Bringing it all together...

Just finished the wrap-up tutorial for LSC-30043 Conservation Biology, which provides the students with a forum to discuss any issues pertaining to the individual field tutorials and the associated in-course assessment. This was a really useful session for MYSELF and the students. I handed out my post-activity teaching evalution questionnaire for the students to complete. As I suspected the students had not remembered their unique alphanumeric ID to track the pre- and post-activity responses. I was really touched that the students (a) completed the forms despite it being an optional activity and (b) took the time to seek out their pre-activity forms so they could add the unique ID. I am going to hold fire looking at the responses until after I have marked the reports. These anomously "tracked" questionnaires are one of the datasets for my Action Research project.

From the verbal dialogue and questions raised during this session it became evident that the students were a bit troubled by the target notes aspect of the report. There are five field sessions, each of which examined ten targets, plus we covered one in the initial briefing session to get students switched on to what they needed to look for. This yields a total of 55 target notes, which should be placed in the appendix of the report (and therefore does not contribute to the word count) and act as "raw data" for the report. This should not be an onerous task as each student should have produced an individual written account of the target as part of the weekly tutorials. The students are struggling with two concepts here: INDIVIDUALITY when the targets were produced as a group activity and the concept of the target notes forming RAW DATA.

Why individuality?

The students worked in groups of 4-5 individuals and were required to discuss the nature of each target as a group, but write up their accounts individually. This collaborative approach is something that occurs within ecological consultancies, and therefore emulates the working environment, and is standard practice for students engaged on field-oriented courses such as geology and environmental science. A verbal dialogue is a great way of problem-solving tasks that may seem a bit overwhelming if faced alone and enables students within the group to benefit from the unique perspectives and skill sets of the different individuals. The problem is that despite repeatedly telling the students (printed in the handbook and verbally in the tutorial briefing sessions) that each individual in the group must produce their OWN set of notes, several of the groups elected to produce a single collated notes. While on one side, this is really great as it shows the degree to which the students have collaborated on the task, but if they all put in the same set of notes it will get flagged up as "plagiarism" by Turnitin.

The reason we want an individual approach is that (a) individuals may have different views on what the habitat is and they need to be able to justify this in the report, and (b) we want to assess student understanding of the process, which can only be gauged if its in their own words. Otherwise the group notes could be the product of one particularly switched on student. Unfortunately, the knock-on effect of this is that for these affected groups, the task of putting the 55 target notes into the report appendix becomes a much larger job as they need to rewrite the notes into their own words. We had an informal discussion about how students could be encouraged to do the task individually. The general consensus seemed to be that students are required to hand in their map and associated target notes for formative feedback early in the field tutorials, and this is something I plan to build into next years module.

So what is raw data?

I don't think the students quite got the "data" angle of the target notes until today. In science, "data" is viewed as quantitative numerial measurements of a particular feature. So the science students were comfortable with measurements, such as the width of the lake, the slope of the bankside, the distance of a tree to the path, etc, being data. But, did not view a textual account of the educational value of a rhododendron bush or a photograph of a tree tag that has been nibbled by a squirrel as datal! Yet all of these observations, which can be subjective and are often framed in the outlook of the observer, constitute data. I can understand why the students are struggling here, as I have been debating the very same issues for my Action Research project and it has opened up whole new world of possibilities to me and I hope the students feel the same.

Types of data - this photo of a partially intact arboretum tree label could be evidence of squirrel damage or anti-social behaviour by visitors?

Types of data - this photo of ducklings with female mallard is proof that breeding has been successful.

Types of data - the measurement tool in MAGIC was used to gauge the maximum width of the Keele Lake in meters.