Learning to Teach Inclusively OER Videos in Human Resources

At the University of Wolverhampton under the Open Educational Resources Programme, jointly supported by JISC and the HEA, we are developing a multi-media open access module for HE staff - Learning to Teach Inclusively. As part of the project we are sharing series of video clips. This series of video clips was selected from two sessions of a Human Resources module with a highly diverse group of Business Studies students. The aim of the first session was to explore issues around career planning and management and to apply a theoretical framework to help students make sense of the issues in practice. The second session was to consider the influence of personality and personality tests in the choice of career and in the selection and recruitment process. (Note that ‘Es’ and ‘Is’ in the clips refer to Extrovert and Introvert from the Myers Briggs personality test that the students had taken earlier in the session). Overall these clips illustrate how the teacher harnesses students’ knowledge and experience and how she creates a safe and supportive environment for students to share their knowledge and experience (see Sharing knowledge and experiences). Teachers who are effective in engaging groups of students who may have quite different sets of knowledge, often start from what the students already know about the topic or from how they have experienced it in their lives. For example, you can see in one of the clips how the students share and compare their own career journeys so far and discuss common themes and experiences. Through a series of activities that stimulate discussion about the topic, the teacher gradually introduces theoretical concepts and propositional knowledge, linking it to and referring back to students’ prior knowledge and experiences. So students’ different positions and interpretations form part of the subject of study and abstract concepts become more understandable and relevant to all students. McLean and Abbas (2009) call this the ‘biographical turn.’ This is illustrated in the clip (Connecting lives to theory) that shows the teacher gathering feedback from the group activity where the students are applying an analytical framework (Inkson 2004) to their own lives and that of the case study character. This is the effect of the ‘biographical turn’. The classroom session clips also show how the teacher coordinates interaction within and between individuals and groups. They show how she moves among the students even though the classroom is not ideal. They show how she encourages students to generate questions and answers about the subject themselves. They also show, however, one or two students who appear to be a little left out of the small group activity. We invite you to use these clips to trigger discussion. What would you do as the teacher if this happened in your class? This collection of clips also includes extracts from an interview with the teacher after these sessions. She reflects on these sessions and explains how she tries to engage students and integration between students from different countries and backgrounds. She also talks about the challenges she faces and how she rises to them. The collection also contains some clips of interviews with some of the students in this module. The also talk about the benefits and challenges of studying with students from different backgrounds, the importance of teachers building a rapport with them, and the relevance of the subject to their own lives. Project web-site – www.wlv.ac.uk/teachinclusively e-mail: oer@wlv.ac.uk Videos are in .mp4 format (H.264 compression) and are playable with most media players. If you have any problems with the playback we recommend free open source VLC media player – www.videolan.org or all of our published videos can be viewed online on www.vimeo.com/oer/videos in your browser. Please contact us if you need any help oer@wlv.ac.uk, or fill in Problem Report form - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEg4a1h6T0ZzenRkVnlIcW1iYXpadHc6MQ