Educational Tools
PAC (Pedagogy Action Card) game
The game invites groups of lecturers to critical examine their own pedagogic practice. By adopting a creative, inquisitive, reflective mindset, the focus of the discussion and debate shifts from how a session is delivered, to how the students are responding and behaving during the taught session. It is the impact of the session on the learners that is the primary focus of the game. It therefore challenges the preconceived notions as to how students might experience and learn during a session.
The PAC game was trialled at the AdvanceHE annual Learning and Teaching conference (2019) to much acclaim, and in 2023 the game has since been further enhanced and professionally printed to enable institutions to purchase copies.
As an Educational Consultant, I am available to deliver the PAC game and a research presentation at your institution and can tailor the content of the presentation to align with your requirements. 2.5 to 3 hours has proved to be a good length of time to accommodate this content. The maximum numbers of staff to undertake the game at one sitting would be 36.
The PAC game is also for sale! The price for the game and a set of additional PAC cards is £55.
To discuss inviting me to your institution as a consultant, or to order a copy of the PAC game, please email janebartholomew5@gmail.com
Bartholomew’s Taxonomy of Self:
The motivated undergraduate student
This taxonomy invites lecturers, managers and course teams to refocus their attention toward developing Student Autonomy. This involves questioning how students’ behaviours and competencies develop as they study in higher education. By taking a person-centred approach to support students to become independent and autonomous, students will then have developed the necessary skills to prepare them well for their futures.
For related context, the average age of a student studying for a 3 to 4 year undergraduate course is 18 to 22 years old. In psychology terms, this is when humans transition between adolescence and young adulthood.
This therefore begs the question:
How well do managers and lecturers accommodate this natural phenomenon as they design their courses, develop the curriculum and determine the most appropriate pedagogies to use when delivering taught sessions?
Every student brings with them a unique set of beliefs, experiences, fears, anxieties and aspirations to university. Therefore, providing each individual student with the opportunity to become ‘self-aware’, ‘independent’ and ‘autonomous’ will invoke the necessary traits for them to become confident, articulate graduates.
‘Bartholomew’s Taxonomy of Self’ has been designed to support course teams to reflect on how well their course supports the students’ self-awareness and improves their abilities to think and act independently, both of which are motivators that incite autonomous behaviours. Student Autonomy is therefore proposed as a step forward that addresses the growth and development of the student.