Brian Rock: Providing Effective Feedback to Enhance Student Learning

Tuesday 12 February 2008

Providing Effective Feedback to Enhance Student Learning

Three times a semester the postgraduates at the English department at Stirling University organise teacher training sessions for teaching assistants. I began teaching in the departement on September 2007 on the first year undergraduate module called 'Author, Reader, Text', and this semester I will be teaching on another first year module 'Texts and Contexts'. See http://www.english.stir.ac.uk/undergraduate-current/modules/index.php for more details on the current modules being offered through the department. In order to improve upon my teaching practices I am actively involved in helping to run the sessions on offer for teaching assistants, and next week I'll be giving a paper on the importance of giving effective feedback to students to enhance their learning and improve communication between tutors and students and between a student and his or her peers. If you have any ideas or suggestions of things that you use in tutorials in your feedback practices, feel free to contact me. Next week I'll publish the paper I will give at this session and give an overview of what other teaching assistants see as being effective feedback.

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About me

I am taking on this Ph.D. researching Anglo-Irish literature in a postcolonial context to undertake academic training and pursue a teaching, research and publishing career in academia. My undergraduate and postgraduate career served as excellent preparation for research providing knowledge in Anglo-Irish and postmodern literature and critical theory and giving me my first publishing opportunity. My work experience as academic tutor and English language teacher have developed a keen interest in teaching and fostering students’ literary and language interests. After careful consideration, I commenced a Ph.D at University of Stirling due to the English department’s cluster of staff distinguished in the field of postcolonial studies including my supervisor Professor David Richards, director of Stirling’s Centre for Commonwealth Studies. The feasibility of my project stems from Stirling’s strength in resources on postcolonial studies and easy access to the National Library of Scotland. The university provides research skills training both within the department and through the Stirling Graduate Research School which have included seminars on time and project management, CV writing and job applications, a teacher training course and workshops of postcolonial studies. I have taken the opportunity to organise and present papers at three postgraduate conferences for the department and have attended conferences externally.

About my research

Provisional title of dissertation: A study of representations of national and cultural identity in Irish and African post-colonial writing.

This research project contributes to the growing field of minority discourse studies pioneered by Deleuze and Guattari to fully engage with the concepts of ‘minor’ and ‘major’ writing. Through a study of the Irish writer Flann O’Brien’s novels and journalism and by introducing Ireland into the debate of minority discourse theory, I raise the question of to what extent these concepts can adequately describe the Irish condition, and more specifically, O’Brien’s work. Introducing Irish literature into this debate will complicate and expand the limits of current models of postcoloniality that are traditionally applied to 'third world' nations and their cultural productions. As yet there has been no study focusing exclusively on O’Brien in terms of postcolonialism and in relation and comparison to other postcolonial writers and criticism. My research examines common features between Irish and African writers, in order to highlight similarities and differences between how such authors treat ideas of landscape and the nation, concepts of the real and the imaginary, and formations of ethnic identity and myths of nationhood. Such Irish and African authors include Patrick McCabe, Mairtin Ó Cathain, Ciaran Carson, B. Kojo Laing, Ben Okri and Syl Cheney-Coker.

Academic Events Attended

Fantasy Ireland: Imaginings and Re-imaginings, Seventh Annual Irish Studies Conference organised by the NEICN (North East Irish Culture Network), University of Sunderland, November 2009.

IASIL, University of Glasgow, July 2009.

Old Irish, New Irish conference, National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), June 2009.

PSA conference, WIT (Waterford Institute of Technology), May 2009.

Crosscurrents Conference, University of Aberdeen, April 2009.

Teaching event at University of Edinburgh.

Reading After Empire, University of Stirling, September 2008.

Interrogating the Postcolonial, Royal Holloway University London, July 2008.

Poetry and Translation Conference, University of Stirling, July 2008.

Caribbean-Scottish Studies Conference, University of Stirling, June 2008.

Translating Christianity Colloqium, University of Stirling, May 2008.

Exploding the Canon Conference, University of Stirling, May 2008.

Crosscurrents Conference, University of Strathclyde, April 2008.

Postgraduate Symposium in Postcolonial Studies, University of Stirling, April 2008.

Politics of Memory Workshops, University of Stirling, November 2007.

Retelling Tales Conference, University of Stirling, May 2007.

Conference papers

'Fantasy landscapes for the English traveller: Patrick McGinley's textual indebtedness to Flann O'Brien in The Trick of the Ga Bolga'. Paper to be presented to Fantasy Ireland: Imaginings and Re-Imaginings, Seventh Annual Irish Studies Conference, November 2009.

'Flann O'Brien's minor modernism: deconstructing Anglo-Irish heritage in At Swim-Two-Birds'. Paper presented to IASIL Conference, University of Glasgow, July 2009.

'Linguistic postcolonial concerns within the Irish Free State: Brian O'Nolan's minor literature'. Paper presented to PSA Conference, WIT (Waterford Institute of Technology), May 2009.

'Representing immigrant experience within Ireland in Roddy Doyle's The Deportees'. Paper presented to New Irish, Old Irish Conference, NUIG (National University of Ireland, Galway), June 2009.

Paper presented to Crosscurrents Conference, University of Aberdeen, April 2009.

'Appropriating Sween(e)y: Authority and the Anglo-Irish canon'. Paper presented to Exploding the Canon Conference, University of Stirling, May 2008.

'Problems with identifying the postcolonial status of Flann O'Brien'. Paper presented to the Postgraduate Symposium in Postcolonial Studies, University of Stirling, April 2008.

'Subaltern politics and metafiction in Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds'. Paper presented to Crosscurrents Conference, Strathclyde University, April 2008.

‘Poetics of defamiliarisation: a comparative reading of Ben Okri’s The Famished Road and Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman'. Paper presented to Contemporary Encounters: Africa and Europe Conference, University of Basel, July 2007.

‘Voicing the marginalised Irish working class in the texts of Flann O'Brien’. Paper presented to InVisibilities: Absence and Presence on Cultural Texts and Images Conference, University of Dundee, June 2007.

‘Defying generic empiricism: hybridity and ambiguity in Salman Rushdie’s novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories’. Paper presented to the Retelling Tales Conference, University of Stirling, May 2007.

‘Representations from the Celtic Twilight: Irish gender and sexuality in the Irish Free State’. Paper presented to Gender and Sexualities Conference, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, May 2004.

Teaching Experience

Teaching Experience

Teaching Fellow, Department of English Studies, University of Stirling 2009-2010
Taught ENG 9FB: African Writing in English
Third Year Undergraduate option module

Teaching Assistant, Department of English Studies, University of Stirling, 2007-2009.

ENG 9X3

ENG 912

ENG 911
Full responsibility for two tutorial groups (total 12 students per group) in a first semester module on Author, Reader, Text and two groups for a second-semester module on Texts and Contexts.
Planned lesions of a range of fiction, drama, poetry and film from the medieval to the twentieth centuries, including works by Chaucer, Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Alfred Tennyson, Sarah Kane, Quentin Tarrantino and J.M. Coetzee.
Advised students on writing strategies and general academic skills.
Led discussion, marked and gave feedback on academic essays produced by students in class and during office hours.
Presented two papers at teacher training sessions I organise for the Department of English Studies on giving effective feedback and group and team work activities in tutorials.

Tutor, DAICE and Student Learning Services, University of Stirling, 2007-2009.
Gave workshops and one-to-one tutorials on grammar and spelling, essay writing, academic journals, plagiarism, and time management to mature students, international students, and students with learning disabilities.
Attended career development workshops on learning styles and giving effective feedback organised by the Department of Education.

Tutor, Centre for English Language Teaching, University of Stirling, 2007-2009
Taught academic reading, writing, listening and speaking skills to two groups of international postgraduate students on the pre-sessional EUS and in-sessional academic writing and oral presentation skills courses.
Marked and gave feedback on academic essays produced by students in one-to-one tutorials.

Tutor and Lecturer, School of Management and Languages, Heriot Watt University, 2006.
Assumed full responsibility for two modules, comprised of translators and interpreters (total 30 students), on advanced written and spoken English.
Planned tutorials on a range of topics (economics, history, law and business and language awareness).
As part of the course team, I wrote and delivered a lecture on censorship and the law in modern Ireland.

Tutor, Department of English, Jagiellonian University, 2004.
Assumed full responsibility for a module delivered to first year English students (total 40 students) on literary comprehension and analytical skills.
Developed the module, assigned readings and topics, led discussion, advised students of writing strategies, graded and evaluated student work.

Teacher of English as a foreign language in Cracow, Dublin and Edinburgh, 2003-2007.
Taught a range of levels from Beginners to Proficiency levels, exam classes, IELTS, business English, group and one-to-one lessons.
Planned and co-ordinated lessons and social and cultural activities.