Karey's tool
Synopsis
Karey, a lecturer in Communications, has developed an interactive ‘difficult text' reading task.
Description
Karey's tool is an activity centring on a piece of text discussing various metaphors of power. The tool shows students how to sort information from a long, complex, and convoluted text into the key categories around which the text is organised. The activity's based on the idea that in order to recognise patterns or connections we need to be able to see all the elements that constitute the pattern at the same time.
Students read the extract and click on highlighted words, which they then place within one of these key categories. If a wrong answer is selected, the tool tells the students where they have gone wrong and gives an explanation for the correct answer. Once the student has worked through the reading, they can open a table which summarizes the key distinctions made by the text. This table allows them to see all the descriptions and distinctions at a glance.
At this point, students are asked to think of a separate image or scenario for each of the key categories, that captures all the items listed in the table under that category. Students can use the image or scenario they think of to apply the concept appropriately in novel contexts.
Target audience
The tool is used with Communications and Media Studies Students in their second and third years. Most of these (about two thirds) are off-campus students.
Learning goals and objectives
It's designed as a tool to help to teach the processes involved in organising and analysing ideas. The point of the exercise is not so much about teaching the content (ie, metaphors of power) but to help students learn the skills they will need for critical hinking and reading (ie, to comprehend, organise, and analyse both fine and broad distinctions in texts that are difficult to read). For example, it teaches students to pay attention to the grammatical clues that allow them to distinguish between an opinion expressed by the author of a piece, and the author's discussion of the opinions expressed in the works of another writer.
Roles
Karey designed the tool herself, using text and materials from the book Frameworks of Power by Stewart Clegg (1989, Sage). DeC created the software that put it together on the webpages.
Results
Karey has found that this exercise successfully transforms students' understanding, both of the subject at hand (ie power) and, even more importantly, of the way texts should be approached. Students have to work through the whole exercise with a difficult text, but can do so at their own pace and take as many goes at one question as they need. Because most students cannot understand or interpret the text before they start, but can both understand and use the ideas from the text once they have done the activity, Karey finds it also raises their confidence to deal with other difficult texts.
Problems and advice for others
It is important for the success of this particular learning activity that the text chosen be one that is too difficult for almost all students to understand without undertaking the activity. The difference the activity makes to their understanding convinces them of the worth of the process.
Karey says that the cost to Faculties of getting the help of DeC and the teaching design staff to put together a technology-enhanced learning tool is now discouraging staff from doing projects like this.
General recommendations
Karey would like to see a mechanism made available whereby information about what other people are doing could be disseminated. For example, her tool for dealing with difficult texts could be adapted for use by other lecturers and in other subjects, but there is no formal way for her to let people know about its existence. She suggests a web forum would be a good way to share ideas and questions and help one another out a grassroots level.