Reply To: Pressure groups inquiry (A-Level Politics)
I have now uploaded the new inquiry journal (which isn’t designed to be issued as a single booklet, but as individual sheets – some of which may be filled in on screen if students prefer, and one of which should be printed on A3). Those familiar with the previous journal will not notice many differences over the first few pages (except that the first page is missing because I didn’t have access to a Word version of that!). The first substantial difference occurs on page 7 of the new journal (page 14 of the old – I have removed a lot of redundant repeat investigative journal pages because students can add these as they need them. I have also removed the CRAAP Testing Rubric because that is available separately and is not specific to this inquiry). Don’t forget that this journal is intended to be viewed in conjunction with our LibGuide , which explains how all the resources are intended to be used.
The first changes students this year will encounter are:
- The debate will need to take place on screen due to the Coronavirus school closures here in the UK, which is very different to debating in the classroom. To get things started we have therefore decided to ask students to produce a very short (90 second) opening statement, which they will then have a chance to respond to ‘live’.
- We decided that trying to make notes on others’ debates in highly structured sheets placed too high a cognitive load on students last year, and led to lack of detail in notes taken during the debate. This may have contributed to the fact that many then did not then really use evidence from others’ groups in subsequent essays. This year we have decided to reduce cognitive load by using a much looser Cornell-style note-making sheet, which allows students to organise the notes they make after the debate, rather than trying to do it as they are writing (see below for snapshot of page 7 from the new journal). We also decided we were asking for too much peer feedback at this stage and, as a result, it was poor. Peer feedback at this stage will be now done informally via Teams group chat.
I’ll post another time about the substantial changes we made to the second half of the inquiry – and Joe may have comments of his own to add.
