week 6: PAL's missing piece

Dear flowers,

Week 6 of PAL was quite interesting. We did a brainstorm of things that we think are missing at PAL at our uni. Have a look at it below. Isn't it beautiful?

The following are questions that I have considered personally. I believe that if these questions remain unsolved it will limit the growth of PAL at uni.

- Should students interested in PAL do a pre-test so that PAL leaders are well aware of each students strengths, weaknesses and learning preferences?
Perhaps in the first few PAL sessions students can be asked if they would like to complete an anonymous questionnaire or discuss as a group their learning styles and motivations. This may inform PAL leaders instruction, for example if students are shown to have more preference to present information visually than verbally the PAL leader can cater for this.

- Should there be PAL session dedicated to cognitive strategies?
For example, one session per week to cover effective note-taking, essay writing (understanding Bloom's Taxonomy) and research report writing. This can also be discipline specific. However, this will require PAL leaders to be trained in cognitive strategies as we cannot just assume that all PAL leaders are fully equipped or even feel confident themselves in using these skills. This is something I am quite interested in as a potential postgrad because I think that this issue is the elephant in the room that teachers are not finding the time to deal with. And so, as a result, students waste their time using the wrong skills which hinders their learning. Cognitive skills need to be taught explicitly rather than assumed of by students and PAL perhaps may be a good avenue for this.

- How does PAL cater for cultural differences in PAL sessions?
The implications of not catering to cultural differences may lead to the exclusion of some students. This is something that really needs to be considered at uni since we are such a diverse community and have many international students who I'm sure would be interested in PAL if it was perceived as more inclusive.

- How do we assess that students have learnt anything from PAL sessions?
The PAL leader whose session I attended last week liked to get students to present their main ideas to the rest of the group at the end of the session. However, on this occasion, a group of students left 10 minutes before the the PAL session was over because they needed time to walk to their next class which was on the other side of uni. And so, sadly, they were unable to present and the other focus were unable to benefit from the other group's discussion. How can PAL leaders 'make' people stay without feeling forced? Should PAL sessions be held in more central locations rather than on the outskirts of uni?

- How do we ensure that students maximise their benefit during PAL sessions?
Should we provide a basic guide of what PAL is all about to first year students? This guide can present the statistics of students who participate in PAL sessions and their final marks. This guide can make students aware that PAL sessions are not lecture-style or even tutorial-style sessions. They can also be made aware that PAL leaders are not lecturers nor tutors and will certainly not spoon-feed any answers. At the beginning of PAL sessions perhaps as a group they can complete a mind map of the lecture material covered that week. This can help to light up some neurons and active students prior knowledge so that they don't feel like they are diving into the deep end to quickly.

- Are PAL leaders receiving the training they need to become effective PAL leaders?
Something that I've been thinking about is developing a PAL leadership training manual. I think that it's important that PAL leaders with limited or no teaching experience should receive adequate training. They need to be equipped with strategies in dealing with classroom management and in particular students who refuse to cooperate with the way that PAL works. I cannot imagine being asked to run my first PAL session without being modelled some effective teaching strategies, observe a PAL session, and be expected to doing things ad hoc. Having a training manual that the PAL leader can constantly refer to would firstly help potential PAL leaders to develop interest in the PAL process and secondly, ensure that all PAL leaders are receiving the same standard level of training.

For the unit we were asked to work on a grant application which I found extremely challenging. And of course it would be, academics are vying for the same prize, as if I'd stand a chance? But honestly, it was nice to do an assessment that could potentially mean something to the university and that could potentially grow PAL.


Love,

Miss Fun size