shared thinking for PDP & eportfolios

[kev.brace]

Thought I'd "share" this with you >> (posted on a JISc mail list about
eportfolios & ePDP)



Web Site for Shared Thinking -Group Learning supported by Voting
Technology:
http://www.sharedthinking.info


Hi Everyone,
By way of an update, we ran 2 separate Shared Thinking sessions
yesterday at a new university. This was for final years students to
reflect together on individual work placements (employability). This
involved them sharing placement experiences and pulling out the key
issues together (student- generated questions). They then quantified
them according to how significant they perceived those issues to be
for the future. That was done by electronic voting. This produced a
whole-group view of the quantified issues in the room.
We are still digesting the data and doing interviews as follow-up but
there are some early points that stood out.

Thinking about the relationship between conversation, thinking and
writing (preparation and support of portfolio work) we asked whether
the sessions would help them write about their placements afterwards.
In the first session, 91% said they thought the session would help
them write about their placements. In the second session, 59% thought
it would help with a writing task.

These were final year students so you might have thought that they
would not see much that was new to them when they shared experiences.
Despite this, of those in the second session, 20% said that they had
learned something new from their peers as a result of this shared
approach. Of those in the first session, 62% said they had learned
something new from their peers as a result of this shared approach.

Both sessions saw participants expressing a strong preference for
collaborative reflection using this approach (87% & 77% in favour)
over reflecting alone. This suggests that the Shared Thinking can be
useful for reviewing placements together (employability) and for
individual writing (portfolios) as part of a variety of activities to
support PDP.

A lot more data and analysis is required and these are only early
findings which of course need to be treated with caution. In case
people would like more information on this approach see http://www.sharedthinking.info

Next week, we're running what may be the last session for data-
gathering.
That will be for staff development (CPD) in an old university.

Best Wishes,
Nick

-------------------------------------------------
Nicholas Bowskill,
Faculty of Education,
University of Glasgow

Web Site for Shared Thinking -Group Learning supported by Voting
Technology:
http://www.sharedthinking.info