Author: lizziepinard

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A getting to know you activity that worked!

Last week was the first week for the September cohort and in my first face to face lesson with my new group, I did a substantial getting to know you activity.

Step 1: the name game

The first step was getting them better acquainted with one another’s names (also indispensable for me getting their names down off the bat!) – I did my old reliable standby in which I start with “My name is Lizzie and I like running” and then Student 1 says “This is Lizzie and she likes running. I am X and I like y.” Student 2 says, “This is X and s/he likes y. This is Lizzie and she likes running. I am A and I like b. And so it goes on. With 15 students, it was a good challenge! And by the end of it, I knew all their names and they knew more names than they did before.

Step 2: the interview

I gave each student a sheet of paper with some questions printed on it. The questions had gaps in so that the students could complete them with their own ideas provided they fit grammatically. They were free to discuss their ideas together as they did it. Once they had done this (preparation), I moved them around so they were working with a new partner. With that partner they asked and answered questions and made a note of their answers, knowing they would be reporting to the whole class subsequently.

Step 3: the reporting

Before starting this stage, I gave each student a piece of paper with a table on it – one column for student name and one column for notes. Each student took a turn to introduce their partner. Those who were listening had instructions to write each student’s name in a new row and in the notes part, they had to note down anything in the report that was the same for them. So for example if the report said “Student x’s favourite animal is a dog” and the listener’s favourite animal was a dog, they’d write down “his/her favourite animal is also a dog!”. The purpose for this part was two-fold: one, give them a reason to listen, two enable them to find things in common with everyone in the class (useful for helping them on the way towards becoming a cohesive group).

Step 4: Filling in the gaps

Once they’d finished, they might have gaps next to some students’ names (either because they had missed what was said or because there was nothing in the report which was the same for them). The final part of the activity was for them to fill in those gaps. They had to do this by approaching the students for whom they had gaps and finding something in common with them so that they could write it in the gap.

At the end of the final lesson of the week, I had them complete short reflection handout (What I learnt this week… Good things for me this week were…because… Bad things this week for me were…because… Next week I would like to…) – prompts adapted from Dornyei and Murphy’s Group Dynamics in the Language Classroom. And the most commonly repeated good thing was around making friends and getting to know new classmates. This activity was a part of that.

It was a 2hr lesson and I think it probably took somewhere in the realm of 1.5hrs in total. There wasn’t time for a lot else in the lesson (just my sequence where they brainstorm ideas for studying effectively while they are at the college, I feed in a few more that I feel are important and often missed, and then introduce them to mindfulness meditation using a short video which explains what it is, how to do it and the benefits of it. Then we do an example one together. In future lessons we will start the lesson with that short meditation to give them time to draw breath after rushing in from their previous lesson.). Obviously the length of time it takes corresponds to the number of students.

If you try it, let me know how it goes! 🙂

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End of 2024-25!

Today is my last working day for this academic year. Sort of…I am back for a week w/c 18th August to do resit marking and resit speaking exams (presentations and seminar discussions) but other than I am freeeee until 18th September. It has been a year of unexpected change – restructure, voluntary severance scheme, colleagues leaving – and I find myself finishing ADoSing/coordinating the January cohort for the final time (in theory – nothing is set in stone…) with a view to switching to coordinating the September cohort from when the next academic year begins. I feel like looking back and looking forward as a suitably calm and organised way to round off a chaotic year!

What I have been learning about and doing this year:

  • Generative AI (somewhat inevitably…): I’ve attended a number of development sessions both internal (ELTC-based) and external (webinars and the like) – thus a number of my recent blog posts have focused on it. This has fed into the course development I’ve been co-doing ready for the September semester, when we will be rolling out the new syllabus with integrated focus on ethical and effective use of AI.
  • Instructional Design for Language Teachers: That 10 week course I did in the September semester (seems approximately 10 lifetimes ago…!). I’ve not made any Articulate RISE or Storyline content since then, but it’s been helpful from the perspective of giving feedback on the content that the TEL team have been developing to support the new syllabus (focusing on a new formative assessment, focusing on ethical and effective use of AI in relation to each of the assessments the students will have to do). The focus on effective use of Google slides has also been helpful in terms of the materials development I’ve done for the new syllabus.
  • Group Dynamics: Thanks to Sandy Millin’s Delta Newsletter, I read her blog post about, and watched her recording of a talk she did about, group dynamics. My interest was sufficiently piqued as to acquire Group Dynamics in the Language Classroom (not an affiliate link, I’m not that clever) by Zoltan Dornyei and Tim Murphey. I was aware of its existence but had sort of forgotten about it, and the newsletter was a timely reminder: our groups of students have changed quite a bit in the last few years, from consisting predominantly of students from mainland China to a more diverse demographic, including a number of students from the Middle East and an increasing number of first language speakers of English from a range of countries (African countries, Asian countries, the U.S…). This has posed various challenges to teachers, including in this last January cohort, which had some “difficult” groups in it. I shall continue to read the book over this summer, in the hopes that if I get a challenging group I will be better equipped to work with it, and if one, or more, of my teachers does, I will be better equip to support them with it.
  • Neurodiversity: I’ve done a lot of research into Neurodiversity in the last few years, and this year in April was ‘diagnosed with autism’ (or better, identified as being autistic). One of my students in my most recent group was neurodivergent and I feel I have been better able to support her due to my increased awareness. I have a research idea relating to neurodivergence and autism which I am exploring with a view to starting an Ed Doc possibly in 2026-2027 academic year (that sounds like an impossibly high numbered year for being next calendar year’s academic year beginning!).
  • New Blackboard: We are moving from old Blackboard to Blackboard Ultra in September, so I have been doing a self-study course (piecemeal, when I could find time) to try and prepare for that. There was a selection of new vocabulary to get to grips with (e.g. “document” has a new meaning in the context of Blackboard Ultra!) as well as how to do all the stuff on it that we were accustomed to doing on old Blackboard.

What lies ahead:

  • Navigating the new cohort and syllabus: After all our work on it, it will be awesome to roll out the new syllabus and content, and I get to be in the ADoS/coordinator (our name is in flux, can you tell?!) role for the first cohort of teachers and students to use it! I’m excited!
  • A change in contract %: I am going down to 80% starting next academic year. I will have Tuesday morning and Friday afternoon off (splitting it up like this enabled more timetabling flexibility and lets me spread out my workload while also enabling slightly earlier finishes on campus). Hopefully this will be a positive move for my work-life balance and working with my autism rather than against it.
  • New AI policy: The times of “You must not use it. The End.” are now over. Hopefully our new syllabus will enable us to teach our students how (not) to use it and the value of engaging with sources and the process of writing themselves. (I remain optimistic!!)
  • Applying for the Ed Doc: Hopefully…maybe…Semester 1 will give me a good idea of how amenable my new contract percentage is to my energy levels and possibilities of taking on something like an Ed Doc.

The above lists aren’t exhaustive but they are what I’ve picked out in the time I have available! I won’t now say goodbye till next academic year because my extended, if slightly fragmented, break means I might actually have time to write the odd blog post – stranger things have happened! Including this post, I’ll be on 6 for this calendar year, last year in total I managed 7, so I am likewise optimistic about increasing that total for this calendar year. Watch this space! 🙂

And to finish, for now, one of my favourite memes, because it is about right:

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“Let me hear the real you” M.E.T. webinar by Mark Heffernan and David Byrne

This double-act webinar was done by Mark Heffernan and David Byrne. You may have come across this duo at IATEFL if you attended. They also have a column in Modern English Teacher, who hosted this webinar. I haven’t encountered them before, but it was a really good webinar – if I were to attend an IATEFL in the future, I would totally look out for a session of theirs in the programme!

If you are they, or you attended the webinar, and see any mistakes in my notes-based summary, please comment and let me know!

The outline was as follows:

David particularly highlighted the idea of “Help your learners to find/make decisions”, saying that the role of teachers has changed over the years. We used to be arbiters of right and wrong, but now, we are facilitators of learning and discussion, our role isn’t to say what is right or wrong but to show possibilities and allow learners to make choices.

Writing

  • Has AI changed how we write?
  • Has AI changed how students write?

Yes.

Everyone (well, many people) uses it, to varying degrees of success, appropriateness and responsibility. If you don’t use it responsibly and effectively, it does wash out your personality/voice. In order to maintain your voice, you need to know what your voice is.

We have to train our learners on responsible, appropriate, effective use.

Questions we need to ask are: Who is the audience? What is the need (Why are you writing this?)? What role do you play in it? What role should/could AI play in this process?

E.g. a letter of complaint – if you will be all hedging/not cantankerous enough, you could use AI to write it and prompt it to add in some extra cantankerousness. If you are, you probably want your voice in there and will write it yourself. You have choices.

If we’re doing a test, AI is not appropriate unless it is built into the test. However, you could use it for brainstorming, ideation, feedback, suggested language chunks. It can be a learning tool. Most universities acknowledge and accept students using it in that way. What is generally prohibited is using it to produce text and submitting that. This is a change from two years ago and shows how things have evolved.

How do writers come across? How do you want to come across? It’s all about tone and voice.

The question becomes not did you get the grammar/vocabulary correct but is the text produced undeniably written by AI? If it is, it is not successful. If you have just pulled little language chunks from AI, then it could be.

You can teach a whole lesson on voice/tone but David/Mark suggest that is better to embed it throughout the course. Syllabuses tend to be spiral-shaped. Give students chances at multiple stages during the course to reflect and make choices. If we give them chances to do that, they have choices. It’s not a one and done lesson, appropriateness and AI can’t be a one off. It needs to be woven through. It needs to be scaffolded. The rise of AI has made it even more important than before to do this (teach about voice) but it was always important.

Speaking

When you speak, you portray a version of yourself, you make choices.

English learning and using depends on context: I need to be able to… so that I can… .

There is more than one correct way to structure an essay but we teach maybe the most foolproof way, the easiest way.

Hedging – it’s partly using modals, so it’s grammar but it’s also functional (you signal how sure or unsure, how strongly or otherwise you feel towards what you are saying).

David and Mark shared some possible activities for working with voice/persona by weaving it into existent activities:

If you don’t show interest in what someone is saying, so you just listen and don’t say anything/interject etc, the speaker may feel lack of interest and lose confidence. If you see this happen in a discussion between students of yours, facilitate discussion of these kind of moments – e.g. this happened (X didn’t say or do anything while you were talking), why is that, X? How did you feel about it Y?)

My take-away:

We have seminar discussion exam preparation and then the exams coming up, and I want to try taking this approach to evaluating the example discussion recording (e.g. how did x respond, or not, how do you think y felt?), and to feedback on students’ discussions, and link it back to the language we teach them in order to enable participation. Get them thinking about what kind of persona they want to portray in a seminar discussion exam (e.g. engaged, knowledgable etc) and how to achieve that, as well as get them thinking about how to participate effectively in a real seminar. I might get them to repeat a practise discussion while playing different personas, to give them a chance to experiment.

In terms of writing (we are about to embark on extended essay writing on Monday!), I want to include more discussion of voice and, again, showing them that they have choices over how to express themselves in their essays and how those choices affect the outcome.

I feel I’ve come away with a load of ideas for how to slightly tweak what I already do, and hopefully thereby increase the value of it to my students: I call that a win! 🙂 Thank you Mark and David!

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Teacher Identity

This blog post was inspired by Sandy Millin’s write-up of an IATEFL 2025 panel on the subject of Teacher Identity…

I think opportunities to discuss and reflect on teacher identity, such as the IATEFL 2025 panel written up by Sandy, are invaluable, as identity is constantly evolving and growing. In the first talk Sandy summarised, the speaker, Robyn Stewart, adapted Barkhulzen and Mandieta’s (2020) facets of language teacher professional identity to highlight the influence of the world on identity, external influence on it. It also shows the interplay between personal and professional identity and the elements that can be considered to be part of our professional identity:

Via Sandy Millin’s write-up of Robyn Stewart’s talk in the IATEFL 2025 teacher identity panel.

There are so many things that influence who we are in the classroom! One of the lessons Robyn Stewart drew from her dissertation research was “Don’t underestimate the role of context”. I’m inclined to agree:

On a personal level, I’m not that interested in generative AI, generally distrust it, disapprove of the resource consumption it represents and feel the amount of money, time, expertise and so on being ploughed into it everywhere could be better spent elsewhere (e.g. use of AI in medical contexts) rather than generating infinite quantities of text.

As a language learner, if I had the time, energy and spare brain, or was as driven as summer 2014 me, such that I could overcome the lack of all the afore-mentioned (and could override my concerns about unnecessary resource consumption!), I would perhaps explore the possibilities of communicating with it in Italian/French/German and using it to help me improve my production. I could get *well* in to a project like that. (And if I were teaching general English I could use the knowledge and skills I might develop in the process to help my students benefit from using the English version.)

However, my professional identity has the greatest influence on my interaction with AI: I have to embrace AI’s existence and figure out ways to work with students in a world which it is now very much a part of. In terms of context, I work specifically in higher education, preparing students to study at university by teaching them an Academic English skills course which they do alongside subject modules. Assessments are high stakes in terms of scores but they also need to ensure that students develop the skills necessary to succeed, including that of correctly treading the line between fair use of tools and academic misconduct regulations – a line that has been evolving with the evolution of AI. We used to mutter about Grammarly and translation tools, but ignore them other than prohibiting students from using them and putting a handful forward for misconduct each assessment cycle, and then generative AI came along and blew all that out of the water and onto a whole other level. We have been grappling with it ever since. However, it will only be come September of this year that I will engage with it fully as a teacher in the classroom beyond warning students off it (rather than only from the perspective of course coordination, course/materials development – as in, integrating teaching AI – related skills into our materials, currently in progress, rather than developing materials using AI – and misconduct evaluation).

The young Vietnamese participants in the study carried out by Hang Vu, the third speaker of the IATEFL 2025 panel on teacher identity, demonstrated a high level of insight and awareness into the issues they face in developing their professional identity as teachers in a world dominated by AI, and what kind of training they need in order to do that successfully. Sandy described Hang Vu’s idea of “emerging identities”, as summarised on the slide below:

Via Sandy Millin’s write up of Hang Vu’s talk in the IATEFL 2025 panel on Teacher Identity.

There’s a lot to think about there! I suppose I have mainly been teacher/coordinator as AI inspector in professional terms, but also teacher as learner as despite my personal misgivings: I have made an effort to attend (whether live or via recording) all the training available to us regarding AI. I have been teacher as AI user when I have used it to generate discussion questions (and then teacher as critical thinker when I have deleted half of them as unsuitable and edited/adapted others!). Teacher as AI instructor/facilitator, of course, as mentioned above, is still in the “coming soon to a classroom near you” stage. I suppose will have to be “teacher as AI supporter” within the “teacher as instructor/facilitator” side of things – regarding what we decide are acceptable uses of AI…but I predict it will be more along the lines of channeling inevitable use rather than encouraging use vs non-use! And I think alongside that, I will definitely be encouraging critical discussion in my classroom regarding the use of AI and surrounding issues. It will be interesting to see what the students think. It seems to me that just as much as the youngsters in the Vietnamese study, us old fossils who have been teaching a good while also need to regularly engage with our professional identities and figure out how we are going to move with the times professionally, regardless of (although obviously also interlinked/connected with/influenced by!) our personal feelings towards the various changes (which as Catherine Walters’ plenary discussed, have been many and varied over the last 50 years!)

Sandy’s post finished with some of the questions posed by the audience, one of which was “Should we proactively work with learners about how to do AI? Maybe we should ask learners for the whole AI conversation, not just the final result.” – It’s an interesting one. I definitely want critical discussion and to find out the students’ take on it, and as with other things potentially their feedback/ideas/thoughts can feed into future iterations of the course, but ultimately, in terms of assessment, what is and isn’t acceptable has to align with university and college policy on AI use. One thing I do hope is that I will be able to persuade students of the importance of developing their own voice, as I think if I can do that, then reasonable/acceptable use (with the appropriate guidance on how) will be a natural progression. For sure, all this thinking I am doing at the moment (I’m on annual leave – I have time to think!!) will be a useful form of preparation for the task ahead!

This blog post is plenty long enough already, yet I haven’t even scratched the surface of identity, personal and professional, and the interplays between identity and classroom. But, another time… 🙂

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Generative AI and Voice

I’m a writer. I am writing right now! I have written journal articles, book chapters, (unpublished) fiction, (unpublished) poetry, materials, reflections (blog posts), combination summary/reflections of talks/workshops (blog posts) I attend, emails, feedback on students’ work, the occasional Facebook update, Whatsapp/messenger/Google chat messages, and so the list goes on. It is a form of expression, as is speaking, and drawing. These, including all the different kinds of writing I have done and do, are all forms of expression that AI is now capable of approximating. However, until fairly recently (when suddenly it was showing up everywhere!), I had not explicitly considered the relationship between AI generated production and a person’s ‘voice’. Examples of ‘voice’ vs AI can be seen in the two screenshots below:

Via an email from Pavillion ELT – abstract of a forthcoming webinar.
Via Sandy Millin’s summary of Ciaran Lynch’s MaW SIG PCE talk at IATEFL 2025.

Both of these screenshots set voice against AI-generated content. The first one (which looks like an interesting webinar – Wednesday 14th May between 1600 and 1700 London time in case you might like to attend!) seems to be about helping learners develop their own voice in another language and suggests that this aspect of language learning is of greater importance in a world full of AI output. The second is in the context of materials writing, and highlights an issue that arises in the use of AI in creating materials – “lacks teachers’ unique voice”. The speaker goes on to offer a framework for using AI to help with materials writing while avoiding the problems listed in the above screenshot. (See Sandy Millin’s write up for further information! The post actually collects all of her write-ups of the MaW SIG 2025 PCE talks in a single post – good value! 🙂 )

I teach academic skills including writing to primarily foundation and occasionally pre-masters students who want to go on and study at Sheffield University. In the last year, we’ve been overhauling our syllabus, partially in response to one of our assessments being retired and partially in response to the proliferation of generative AI. Our goal is to move from complete prohibition of AI to responsible use of it. And I suppose, one thing we hope to achieve from that is reach a point where students may or may not choose to use AI in certain elements of their assessment but actively avoid it in others. This, I think, has some overlap with Ciaran Lynch’s framework for writing materials:

Via Sandy Millin’s summary of Ciaran Lynch’s MaW SIG PCE talk at IATEFL 2025.

Maybe we need a similar framework/workflow for our students that succinctly captures when and how AI use might be helpful and when it is to be avoided. And I think voice is part of the key to that! But what exactly is voice? In terms of writing, according to Mhilli (2023),

“authorial voice is the identity of the author reflected in written discourse, where written discourse should be understood as an ever evolving and dynamic source of language features available to the writer to choose from to express their voice. To clarify further, authorial identity may encapsulate such extra-discoursal features as race, national origin, age, or gender. Authorial voice, in contrast, comprises, only those aspects of identity that can be traced in a piece of writing”.

[I recommend having a read of this article, if you are interested in the concept of voice! Especially regarding the tension between writers’ authentic L1 voice and the constraints of academic writing in terms of genre and linguistic features (which vary across fields).]

In terms of essay writing, and our students (who are only doing secondary research), if they are copying large chunks of text from generative AI, then they are not manipulating available language features to express meaning/their voice, they are merely doing the written equivalent of lip-synching. I think this is still the case if they use it for paraphrasing because paraphrasing is influenced by your stance towards what you are paraphrasing and how you are using the information. I suppose students could in theory prompt AI to take a particular stance in writing a paraphrase or explain how they plan to use the information but they would also need to be able to evaluate the output and assess whether it meets that brief sufficiently. In which case, would it save them much time or effort? Would the outcome be truer to the student’s own voice? I wonder. Of course, the assessment’s purpose and criteria would influence whether not that use was acceptable.

On the other hand, if students use AI to help them come up with keywords for searches and then look at titles and abstracts, and choose which sources to read in more depth, select ideas, engage with those ideas, evaluate them, synthesise them and organise it all into an essay, using language features available to them, then that incorporates use of AI but definitely doesn’t obscure their voice and the ownership of the essay is still very much with the student rather than with AI. They could even get AI to list relevant ideas for the essay title (with full awareness that any individual idea might be partly or fully a hallucination), thereby giving them a starting point of possible things to consider, and compare those with what they find in the literature. This (and the greyer area around paraphrasing explored above) suggests that a key element that underpins voice is that of criticality. Perhaps we could also describe it as active (and informed) use rather than passive use.

Another issue regarding voice in a world of AI generated output, which I have also come across recently lies in the use of AI detection tools:

From “AI, Academic Integrity and Authentic Assessment: An Ethical Path Forward for Education“

If ESL and autistic voices are more likely to be flagged as AI generated content, then our AI detection tools do not allow space for these authentic voices. These findings point to a need to be very careful in the assumptions we make. I’m sure we’ve all looked at a piece of work and gone “this was definitely written by AI, it’s so obvious!” at some point. Hopefully our conclusions are based on our knowledge of our students, and their linguistic abilities, previous work produced under various conditions and so on. However, for submissions that are anonymised this is no longer possible. I think, rather than relying on detection tools, we need to work towards making our assessments and the criteria by which we assess robust enough to negate the need for such tools. Either way, the findings would also suggest that the webinar described in screenshot no. 1 may be very pertinent for teachers in our field. (I wonder if the speakers have come across instances of that line of research too?! I increasingly get the impression that schedule-willing, I may be attending that webinar!)

Finally, this excerpt from a Guardian article about AI and human intelligence I think provides perhaps the most important reason for helping students to develop their voice and not sidestep this through use of AI:

“‘Don’t ask what AI can do for us, ask what it is doing to us’: are ChatGPT and co harming human intelligence?” – Helen Thomson writing for The Guardian, Saturday 19th April 2025

We want those Eureka moments! We want the richness of what diversity of thought brings to the table. (It is baffling to see Diversity, Equality and Inclusion initiatives being dismantled willy nilly in the U.S. – everybody loses out from that. But then, so much of what goes on these days is baffling.) Maybe something small we can do is help our students realise that their voice, as every voice, is important and that diluting it and losing it through ineffective use of AI makes the world a poorer place. I haven’t even touched on AI and image production or AI and spoken production but this blog post is long enough already (maybe I should have got AI to summarise it for me! 😉 ) so I will leave that for another post!

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Using Adobe Firefly for Image Generation

Have you used Adobe Firefly before? Me neither. But we have free access to it via the University and the TEL team has used it, and so did a session for us on it. It can be used to for images to put in lesson handouts and slides, but also online platforms like Wooclap and Quizlet.

You write a prompt in a box and it generates images.

This was a scenario given to us:

Prompt 1: an image of 4 students in a discussion. This was the result:

Issues: There are 3 students and teacher. They look quite young while we teach university age students. Three of them are blonde so it isn’t a good representation of our students. So this is an example of the bias that exists in AI in an automatic result with no detail prescribed in the prompt.

Prompt 2: an image of 4 university students from diverse background in a discussion. This was the result:

Problems: They are not in a classroom.

Adding “seated” (to be more typical of a classroom):

Not a perfect picture (looks a bit like an airport…) but better than the first picture! In terms of the purpose of generating the image, this would probably work. Prompt writing/editing for Adobe Firefly tends to take multiple iterations before you get something you might be happy to use.

We were given the following tips:

  • add more detail to get better results;
  • be aware of bias as you engineer prompts and evaluate the outcome;
  • be picky – it may take several iterations to get what you want. Sometimes a fairly simple prompt immediately yields a satisfactory outcome but usually it takes a bit more effort. Particularly to produce an outcome that is suitably representative for an international student population.

Adobe Firefly has a lot of stock images that it draws on which means the quality is better than similar counterparts.

Once you have generated an image you can also edit it to a certain extent. Which is good as the first images you get can have arm melds, funny shaped heads and so forth! It’s not very good with limbs. A central human image may be fine but anyone in the background or if you require groups/more people, then problems abound! Despite these issues, Firefly is better at it than Gemini.

So al very cool but actually stock images like Pixabay (and creative commons licensed like Flickr – in particular ELTpics – if the context is suitable), i.e. human generated, are much less resource-intensive to use. So, don’t get too carried away by the “it’s so cool” thing. I tend to use Google image search and the appropriate level of license filter, personally.

My general impression: I can’t currently see an Adobe Firefly – shaped hole in my life that needs filling. I wonder if in 5 years time I will look back on this post with an “oh you innocent child” type lens or not?! Time will tell! It was a good session though, after being shown the prompts and pitfalls, we went into a breakout group and had to come up with prompts for another scenario. Unfortunately in my group, none of us had access sorted out yet so we couldn’t test the prompts we wrote.

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Looking forward: My Resolutions/Goals for 2025

In the interests of starting 2025 on a positive note, I thought I would set myself a few goals/New Year Resolutions. Before starting to write this post, however, I had a look at previous years and what I have blogged about at the start of the year, wondering what past goals had been, and noticed a handful of things:

  • I have actually tended to do more goal-setting at the start of the academic year rather than the calendar year in most instances, when I have done it.
  • Burnout at various points has impacted my goal-setting (before the pandemic: driving a shift from working 5 days to working 4 days which began in September 2020 but was initiated pre-pandemic; during the pandemic: well, obviously….and thank goodness for the afore-mentioned shift part way through; and since the pandemic: the combination of house-buying, house-renovating, wedding planning and moving – the latter 3 all in 2023 and interspersed with ill health – did for me quite comprehensively.)
  • When I did do it at the start of 2017, I drew on this slide from a presentation I had done for EVO (quoting EVO via that blog post – Every year in January and February, the Electronic Village Online (a project of TESOL’s Computer-Assisted Language Learning Interest Section) brings together English language educators from around the world to engage in free, collaborative, online professional development sessions, – not sure if it is still running now!):

So I suppose this blog post, once complete, will be fulfilling the grey italics regarding motivation at the bottom of the slide.

Coming up with something that is “challenging and difficult yet realistic” is, itself…challenging, I feel! Hitting that sweet spot requires both a good degree of self-awareness and, perhaps, of humility. It’s so easy to aim too high and miss realistic. On the other hand, if one lacks awareness and confidence, it might be equally easy to aim too far the other way and pick something that you duly achieve but is perhaps less satisfying than it might be. This time last year, “challenging” was simply surviving and carrying out my job duties. Nevertheless, I managed to do quite a bit of CPD last year, which goes to show that you don’t necessarily need goals in order to achieve things! It can be a more organic process. If we consider our minds and bodies as our primary tools, they won’t be good for getting anything done if we don’t look after them so that has to come first before the rest can follow. Last summer holiday was certainly much-needed recovery time for me.

So what of this year? Well, so far so good… I had an extra week of leave which meant that as well as doing the famiy Christmas visiting marathon (1 week) and being ill (10 days), I did have a couple of days of real down time and didn’t have to start work while still poorly. This makes a huge difference wellbeing-wise and motivation-wise, the latter because I have actual energy and, also important, ability to generate positivity. This year is going to be very challenging due to external factors but things will unfold as they unfold regardless of what my brain is doing. Which leads me to…

Resolution 1

Channel my brain into positive and creative pursuits (rather than only using it for worrying). Too fluffy? Well what it looks like is:

  • doing more writing: blogging – I’ve not done much blogging recently, up until the second half of last semester when I got started again. I want to do more this year!
  • doing more writing: creative writing (fiction) – I’d done no creative writing since about 2016 or so until last week (life has been a LOT) but oh the joy it’s brought already in the short time I’ve been back at it. 🙂
  • creative writing development: I’ve started a course by Malorie Blackman on BBC Maestro about writing YA fiction. My sister gave it to me for my birthday in 2022 and I’ve only now got round to using it!
  • being curious about my students and my team of teachers and using that to feed innovation in how I support them.
  • doing more piano, while not linking success or failure to specific quantities: this may seem to fly in the face of measurability but I have realised that in the past I have set myself time-limited goals e.g. do a bit every day, or x days a week or whatever, and then when I’ve missed sessions I’ve been more likely to then not do it for a spell because missing the session felt like failure. So this time, I will count each time I do it as a success, regardless of whether it’s day 10 in a row or the first day in 2 weeks. After all, it is a pleasure not a rod to beat myself with!
  • learning: doing CPD always brings me great satisfaction and so does learning new things outside of work. I want to do both whenever I can (albeit not simultaneously)! Within this lies continuing preparation and exploration for my future Ed Doc. As well as information-based things, I’d like to learn how to crochet but I’ve never done it before so it needs maybe a holiday in which I am not ill to have the brain space possibly… We shall see!

My next resolution, to balance out no.1, will focus on the physical:

Resolution 2

Prioritise physical wellbeing. I’m no spring chicken and am at that delightful age and stage where I’m actively losing muscle if I’m not working hard to maintain it! Physical health and wellbeing also have an impact on mental health and wellbeing. Too fluffy? Well, what it looks like is:

  • do a regular bouldering session at the bouldering wall: once a week on a Tuesday is doable when I have my NAW
  • Do an additional strength training session one day a week.
  • Keep running 4 times a week (on 2 x work days I go out before breakfast! Which is a lot more enjoyable in daylight once the days get longer!!)
  • Do yoga regularly – I predict being able to manage this approx 5 times a week (my timetable on Thursday and Friday isn’t so amenable to it!)
  • Do lots of gardening (great for getting fresh air and bits of exercise; a short burst of weeding or digging could be a perfect 10 minute break…)

So, that’s me…but something is missing and it is the basis of my final 2 resolutions…

Resolution 3

Put time and effort into my marriage. Too fluffy? Well, what it looks like is:

  • Support my wife in achieving her own goals.
  • Prioritise spending time with her regularly.
  • Continue team-working everything effectively!

I am lucky in having a wonderful marriage but I never will take it for granted!

Resolution 4

(On the topic of not taking things for granted…) Make time for family and friends. Too fluffy? Well, what it looks like is:

  • make the effort to get in touch with friends/family
  • make the effort to see friends/family
  • balance this with my need for solitary downtime/recovery (I need to recognise this need because otherwise I will inevitably burn out!)

So, that covers mental, physical, emotional/connectional areas and encompasses personal, social and professional domains. Circling back to the diagram, these resolutions/goals deliberately don’t have any completion dates as such, because they are ongoing, regular things rather than one-offs. They don’t appear clear and specific on the face of it but I have a clear and specific idea of what they look like in practice, which suffices. Being ongoing things, they are all both proximal and distal. In terms of measurability and ability to be evaluated, I can do this simply by looking back on each day/week/month and seeing what I’ve done. I think they are definitely realistic…are they challenging and difficult (enough)? Well, all the examples require effort to do, but they are positive and uplifting so it is effort I will be happy to make! I do think if our resolutions/goals are uplifting and/or inspire us, we are more likely to carry them out! I would add that as a principle. 🙂

What are your goals/resolutions for this year? Whatever they are, Happy 2025 to you! Let’s hope it is as kind to us all as it can be.

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2024 – and what have I done?

It seems odd to think another year has elapsed. Feels like it began simultaneously yesterday and a million years ago! We are in our final week before Christmas. It is a non-teaching week but there are still plenty of other tasks to be done. I decided that one of mine is to look back and reflect on what I have done this calendar year…

Teaching:

  • The January cohort seems a long time ago but they completed their course between January and August this year. JFPH02 (January, Foundation, Physics, Group 2) was my group. They were a very mixed level group and a nice mixture of nationalities were represented. There were 19 of them but their attendance was abysmal so for F2F classes (of which there are 2 a week) it seemed as though I only had a much smaller group. A rotating cast of characters appeared each lesson, with only one or two whose attendance was much more consistent. Attendance was reflected in assessment scores! Low attendance was generally due to students struggling more on other modules and choosing to dedicate more time to them (or oversleeping and missing the 9am as a result of burning the midnight oil in that dedication!). It was frustrating and difficult, but I did my best with the situation, ensuring that those who attended benefitted from it, and ultimately that is all I can do.
  • This semester, I also did some teaching on a programme which consisted of 1-1 lessons on Google meet to women in a location with poor internet connectivity and limited options. They were speaking-focused lessons, with the other course component being app-based learning materials released each week. The 1-1 speaking sessions were based on the topic of the previous week’s materials. It was a very rewarding programme to participate in, as well as very intense (somewhat unsurprisingly)!. It was a very different kind of teaching to the kind I usually do and it was good to have the opportunity to experience it.

ADoSing

I started ADoSing in April 2018 so a fair bit of time ago now – over 6 years. Work is in flux at the moment and we aren’t sure how things will look on the other side but nevertheless this year I did another iteration of ADoSing the January cohort, with my co-ADoS. This included:

  • preparing January course materials
  • preparing and running induction sessions about our programme for the teachers joining us to teach on the January cohort
  • preparing and running weekly module meetings with the January cohort teaching team
  • preparing and running standardisation sessions for three pieces of coursework (reading, writing, speaking) and one exam (the speaking seminar discussion exam)
  • checking rubrics and .rbc files for coursework submissions
  • preparing Turnitin coursework submission points on Blackboard for two pieces of coursework
  • preparing Blackboard announcements for students, relating to coursework, mock exams, real exams, results, tutorials. Many of these include multiple versions due to reminders.
  • responding to queries from teachers
  • attending weekly ADoS team meetings
  • preparing writing exam standardisation materials
  • correcting any errors that show up in course materials
  • preparing submission points, Blackboard announcements, email templates and information packs about resits
  • generally ensuring the smooth running of the January cohort AES programme (to include all the other tasks not in this list but that nevertheless get done!)

This semester, while not actively ADoSing, I have:

  • co-led an SpLD project which involved preparing preview materials for students and listing content topics to act as a trigger warning.
  • worked on development for the 2025-2026 academic year course materials
  • been part of the process of deciding how to integrate the existence of AI into our assessments and course materials
  • started preparation for another January cohort which lies just around the corner!

One thing I will say about ADoSing, it is a good test of organisational and time-management skills! You have to always be thinking many weeks ahead of the current week so that everything is in place when it needs to be and all communications happen when they need to happen. You also need strong attention to detail as there are so many tiny bits of information in so many different documents (and also in things like submission points) in different locations with the potential to create big problems if done incorrectly.

Development

I’ve already written a post about the development I’ve done this calendar year so I will just mention some highlights here:

  • Instructional design course – 10 week course, now completed!
  • FutureLearn expert track on Autism (4 x 4 week courses)
  • Several online sessions about supporting students with SpLD and students with Autism
  • AI – focused sessions run by our digital lead (attended a combination of live online and via catching up on recordings)
  • Hatching a plan to do an EdDoc and doing some preparatory reading (lots more to go but the instructional design course maxed my development hours this semester! Still, there’s time! I’m not starting it until at least 2026-2027 academic year!)
  • Other than the above, I have also finally started blogging again, which I am really enjoying. I had forgotten about the joys of informal publication!

So, it’s been a pretty busy year, as ever! Another January cohort safely shepherded through two semesters. Plenty of teaching, ADoS tasks and professional development. A lot of learning.

Being as it is the 19th December and tomorrow is the last working day before Christmas break, I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is probably the last blog post for this year! I will look forward to picking it up again in the new year.

Thanks to all who have read and commented on this year’s posts. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it and a happy 2025 to all!

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What do you do in the first week of a new course?

(This post may seem somewhat counterintuitive at the end of a semester, just before the Christmas break, but I am looking ahead to our new January cohort who are beginning in the new year, which actually isn’t so very far away!)

I always love the first week of a new course. Our courses follow a blended approach with Semester 1 being 10 weeks at 6hrs of learning per week, divided up into 2 x 1hr online lessons and 2 x F2F lessons, and Semester 2 being 12 weeks at 5hrs of learning per week, divided up into 1 x 1hr online lesson and 2 x 2hr F2F lessons. In Lesson 1, we introduce the course, reviewing its structure, how they will be assessed and how to navigate the VLE (Blackboard). In Lesson 2, students attend a tech induction, to familiarise them with how to use Blackboard Collaborate (for the online lessons) and the Google Suite. In the 2 F2F lessons, students learn about the asynchronous learning content, including establishing the importance of it and guiding them through accessing it, and write a letter to the teacher introducing themselves. All remaining time in the F2F lessons is dedicated to getting to know you activities. There is one provided but teachers are free to use the time as they wish.

These are the activities that I always try to include in Week 1, together with an explanation of why:

In addition to the core content of the Week 1 lessons, there are some elements that always feature in my Week 1 lessons. Here they are:

  • The name game: Like the shopping list game where items are added at every turn, but in this case the items are a student’s name and something they like. This is generally the first activity in the first F2F lesson.

Learning students’ names is hugely important in establishing a rapport with them and being able to interact with them as individuals. For me, the easiest way to achieve this is by playing the name game with them. This is because as well as supporting students when they can’t remember a name or a like here and there, I am constantly repeating the information in my mind along with them. A class’s worth of repetition really helps to get the names embedded in my brain. As well as allowing me to learn their names, they get to know each other’s names as well which is helpful in the process of becoming able to work together effectively.

  • Focus on pair-work and group-work: This starts with a describe and draw activity where, in each pair of students, one student describes a picture that the other must draw without sight of it. The describing and drawing stage is followed by a brief evaluation, in groups, of what is produced and what is missed. Finally, students, in groups come up with a list rules for effective group work.

Pair and group-work are a core part of our lessons, but may not have been much of a feature in students’ previous learning. The describe, draw and evaluate portion of the activity is light-hearted and provides a low-stakes way to experience pair-work and group-work. It also provides inspiration for the following part in which students come up with their rules. These rules can be referred back to in subsequent lessons when students take part in pair-work and group-work activities. For neurodivergent students particularly, a clear understanding of what is expected in group-work, with rules to follow, can help to alleviate anxiety.

  • Introducing Mindfulness meditation: I start this sequence by showing a still (see below – and click on the link if you’d like to watch the clip!) from a short youtube clip about mindfulness meditation and its benefits, and asking them what they think the video will be about. They then watch the video and make notes, which they use to answer two key questions: What are the benefits of mindfulness? Which of those benefits would be most useful for you? In the final part of the sequence, I show the students the wording of an example short mindfulness meditation and suggest we try it, with me saying the words. Afterwards I ask them how they feel and finish by suggesting that we start each F2F lesson by doing it.

I have been using Mindfulness Meditation with students for some years now and remain convinced that it is beneficial for them. When they come into a lesson, their minds are all over the place – other lessons, assignment-related stress, workload, future plans etc – and doing a short guided meditation at the start of the lesson gives them a few moments of transition time, to really arrive in the lesson. Neurodivergent students particularly struggle with transitions so this is one way to make the switch from one lesson to another less abrupt and painful. The effect is always a class of students who go from being distracted by each other, their devices, their thoughts to being focused, calm and ready to learn. I introduce it the way I do (described above) to give them the opportunity to learn about and experience some of the potential benefits of meditation and evaluate which of those they would most benefit from, thereby turning it from being a random thing that is imposed on them to being something that they understand as beneficial to them. I do this in the first F2F lesson so that the second F2F lesson can already begin with it – start as we mean to go on! As we do the meditation at the start of every F2F lesson, it also becomes one of the many little routines which enable a secure, stable classroom environment for students.

  • Focus on strategies for effective studying: “How can we study effectively?”: This is a simple activity – students work in groups (getting to practise using the group-work rules they have already established) to make a list of strategies. Then, after eliciting all of theirs, I share some of my own.

Students generally come up with ideas that centre around study-skills, time management, organisation, collaboration and the like. My list contains some of those but also focuses on wellbeing, so for example “take breaks”, “exercise”, “meditate”, “try to get plenty of sleep”, and psychology, for example “have a growth mindset” and “tell your teacher when you have a problem”. Each item is accompanied by a brief explanation. Students’ two semesters with us are going to be loaded and stress levels are likely to be high, so looking after themselves is critical to being able to study effectively.

  • a speaking-focused icebreaker: this is less set in stone. My current go-to, though, is “Interview a classmate and then introduce them to the class”. Nothing spectacular, the task is scaffolded by a handout which guides students through question preparation and provides space for notes to be made during the interview. Students then use those notes to tell the class about the classmate they interviewed.

Speaking-focused icebreakers are useful for two key things: giving students the opportunity to learn more about one another (as well as me to learn more about them!), and giving me a reasonable starting idea of students’ speaking abilities. With the above-mentioned activity, I can listen in to their interviews to hear unprepared responses and then the feedback stage demonstrates what they can do with a bit of preparation and some notes. Of course I also get to learn a lot about them as people which is lovely. Happily, remembering it all isn’t critical because the “Letter to the teacher” activity which is part of the core content provides a similar swathe of information in written form. Both the speaking activity and the writing activity inform the initial RAG (Red Amber Green) rating we give students at the start of the course.

Why is Week 1 important?

Week 1 sets the tone for what is to follow. At the end of a good Week 1, you have a class who have started to mesh and who are prepared for what lies ahead. They know a bit about what is expected of them and a bit about what they can expect from your lessons. They feel positive, encouraged, comfortable, respected and this means their brains will be more open to learning. You also have a teacher who knows their students’ names and has started to get to know them as individuals, a rapport being built. These are the foundations of a successful course of study. Also, and I think you will agree, there is nothing like the excitement tinged with nervous anticipation of embarking on Week 1 and meeting your new group of students!

Over to you

What do you always do in the first week of a course with a new group of students? Why? Tell me all about your go-to activities for Week 1 using the comments function – I’d love to hear from you (well, read anyway!).

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Generative AI and Assessment

A session about Generative AI and EAP that I attended recently provided the above quote for our consideration. I think one of the things that is challenging about the Generative AI landscape and its presence in the context of higher education is that it evolves so rapidly. This rapid evolution contrasts starkly with much slower-moving policy-making and curriculum development processes. Certainly in my current context, this issue of becoming “left behind” has been one that we have been grappling with for a few years now. Initially, there was a period where once generative AI had emerged into existence, all we could do was watch, as it became increasingly apparent that students were using it in their assessments, while awaiting a university policy to inform our response. An extra layer of waiting then ensued because as well as being university policy-informed, we are Studygroup policy-informed. During that wait, our response to generative AI had to be “No. You can’t use this tool. It is against the rules. It will result in academic misconduct.” Of course, being as assessment in pathway colleges is high stakes (the deciding factor in whether or not a student can access their chosen university course), students use it anyway, due to running out of time, due to desperation, due to self-perceived inadequacy.

Now, we have the university policy which centres on ethical and appropriate use of AI, and acknowledging how and where it is used, and, in cooperation with Studygroup, are figuring out how to integrate AI use into our programme. We started by focusing on one of our coursework assessments, an extended essay, and discussing what aspects we thought were and weren’t suitable for students to use AI to help them with. So, for example, we thought it acceptable for students to do the following in their use of AI:

  • generate ideas around a topic, which they could then research using suitable resources e.g. the university library website and Google Scholar.
  • ask AI to suggest keywords to help them find information about the topics they want to research.
  • ask AI to suggest possible essay structures (but not paragraph level structure)
  • generate ideas for possible paragraph topics
  • get AI to proofread the essay but only at surface level, to suggest language corrections (this would only be the case if we no longer gave scores for grammar and vocabulary so will require rubric-level change)

Of course we can’t just implement this, we need to go through the process of getting approval from Studygroup for it and then building it into our materials. We can’t just expect learners to meet our expectations with no guidance other than the above list embedded in an assignment brief. Much like was discussed in the AI and Independent Learning webinar, we need to help the students to develop the skills that they need in order to use AI appropriately and effectively. This will include things as basic as how to access the university-approved AI (Gemini) and how to use it (including how to write prompts that get it to do things that are helpful and appropriate and equally avoid accidentally getting it to do things that aren’t helpful or acceptable). Also important will be raising their awareness of ethical issues surrounding the use of AI and of its inbuilt bias, as its output depends on what it has been trained on and there is always the risk of “hallucination” or false output. They will need to be cognisant of its strengths and weaknesses, and to develop an ability to evaluate its output so that they don’t blindly use or base actions on output which is flawed. Their ability to evaluate will also need to extend to being able to assess when and when not to use it, and how to proceed with its output.

All of the above is far from straightforward! When you look at it like that, it’s little wonder that left to their own devices students use it in the wrong way. So, in order to have an effective policy regarding the use of AI, there is a lot of preparation that is required. That skill-development and awareness-raising needs to be built in throughout the course into all relevant lessons. And that means a lot of (wo)man hours, given our course materials are developed by people who are also teaching, coordinating and so on. In addition, teachers will need sufficient training to ensure they have the level of knowledge and skill necessary to successfully guide students through the materials/lessons where AI features. The other complicating factor is that the extent of the changes means that new materials/lessons cannot be implemented part way through an academic year as all cohorts of a given year need the same input and to take assessments that are assessed consistently through the year. So, if we are not ready by a September, then we are immediately already looking at a delay of another year. It is a complex business!

So, I absolutely agree with the quote at the start of this post but I think it is also a LOT easier said than done. As developing an approach in a high stakes environment takes time but generative AI and tide wait for no man. By the time we reach the stage of being able to implement our plans fully, they will probably need adapting to whatever new developments have arisen in the meantime (already there is the question of Google Note and similar which we have not yet addressed!). For sure, the assessment landscape is changing and will continue to change, but I do believe that we can’t rely on “catching students out” e.g. with AI detection tools and the like. We need to support them in using AI effectively and acceptably, so that they can benefit from its strengths and be able to use it in such a way as to mitigate its weaknesses and avoid misuse. Of course, as mentioned earlier, to be able to do that, we, ourselves, as teachers, need to develop our own knowledge and skills in the use of AI so that we can guide them through this decidedly tricky terrain. Providing training is a means of ensuring a base level of competence rather than relying on teachers to learn what is required independently. Training objectives would need to mirror the objectives for students but with an extra layer that addresses how to assist students in their use of AI, and how to help them develop their criticality in relation to it. Obviously there will be skills and knowledge that teachers have that will be transferable e.g. around criticality, metacognition and so on, but support and collaboration that enables them to explore the application of them in the context of AI would be beneficial.

Apart from the issue of addressing AI use in the context of learning and assessments, in terms of not getting left behind, we also need to ensure that what we are offering students is sufficiently worthwhile that they continue to come and do our courses rather than deciding to rely on AI to support them through their studies, from application through completion and side-stepping what we offer. But that’s for another blog post!

I would be interested to hear how your workplace has integrated use of AI into materials and lessons, and recognised its existence (for better and for worse) in the context of assessment. I wold also be interested to hear how teachers have been supported in negotiating teaching, learning and assessment in an AI world. Please use the comments to let me know! 🙂