Robust Feedback: Student Satisfaction Guaranteed?

There is certainly an art to giving feedback that is tough enough, but doesn't knock confidence and builds student resilience. Good feedback should be positively directly, e.g., work that is lacking detail, has major omissions or is too short "Could include more..". Those who welcome feedback, good and bad, and take it on board often flourish.  Not all students see that right away and some never see it. We focus on feedback but surely we need to teach students how to use feedback too. 

MSc in Environmental Sustainability & Green Technology students

I was sat in my office with a student. "Bad feedback is sometimes really good feedback.". The student nodded in agreement, but although the head was moving up and down the eyes were telling a different story. The eyes looked hurt and the eyebrows were no longer level, one of them scrunched down and one raised giving away the skepticism that lay beneath. I knew that the next time I would see this student they would probably be celebrating success, having improved by taking my feedback on board. I was right. This student continued to improve and achieved a distinction. 

Students are becoming more demanding (understandably so) in the UK as consumers of an education service they now pay for from their own pocket. Lecturers are coming under  more pressure to be more customer-focused. What does that mean for effective education? It certainly means that we aim to have happy students. Keele University has been ranked number one for Student Satisfaction for the last three years so we are doing something right. Does that mean that we always tell the students what they want to hear? Of course not. We tell students what they need to hear. A good education is about supporting improvement and that includes driving improvement, maintaining tough standards and making sure that the education our students are now paying for is the best. That means supporting and challenging and that starts with focusing on feedback and sometimes that can be tricky to deliver and harder to digest. I have found that supporting students to be receptive to feedback at the start of their journey can be the key to unlocking their potential.

 

Failing to succeed: A look at the role of failure in student learning

The value of constructive feedback is well understood and is an integral part of the postgraduate taught experience..at least it is during the taught component. So what happens during the project? Students working independently have fewer opportunities to seek out feedback during the process and are expected to work more independently. This can feel pretty unsettling. Confidence is tested to the max. I think this is good preparation for the real work environment, wherever that may be.

The dangers of over-supporting students

Its important for students to realise that failure is not the end of the world and it can make us stronger, more experienced and less likely to repeat past mistakes. As educators, we should be supporting confident learners by teaching them how to be resilient and to welcome feedback, good and ...not so good. We should be less afraid of letting students fall by making sure we are providing the right safety gear, crash mats and emotional support. As we approach the last big push of the dissertation write up and submission, our postgraduate taught students have switched from their structured learning with classmates, reading lists, diet of past exam papers to crunch through and defined learning paths to an independent research project. This is a big jump for some students doing something, maybe more out of their depth, with busy research staff in unfamiliar surroundings. Some students crave the structure and support of the classroom environment and morale can dip. It is now that students with the biggest fear of failure are at their most uncomfortable. The ability to adapt to the unexpected is a valuable skill. Resilience and creativity are what is needed if things go wrong.

What goes up....gets stuck on the roof

Students worry about aspects of failure. 

It makes me smile when students come and see me worried that their experiment or study "won't work". What they really mean is that it might not show anything. Students are often under the illusion that we (academics) plan our grand experiments, disappear into mysterious laboratories and emerge clutching Nobel Prize-winning revelations. This is not, unfortunately, for me at least, how research works. The answer to our research question and the result of our test may be that nothing changes or happens. This is a result too. Thomas Edison reportedly stated: "I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.".

Demonstrating hydropower

So, students have their experiment planned, ethics approval sorted and their supervisor has checked that everything is OK and then something unexpected happens.  A piece of kit doesn't arrive on time, or breaks, or a collaborator pulls out or there is a power cut 11 weeks into a 12 week experiment or you forgot to hit "record" at the start of the interview. There are not many successful researchers out there who haven't felt the thump of realisation when something has gone very very wrong. It is how we react that is important. We learn from our mistakes.  I recall the embarrassment when my rather startled supervisor who, after the blue flash and sudden bang, explained to me "No Sharon, I said 'for God's sake, DON'T turn it on' ".  I now always ensure, with any of my students, that I am the one operating the switch.

Speaking Out for Sustainability: A tricky business

It turns out that having something to say is not the same as saying something. I was asked to do a TEDx talk. Great. I read the guidelines. They were clear that it is not enough to talk about things that are common knowledge and accepted world views. A TED talk has to go beyond reaffirming commonly held viewpoints. They are after challenge, inspiration and new thinking and I was instructed to create the "best talk of my life". No pressure there then. I started to create draft no.1 and I started to say something.

TEDx Keele University

The biggest question "So what?"

I do a lot of talks for the public on science and technology and have a reputation for giving quirky and engaging talks. I wanted this to be my best yet. I wanted to share my knowledge about renewable energy and sustainability. I wanted to express all of the things that I care about and the subjects that I teach on the MSc. Clean technology is evolving and new and exciting developments are happening all the time. I wanted to challenge our right to protest against clean energy development when we so desperately need to break from our dependence on fossil fuels. I had a lot to say so I wrote a few different talks, drafts 2, 3, 4 and 5 all really impressive and informative, I thought. Something was still not right. I watched several talks online and it dawned on me that the most engaging talks were not the ones that had the most technical detail, or the most innovative science. The best talks were often the ones that made me feel something. Speakers would give personal accounts, passionately describing how issues affected them and other people and they would answer the biggest question, "so what?". 

The Great Stuff Addiction

I looked again at my, now not so impressive draft talks. None of them came close to being the "talk of my life". They were OK. I thought about what I care about the most and started again and wrote a talk about stuff, our growing dependence and the sustainability challenges that this presents .. through my own eyes...on a journey through my life.  I haven't delivered the talk yet but I am ready as I am much happier with it. It is from the heart, an important issue told through my story. I have something to say. 

To test or not to test?..that is the question

Hydropowered mountain lift at CAT

We are currently tearing around North Wales on our annual three-day MSc field trip to Bangor and Anglesey. From the student perspective they are driven to North Wales, get to look as some wind turbines close-up, visit the Center of Alternative Technology, get to see the stunning North Wales coastline, get a guided tour of a copper mine site with a tour from an expert from a national government environment agency, see some historic and cultural sites, visit the underground "Electric Mountain" hydroelectric facility at Llanberis and see the impact of slate mining.  From our perspective this is a lot of organising and lots of driving.  There is no exam, no module credits for this trip and no course-work or compulsory field experiments, formative assessment or feedback. If students want to test soil, or pH levels of acid minewater run-off out of curiosity they can...and they do. That's the point.

At Carnot Wind Farm

Space to breathe and learn

The Bangor field course, called the "Road Trip" is the highlight of the course for many students who remember the trip as a chance to reflect, think, talk and connect with their subject and what it really means. I wonder if we maybe over-assess our students, demanding essays, posters, presentations and exams to test them and to get them to evidence their learning. I worry that, without an opportunity to properly reflect, from the student perspective this pressure to prolifically produce may lead to a shallow experience, producing lots but retaining little and having little or no chance to put information and learning into context, let alone practice anything. Carefully timed, this trip allows students this space allows space to put things into perspective and context before they embark on their independent research project and put it into practice. A real boost at just the right time.

MSc Road Trip 2016 begins in Wild Wild Wales

Students come out of their shells on this trip and really get to know each other. They really start to debate and discuss, deeply, the ideas and thoughts they have developed during the course. As I drive the bus I smile as I overhear conversions. Between disturbing debates that begin "Would you rather...." followed by some impossible and hideous dilemma, there are snippets of informed, mature and fascinating discussion on social and cultural differences the students have and wider important issues, like public engagement, policy, technology, climate change, etc., etc. sparked by the various visits. I'm reassured that it is well worth the effort of doing informal things like this just for the hell of learning.

For more on this course click here

When the going gets tough: the tough get a career advantage with a taught masters

Getting to grips with anaerobic digestion (Photo: by Greenie)

A good course is key to getting ahead in the job market and access to industrial experts can really make all the difference. A taught masters is a good way of doing this, but if you are under the illusion that a taught masters course is easier than a masters by research, think again.

Imagine you have a 3-day field course, around 96 lectures to attend, a couple of exams to pass, 6 x 3,000 word essays to produce along with 4 posters, 8 oral presentations, while  coming up with an idea for a research project that you need to design, propose, seek ethical approval for, carry out and publish into a 20,000 word document, all within 12 months. This is a typical workload for a busy taught masters student.  So is it worth it? Ours students tell us it is.

This demanding schedule at an advanced level trains our students to become independent thinkers and confident managers. Without experience though, our students have no way of demonstrating this to employers. However, our students do get jobs. Good jobs! see employment case studies here.

Making career links during the course

Green IT visit to Stone Computing

This is partly down to the program and skills gained, including time management! It is also down the fact that all of our masters students on the MSc in Environmental Sustainability and Green Technology at Keele University have the opportunity to do a project with a business or public sector organisation or a research group. 90% of these students elect to work with industry.  This means that the student can align their learning experience and get some experience and insight into the career where they are heading.  Projects this year include: municipal waste management with a local authority, how solar energy can connect communities with a local social enterprise, environmental testing and land remediation at a development site for a power station, biomass ash analysis with Keele researchers, building performance with a large manufacturer and green IT projects with a local company and our research team at Keele looking at smart energy.  These students work on real problems and have something real to talk about at interview.

What goes around.....

Blustery conditions at a wind farm in Wales in the Spring

In 5 months time from now my students will hand in carefully bound and proudly labelled dissertation documents and will be celebrating with a huge sense of mixed relief and achievement. In 12 months time, they will have mostly all asked me at some point for a reference. In a couple of years, I will be proudly asking some of them to return as speakers and project collaborators as they become the employers.

For information about how to apply for the course (click here) or if you are from an organisation with a strategic problem and you would like to collaborate with us on a dissertation project we would love to know.

Masters Courses: Onwards and Upwards or Second Chance

Hats off to our graduates!

The decision to take a masters degree is a big one. If all students chose University courses for the same reasons we would just need one course for each discipline in one huge University. This is of course not the case as Universities compete for a valuable but increasingly diverse market. 

Choosing a UK University

According to the Higer Education Association, most non-EU applicants (58.5%) focus on the reputation of the University compared with only (43.6%) of UK-residing applicants. Instead, these UK residents are far more interested in the location.  Less that 10% of full-time applicants cite flexibility of the course as an important factor in selecting a course but for part-time students this is higher at almost 50%. Offering separate courses for all of our target markets is just not feasible so comes down to designing courses that cater for students needs.

Meeting student expectations is far from easy!

In the UK, all students have their say on how we are doing through the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES). We use this to improve our courses and student experience. At Keele we are proud to be number one for student experience for two years running. This is no accident....

Students visiting a wind farm with lecturers

Meeting Career Expectations is Key: what to look for in a course that meets your needs

Weighing up whether the fees and yet another year (two if its a part-time course) can be dictated by several factors. You need to ask a lot of questions to check out if a course is right for you and preferably go to open days, like ours here.. Many of these are available online like ours here. From my experience of postgraduate masters applications and teaching, I have found that most students applying to my course fall into three main categories.

Environmental testing in the field in Wales

1. Career Builder. 

This applicant often has already had a job and realises that they want to, or need to, retrain in a more secure or prosperous area to gain job security or job satisfaction. They often recognise a specific skill gap. This applicant may be a mature student that has been out education for a while and they may be apprehensive about a return to study. A course linking dissertations with career aspirations can be a big driver for this student in choosing a course. If this is you, ask about opportunities for industrial collaboration and ask to speak to former or current students about their experience.

Gaining new skills is vital to career enhancement

2. Passionate Learner. 

This applicant lives and breathes study. They don't necessarily have a background directly related to the masters course but are interested in the subject. They are often keen to get going and get stuck in. This applicant is often focussed on the expertise within the University and course leadership team and often haven't considered specific career objectives apart from continuing their epic journey of learning into a PhD. If this is you,  ask about opportunities for fieldwork and to do a dissertation in an active research group.

3. Time Traveller. 

This person is trying to buy time to reverse a disappointing degree result or to tackle difficulty in securing employment. This applicant could even be trying to right the wrongs of a misspent undergraduate career of too many late nights, late drinks and late assignments! They are often, like the Career Builder, focussed on employability, but they may be less experienced and therefore keen to build their CV and portfolio of skills. They see the course as a second chance to improve prospects and a chance to focus on an area of interest. If this is you, ask about past performance and career prospects of former students on the course. See if you can sit in on a couple of lectures to get a feel for if this is for you. 

Keele is holding a Postgraduate Fair on March 16th, 2016.

Unlocking a different way of thinking with a Masters

As I delivered an inspiring speech in the lecture room with quotes on leadership and future success from Barack Obama and an emotional and tear-jerking rendition of Dr Seuss's "Oh, The Places You'll Go!", I couldn't help reflecting on how far these proud, confident and professional postgraduates had come already in a relatively short time. What a different sight these very same students had presented just a year before, in the very same room, on day one of the MSc, with their backpacks and notebooks and apprehensive smiles and nods of "Hello" to each other. I realised that this group of postgraduates had been through a demanding journey that had not only taught them about the subject but had fundamentally changed their way of thinking. These postgraduates are entering a tough job market but I was proud to know they were fully prepared with an MSc that gave them so much more than a certificate.

Learning to think differently and asking..."So what?"
The ability to think strategically sets these postgrads apart from their undergraduate peers. Its no longer being able to absorb and faithfully repeat knowledge that is rewarded. On the contrary that approach that might have generated a distinction would hardly raise a pass in the postgraduate world. The bar is lifted and now the emphasis is on critical thinking, comparative and strategic thinking and impact. The ability to assimilate, discern, challenge, evaluate and communicate information is key to postgrad-level career success in the fast-paced field of sustainability and energy development. Subject knowledge, whilst important, can get outdated quickly. It seems that the ability to research and maintain up-to-date knowledge is more important than simply learning facts. Its also about being able to work out the "So what?". For example, it's all well and good being able to draw up a business proposal and planning document for a new waste-to-energy anaerobic digestion facility for the large hospital you work for but it will never see its way to being a real project if it doesn't include a dash of "So what?". What will be the benefit for the organisation in terms of economic return, sustainable development, enhanced reputation and improved efficiency, over what timescales and involving which stakeholders? What are the risks and how can these be mitigated?

An MSc course is a journey

Routes into leadership and driving innovation
According to the UK Commission for Employment and Skills 14.1% of all UK jobs will require a postgraduate qualification by 2022. That's around one in every seven! However, over the last four years postgraduate taught student numbers in the UK have fallen by 17%. No wonder the UK government are investing in the postgraduate population to ensure that this valuable pipeline of resource and skills is there for business and industry. These strategic skills are vital in energy development, sustainability and meeting many of the key global challenges we face as a planet.

For more information about our MSc click here

Getting ahead in your career in Sustainability: is an MSc necessary?

"What jobs do MSc graduates go on to?". The voice on the other end of the phone can be male, female, young or older but always the same question. It's a fair question. If I was applying for a masters and paying fees it would be my top question too. It is true that a masters degree does enhance employability but the reasons are complex. It is documented that employers want postgraduates with specific skills and knowledge. Employers particularly want graduates with work experience and relevant practical skills. Tricky to deliver in an interdisciplinary course like ours. There is a balance between delivering a consistent, high quality learning experience and giving a tailored experience, giving them relevant employability skills and allowing our masters students to align their experience to their career destination. Not easy but definitely do-able. We are proud of our distinctive graduates who stand out from the crowd.

It's not easy standing out from the crowd

From my experience the magic key to unlocking employment potential  has been a three-way process between our masters students, our teaching staff and employers during the course. This makes sure that employers are at the heart of our teaching and telling us what they want and how they want it. Masters students have the opportunity to develop a relationship with employers and to develop relevant dissertation projects and gain that all important CV fodder, experience. The driver of this process is the staff member who works behind the scenes, oiling the cogs and managing expectations on both sides of this relationship. 

We are fortunate to have great support at Keele University to foster these links and to grow these relationships. This year there are two different internship programmes that will enable our graduates to flex their knowledge and get their teeth into some real work experience. We know this works. I had so many messages this Christmas and New Year from ex-students who have gone on to be academics or professionals in environmental organisations, local authorities, the NHS, businesses and charities. You can see what some of our graduates have done by clicking  here.