 Okay we're going to make a start then. So welcome this afternoon to this parallel session, half an hour. So in the next half an hour you'll be listening to Abigail Bale here from Warwick, the head of Technology Enhanced Learning. And the session is Transforming and Enhancing Teacher Education. So without further ado I'm going to hand over to Abigail and welcome, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Can everyone hear me okay? Yeah, lovely. As long as, yeah, I think we're going to, we're stuck with that, there's not much I can do. So yes, my name is Abigail Bale, Assistant Professor and Head of Technology Enhanced Learning in the Centre for Teacher Education here at the University of Warwick. And first of all I'm just going to give you a little bit of information about my role. So I plan and deliver CPD activities in technology enhanced learning. I lead projects that embed innovative tell approaches into programs and that's what I'm going to be talking to you about today. I met staff in the use of appropriate technologies to develop their teaching practice and research. And I develop and facilitate tell focused curriculum enhancement opportunities. And I also undertake research and disseminate information about new and innovative use of existing technologies. I'm just going to now talk a little bit about the Centre. It's the Centre for Teacher Education and we deliver postgraduate talk programs to graduates who are looking to gain qualified teacher status. So our PGCE programs equip our students to teach in the early years, primary and secondary phases, and our students are based locally nationally and internationally as well. We also run an MA in professional education program which is available internationally and we've also got optional introduction to teaching modules for our undergraduates at Warwick to study certain topics such as math and English. So the project itself is called the Digital Teacher Education Project. It goes through a strategy renewal process which I'm sure other institutions do as well and the project is part of the five year strategy renewal process for our department. And I'm going to be talking about year one of the project today, which took place last year and it's the funded component of the project which we predominantly use for staff buy out. So I'm just going to move on. So this charming diagram. It's a bit of an epic, but this is the diagram that we use to explain the project. So each of the if I go just go through the diagram briefly we've we've got four strands as we call them which are topics if you like or themes mentoring digital communities of practice reusable learning objects and student experience and quality assurance and embedded within each of those strands. Things like well being inclusion and inclusive teaching and also values and ethics. And if you look at the horizontal lines on the diagram. The idea is is that each of these strands feeds into our local PGCE to enrich the program. Our development and expansion of our international program and also the enrichment, and then also our remote CPD provision. Each of the strands has got a lead so there's four leaves. And then a small team of staff that are working on that particular strand. I'm the project facilitator so I've got overview of the whole project and I'm also a member of project board. And I've got a number of other roles which is what I'm going to be talking about today. What I'm going to do now is just move through each of the four strands and just tell you a little bit about what they what the purpose was what they did, and then my reflections on the process of being involved with that particular group of people. The first round the mentoring strands they were looking at how we could provide video technology for our students. So that they could record their lesson observations essentially and then share that with their tutors and with their mentors and then gain feedback from them. And this was all part of the instructional coaching process that we use at Warwick and it's part of the work at gym night. If anyone wants to look up the information so we're looking also to encourage mentors to use instructional coaching principles during the mentor sessions and in order to do that we needed to provide them with CPD opportunities. So one of the pieces of work that we did on the project was to pilot a piece of work a piece of software called go react now I don't know if any of you have heard of go react, but it's basically a tool that's used for teaching performance based skills. So it's interactive cloud based platform and you can submit videos and then you can grade the videos. And one of the benefits with it is you can timestamp comments through the video which is really quite useful. So the outcomes of the project. It was a successful pilot we use go react it's great. And I'm not, there is nothing wrong with go react I'm going to say this and I'm not being funded by them so I'm just saying this. But basically what we've decided due to a number of factors we're not going to be using. We're not currently using go react at the moment. We're what we're using instead is moodle as a dropbox to allow our students to submit videos and then staff can assign comments at that point. It's not as good obviously as go react. You don't get the granular feedback, but we had a number of challenges, particularly on our international programs with storing the recordings whether they were going to be based on our servers or somewhere else. And because of that it's easier just for us to use moodle instead. We also had significant challenges with recording children for safeguarding issues, and particularly in an international context, each country has its own rules about what you can record and what you can't record. The reason we wanted to do it was because you get benefit if you have a student teacher at the front of the class and they are recorded and they see what they're doing. But it's much more beneficial if you can also record the class and how they're actually interacting with it. That was a step too far. We were just not able to do that. And there's still a load of work going on to try and resolve these issues. But they're sort of part of the reasons why we ended up not using go react. The second sort of tranche of this section we did a load of curriculum planning. So what we've done is we've now got a growing collection of resources to help us to or help our students to use video capture. We've also got a huge amount of mental resources being developed and they've already been developed, and we're sharing them with our mentors. And we've got what are called professional practice units. So these are on placement experiences that are designed to integrate provider led so what we do here in university with what goes on out in placement on their student teaching experiences. And quite a lot of those when they were developed they were very text based. And what we've been able to do is with the work with video we've actually been able to bring in different types of resources to add to these professional practice units to give the students alternative resources to use which has been really nice to do. So some of the reflections on this. I describe my role on this one as that of a critical friend and you'll notice there's a hat on the screen. This is because I'm going to be wearing lots of hats because I've got different roles as I work my way through the strands. So as critical friend is someone who provides a supportive but neutral sounding board if you like, but he's also there to challenge and ask questions that to the grouping question. The first finding though was that I was the questions that I was asking the strand were being fed to me by project board. Everyone knew I was on project board it wasn't like it was a secret or anything, but I was finding that the questions weren't my questions if you like they were someone questions. And I needed to find a way to reconcile those two roles, if you like. But what I became aware of was that the project board were asking questions about sort of admin and how we were going to integrate video within to our academic process. So they were legitimate questions and they were sort of the wider departmental questions from outside of the project. And I thought okay well if they're prepared to ask those kind of questions and they're acceptable then what I need to do is think about what other questions can I ask. And I decided then to look at the types of questions that mentors might be asking because they were underrepresented. We were inflicting if you like the software on them and getting them to do all this stuff but we weren't actually giving them a choice in this process. So that's how I sort of reconciled the two sort of components of this, and accepted my multifaceted role. So I'm still asking to challenging questions we are still going forward with those, and it's working well at the moment. I'm going to move on to the second strand, and we kind of went pilot mad so we've got pilots everywhere. So we, this is the digital communities practice and we wanted to establish best practice guidance to facilitate the exchange of ideas and expertise amongst all our stakeholders wherever they were based. We also wanted to be able to let them learn from one another and stay up to date with their latest developments in their field. And because we're expanding out to a significantly large international audience, that's becoming increasingly difficult to do. So we decided to pilot a piece of software called gather town. And I don't again I'll explain what it is. It's, it's like web conferencing software where you can see yourself as a little avatar in the room and you can interact with others in the room. And it's a bit like a sort of 80s video game but it's quite it's quite nice to do is quite useful. And we piloted that across all of our programs so not just our international program which I will mention several times in a minute. I've put on the screen that this was an unsuccessful pilot. Technically it was, but it wasn't again it wasn't anything to do with the software it was just a number of factors that we had and the biggest challenge that we had was actually getting student engagement. And that was a surprise to me and the team. And our students were, we've got students based all over the world, some in countries such as China and Saudi Arabia. And our choice of the topic which was rainbow allies topic which was about equality diversion and inclusion. That was a challenge to get those students in those countries to be able to interact with that so that was that was an issue for us. We also piloted part way through the year. Because that was when the funding was available and that also was a real problem because the students had gone past the point where they wanted to take on new technologies. And so what we've been doing instead with looking at widening the choice of subjects for our communities of practice, things like students with caring responsibilities students with dyslexia. And then what we've also done is we've introduced gather town during the induction program so that the students can try it out. They can meet the teachers that are involved in it they can meet the students that are going to be using it. And if you like they can build trust before they actually get to the point where they've got to use it, and we're actually going to say to them right now you need to go and use it. And we're also using gather town on our online conference days, as that's a sort of everyone's online so it's a sort of contained environment if you like. My role in this particular project was that of co lead. That in itself was an experience. Fortunately I was able to persuade my co lead that we were being over reliant on one particular community topic. And I use the academic literature to bolster my argument if you like to justify why we needed to do it. So I suppose it's one of the benefits of working in academia is that you can actually do that and people do take advantage do take notice of you when you do. And as I said we've introduced the software during induction, because of the opportunities to build trust because as far as booth says here. One of them known issues with communities of practice is, you know, is that establishing of trust and sharing. So we're trying everything that we can to actually give the students much more opportunities for this so that they will actually be much more comfortable with the software. From a personal perspective, I guess I suppose I can become quite good at writing funding bids warwick funding bids. I've gained managed to gain three different sources of funding to help us with this project so that's been a personal thing for me. And I think my persuasion skills have improved, but there's still quite a lot of work that needs to be done with them. Okay, so I'm just going to move on to the fourth. The third strand. This is the reusable learning objects strand or row loads as everyone in the department calls them. And the idea is that we wanted to create a collection of reusable learning objects that we could that we were going to build around the warwick teacher values of social justice intellectual curiosity concept and creativity. And, and again, for those of you that don't know, really those are instructional design components that can be used in multiple, multiple settings. They're normally small electronic components, and they developed for a specific use but you can reuse them in lots of different settings. I think the purpose of this strand was to basically develop lots of reusable learning objects. I was lead on this strand not out of choice but because we had a member of staff who was in post left and we didn't have enough time to recruit someone else so I ended up having to take this one on. So you can start to see how my role I have so so many different roles, going forward. I developed and led a load of CPD activities for our staff within the department. I made the decision that these were going to be cross phase so staff have got a tendency to work in silos. So I actually deliberately mixed up the groups so that we had early years working with secondary and things like that. And we focused on making reusable learning objects for the professional practice units that I've previously mentioned. I've also developed evidence based guidance for all our stakeholders to be able to use for developing and using reusable learning objects. And I've attended a number of dissemination events such as the university's council for the education of teachers cultivate which is a community that's based at warwick that's looking at supporting learning teaching and assessment. And then also I presented at teal fest which again it's a work event for sharing technology enhanced active learning practice research and ideas and experiences. So I would say that in setting up the training the CPD the way I did staff within the department had a much better idea of the wider picture and what we were doing and why we were doing it and how we could reuse these resources across different phases. And I think the work that I did also set up other CPD opportunities for the department, because staff were then able to take advantage of, say for example training on H5P or quizzes or whatever they were doing. I have to say from a personal perspective is far easier when you're the lead, when you're not having to co lead or negotiate or try and persuade someone from behind the scenes in a role as a critical friend. When you're in charge you say what you want to do and you get on with it. It's much much easier. We also had the advantage with this particular strands that there was much more of a focus need. We were piloting, yes another pilot, an international PGCE program, and we needed resources to be able to use on that program so we had a looming deadline, and we needed to get things done by then. So that really did help to focus us. I think one of the presentations that I was in this morning talked about the importance of exemplars, and I would say that's key. If you're going to explain to staff what they what you know what a reusable learning object is they need to see examples. But one of the things I would say it's kind of a balancing act. What I found was if you gave a member of staff an example let's say an interactive quiz that you created in H5P. They would then go away and think oh yeah great I'll go and do that and then they create another interactive quiz in H5P. So you needed to have different types of examples for the same topic in order that they could see that there was a range of stuff and then you would get the broader choice that they would make different things. I'm also mentioned the fact the way I set up the CPD sessions and the fact that staff were then able to take advantage of further training. And in doing that that actually gave me the freedom to be able to focus on planning and development rather than having to train people how to use H5P. So that was that was quite a good thing for me. So moving on to the final strands the students experience and quality assurance strands so we wanted to provide recommendations for a solution for data management assessment portfolio submissions, work based learning communications for students mentor staff for the whole length of the initial teacher education journey, irrespective of where they were located. And to do that we piloted a piece of software called Mosaic, which is it's basically it's a bespoke piece of software for students who are on initial teacher education so it's been designed for you to be able to access them through the whole length of their journey. And we piloted it on our international education program. It was a very successful pilot had really good feedback from staff and students involved. We found it was much easier to manage our external users so our mentors on the pro on this particular piece of software. One of the challenges that we have at Warwick is is that we're getting external users don't have work accounts therefore we can't give them access to the system. So we found a way to get around this if you like. We are currently using mosaic on our international PGC program again this year. But as any of you who work in higher education know once if you want to roll something out you then go past the point where you need to go to tender. And that's what we're having to do next obviously we're inviting mosaic to bid for tender, but it's going to be an open bid and open tender and everyone who's interested can can can can bid for the bid for the work. So some reflections from this one. And there's a reason I've used a hard hat as my hat on this one. This was quite hard. I'd expected I was going to be a critical friend I thought I would have the same role as I did with the mentoring strand. And that was just not the case. There was far too many things that were needed to be much more hands on needs to be involved. One of the things obviously when you're looking to pilot a piece of software you have to involve your IT department and you have to justify to your IT department why you want to pilot the software. You also have to get legal team involved so that we come up with a contract for the pilot. These are all things that I never thought I would have to get involved with as an in an academic technology type role, but I did. So hence, I've got far more skills probably that I want to know about how to negotiate how to deal with conflict resolution. I've learned far more about legal speak than I ever want to have to learn ever again. Apologies to anybody who's got a legal background in here. And one of the things that I did gain was a lot of experience with having to communicate with people who didn't really know what I was talking about basically. So, you know, we're in our little bubbles we work in our departments and you've got like shorthand when you speak to your colleagues they know what you're talking about, but you shift to an external department or a different department. And you have to start to explain much more clearly why you're doing something and what you're doing. So my, as I said my negotiation skills my wider communication skills, definitely improved. So working within the department and on the pilot I found that I've learned a lot more about how the different phases so the earliest primary and secondary phases are assessed. You'd think we're all delivering the same program the students will get a PGCE qualification at the end of it, but the actual nitty gritty assessment points are quite different. So I've learned a lot about the assessment and feedback process that exists out in schools because I don't have any I'm not involved in that normally at all. So I learned a lot more about mentoring what the mentors have to do the workload that's involved with them. And I would also say that it's improved my active listening skills and my assertiveness skills as well, because at times actually really quite strappy to say what I wanted to do what I wanted to do. But anyway. Okay, so just to summarize then really basically for leadership this was a really complex projects and I'd say you need to look at each leadership leadership situation differently than no two situations are going to be the same. Take each one as an opportunity, even if at the time, sometimes it really doesn't feel like an opportunity, but you just need to take it. There's a quote that I've found from allegedly from Thomas Edison I'm not entirely sure how valid it is, but he says basically I didn't fail 1000 times the light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps. And how it kind of felt on this project, it was, we did have failures, but we've had to learn to move forward go around and try an alternative way and, and it's so it is constantly lots of little steps in order to move forward. What I would say with complex projects like this it's not just about leadership, yes leadership is important. It's also about innovation, and it's about allowing the staff that are involved on the strands in this case to innovate for them to have the space to be able to make the decisions to be able to to make mistakes, you know, we got things wrong. There's no recriminations it was just all part of the learning experience, and it's about making it a positive as positive and experience as you can within that process process. It's about change management. You've got to it's very easy to focus on what you're doing in the project, and forget that there are lots of people who are just carrying on doing their day to day stuff, and they're not involved and they're not going to know what you're talking about. So you need to be able to bring them along with with you if you like, and that part of that is about managing change. And I would say it's enjoyable, but challenging is how I would describe the work that I've done. So reward and recognition was something that Alt wanted me to talk about. That's actually quite hard. Because we're only in year one or we've just completed year one or in year two of the project and it's a five year project. I think the reward is still coming. I guess I've had personal rewards if you like I've been able to my skills have developed. I've been able to present events and things like that. I think the bigger rewards will come towards the end of the project when we finish what we're doing. From a recognition perspective, absolutely. And there's been, because I've been working across the whole department, because I've been working with external work departments, I would say that my recognition, the recognition that I have received has been huge. I mean, I know I now know people from all over the place all different departments. And that's great. And that's one of the really good experiences on working on these bigger complex projects is that you do end up having to engage with lots of other people and lots of other departments. I think. Okay, we've got five minutes. Wow. I've got two screens of references. That's all that is to finish it when I practice this is taking me like 40 minutes, 45 minutes. So I'm surprised I've got here with five minutes to spare. So is it open for questions. Is that all right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anybody got any questions. I think it's a weird moment. As I call it. Yeah, if you'd please. All right, fine. Come over to. Oh, sorry, sorry, sir. Yeah. It often takes shorter because when people are sort of presenting in in person and the rehearsal is often longer but yeah, talk much faster live as I'm doing now. Yeah, Chris. I'm really interested in this obviously you're surfacing a lot of the complexity of this sort of project. And I just kind of wonder what how visible is all this to the students because obviously it's really valuable experience for them to kind of understand what it's like to go through these sorts of projects because they're going to be doing them too. Yeah, I just kind of wonder what their involvement was. One of the challenges that we've got in the department is that our PGC program is a year long. So it's very, very difficult. It's not like you could start something in the first year of an undergraduate degree and then you still got the students at the end three years later. We've got just over a year bomb that's it and they're gone so it's really difficult to get student involved. We've got a lot of feedback from students particularly on the pilot software so they they have been involved in the pilot. And we've taken on board a lot of their suggestions and things moving forward. But it's like we've started because we've started again this year we've kind of lost all that feedback. It's something that I do want to. I would like to take the project more visibly to things like student staff liaison committees and things like that. That's going to be a little bit more of a logistic challenge but yeah, it's work in progress should we say. Yeah. Yeah, another question at the back. It's very interesting. I was just wondering if you could repeat like the main goal of the project and how you feel like where you are now because you're saying it's five years do you feel yet where are you in the process and what are the next steps. Okay, it's a really good question. We basically it's about it's called the digital teacher education project and it's about transforming teacher education that's the overall goal. I would say we are probably quite a bit further on than possibly this presentation suggests. Alongside this which I haven't had mentioned as part of the presentation was we were undergoing a massive curriculum review process, and we've got a whole load of new courses or all of our courses have got to be been revalidated and we start a fresh with a new curriculum next year. So all of this is running in parallel to that so I would say by the time we hit what will that be two and a half three years, we're going to be well on the way to and I would say also that our curriculum is very very different now to what it was when we started this and it's going to be even more different by the time we get to that point so yeah we're getting there. Do you feel like the two changes are like going hand in hand or do you actually feel like the curriculum review and this project are kind of like colliding like working against each other. Again, good question. They're not working against each other basically because I'm involved in both. But from my perspective it does mean there's a lot of work I've got to reconcile what's going on in here with what's going on in the curriculum development and it's again it's about bringing the disparate groups together to work on things. So it will be sorted it will be fine but yeah at times I do feel like I want to smack people's head together and just some say get on with it but I can't so yeah. Okay. Any more questions. I think it's probably too soon to give a definitive answer to this but do you anticipate a kind of knock on effect where your trainees are taking this kind of technology out into schools because it seems to be the zeitgeist in schools at the moment is to be really really conservative with their technology Yeah, that's ideally that's what we would like to do. Yes very much so one of the things that we noticed when we were in COVID in the lockdown because we were teaching our students online. We were finding that they were taking those skills from those lessons that that they were learning and they were actually having so they were almost finding that they were switching role they were they were becoming the the knowledgeable ones rather than their their teachers or their mentors or their mentors out in schools. So that's kind of flipped back now that we've gone back to more traditional teaching but I think yes I think it will it will start to happen. Because they do vote with their feet, you know they they like certain technologies and that's what they'll go with so yeah and they will bring them out into their teaching. Yeah, very much so. Okay, thank you. Yeah that's a really good question. A lot of snapback. Peter Bryant's blog on snapback snapback. Any more questions. Abigail. If not, thank you very much. Thank you very much for your time.