Collaborative annotated bibliography of works that have influenced you in respect of the scholarship and practice of teaching
The aim of this weeks activity is to share and critically review your collective knowledge and also the scholarly literature on teaching and learning.
A successful MOOC relies on open sharing of ideas and resources so we hope you feel enabled to connect and add to this.
Next week the focus will be on reflection of your overall experience to date of being a teacher. As you begin to write about this experience it is useful to be able to draw upon the scholarly literature in relation to teaching and learning in order to contextualise and develop knowledge to further your own teaching practice.
If you refer to page 3 of The UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and supporting learning in higher education (HEA, 2011) https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/UKPSF_2011_English.pdf
Do you agree that Professional Values 3 and 4 cannot be fully explored without drawing on a wide range of evidence-based and contemporary resources? This learning activity is based on this assumption and that by building a shared repository of these resources will enhance these values further.
General principles of the activity
The intended outcome is to create an annotated bibliography of resources and/or a shared group library using a preferred author, date reference system
Ideally you will contribute to these resources and also review and appraise your own resources, in addition to critique of contributions made by other participants within the course.
You will have the opportunity to draw upon the shared resources of the course. This will help you to explore your perspectives and support your reflections on teaching and learning and cite, integrate and critically analyse these sources appropriately within your reflective writing.
We hope that this activity will encourage you to build your own personal library of citation resources to share and connect with others beyond the remit of the course.
Links to resources to support learning activity 1
- Critical Annotated Bibliographies
- Citing and Referencing
- Harvard system referencing
- Critically reviewing literature
A range of options
Given the diversity of participants within a MOOC and different strategies for citation and reference management, which includes the activity of Social bookmarking a range of possible options will therefore be suggested within this learning activity.
Annotated bibliography within a Google Doc (option 1)
Many of you will be familiar with the use of Google Doc. For those who are not, the following video provides a very simple and quick explanation.
We have set up a Google Doc.
The activity has two short stages. You can go on to stage two as soon as you and at least one other person have done stage one.
Your task is to contribute one item to the bibliography and comment on two items contributed by other people. That is you should:
Stage 1
- Identify a work that has been an influence on you and how you teach (or intend to teach) your subject. This may be a book or an article, scholarly or other, in any medium that has helped shape your thought as a teacher.
- A correct citation to the item
- An annotation of up to 100 words, saying why this work has been significant
- An attribution by giving your name.
- Stage 1 of the activity needs to be completed by 8 February
Stage 2
- Read the annotated entries by your peers
- Choose two that interest you and briefly (maybe 50 words) comment on what features are of interest and why.
- Stage 2 of this activity needs to be completed by 15 February
Reference management software (option 2)
Reference management software is a serious consideration for your work within higher education. This invaluable process enables you to store, catalogue and build your own academic resources. In addition you can selectively share items with colleagues and students for distributed and collaborative teaching and research practices.
We are suggesting a use of one of the following as an alternative option (or in addition to) the annotated bibliography within the WIKI in order to carry out the above acitivity.
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Zotero is a powerful open source tool and free to download and use. Zotero started life as a Firefox Add On but now with version 3, is freestanding. Zotero is particularly good for collaboration and sharing and storing references from journals, books, PDF file and web pages systematically by grabbing them from the web. You can also add a further plug-in which enables you to insert your citations within a document (using the appropriate convention) at the click of a button.
We have set up a group library in Zotero for #fslt and added some resources. There is a folder for each week of the Course. Note how the resources have been tagged.
In order to add your contributions to the group library you will first of all have to add resources to your own Zotero library and then click and drag them into the #fslt15 group library. Alternatively you can add resources to the group library manually.
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Mendeley is a web service that is similar to Zotero, but runs in a stand-alone desktop client or in a web-based client. It is not yet as powerful as Zotero but is being developed rapidly.
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CiteUlike is a free online service for managing and discovering scholarly references.
If you choose to use a social citation tool then make sure that you use the tag #fslt15 for your contributed resources.
A note about Google accounts
Comments in Google Docs will be anonymous unless people are signed in to a Google account. This document is fully public so anyone with the link can edit it anonymously without being signed in. This is the easiest - most pragmatic - thing to do for an open access course. You do not need to be signed in to edit the document. But, of course if you are not signed into a Google account, you will not be automatically recognised.
- If you want your name to appear automatically on your comments you will need to be signed into a Google account in the same browser as you are using for FSLT15.
- If you are at Brookes (or any other institution that uses Google Apps for Education as their email provider) being signed into your email account in another browser tab will do it.
- If you have another - personal - Gmail account you can, of course, sign in to this by opening another tab in your browser.
- If you do not have a Google account - and want one - you can sign up easily enough. Though I understand why people may not want to.
- If you choose not to have a Google account, just identify yourself in the comment with something like: "Hi, George here... I just wanted to say..."
References
- Sample, M. (2011) Sharing Research and Buliding Through Zotero. http://learningthroughdigitalmedia.net/sharing-research-and-building-knowledge-through-zotero accessed: 22nd January 2012