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A grand day out at the Festival of Education

Members of the TELT escaped from Dept W and had a great time at day two of the Festival of Education, organised by the Queen Mary Academy.  

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After Meg and Rume being involved in presenting at day one of the Festival of Education, day two had Meg involved in a poster presentation and we travelled all the way to Mile End again. 

The day was organised by the Queen Mary Academy and was an excellent opportunity to see just how much is going on across the university.    As the TELT are now based off campus, I really miss feeling part of the ebb and flow of the academic year.   It was great to see some familiar faces and to meet some new ones. 

It was particularly encouraging to hear from so many students too.  It's daunting presenting to a large number of staff, even more so in a theatre, on a stage with a giant powerpoint slide behind you.  Presenting in the Great Hall really is a performance.

Format of the day

The day was really well organised.  It started with some mini-keynote talks followed by the opportunity for discussion with the speakers in a world cafe format.

I particularly enjoyed the next section which was "pitches" followed by table discussions.  Groups had two minutes each to tempt us into joining them at their table to discuss their work further.  We could choose four tables to visit and had 15 minutes at each.  Probably exhausting for those leading the discussions but worked well for me as an attendee.

The afternoon saw a large poster presentation session in the Octagon.  There were a lot of posters on a variety of topics.  Not all on AI either.  An online gallery of the posters can be seen on the Queen Mary Academy website.   TELT Learning Technologist Meg was involved in "Transforming Online Collaboration: Co-creating Virtual Spaces in the Metaverse" (Poster 68) with the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science.

Highlights

With so many interesting presentations, posters and discussions, I couldn't possibly cover everything in a short article.  Here are just a few of my highlights.

  • Hearing from Dr Elsa Noterman from the School of Geography about her work on a first year research methods module.   Students use ARGIS StoryMaps, to explore and present research topics based in the local area.  The best of these StoryMaps are being published as part of the East London Atlas.  A great way to allow students to showcase their work.  
  • Work being done by students to investigate student attitudes to AI and looking at which tools they are using and why.  
  • The use of AI in reflective tasks came up in several discussions.  Also, somewhat related, the use of e-portfolios.   There are tensions between concerns of offloading reflection to AI and the potential for AI to help students reflect more deeply, or indeed at all.
  • The EduMark project developing an app using AI to assist in providing grades and feedback.  Look at poster 3 in the online gallery if you'd like to know more.
  • The tension between industry and academia when it comes to AI.  Employers want "AI literate" graduates but what do they mean by that?  Are universities and employers in alignment here?  Should they be?  Thanks to Senior Lecturer Jon Jackson and particularly to Degree Apprenticeship student Ali Elbarky, both in the Department of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science.
  • Hearing from Dr Gwijde Maegherman, School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences (posters 19 and 20) about peer marking and his successful use of the QMplus workshop peer-assessment activity.

Really that's only a flavour of what was a really interesting and inspiring day.

--Gill 

 

 

 

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