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Our partner university for the BA (University of Wales, Newport – awarding institution) will shortly be subject to a QAA inspection. ECBM will be supporting, and possibly participating in, Newport in the review.
QAA (Quality Assurance Agency)
Who are they?
- Independent body, funded by subscriptions from universities, colleges and higher education funding bodies that safeguards academic standards
- The QAA works closely with the higher education sector's 'stakeholders'
- Responsible for:
- conducting independent quality assurance reviews through audits to ensure that universities are fulfilling their responsibilities
- dentifying and promoting good practice
- Making recommendations for improvement where necessary
- Publishing guidelines and Codes of Practice
Further info: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/aboutus/WhatWeDo. More...
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The weather is getting better and it is Summer, even in England. This time of year is exam time for some of our students, so it’s a time for hard work as well as sunbathing (that’s a reminder to everyone on the Bachelor programme – but I am sure they don’t need reminding!). It also means the semester will be drawing to a close before long.
At ECBM we finish at the end of July, but many of our students continue to study over the summer months working on their dissertations and projects. Hard work brings its own reward though, and we all look forward to our graduation in November at the Honourable Artillery Company (in London) and the BA graduation in Wales in September. Not long to go!
I would like to take the opportunity to say all the very best of luck to all our students at this time of year, and especially those taking their exams. Be confident, you will do well, I am sure. More...
The new semester is now fully under way at ECBM, and we will soon be in a position to launch the timetables for 2010-11. Richard Bills is due to go to Berlin on the 23 March to present the Bachelor programme to potential students, and we have been doing marketing in Munich and Stuttgart, and Heilbronn in the past couple of months.
Richard went to Heilbronn two weeks ago and had an excellent visit to partner institutions. We are hoping for many new students in the coming months, and enquiries are already looking good. On another positive note, we have just started a new CMS (Certificate in Management Studies) programme in Stuttgart, and this looks like another successful group that will be going on to complete their studies with the Bachelor in 2010-11.
The Certificate in Management Studies group based in London were taught over the last weekend, the topic of the weekend’s teaching was ‘leadership’. Seventeen students took part, and these students are all aiming to continue onto the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Business and Management programme in the next academic year. The CMS is a perfect, flexible, way to start BA studies for Kaufleute who have Abitur and wish to climb the career ladder without joining university full-time. The students will be working hard on their coursework and we wish them all the best for their studies and future career.
Good news for our Bachelor students:
Our partner university, the  University of Wales in Newport, will benefit from a closer collaboration of three organisations that overlook quality at Welsh universities:
- the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA)
- the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW)
- Her Majesty's Inspectorate for Education and Training in Wales
They mainly aim at
- developing and supporting “improvement in the management of the quality of higher education in Wales”
- developing “areas of common interest, and benefit the HE sector in Wales by improving clarity and reducing the administrative burden on institutions”
For more information follow this link:
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/news/media/pressReleases/270110.asp
I have been meaning to write this blog post for weeks now but just did not get round to it yet.
Who does not know the feeling? You have a job to do which you just keep pushing to a later moment in time rather than facing the challenge.
The internet is full of tips with what to do about the problem ranging from priority lists to meditation. Here the advice I found most efficient:
1. If you find the task intimidating because of its overwhelming nature, try to split it up in several small elements that are more easy to tackle.
2. Set specific targets for every day, that you hope to tick off your list.
3. You should motivate yourself by thinking of how satisfying it will be to tick off the task on your to do list.
4. If you constantly get distracted by emails, instant messenger, phone calls etc. More...
... , switch it all off for a while and force yourself not to check out your facebook for a few hours.
Think about how annoyed you will be with yourself, if after 3 hours you allocated to work on your assignment, you actually find, you have just been messaging with all sorts of people but not made any progress with your work.
5. Often the difficulty is to get started once you’re on the track you keep rolling more easily.
6. If you fear failure, lower your expectations. You do not have to be perfect. Do what is possible for you and it will be better than nothing, clearly.
7. If you dislike the task, you will feel better once you got it out of the way and maybe once you got started, you even enjoy working on it.
8. If it all possible, try to trick yourself enjoying it.
Now, that’s enough reading around on the ECBM blog!
Go back to your to do list. You can do it! Go and kill that assignment!
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The reflective diary that Bachelor students are required to hand in together with their work seems to be often misunderstood.
Some students take the word “diary” a bit too literally and produce a diary style report “First I had breakfast, then I went to the library for two hours and finally I started writing my first page” while others use it as a “dumping place” for all sorts of feedback and other emotions. “I do not like finance as a subject” or “It was very useful to get the lesson material well in advance in order to prepare for the lesson and during the lesson we were briefed very well on how to write the assignment” I really enjoy reading these so-called reflective diaries because partly students speak out their feelings about the course, the lesson, the subject and their perception of life as a whole in here. More...
...
However interesting all this may be, the reflective diary is not the place to put any of this. It is meant to be something different and I am trying to get the idea across in this blog post.
1. Background Information
The reflective diary is to be handed in with every assignment on the Bachelor level and should contain ca. 500-1000 words. Although it does not form part of the assignment as such it is taken into account for marking and a good reflective diary can bring the grade up by one alpha numeric while a poor reflection can drag the grade down by 1 alpha numeric.
These are the criteria the marker uses to assess the reflective diary:
Journal Grade
High level of reflection and critical evaluation based on the assessment criteria. gain 1
This demonstrates a “Stepping back” from the events. alpha numeric
The reflection would be analytical or integrative grade
Reflected with some success, may have concentrated on process rather than neutral
feelings or issues.
This could be quite descriptive, but with some justification.
No Reflective Journal submitted or Journal limited to descriptive writing, lose 1 alpha
no evidence of discussion numeric grade
2. What is reflection?
After having performed (for example after having completed an assignment) a reflective practitioner should reflect upon his/her work and state ways of how to improve in the future. The first step involves being self critical and recognising that your work is not perfect. It is about stating your weaknesses. Recognising your weakness is absolutely crucial for personal development and continuous improvement.
After a lesson, a reflective teacher would think about the lesson: were the handouts structured in a logical manner? Did learning take place? Did I overload the students with information rather than making sure the basic concepts are understood? Should I have done more or less group work? Did the students really understand how they should write their reflective diary?
The second step is all about finding methods of improving this for the future.
Having found that actually all of the above went wrong, the teacher then should take action and try to improve for the next lesson. How can I improve my handouts? This is a question of better preparation. I should decide on what I am covering in my lesson beforehand and then once in the class not jump around between subjects and create confusion for students. In order to make sure learning has taken place I should allocate more time to activities in class where the students should actually apply different concepts and finally to get the reflective diary idea across, I write an entry for the blog to clarify this.
And the third step is a trial and error step. In the next lesson the reflective teacher will try to improve and see how the new concepts work. Is it really worthwhile allocating more time to activities at the cost of not covering that much of the lesson plan? Do students actually read the blog entry and do they manage to produce better reflective diaries as a result of this?
And it can of course be foreseen that the actual experience will have other issues again and there will be more aspects to improve upon and the never ending learning cycle starts all over again.
With this example I illustrated Kolb’s learning cycle, a model with four different steps, one should follow for an improved learning experience. I find this model ideal for students to refer to when reflecting upon their work.
Kolb, j.A. (1984) Experimental Learning Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs
3. Why is reflection important?
In today’s lifelong learning environment, students, teachers and anyone else are required to constantly improve. There is always more to learn out there and there is always so much more you could do better. Of course it is not possible to do it all at once and perfection cannot be achieved. However, it is an important skill to seek, find and improve upon one’s personal weaknesses.
Through developing a reflective, questioning attitude within our students, we aim at developing and educating graduates fit for a successful career in an ever-changing world where they are required to constantly question themselves and look for opportunities of further improvements and personal development.
It is important for students to develop this skill because students should take control of their personal development and ensure that they get the most out of every learning possibility.
4. What are problems students are facing?
Reflecting on your own assignment is quite a difficult task and many students fail to see the point and the importance of this. Furthermore as it only has a minor impact on the final grade, the calculating student just makes sure that there is something titled “Reflective Diary” to tick the box and will not bother too much wasting time on such a secondary report.
Another issue is that our students are highly efficient when it comes to producing reflective diaries. Once you have written one, you change the title of the subject and the assignment and there you go, a new reflective diary in less than 5 minutes.
This is the wrong approach. For the above mentioned reasons, practicing reflection is very beneficial even beyond the grade for your assignment.
I also was asked the following question in class “What should we reflect upon if we are perfectly happy with our assignment and do not see any weaknesses?” Well, it is of course a pre-requisite to see your own weaknesses. I personally believe that if students do not see their weaknesses it does not mean that they do not have any. In fact one of their weaknesses is not to be self critical enough to see their own weaknesses. My advice for all those students who cannot find their weaknesses is to actively seek for them. There will always be weaknesses, for example linked to the research undertaken and there are often language weaknesses or time management or organisational issues, just to mention a few of the most common ones.
A further issue is that students get defensive about their weaknesses and shift responsibilities to others. “I was under time pressure because I was busy finishing other deadlines for my employer while I had to write my assignment.” This again is not part of what should go into your reflective diary. Here it should be about those things that are under your own control.
Finally, it is important to understand that recognising our weaknesses is not something we should be ashamed of. On the contrary, it is the first step to improving and is therefore something we should be proud of.
Over the weekend of 4-6 December, ECBM staff held the end of semester revision session in Stuttgart for our Bachelor programme. 42 students were at the Kolping Bildungzentrum, and three members of ECBM travelled to provide input for the weekend.
We have an excellent relationship with the Kolping Bildungswerk in Stuttgart and in Baden Wurttemberg as a whole. Students from around the region, and from neighbouring Bavaria, took part in the weekend. The ECBM has over 90 students currently studying for the Bachelor in Stuttgart and at our premises in London.
In the coming New Year we hope to go from strength to strength with our co-operation in southern Germany, and wish all our friends at the Kolping, and of course our students, very best wishes for the festive season.
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