Roger Rees
Academic and research departments
About
Biography
Roger's role is to support staff in the development and implementation of approaches to the application of technology to enhance learning and teaching. His role is particularly to contribute to enhancing and supporting the academic practices of staff through a range of professional development opportunities and co-ordinating a network of e-Learning Practitioners.
Roger joined the University of Surrey in August 2009. He has worked for over twenty years in a variety of roles in Further and Higher Education. These have included working as a Senior Lecturer, leading a number of successful JISC funded projects, and most recently as Head of Learning Enhancement and PPD at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication. He is qualified as a trainer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and has a MA in Networked Media Environments, specialising in the application of emerging technology to enhance learning and collaboration. Roger's areas of particular interest include exploring how current trends in digital and networked culture offer the potential for innovative and pedagogically sound approaches to enhancing learning, creativity and collaboration.
Publications
After spending a year working on the development of a new online Master's programme in higher education, members of the development team were interviewed to reveal their thoughts about the nature of the programme. The dialogue of each interview was summarised as a concept map. Analysis of the resulting maps included a modified Bernsteinian analysis of the focus of the concepts included in terms of their semantic gravity (i.e. closeness to context) and the degree of resonance with the underpinning regulative discourse of the programme. Data highlight a number of potential issues for programme delivery that centre around the use of appropriate language to manage student expectations in relation to the process of learning and the emotional responses this can stimulate, as well as the tensions that can be foregrounded between the demands of teaching and research within a university environment.
There is growing recognition that socio-constructivist representations of feedback processes, where students build their own understanding through engaging with and discussing feedback information, are more appropriate than cognitivist transmission-oriented models. In parallel, practice has developed away from hard-copy handwritten or typed feedback comments, towards the provision of e-feedback in Learning Management Systems (LMS). Through thematic analysis of activity-oriented focus groups with 33 Undergraduate students, the present study aimed to explore 1) students’ experience of engaging with feedback in the LMS; 2) barriers to students’ engagement; and 3) students’ perceptions of the potential for technology to ameliorate these barriers. The data reveal particular barriers to engagement created by the LMS environment; grades and feedback are commonly separated spatially, limiting attention to the latter. Additionally, the distributed location of feedback from different tasks limits synthesis of feedback. Nevertheless, students perceived that the LMS environment affords opportunities for addressing such challenges, particularly in relation to the potential for a LMS tool to synthesise feedback information across modules, and to direct students to resources to develop their skills. The findings are discussed in the context of cycles of engagement with feedback, and implications for the principled use of technology in feedback processes are discussed.