Record of Observation/ Review of Teaching Practice – Tutor Observation

  

Session/artefact to be observed/reviewed: 

Size of student group: est: 45 (possibly more) Register includes circa 150 students 3 from courses.- Last week 49 

Observer: Kwame Baah 

Observee: Ian Holmes 

Note: This record is solely for exchanging developmental feedback between colleagues. Its reflective aspect informs PgCert and Fellowship assessment, but it is not an official evaluation of teaching and is not intended for other internal or legal applications such as probation or disciplinary action. 

Part One 
Observee to complete in brief and send to observer prior to the observation or review: 

What is the context of this session/artefact within the curriculum? 

This session is the second session of Block 2 – Advanced Research Methods Unit for the above PG Marketing courses (the content of this session was also delivered to MA FDM on Wednesday – some minor adjustments have been made – which reflect changes to the main course content – I have been in liaison with Unit Lead Julie Dennison) 

The Language Development programme is embedded within the main course on the Unit Moodle page –(for this unit there is a Language Development Tile in the Unit Moodle page and has been highlighted to all the students in the Unit Launch lecture – which I also attended Thursday 8^th. This is part of a strategic plan to align the content of the LD sessions with the content of what is delivered on the main course – sometimes explicitly using the same slides (this will also form part of a case study for the PG Cert- Planning). 

In this session we will be looking a back at some language items from the last weeks – revision of Research Philosophy lexis and theoretical terminology – using some frames and promoting a “collaborative disruptive” workshop – generating ideas through language form well as looking forward to some of the content – lexis Research Strategies that will be presented in the main course lecture on 20^th Feb – PM. This session will also focus on SCR (Sourcing – Citing – Referencing) text and diagrams – especially Saunders, Thornhill and Lewis (2023)The rationale for this approach is to concept check and revise some items that the students will have seen previously – and to provide them (especially learners who speak English as a second or other language), with a deeper understanding of the language-based items i.e. academic writing – a research proposal – that they will encounter in the main course presentation. In this respect the activities in this lesson have been designed to scaffold students understanding of what they are required to do in the production of the research proposal RP – which is the ultimate (summative) output for the unit.  

Last week activities: The first activity of this LD session was to unpack the learning outcomes for the unit as the fundamental/ abstract instruction for the task – in terms of what learners are required to do. This is a procedure, which we applied at the start of the Autumn term with the Learning Outcomes for the Block One assignments, synthesizes Bloom’s (revised) Taxonomy of cognitive domains (Krathwhol, 2022) with a framework for HE essay question analysis (Gillet, 2025). This is a procedure which I have been refining and adapting since the beginning of 2024 and is designed to help learners understand what they are being asked to do (it will also form part of a PG Cert case study).  

References:  

Gillet, A. (2025) Understanding the task. Available at: https://www.uefap.com/prepare/task/task.htm (Accessed 10^th Feb, 2025) 

Krathwohl, D.R. (2002) ‘A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview’ Theory Into Practice,  Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 212-218 Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1477405 (Accessed 11^th Feb, 2025) 

What are the intended or expected learning outcomes?  

LAST WEEK: 

• Learners will understand on a deeper level what they are required to do for the unit (the basic criteria for assessment) through linguistic analysis of the Learning Outcomes.  

• Learners will revise semantic understanding of ‘Ontology’, ‘Axiology’, ‘Epistemology’- and expand knowledge from nominal form to adjective – as well as how to pronounce through visual phonology.  

• Learners will through pair discussion revise their understanding of what is expected in terms of academic writing at MA level  

• Learners will revise their understanding of in text citation in Harvard (this will feature in more depth in the following week’s session) 

• Learners will understand how to achieve cohesion within paragraphs and identify the functions of sentences in terms of their purpose and content through analysis of actual student (example) RP texts 

• Learners will understand how to construct the Aim and Objectives (A&O) for the RP – and what to include – through the analysis of an example A&O – identifying the who, what, where, how and why 

THIS WEEK: 

20.02.24 

• Learners will revise key vocab – research philosophy: ontology – epistemology – axiology – and: Theory – vs – theoretical framework vs – conceptual model 

• Learners will be introduced to  new lexis: research strategy: ethnography – netnography – narrative enquiry – phenomenology – Research philosophy: Reflexivity and useful word for understanding through visualization: heuristic.  

• Using example aim from last week – learners will generate ideas through using the frame and ideating variations of the who – what – where and why the from this pool – mix and match to create new aims (also exploring example Mixed Methods and Inductive Business Report aim frame– then write a title for paper(s).  

• Learners will revise knowledge/ use of Harvard for SCR – as per citethemright – plus use of caption for figure – practise paraphrasing text from – with reference to the heuristic: The Research Onion- Chapter 4 (Saunders, Thornhill and Lewis, 2023, pp-131-132).  

• Learners will develop cohesion, SCR and paraphrasing  

What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)? 

Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern? 

• Learners will match vocabulary items to definitions revision– Padlet task/ Paper-Whiteboard Task 

• Learners will produce language ideas to frames – (aims) and will then collaboratively ideate ‘Working Titles’  

• Learners will learn (and use) new lexis and practice pronunciation 

• Learners will produce captions for figure, paraphrase and cite section of Saunders, Thornhill and Lewis (2023) 

All the activities will be displayed on the lesson slides and separate activity slides – that students can download and use as they wish during the class – this will be available on a new Padlet for the unit and delivered to the students via Moodle announcement .There will also be some whole class activities that involve student interaction and elicitation – using what is displayed on the slides. Some of the activities will also be available as paper printouts.  

On the master slides and activities – I have used pastel colours – so there is less glare/ contrast in viewing (this is a design feature that I maintained to be more inclusive to dyslexic learners – based on knowledge gained through CPD)  

Potential issues for the session will be students’ access to the digital tasks – most tasks can be done in pairs – and there will be paper based tasks – and most tasks can be done via the screen too. 

Attendance could be an issue as this is a non-compulsory element – however last week we had 49 students – I expect that there will be reasonable attendance for this class – however if everyone on the course does arrive there will not be sufficient space in the classroom. Students will arrive late and therefore I will need to get them up to speed with activities – I will also ask students to peer assist. 

TASK DESIGN FOR DIVERSE LEARNING PREFERANCES 
 
I have tried to design tasks so that learners have the choice of how they wish to the task to provide a diversity of media to meet diverse preference – this includes working alone or with others – I will however be encouraging students to work together – especially across cultures and language groups.  

References: 

Citethemright (no date) Citation Available at https://www.citethemrightonline.com/article?docid=b-9781350928060&tocid=b-9781350928060-setting-out-citations&st=use+of+et+al (Accessed on 15.02.25) 

Saunders, M., Lewis, P., and Thornhill, A. (2023) Research Methods for Business Students. 9th edition. Harlow: Pearson Education 

Student Padlet: See Session 2 

https://artslondon.padlet.org/iholmes9/ld_block-two_advanced-research-methods-muoydx8jcprgmgkv

After the session I add the complete lesson slides to the Padlet  

Master Lesson Slides:  

2_ARM.pptx 

How will students be informed of the observation/review? 

The students will be informed via Moodle announcement – email as part of my communication with them re content and materials ahead of the lesson.  

What would you particularly like feedback on? 

Learner engagement with the tasks and with each other 

The efficacy of the procedures activities I have designed for the lesson including for the potential range of the diverse learning needs/ preferences of the learners 

The effectiveness of experimental activities – the language generation and disruptive generation of language and ideas 
 

The approach I take to teaching Harvard citation style as stipulated by citethemright and therefore UAL 

How will feedback be exchanged? 

Via email (form)  

Verbal – following Observation (TBA) 

Part Two 

Observer to note down observations, suggestions and questions: 

The observation took place in LCF and the class was attended by a wide range of students from LCF I presume. An interesting fact I learned was that prior to students attending this class there was no idea who would actually be present in class. The direction of the class was to learn about ways of writing in English by developing specific schemes of writing that was target specific, including Harvard referencing. 

In the session the main focus was about generating ideas based on ‘Who’, ‘What’ and ‘Why’ in writing for a specific context. The category based key word task generated considerable interest and it was supported with a digital option in the form of a Padlet, this supported an inclusive approach for the task. The pace of the class was very suitable to the entire class even though some kept really quiet and may not have been at par with others. I also commend you on making each person feel welcome by greeting each student that joined the class after it had commenced. It was a useful way of providing individual recognition of attendance and effort. 

Overall your lesson had a suitable enough pace to allow for different abilities of the collective students to keep in touch with thinking and learning. This was supported by questions and comments from both student and teacher, which was a very good approach for supporting student development. The suitability of learning was highlighted by one student who mentioned that using your approach to writing, centring functionality and purpose, helped her get an A-grade in one of her course assignments. 

It is very difficult to know the impact your lessons have on the students, who attend your classes, because of the changing landscape of students. there is however an opportunity to create a Padlet for them to share feedback for each class iteration. You have developed a good methodical approach for supporting good writing skills in your classes and stepping through how the Harvard referencing works was the icing on the cake. 

Thank you for the privilege! 

Part Three 

Observee to reflect on the observer’s comments and describe how they will act on the feedback exchanged: 

Thank you, Kwame, for the observation and notes  

I am very pleased that the efficacy of the methodology and approach to teaching this group of learners can be recognized through this observation – this gives me the confidence to design future lessons using the strategies that I employed here.  

In response to the difficulty of assessing the impact that the lessons have on the students who attend the sessions I think it may be useful for me to design research with which I can measure the outcomes of their assessed written work over the course of the academic year – so that it is possible to measure progress in grading outcomes against the variables of L2 users (and  L1 users) of English who do and do not attend – using block 1 – 2 and 3 data. This will involve planning and co-ordination with course leaders; however, it will provide useful metrics that could be used to communicate the value of these (non-compulsory) sessions to learners, course leaders and the wider UAL community. 

In response to the note about providing a Padlet for students to offer feedback on the sessions – I agree that this would be a useful way to gather more data on the efficacy of the sessions from the students’ perspective. This is something that I have offered in a limited way with some of the sessions I have delivered using Padlet – and there has been some response from students, however this too has been limited. I feel that an effective strategy would be to make the channel for feedback more salient – bring this to the attention of the learners earlier on in the program and sessions (from the beginning) so that it becomes embedded in the learning process. I feel that perhaps the lack of foregrounding this stems from a lack of confidence in approaches that I am employing, and my willingness to adapt what I am doing – however, through this process I feel that I am more confident in recognizing the value in having a more open dialogue between myself as teacher and the learners about the development of the teaching strategies and approaches in the language Development classroom.