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World Café – engaging learners

Mark Hetherington and Isobel Paterson

(Lecturers in Communication

and English)

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• Overview of the ‘World Café’

• Stevenson College – applications and event(s)

• Feedback from the event

• How it has / can work in the classroom

• A World Café session in Helsinki

• Feedback / plenary

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http://www.theworldcafe.com/

• TWC – innovative, simple methodology for hosting conversations about questions that matter.

• Link and build on each other as people move between groups, share ideas, discover new insights into the questions or issues most important in their life, work, or community.

• As a process, TWC can evoke and make visible the collective intelligence of any group.

• To increase people’s capacity for effective action in pursuit of common aims.

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Stevenson College - EWC

• Why? Learner engagement a constant challenge

• Attempt to build a clear learner engagement strategy

• Led by students – their views central to any decision making

• The start of a process

• Held in Edinburgh Zoo – 15th September 2009

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About the event

• 60 participants – very few had attended a World Cafe event

• Risky?

• Aim – to create a relaxed opportunity for ‘cafe style’ conversations on key issues

• Innovative and participatory methodology with a focus on creative solutions

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Practical arrangements

• Nine tables (students, lecturers, senior management, student guild)

• After discussing issues (recorded on table cloths), everybody, apart from the ‘hosts’ at each table moved to another table

• Different people discussing different issues meant facilitators could pick up themes

• Outcome – collective sense of priorities for engagement

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Types of questions (student led)

• Communication – technology, ways of communicating effectively?

• Staff performance – student involvement in recruiting staff, introduction of student voted good teaching award?

• Management – what do you want to know about how SCE is run, how are students supported on committees?

• Facilities – how is the canteen used, do you get good service from the Advice Centre?

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Types of questions (student led)

• Class rep system – how can that be improved?

• Feedback from lecturers – do you get any, is it enough, how is it communicated?

• Learning resources – adequate library, computers?

• Learning and teaching – teaching methods, should students be involved in course design?

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Agenda for future...

• Develop better communication systems (intranet, VLE)

• How can students feel more secure when complaining about lecturers to other lecturers?

• How are tutors chosen?

• How do we develop a buddy scheme to support students?

• How do we improve social spaces for students?

• Can students pay before starting?

• How do we prepare and support students for participation in college groups?

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Feedback

• “A great way of engagement. By switching tasks, ideas could easily be turned on their head”

• “Really interesting to have all this interpreted by an outside eye and displayed so vividly”

• I liked the dynamic nature of this – I think students found it straightforward to contribute”

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Cross Faculty Approaches

• Two faculties: Creative Industries and Science, Sport and Engineering joined together for a World Cafe event in October 2009

• HMIe inspection in November 2009

• Theme – ‘Who’s afraid of the HMIe?’

• Feedback on this event was excellent

• (The College performed very well in the review by the way!)

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Classroom approaches

• Encouragement to students of literature to encourage them to take responsibility for their own learning:

• Having studied a novel: divide the class into groups where they are asked to discuss these literary techniques:

• Plot, Themes, Setting, Structure, Narrative techniques, Characterisation, Key incidents, Symbolism

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How is this done?

• Students write down their collective input on a communal piece of paper.

• Half of the group move on to the next group and add their ideas to the original written document.

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Discussion after the World Cafe Event?

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Today’s World Cafe!

• Questions to stimulate discussion for today’s ‘World Café’ workshop:

• What does your College do to encourage student input into learning and teaching?

• What factors result in your students ‘dropping out’?

• What does your College do to promote social inclusion? 

• How does the culture of your College promote discussions that result in systems to encourage retention?