Dr Veronica Gardiner, Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) from Murdoch University on ‘Preparing for WIL in Teacher Education.’ This recording is from our 2022 Perth, Australia MiniBash community event. Videos are for educational personnel only and require a live educational email to watch. You can read the video transcript below.
Transcript:
Lovely. Thank you, Jacqui. So hello to new friends and old. I’m very happy to be here. I’m Dr. Veronica Gardner from the School of Education at Murdoch. I’ll try to keep to the ten minutes.
This will really just be a snap of what we do. And my take home message is really about showing you how we purposefully integrate PebblePad workbooks in units and at the course level.
So a bit of a tip of the hat to to design thinking.
This is very important because it resonates with some of what our professors were talking about earlier in that this authentic approach, this future focused approach, being teaching, we’re very much about linking to our profession, and then the employability follows from that. So I was listening carefully to what was being said earlier.
And we want, when we’re designing our PebblePads which mainly are workbooks rather than eportfolios.
We’re very much about making them meaningful to the learner and for activities within those and their connection to other things we’ve built around them being authentic and purposeful and giving them agency.
So we have PebblePad workbooks in what we call our wheel units or our placement units, but they’re also right throughout our courses.
So I guess what our students are working with is content theory practice, and then they’re going into their placement units which will work integrated learning, but we wrap around them with more content, more practice, and simulated teaching, which I’ll show you in a little while. And the PebblePads, I heard the word before used repository.
I know that nursing has specific needs, rather than repository, we use our PebblePad workbooks as an anchor. So we’ve got all these different things going on, learning about theory, putting it into practice, simulated, microteaching, and pebble pad is like an anchor for all of those activities.
Within units, and also at the course level. So we’re designing a scaffolded approach, where they begin gradually, we heard talk about how do they learn this, we scaffold it in first year and then they would move and become more sophisticated as they go along in their course.
Oh, I’ll go back to that. So in our PebblePads, either in the work integrated unit or content area units.
These are typical pages. They’re very tiny, so you can’t really see what’s on them. But we always have a welcome page now that we’ve been going to the wonderful PebblePad webinars and things. We got very excited about welcome pages, we usually have a little video learning object in there, either to connect with the student, directly by just talking to them. Here I am, you know, who I am, teacher present, so that there’s a human being in their PebblePad workbook.
And or it can have a bit of framing of theory or what you’re going to do on this workbook page. And then we have some tasks. So in a work integrated learning unit for instance, there’d be about ten or twelve of these pages in the workbook, one a welcome page talk about building resilience. We connect back to their learning area that they’re getting ready to go on placement for, so this is the getting ready for wheel kind of angle, and we would also have some other things in there that help prepare them for placement.
And so, part of that in the work integrated learning units.
They’re traveling along in their PebblePad. They’ve reconnected with the ideas. They’re getting ready. They’re practicing lesson planning. And then they will go to a simulated micro teaching booking in our lab, which I hope I have time to show you, and that is prepared for in their pebble pad as well. And we heard for from nursing and midwifery, about reflection, about needing to meet standards, about all sorts of things that we do in our courses and ours are very similar, a little bit same, same, but different.
And so before they go to their micro teaching in their PebblePad, they would upload their lesson plan which they’ve prepared they would confirm that they’ve got a booking, they would start their reflection.
So wherever they’re at, if they’re first year, second year, third year, fourth year, how are they going? What are their strengths? What are their areas to build on what goals would they might like to set for the future? Then they go off and they teach in their simulated micro teaching and come back to the PebblePad and receive feedback from our clinical practitioner.
So this is where the clinical practitioner would give feedback after they’ve been to micro teaching and the pre service teacher would also reflect on their own experience in the micro teaching and set a goal for the future. And these are really cyclical because they’re going to use the pebble pads in every year level, and every time they go towards a work integrated learning unit, and so they’re building kind of a spiral of capabilities.
They’re looking back, they’re looking forwards, and this is all part of what we hope to build everybody everywhere into work, integrated learning, And ultimately, this becomes also about building their professionalism, their identity, which I know Stan is interested in.
And their employability.
They have to present a certain level of professionalism when they engage with all of this. So constantly touching base with them about skills and capabilities and kind of a mindset for their future work. And in teaching our degree, I guess this is a little bit different to perhaps for instance, business, where our degrees are all about teaching, so everything is about that profession and that employability.
I’ve got some time to show you a little bit about SYMLab. This is where they do their micro teaching and then I’ll show you how this links up together in a unit. So similar as I said, they do something in every year level and we’ve also got it as a little tool for screening when they come in to touch base with how are they at communicating, what sort of rapport can they build with people they’re talking to. And right at the end an added feature is that in fourth year, the really fun one is they, in the simulated environment, which is safe and within certain parameters, they can work with an angry parent And this is very authentic.
I remember going out as a new grad, and we didn’t have any of these kinds of things back in the day. And so a lot of things you were actually learning on the job. And I heard us talking about how sometimes with work integrated learning people and feel like they’re just landing in it, and they haven’t had any preparation. But all of these things with Pebel pad as the anchor for their reflection, their content connection, their thinking about professionalism, it really helps prepare them not only for the work integrated learning itself, but also in that spiral for working in their profession.
I won’t show you that one, but obviously we’ve got a scope and sequence that we think about. So behind the scenes, we try not to show all of this to the students because we want them to forget that there’s workings behind the scenes. And just go in there as if it was real. But behind the scenes in other rooms, we have real live interactors who are trained improvisation actors in real time working student avatars. And you can see here a little bit small, but it’s set up like a classroom.
Our students walk into a room and they face a big screen with the students who move in real time, who talk, who respond, they can’t get up out of their chairs and are alright, but we do we can do quite a lot of activity with them. And so these people here, the interactors are making that happen and they’ve got kind of profiles that help them distinguish each particular avatar and the avatars have to be consistent for every student and and over different episodes.
So here’s student coming in and teaching to them. I’ll show you a little bit about that in a video.
And in the room, but kind of in the corner as a clinical practitioner.
So again, nursing and midriffery would have clinical practitioners, slightly different to ours. They’re observing. They’re taking notes. What is the student doing well?
They’ve already looked at the lesson plan. They’ve looked at that page in PebblePad, so they’re connecting with the PebblePad as well as at all. And then they give some feedback. And as our pre service teacher is teaching, they’re typing into the PebblePad.
So the PebblePad is really a transportable tool between different kinds of staff and in different spaces of teaching.
Now, Jacqui’s going to be my helper, and we’ve written down some points so that we don’t have to show the whole video.
So if we go to four forty first, Okay. Thank you.
Now first, it’ll it’ll shut. Oh, it hasn’t gone there.
It’s right at the beginning.
We just don’t want to show you the whole thing.
So while Jacqui’s playing with that, you can see the students there, they’re talking amongst themselves this one’s about second year.
So students are muttering and talking.
Here’s our pre service teacher in the second screen.
And so I have to give them a warning. Have a story sis, everyone. Just a quick nod to the head, enjoy the Okay. Thanks, Jacqui.
And if we go to the second one, So that was just a simple second new one. He’s about to deliver a little mini lesson to them. The clinical practitioner is sitting there and she’s engaging with the pebble pad. To put some energy into that student’s reflective processes.
Okay. Nine. Third year. Savannah, I see you’re really quiet. Please.
Thank you.
Right. So before recess, we actually watched the YouTube about the dinosaur, I had any dinosaur.
We had a bit of a a dance around, and it got me thinking that maybe, what would happen back in the old days when he was pregnant, and even we just sit seal place, It’s he’s tapping.
Hi, honey. I thought he’s tapping. I was like like typing lightly.
I but we know that that it’s just you need to speak quietly Yeah.
Thanks, Jacqui.
Okay. We’ll just we’ll just dwell there for a minute.
And you can you can feel already how we know it’s not real. We’d be delusional we thought it was. But for but while we’re in the experience, we we feel immersed in and even I do if I go into it especially the angry parent.
And I’ve showed the angry parents two principals and we’ve played with it. I have advisory panels with industry going, and they say it feels really real to them and brings up lots of memories about what that’s like, to to try and deescalate someone who’s not happy and work with them and listen That last example, I’ll show you a little bit more about that here, because there was a bit more going on there that might meet the eye at first.
So in third year we have we start obviously.
They’re scaffolded. In first year, they’re just getting the basics second year they’re into curriculum and they’re getting some solid ideas. By third year, they’re starting their inclusive education and edge support and those kinds of focuses and getting a bit more sophisticated.
That last one that we saw is hand in hand with inclusive education in the unit and in their PebblePads, they’re learning about inclusive practices, about student diversity, about how to work with very diverse people in schools They get concrete strategies, they get theory, they get all sorts of things. And that remember I showed you before their pebble pad workbook pages, So there would be pages and tasks and videos going right throughout the semester and they might be for learning about children with autism.
The the little fellow in the middle with the blond hair is Nate. He has autism, And what was happening there is, Ethan is tapping on the desk and making lots of noise or whatever kids do because kids are really noisy, but the pre service teacher needs to think more carefully about and demonstrate that they can set in place some agreement and strategies so that all students can access the learning experience that’s happening. So this is all happening in the unit and in PebblePad.
And then they’re going off to the the simulated micro teaching I showed you, where again, PebblePad is the tool. It’s integrated.
They’re reflecting on how they did. What happened when they did that? Did they do well?
And then they would produce some other products at the end of the unit. And again, they’re drawing on the experience in the micro teaching, their unit but all those practices and understandings they’ve been building up in the pebble pad itself. So I think I’ve just been given the sign that my time is up. Thank you very much so much to say so little time.
