A2: TEACH AND SUPPORT LEARNING WITH INDICATORS OF OTHER DIMENSIONS

Many educational technologies can be used for enhancing students learning experience, a variety of teaching strategies can be adopted. However, the suitability of these strategies or approaches associated with lecturer’ personality, students’ background and the learning environment. [K1: Design and plan learning activities] [K3: How students learn] [K4: The use and value of appropriate learning technologies]

• I found it is difficult for me to apply humour within the classroom due to my cultural background and personality, although it is very useful tool for students’ engagement (Lovorn and Holaway, 2015). However, it is much easier for me to apply it via social media, or for students who come from the similar background.

• Moreover, although team-based learning can improve students’ performance (Haidet et al., 2014), I found it is very challenging, especially if it is for summative assessments. According to students’ feedback, this might be due to two reasons: (1) the variety of students, as discussed in section A-1.2 and (2) each class (from HE5 to HE6) always has a great amount of new students who come to UoB to study for the first time.

Due to the limitation of the current learning environment within UoB, I tried to let students make better use of what we have got.I require students to bring their own devices (Iphone/laptop/iPad) to the and ask them to try to find out answers by themselves (Sun et al., 2017b). This has operated well with my teaching pedagogies :

1. I strongly believe more “guide on the side” should be provided because students should learn to be independent learners within the higher education (Sampson and Karagiannidis, 2010) (Sun et al., 2017b);

2. I enjoy applying the most advanced technology or software to try to get the “WOW” moments from students (Castro et al., 2016) with screenshot-based interactions shared on Moodle and social media (Huang, 2015) and Space Race game activities via Socrative (Vasconcelos et al., 2017).

3. “Real time” academic support with micro-lectures via social media (Sun et al., 2017c, 2017d)

4. Flipped classroom (Sun et al., 2017a), this embedded multiple teaching strategies: active learning, self-evaluation, peer evaluation, group discussion, reflection, scaffolding, role play, quiz, etc.

As explored from my research (Sun et al., 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d), these strategies have a positive impact on students’ motivation, engagement, performance, satisfaction, and retention according to results collected from focus groups, anonymous SurveyMonkey questionnaires, module evaluation questionnaires, and attainments. Several frameworks are developed for the implementation of these strategies. Although students’ pre-knowledge and learning style may have an impact on which strategy can be the most suitable strategy for all students, Sun et al. (2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d) show that these factors do not affect the results. [A5: Engage in CPD and pedagogical research] [K6: Quality assurance and quality enhancement]

References for my conference papers:

Cowley, P., Sun, S. and Smith, M. (2017d). Enhancing International Students’ Engagement via Social Media – A Case Study of WeChat and Chinese Students at a UK University, 11th Annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference, 6-8 March 2017, Valencia, Spain

Sun, S. and Smith, M. (2017c). Found in Translation: Empowering Chinese Students in Anglo-Centric Pedagogical Contexts. 3rd Annual International Conference on Responsible Research and Transformation in Education, 5– 7 April 2017, London, UK.

Sun, S., Smith, M., Hyams-Ssekasi, D. and Cowley, P. (2017b). Tapping into Pedagogical Knowledge Through the Use of Smart Phones. 9th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, 3-5 July 2017, Bacelona, Spain.

Sun. S., Smith, M., Cowley, P. and Hyams-Ssekasi, D. (2017a). To Flip or Not To Flip, Exploring the Best Mix: An Action Research on the Teaching Pedagogy for Research Methods Module. 9th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, 3-5 July 2017, Bacelona, Spain.