HCI Disciplinary Commons Portfolio - Fiona Fairlie
Delivery Commentary
Lectures take place in conventional, tiered lecture theatres – which can limit the types of activity which can be carried out. As my module aims to move students towards a more theoretically justified approach to HCI, the lectures can be seen as a useful way of reinforcing the importance of the theoretical materials. Unfortunately they also seem to carry an expectation that they are a passive medium with students arriving with the idea that they can simply sit and listen for the duration of the class. I try to move students away from this by incorporating student activities and by encouraging students to ask questions. It has to be said that this approach has had somewhat mixed success, with students being willing to participate in structured activities but seeming reluctant to ask questions in such a large, relatively formal, group. This is in marked contrast to the practical sessions which take place in groups of 15-20 students in an informal lab/studio setting.
All of the lectures on the module are delivered with the support of PowerPoint presentations which are then made available to students via Blackboard. One difference in style between the two lecturers delivering the module is that I no longer hand out printed copies of the slides while my colleague gives out paper copies at the start of each lecture and provides printed summary notes of the main points. I have consciously moved away from this approach and seldom give out printed material. I have also cut down the number of slides I produce for each lecture – trying to choose a few memorable illustrations rather than typing out a bullet point for each point I wish to make. Asking students which approach they prefer indicates that they are happy with either as long as the lecturer is consistent and they know in advance what to expect.
A major theme in the practical sessions is that learning is an active process. Students are encouraged to construct hypotheses and make decisions. The role of the tutor is seen as being to encourage students to discover principles by themselves. In order to allow this instructor and student need to engage in active dialogue, so in the early part of the semester the practical sessions are constructed around a series of practical tasks which have been designed to encourage dialogue through participation in face-to-face small group debate, online discussion with classmates and individual conversation with the instructor. Later in the module, once active dialogue has been established, discussion tends to centre around the project based coursework.
As part of this student-led, problem-solving approach to learning it was decided not to teach programming in a formal way this year. Instead, students were given booklets which introduce the scripting environment and pointers to books and website which contain scripts and/or algorithm for all the interactivity necessary of the project. Students were expected to work through the booklets in their directed study times, decide which of the additional materials provided were relevant for them, and then apply what they had learned in their projects. If they encountered problems they could bring them to one of a number of “Flash clinics”. These clinics were problem-solving sessions with student and tutor working together to achieve the students’ goals. While this approach seemed popular and quite effective I feel that the students might have benefited from additional advice on project planning and structuring earlier in semester. I therefore intend to rewrite the Design & Prototyping lecture before the next delivery of the module and to deliver the Coding Strategies lecture earlier in semester and to integrate these lectures more closely with the programming clinics.
Towards the end of the semester the practical sessions revert to a one hour tutorial and a two hour lab followed by directed studies. Tutorial sessions become more traditional, with students being given written exercises to complete and the tutorial time being devoted to discussing students’ answers. This is in an effort to prepare students for the end-of-module exam and is in response to student requests in previous years. Many of the students studying the module are in their first semester at university and have not taken exams for a number of years. These students find the preparation of written responses, with accompanying feedback from tutors, reassuring in their efforts to prepare for the exam. Lab sessions continue the student-led approach with students working on their project-based coursework in consultation with their lab tutors.
Updated: 22 April, 2008 | Site
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