Induction

Induction Activities

These activities will help you study the course effectively as well as complete all required elements successfully. Therefore, it is important that you engage with all induction activities before you start the study of Unit 1. Engaging with the induction activities before course start will also ensure that you spend the right amount of time on your study, as outlined below.

In this course, we estimate that you will spend around 6 hours studying per week, depending on your previous knowledge of teaching Scots, your level of academic skills, and the intensity of your engagement. Please note that the study time estimate only takes into account the engagement with the core study materials, the preparation for and reflection on your classroom application. In addition to the study time, you will spend time applying your new skills in your classroom.

1. Website Tour

To help you get started and find your way around the course website, we have prepared a webtour for you, which you can watch here.

Activity 1

After watching the webtour, go to the course website and locate the following items:

    1. The study planner

    2. The course forum

    3. Unit 1

    4. The reflective blog

    5. Your learning log

Then move on to the next activity, where you will engage with the course guide that will explain the purpose and function of the above items you located on the website.

2. Course Guide

Activity 2

To help you understand how your study of the course will work, it is important that you read the course guide.

This guide explains:

• course structure

• course content and materials

• the tutor’s role

• tutorials

• assessment

• professional recognition

3. Live online induction tutorial

You are required to participate in the induction online tutorial, where you can meet your tutor and fellow students, learn how this course is structured, where to find key information, and get advice on how to study this course most effectively. Don’t miss this introduction as it will help you succeed in your studies.

The induction tutorials will take place in Microsoft Teams and more information is available in your study planner - the course timetable.

Find the date and time of the induction tutorial on the study planner.

Activity 3

1. Take some time to locate your tutorial times in the course timetable and open the Teams tutorial welcome page to ensure everything is working for you. If not, please contact your tutor via the course forum to ask for help.

4. How to record your learning and monitor your progress

Activity 4

Each unit starts with an introduction and a list of its key learning objectives. This is followed by a number of activities. Each unit has a similar format.

To understand that you are 'taking away' the right things from your study, we provide many examples and model answers.

As you go through each unit, we suggest you keep a learning log. We have provided a tool for you, which you might want to use - the Learning Log which is a blog that only you and your tutor can access. However, if you prefer keeping a record of your learning in a different way, you can decide to use another approach, for example, take notes on paper, in a Word document or any other format of your choice on aspects that are of particular interest to you. This will then constitute your summary of key things to take away from each unit. In addition, you might want to take a note of some of the weblinks and other resources introduced in each unit for future reference.

No-one will be able to view the entries you make in your reflective blog except you and your tutor. At times you may even want to ask your tutor for feedback on some notes you have taken. Do set your blog to 'allow comments' so that you can return to existing posts and add further thoughts, and so that your tutor can add comments; however, note that your tutor's comments will not be preserved should you decide to export the content of the blog at the end of the module.  Do make a note in a separate post of any important points made by your tutor.

Now:

• find the learning log using the link above,

• check how it works,

• make a test post summarising your expectations of this course.

5. Meet your fellow students

The course forum is the central space in this course for you to interact with your fellow students and your tutors. Here you can ask questions or engage in discussions with others.

Your tutor will post information about tutorials here and also provide a quick overview each week of important unit activities. This space will also be used to complete the Application and reflection tasks.

The same discussion forum is used for every Unit.  It is located in the 'Course induction and tools' section.

It is important to check the discussion forum regularly and contribute as often as possible.  To help you with that you can subscribe to the forum by clicking the 'subscribe' button under 'Email subscription' below the forum start page.  This is where you can also change your email preferences to set how frequently you want to receive email notifications of what has been posted in the forum.

Activity 5

1. Go to the course forum and get to know your fellow students. Post a message to briefly introduce yourself – that is, giving name, location, job role, reasons for studying this course – and share any experiences and/or burning questions you might have in relation to teaching Scots language and culture.

6. Our course on Twitter

Activity 6

To help you establish a community of practice with your fellow students as well as students who have already studied our module, we have set up a hashtag on Twitter for this course: #OU_ScotsCPD. You will see that at certain points throughout your study of the course we will encourage you to share ideas, resources and examples of your Scots language teaching practice with your peers, using this hashtag. We will also post updates relating to the course and related activities here.

Access the materials former students and the tutor team have posted here already and browse these using either https://twitter.com/hashtag/ouscotscpd or #OUScotsCPD.

If you feel particularly inspired by any of the tweets, feel free to comment on or ‘like’ these.

7. Assessment

Assessment requirements

All assessment in the course is formative. The approach is to learn from the contributions of colleagues, from engaging with feedback you receive and giving feedback yourself.

You will complete the application tasks which form the preparation for the professional recognition tasks for which you will receive tutor feedback and recognition from the General Teaching Council for Scotland on successful completion.

Activity 7

Now read the assessment section of the course guide for further detail about the assessment tasks, marking criteria and arrangements.

Take a note of the assessment you will need to complete:

• what the assessment consists of paying attention to the application tasks as well as the professional recognition element
• where you need to complete the assessment tasks
• when these tasks are due
• what marking criteria will be used by your tutor
• what did you learn about the GTCS professional recognition award.

8. The coaching wheel for professional recognition

A baseline self-evaluation coaching wheel is a valuable tool for exploring your current position and helping you to critically reflect on yourself as a professional and your practice. For more details see GTCS: using a coaching wheel.

Self-evaluation should help you to:

• reflect on what you have done

• think about what you might do next

• consider your own progress and development

• understand your professional practice, your professional learning and the impact of this on your thinking, professional actions, those you work with and/or support, and the pupils and their learning.

Here is an example of a completed self-evaluation coaching wheel

(GTCS, 2012)

View self-evaluation coaching wheel as a downloadable pdf. 84.4 KB

The spokes on the self-evaluation wheel above are adapted from the GTCS’s Self-evaluation Wheel: Professional Actions in Career-long Professional Learning to include the professional actions relating specifically to pedagogy, learning and subject knowledge and curriculum and assessment from the Standard for Career-long Professional Learning (GTCS, 2012).

A coaching wheel may help you create clarity about the areas of the standard you wish to focus on, and to perform a simple gap analysis relating to where you are now and where you would like to be.

8.1 Working towards Professional Recognition

To begin working towards Professional Recognition:

1. Download the coaching wheel for professional actions in career-long professional learning from the GTCS website. Also, download this blank wheel template to complete with your own reflections.

Consider your current practice in teaching Scots language and culture, and plot where you are on each spoke of the coaching wheel. Think about where you might gauge yourself on the wheel and mark the number that matches your thoughts with a dot:

• 0 = really not confident/lots of areas to develop or work on;

• 10 = feel very confident/accomplished in this area.

2. Now select an area of the coaching wheel to reflect on your practice. You can use the table on page 2 of the PDF to help you with your reflections for completing the coaching wheel activity.

3. Looking at your completed coaching wheel, reflect on the following questions:

This provides a pre-programme baseline of your current practice in Scots language education and areas for development.

Your coaching wheel is for your own information, you are not required to share it with your pedagogy tutor at this time. You will revisit this coaching wheel in Unit 7 of the programme to evaluate your progress and development over the period of the course.

Reference

General Teaching Council Scotland (2021) Standard for Career-long Professional Learning. Available at: http://www.gtcs.org.uk/web/FILES/Professional-Standards-2021/2021-Standard-for-Career-Long-Professional-Learning.pdf (accessed 26 August 2024)  

9. Critical evaluation and writing practice

The following task is from the OpenLearn open access online short course called ‘Succeeding in postgraduate study’. It explores the difference between descriptive and critical writing.¹

It is important that you understand the difference between descriptive writing and adopting a critical stance, and are able to show clear evidence of your understanding in your writing. Table 1 provides some examples of this.

Activity 9

Complete this 'Writing Critically'² task adapted from the Institute of Education website.

If you have been told your writing is not critical enough, it probably means that your writing treats the knowledge claims as if they are true, well supported, and applicable in the context you are writing about. This may not always be the case.

Example extracts from a critical review

In these two examples, the extracts refer to the same section of text. In each example, the section that refers to a source has been highlighted in bold.

Example a

There is a strong positive effect on students, both educationally and emotionally, when the instructors try to learn to say students' names without making pronunciation errors (Kiang, 2004).

Example b

Kiang (2004) gives various examples to support his claim that "the positive emotional and educational impact on students is clear" (p.210) when instructors try to pronounce students' names in the correct way. He quotes one student, Nguyet, as saying that he "felt surprised and happy" (p.211) when the tutor said his name clearly. The emotional effect claimed by Kiang is illustrated in quotes such as these, although the educational impact is supported more indirectly through the chapter. Overall, he provides more examples of students being negatively affected by incorrect pronunciation, and it is difficult to find examples within the text of a positive educational impact as such.

Now answer this question:

Which example do you think best meets the critical evaluation and analysis criterion for this course? Why?

Go to our model answer.