006). Why Don't You Speak Up?: East Asian Students' Participation Patterns in American and Chinese ESL Classrooms. Intercultural Communication Studies, 15(1), 192.
Student Support
I attended the Student Support session in order to get more information on supporting students individually. In my subject and department, we don't have 'personal tutors' in the same way that other departments do. The people I teach are usually employed full-time by QMUL or the NHS, and will almost always have one or more mentors in their own department. However, the student support session was still useful as it provided some frameworks for me to think about how I support participants on CAPD courses.
One aspect that I found really interesting was that of setting boundaries. This is an essential aspect for teaching of all levels, and I found it particularly relevant to me. I have pre-existing personal friendships with some academics who take CAPD courses, and so I have found it essential to set explicit boundaries about what I do and do not talk about. I have therefore determined never to talk about CAPD assessments in their presence, so as not to make them feel that their performance in the assessment will affect our personal relationship (or vice versa).
Another interesting point made in the student support session was about encouraging students to build their own support network, and this really struck a chord with me. It's easy to assume that because many staff take our courses as a probationary requirement, their department will support them in doing so. They should, but it doesn't always happen. Often people are given inadequate time off to take the course, or their managers don't take the course seriously and expect them to 'just get through' the PGCAP rather than make an effort.
With this in mind, I and another colleague have reformed the way that we address teaching mentors in academic schools (each student on our course is allocated a mentor in their department). Previously we were reluctant to mandate mentors to do anything, as they are often busy. However, thinking about the difficulties our participants often experience in building a support network around the PGCert or CILT, it is important that we encourage teaching mentors to do their part. We have therefore made explicit the amount and type of support mentors provide, so that our participants know what they can expect (and can tell us if they aren't getting it). We have also made it mandatory for mentors to attend certain events and get involved in the course, so that participants have spaces in which they can meet and seek support from people in their department.
As Mårtensson and Roxå (2016) state, 'it is mainly through [...] and meaning-making processes in collegial contexts that academics develop their understanding and practices of teaching', and therefore 'academic developers may benefit from taking these collegial contexts into account when designing activities and support for the development of teaching and learning within an institution' (p. 185). In order to take account of this, I will try over the next year to make sure that the new guidelines for mentors are adhered to, and throughout the year I will take note of mentors' participation and participants' feelings about the degree to which they are supported within their department. I will review this in January 2018: I will consider it a success if we get mentors participating as requested almost all of the time. If we have participation from all but a few mentors I will ask that those mentors are replaced. If we have low participation across the board I will seek to reform the mentor guidelines once again and re-evaluate.
Reference
Mårtensson, K., & Roxå, T. (2016). Working with networks, microcultures and communities. Advancing practice in academic development, 174-187.