 Hello everybody and welcome to today's session. I'm very pleased to be joined by Amy. I'm Debbie Baff and I'm the membership and professional developer manager at Alt. And I'm just gonna take you through a couple of these slides. And this is the first of the workshops that I've been involved in this time around. And I'm looking forward to this, having just had a quick run through with Amy. So just to give you a quick run through of the hashtags there, these are the hashtags that we are actually using. And this session is being recorded. So we will make that available as soon as we can. Just in case anybody did need a quick reminder, you can use the access panel at the bottom right-hand corner of your screen, which is the purple chevron. And that will enable you to get access to the chat function, which we probably will be using as well in this session. You can raise your hand to ask a question and Amy's already beaten me to it because she's already starting to share her slides, but never mind, I shall carry on. So basically, just to let you all know that it is being recorded. So we are assuming that you have actually given your permission to allow this session to be recorded. So seeing as Amy's already started sharing her slides, I'll hand over directly to Amy and then you can carry on from there. And I shall be quiet. Okay. Thank you Debbie for your introduction. Also, thank you for your help because this is the first time I use Blackboard Collaborate. Okay, so welcome to this workshop. This workshop is about the toolkit for CC circles. And in this workshop, I will focus only on one aspect of the toolkit. And that is about the design questions. And my name is Amy Xiao and I'm a teacher trainer and assessment specialist at T-Oper University. And you can see that this is actually an international project between the Netherlands and Belgium. So I can still call it international. And our project leader is Kamashi Ryoko. And she's from Devon University. And Amy and Inge, they are from Open University. They are both researchers and teachers. And Steven Foyang is a program director of teacher education at UC Devon Limburg. She's also a researcher and supervisor himself. Okay. Okay. These are the members of our team. And this is me, Amy. So I'm talking about this workshop. At the beginning of this workshop, I will first give a very short presentation on these topics. So first I will introduce what our CC circles are. And we did a already quite extensive literature review on the supervisor's needs. And then we will also talk about the disadvantages of group supervision and also the challenges of design CC circles. And then the most important part is about the tool kits, the design questions. So very short introduction. Then the participants of this workshop will work on a hands-on exercise in breakout groups. So what the participants will do is to evaluate, actually to evaluate to what extent the design questions can meet supervisor's needs. And whether these design questions can have potential to overcome these advantages of group supervision. Yeah. Okay. So CC circles, yeah. This term is actually quite interesting because in the English literature, they are all called groups. But why do we use circles? Because actually they are translated from Dutch. And I'm not a Dutch native speaker, but I consulted my colleagues. That was actually the reason. Okay. So that's why we don't call them CC groups. They are called CC circles. And actually in the beginning, they were developed by Roma and Roma and Night House in 2002. Okay. And actually in the beginning, why we have these CC circles is because in the Netherlands, the number of students in research universities is growing and growing. For example, at my university, Tilburg University, at this moment, we have more than 10,000 bachelor students and almost 7,000 master students now. So actually each year, we have an increase of two to 3,000 students per year. But the hiring of new teaching staff to reflect this increase. So actually our lecturers, they experience a very heavy teaching load. So actually in the beginning, why we have the CC circles is because we hope to find a workable solution for the heavy workload for the supervisors. But then actually not only this, because students, they also told us that they find quite alone when they work on CCs. So to reduce their isolation. And also like we want to provide a kind of social structure to connect the teachers and the students together. Then we have this kind of a setup, the CC circles. And then the CC circles have these, these are features of the CC circles. And a lot of the instructions are already written in Rommel and Nighthouse famous book is called Collaborative Learning in CCs Rings. So it was also called the Rings. And then in their book, they already provide the very concrete instructions on the organizational and the communication aspects. For example, in their book, they tell us like how to structure and the chair a circle meeting and how to communicate effectively with some strategies. And, but that's quite actually quite instructional. So, but what are the circles, right? So that's the question like, okay, so the CC circles, they are small collaborative groups. So not just groups, but collaborative. And then it can be one or multiple supervisors in the group, in the circle. And then they usually have the shared theme or subject. And it emphasizes students, the supervisor students, student-student interaction. And to organize CC circles, actually they impose high demands on supervisors' pedagogical expertise. And also there are lots of purposes, formats and implementation at different Dutch universities. So actually the circles themselves are already quite diverse. Okay. So our research group, our first step was to figure out, okay, what are the circles? That's why we, our first article was about the typology of CC circles. It's already in the production at this journal. We heard from the journal, probably it will be online, we already have the DOI will be online this week. Okay. So if you are curious or if you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact me or our research team, yeah. So in the literature, you can also find quite similar terms such as group supervision and collective academic supervision or team supervision. Team supervision is really found in the PhD context. For the other two types, two terms, they are found in both bachelor and master's degrees. And our circles, the CAS, this one, yeah. This is also something quite interesting to know. Yeah, so, okay. So we, as I explained, we did a little, we already did a little bit, we did quite extensive literature review to find out so what CC supervisors need, okay. So first they said that they want to have personalized support with just in time information because they want to find the information quickly and easily. Okay. So the support that they needed, actually I'm not surprised when I saw the reference because I'm a teacher trainer and I often offer teachers a device. They don't want to have the irrelevant information. They just want to, when they have the problems, then we offer them the information that will be helpful for them at that moment. I understand their needs, but sometimes these requirements is also quite difficult to arrange. Yeah, okay. So, but what do supervisors need? Okay, they need to, okay, the first need is to understand the wider context. So actually there is a book, another book is we use quite often at the University is called the Teacher at the University, a guide for post-graduate and the researchers. In this book, they mentioned the wider context. It's the most commonly asked questions by the beginning teachers. Okay. And then there is another study by Cornelius and Nicole in 2015. They have done the qualitative research and they analyzed the questions asked by supervisors. And then they also have a focus group discussions to identify what these supervisors need. And then they also find these for, I heard, okay. They also found these needs, okay. And so the first one is about, for example, like the wider context, like why do we ask the students to write a graduation thesis and why is the thesis used as a final assessment? Okay. And also like they often ask, like that's my personal experience, for example, like they often ask like, they really don't understand what the research supervision really means, okay. And also like the general expectations for bachelor and the master's thesis. They actually have sailed and get the instructions about this contextual information. And also about the program specific expectations. For example, like we, at each study program, we have so-called the program learning outcomes. But what's the relationship between program learning outcomes and the final graduation thesis? And also they have a very little idea about what students have learned before they write, they work on the thesis. And also like what bothers them very often is like, so okay, they are now the thesis supervisors, but what are the institutional expectations as to how much time and effort they should invest in supervision activities? They often find that the department give very low priority to the novice or even the experienced supervisors about how to do their job. So, by the context. And then the second point is about their role and the responsibilities. Because in the Netherlands, the supervisors are also examiners themselves, right? So in principle, they already have to play two roles. But in the circles and meetings, they have to, they have even more roles to play. They have to be the facilitator, they have to be the monitors. So, a lot of roles and responsibilities, but very often they are not informed, okay? And the supervisors also need to know like what are the key stages, expectations at each stage and what kind of tasks they need to carry out, okay? So, these are the most, these are the two needs they need. And then the third one is about their students. Because now we are internationalizing our education at Tilburg University and I think in the most Dutch universities as well. But then the supervisors have quite, they need a lot of support on this because they don't know what the background of the students and whether this background will influence how students learn. And so, this is about to know their students. And finally, they also often argue with communicating with other supervisors. Because they now they have to ask students to do research and to write the thesis, right? But the point is like, if they don't know what students have learned before, then they have no information. Any instructional design, you need to know where to start, right? But if the supervisors don't have the information, they don't know what to do, okay? And also they have the needs to join a kind of professional community to focus on the issues they encounter and then to discuss with the difficulties. So basically the supervisors have these four needs. And then later on in the breakout groups, we will work on the, we will try to look at the design questions and then to see whether this question is potential to meet CC supervisors needs. And then these are the disadvantages of group CC supervision. You know, the usually CC circles are used next to the individual supervision. So it's not because now we introduce CC supervision, group CC supervision or CC circles, then we don't offer students individual supervision. It's not like that. So they are actually a kind of supplementary to each other. Then supervisors and students, they will regard the circles or group supervision as extra workload. So because in the group supervision, they have the activities to do. So if they don't know the link between the group activities and their own cities, they find that, okay, they just have to do extra work. And then the second disadvantage is because now teachers, supervisors, they have to supervise a group of students. And since the students, everyone has a different topic, then of course, the supervisor cannot cater so much to everyone's needs. So if their advice will be at a higher level, more generic than the specific advice. Okay, then the third disadvantage is the reduced commitment to student supervisor relationship. Because in the circles or group supervision, the peer learning, peer review, peer feedback, they have more focus than the supervisors review and supervisors feedback, right? But that also means that the commitment to this student supervisor relationship is lowered down. And then finally it's about the role confusion. As I said, the supervisors and students, they all have to play different roles when they have the group supervision or circles. Then the students, they actually, they have to act as co-supervisors for their circle members. But then the students also need to know how to fulfill their role and responsibilities. Okay, if this is not arranged, then they don't know what to do, okay? And then the supervisors, of course, they have to be the facilitators, supporters and examiners. And then if they don't know exactly what to do, then it's very difficult for them to fulfill their role tasks. And then there are also changes for sizing CC circles. These are the four major challenges we have found. So first is, in general, the group supervision pedagogy has a, there is not a lot of study or very little guidance about how to do that. And then the second one is the most supervisors, they don't have adequate or sufficient prior training on supervision pedagogy or small group teaching. So they have to all do all this together. And then the third one is their own experience when they were supervised individually. And then they find it very difficult to transfer this individual experience to group supervision. And of course, even if they just do individual supervision, it's also difficult because they just use their own, one person's experience and then up to the new situation. Yeah. So if they don't really do the constant critical reflection and get the pedagogical support from others, then it's quite difficult for them to renew or to create the new practices, okay? And also, as I said, the circles are very complex because of the student backgrounds and everyone's topic. And also supervisors also told us like they find it very difficult to balance speaking time. So because now in the circles, we have supervisor student, student-student interactions, but some students, they talk more than the others and then they find it very difficult to maintain the balance between or among different students. And finally, it's a really a difficult skill for students of evaluative judgments because we hope that they can carry out their peer review and deliver quality peer feedback. But if they don't have the evaluative judgments, it's very difficult for them to fulfill their tasks. Okay. So we have learned the four supervisors' needs and the four disadvantages of the circles. Then we want to offer a toolkit. Then you might wonder, why do you want to make a toolkit? Why don't you just have other teachers like manuals, instructions, template checklist? As I said in the beginning, like the circles are very diverse and it's very difficult to use one form for everyone because the context can be very different and the student backgrounds are different. So the diverse change for us to create a kind of manual or instructional like a book for the teachers, for supervisors. That's why we try to create a toolkit. Then they can really use the tool to design their own circles. So the first purpose is to translate the typology and the theories into practice. And then we want to collect the evidence for them because they say that they would like to have just the entire information and they want to find that information easily. Okay. And then also we actually want the supervisors to think carefully to first analyze their context and then they can properly design their circles. So we find it very difficult to provide a kind of one form for everyone. That's why we find it's better to provide a toolkit. So what is our toolkit? Our system of three parts. Questions. We find very important that it goes through these thinking based on our questions. Then we actually, we don't just ask them questions, we already provide the tentative answers and then collect the resources for them. And for some aspects, we also provide scaffolds for students. So these scaffolds are also ready to use for the supervisors. But first, very important is still, what do they want to know? And the design equations can help them to figure this out. And the design equations are based on our typology but also so-called ACAD framework. So these are the six design dimensions of our typology. And then for each dimension, we have several design characteristics. And later in the group, in the breakout groups, we will focus on these two dimensions. So you will look at the design equations and the design equations are about these design characteristics, of course. And then you will evaluate whether the goal dimension can meet supervisors needs. You will also evaluate whether the guidance and working formats, whether these questions have the potential to overcome the disadvantages of group supervision. So this is just to show you the ACAD framework. And this framework is created by Yomang and Kawao. And so ACAD is activity-centered analysis and design. As I said, they really need to first analyze. That's why we choose this framework. And it has three design aspects. Created our questions based on our typology and these three dimensions. Each dimension has also three levels. And they are really quite concrete for us to specify the questions. So we are going later, after my presentation, we are going to do the breakout group activities. So I kindly ask you later that will help me to share this URL. This URL is the handout. And then in this handout, you can find the design equations of these two dimensions. So the first activity is like... So in each group, please read through the questions. And then for each question, please indicate like whether this question has the potential to meet the supervisor's needs, these four needs. So what you are going to do, very simple is read the question and then to think, okay, which needs can be satisfied or to be met by this question. And then after that, we will have the first primary session to discuss this. Yeah. Thanks, Amy. Yeah, you're welcome. Just to let you know, I'm not sure what it was like for Emma and Tilly, but occasionally your sound dipped a little bit, probably because of your bandwidth. So we got most of what we said, but there was the odd occasion where there might be a little bit of clarification still needed. And obviously we've only got Emma and Tilly. So it's up to you really. You can either go into one of the breakout rooms that we've got set up, or you can stay in this room, because I guess if you're gonna, if you might as well, all three of you have the conversation. Yeah, maybe just one room and then we can discuss these questions together. But another recording stops, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, the recording will automatically stop if I put you into the group, into the breakout room. So that's fine. Or you can stay in here and I can stop the recording, but that's fine. Shall I put you into the breakout group one, all three of you? Yeah, that's good. I know we can discuss there. Yeah, great. And I'll stay in the main room here, just in case anybody comes in late for any reason. And if they do, I'll put them into that group with you, okay? Yeah. Okay, thank you. I hope that's okay. So it can be a bit disconcerting when I grab hold of you and pull you into the other room, but don't worry, you should appear. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I'm just gonna try and move you to a group. I'll do you Emma first, okay? Thanks. Okay, Tilly, I'm moving you now.