- To what extent do you think you have achieved each of the learning outcomes for Week 12? If you think there is room for you to achieve these more fully, what could you do to help yourself?
As we know that the week 12 was all about the learning outcomes of this whole module of supporting student learning. And especially the appreciating inquiry have been discussed in this week and it is all about our self-learning evaluation. “It begins with a process of discovering and appreciating what is the positive core of the current experience and then using this information to imagine possibilities, and then to design how to achieve and create the desired future (Hammond, 1998)” (Peter Mather, 2013). So this week raised some thoughts about evaluation of my own practice and these thoughts provided me an opportunity to discuss my practice and its positive and negative points with my peers which will help me to improve my teaching and learning practice.
- What have you learned this week about reflective practice and how it can be used for learning?
Reflective practice is a fundamental element of improvement and the starting point of continuing professional development. While one cannot alter the past, reflecting on experiences and using the opportunities to develop and plan a way forward can be a positive way to initiate change, acting as a motivational tool to reinforce what you can achieve, not what you cannot achieve. So the reflective practice supports a lot in improvement of professional practice. Reflective practice supports in the way that a person considers his/her past experiences and tries to improve next time.
- How did you learn this?
All the digital resources provided in the week 12 helped me a lot to understand the main topic and the theories given in that resources also helped me in order to meet the learning outcomes of this week. (Jeanie Cockell, 2012), (Peter Mather, 2013) and (Ralph Kelly, 2011) guided me in order to understand the topic of this week and helped my evaluate my practice and reflect on my own learnings of this module. Also the peer discussion and the appreciative evaluation task also encouraged me.
- What supported you?
At the initial time I was confused about the task and also was really confuse about how the appreciatively evaluate and reflect on the leaning of this module but then as I mentioned before that all the digital resources helped me to do so. All the peer discussion and their reflections on my thoughts and on my comments also guided me. (Ralph Kelly, 2011) Have a complete guide about the appreciative inquiry and it supported me to proceed in the topic and motivate me in order to evaluate the reflection and also encouraged me to give the reflection about my learnings in the whole PGCHE course first module.
- What have you learned this week about the practice of supporting student learning in HE?
In my teaching context I have learned many things in this week in order to support student learning in higher education. As according to (Bloxham & Boyd, 2007) we can access our students by giving them or assigning them some formative assessments. So then they can be reflect on those assessment files by sharing that files with each other and get the reflection of their peers on their work just like we did in our first assessment task. In my personal student supporting practice I can enhance the ways to engage them in the activities and can increase the chances to get the required outcomes.
- How has your understanding of this changed from doing this week’s topic and activities?
According to the (Peter Mather, 2013) “Appreciative inquiry is a dialogic cyclic process that engages change actors in defining changes. It begins with a process of discovering and appreciating what is the positive core of the current experience and then using this information to imagine possibilities, and then to design how to achieve and create the desired future”. (Hammond, 1998). So my practice completely get changed after this all now I consider my positive past experiences and then design my future session or classroom design according to that good or bad experiences and try to improve the next designs.
- What has challenged you?
There are a lot of things that challenged me in order to improve my teaching practice but the most important thing that I was facing in the traditional classroom was the prejudice explained by (Peter Mather, 2013) that “Traditional classrooms can be combative space. Professors and students alike carry expectations that inhibit the full range of intellectual expression and expansion”. So in all kind of traditional classrooms all the students and teachers make their minds about each other which is not a good thing so this things challenged me to enhance my practice in this way instead of carrying some bad thoughts about my teachers as a student and about my students as a teacher.
- What has surprised you?
We all know about the effectiveness of the appreciative inquiry and also about the reflective practice. So by reading their results and looking on that how nicely I am getting the required outcome of my lectures it really surprised me. Even my ways to design a classroom or some activities to access my students or activities designed to get the feedback also changed my mind. Now I can make it more efficiently than before.
- What has this taught you about your strengths in your practice in supporting student learning?
It taught me many things in my practice that include feedback, activities, assessment tasks, home tasks and many more things. My strengths in all these things is now much improved. This also improved my way and make me enable to empower active learning and encouraged me to motivate my students to do so.
- What actions can you identify from this that you could take to further develop your practice in supporting student learning in the future?
“Appreciative Inquiry is, essentially, a collaborative and highly participative, system wide approach to seeking, identifying and enhancing the “life-giving forces” that are present when a system is performing optimally in human, economic and organizational terms. It is a journey during which profound knowledge of a human system at its moments of wonder is uncovered and used to co-construct the best and highest future of that system.” (Ralph Kelly, 2011). So it helped me to identify the positive points in my practice and motivated and encouraged me to support the student learning in the future.