Expediente varios 912/2010

From my tutor role I was aware that other teaching staff were not surprised if they saw students engaging with non-academic resources in the classroom. However, I was interested in what a new LSA’s impression of the students’ engagement with their coursework was. Sally was new to this role and had worked at college for two terms, but only with the media students for the final term of the year. The previous cohort she had been with had not used computers, so this was her first experience of students using them as their main resource.

Sally: I thought they were fairly, in one way, fairly casual about it err…and obviously

because it's like a whole day lesson…I never felt there was a sense of kind of urgency, perhaps because the lessons were unstructured and there wasn't really a tutor at the front ye know, kind of getting them all working on one thing, or teaching them, so I think that made the atmosphere feel quite casual. But I think they certainly all seemed to have a...be quite passionate about what they do, and interested in it.

Sally’s comments on how the students engaged with their work was insightful towards the duration of the tasks and that there were no short time-bound goals to achieve in much of the evidencing. Below, Sally confirms the duality of activities occurring within the room. Sally also identifies the difficulty in discerning if what a student is doing is for their coursework, or for pleasure as the same media resource could be used for either.

Sally: Always on YouTube, always on YouTube…err…and showing each other things

and…so it's obviously comes from an interest in it, you know, I don't think it is always just messing around...I think they are interested in it. I think people err there's been games as well I've noticed, that they're playing err...people are bringing music and most people are listening to music and most people are listening to music while they're studying or writing err.. So there's a bit of a fine line, cos obviously a lot of their course…and the media stuff they're doing is about filming and might involve that but I think sometimes they're doing other things as well [and then laughs].

LSAs, by the nature of their work, can have long periods working directly with students and I asked Sally if the behaviour she had commented on, in the above quote varied over the duration of a day, or session.

Sally: I would say there's a handful of people in the group that have it on all day [Friday]

and they might skip in and out of work...and then there's other people that work all day. So I think…in the morning actually I'm surprised when I come in how many people have gone straight on to YouTube, or straight on to their email account rather than starting with work...err...and I do find towards the...in the afternoon things do lapse a bit and by the end of the day…err...people are watching it a bit more, but generally I've just noticed that people just seem to have it on ALL the time even if it's not up on the screen they'll have it on and maybe just want a break and switch to it.

Ian, a part-time media tutor commented on how the students usually responded to critiquing a short part of a video that he had played on the whiteboard:

Ian:…if you don’t tell them what to do next, or how to apply the learning outcome to what they’ve seen, they may go and wander on to music videos, or things like that.

As there was an expectation for these students to work independently, this goal was clearly not being met.

Nick, an LSA at the music centre added, on the topic of students’ engagement with social and entertainment media.

Nick: They’re a distraction, definitely a distraction, yeah. They’ve got their videos going on

and music going on; some of them they’re watching a video. They’re texting people and they’re listening to a different tune on their ear bud as well and how they can actually get any work done while they’re doing all that I don’t know.

During a more open part of an interview with Alan, a media tutor, he commented:

Alan: You can walk around and you see people clicking ye know and then it goes all the way

around and then it clicks back on again [laughing], erhm yeah, it's like you're wearing something ye know and as you get into that sort of like area it shuts down zum, zum, zum, zum, zum [laughing].

What Alan was inferring was that the students were accessing more social, or entertainment resources via their college computer. Alan had commented on this previously and the intrusion of students’ use of technologies within the classroom for non-educational purposes and how there seemed to be a constant urge to digitally communicate and in the context of the previous quote he added:

Alan: Well you're getting this addiction, some of them can't, CANNOT leave their MySpace

unchecked in case someone leaves a message, one of their friends ye know. "But she might have left a message for me" AND? "Well I've got to get back to her", "No you don't", "Pardon but I do, I've got to get back to her". It's like oh-h-h [in a frustrated tone] "Okay then". Ye know, there's this NEED to know, there's this fear of being left out of a circle that they don't like.

Alan was asked if he thought that students could isolate learning time from social time.

Alan: I don't think they can, given the technology, if the technology's there for them to use.

Carl, a new media tutor commented:

Carl: They're too much, they're too easily distracted now…all…just from the small

impression of the students I've seen…at all levels, degree level and at the lower levels, it's quite scary to see HOW easily distracted they are…erhm you know all it takes is one student to see something on YouTube and then everyone's piled around them, the whole of the class is in a roar and then you've got to sort of like tell them to get on with their own work, but…it's really hard to get them to focus.

It is apparent that the staff were very aware of how students could use technology in the classrooms non-academically. What has emerged is the level of distraction that can occur and its repetitive

nature. There are compounding factors that are at work, and apart from the most focused of students there seems to be an acceptance that technologies can be used in the classroom, for other than academic work. This can occur discretely, when students are observant and if a tutor is not watching them they will take advantage and continue their social activities. Students might be unaware of how long they spend away from their work and a significant part of the session can be lost to this. Boredom contributes, as a reason, which then questions the amount of time spent on one activity. The awarding body sets the evidencing criteria, so the tutors are quite limited in how they construct the curricula. This needs to be conjoined with the perception of the staff that the students needed to work independently at this level, but the actuality was that they found this challenging. To reiterate, these were students who were obviously enthusiastic about the subject itself.