First Steps into Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

What is Learning?

Introductions

Programme

• What is Learning?• Core Concepts for Teaching in

HE• Planning & Running Sessions• Next Steps

Aims

• Introduce the group to one another

• Provide basic guidance on Learning theories Objective-led teaching

• Practice a small piece of “microteaching”• Address some of your practical challenges of teaching

Your Objectives

• With partner, pairs or a three

• What do you hope to be able to DO better as a result of this course

Your Objectives

Feedback

• Objectives define students knowledge, understanding, intellectual and subject specific skills at each level.

• Objectives clarify the purpose of the course – for you and your students

• Objectives help you decide and prioritise which topics to teach, and in what depth

• Objectives help define appropriate teaching and learning strategies

• Thinking about how students demonstrate their learning leads naturally to purposeful assessment tasks

Objective led

Objectives

What do I hope you will be able to do better as a result of this morning’s sessions?

• Describe some approaches to learning

• Write [effective] learning outcomes

• Elaborate/develop [some] “effectiveness criteria” for teaching

Learning

“I want to talk about learning. But not the lifeless, sterile, futile, quickly forgotten stuff that is crammed in to the mind of the poor helpless individual tied into his seat by ironclad bonds  of conformity! I am talking about LEARNING - the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb everything he can see or hear or read about gasoline engines in order to improve the efficiency and speed of his 'cruiser'. I am talking about the student who says, "I am discovering, drawing in from the outside, and making that which is drawn in a real part of me." I am talking about any learning in which the experience of the learner progresses along this line: "No, no, that's not what I want"; "Wait! This is closer to what I am interested in, what I need"; "Ah, here it is! Now I'm grasping and comprehending what I need and what I want to know!” Carl Rogers

Rogers, C. and Freiberg, H. J. (1993) Freedom to Learn (3rd edn.)

My Learning and view of students learning

With a partner, discuss and produce a joint ‘poster’ on the following:

• How do you learn best? • How [have / will] your own learning

experiences influence(d) how you teach? • What strategies and techniques [do you /

would you] employ to help students learn?

Some models / theories of learning

• Learning Cycles• Approaches to Learning• Process / product• Deep / Surface• Social Learning

What is Learning?

Write down, in one sentence, your definition of learning.

Conceptions of Learning

1. Learning as a quantitative increase in knowledge. Learning is acquiring information or ‘knowing a lot’.

2. Learning as memorising. Learning is storing information that can be reproduced.

3. Learning as acquiring facts, skills, and methods that can be retained and used as necessary.

4. Learning as making sense or abstracting meaning. Learning involves relating parts of the subject matter to each other and to the real world.

5. Learning as interpreting and understanding reality in a different way. Learning involves comprehending the world by reinterpreting knowledge.

How do your definitions fit with these?

Deep and surface• Surface learning

– Rote learning or memorisation• Deep learning

– Learning with understanding

• 2 examples follow:– How would you characterise these?– Discuss with your neighbour(s)

• MARTON F and SÄLJÖ (1976) "On Qualitative Differences in Learning — 1: Outcome and Process" Brit. J. Educ. Psych. 46, 4-11

The first time I read it I really came away with the feeling I hadn’t actually got anything from it ... A few of the things I would just skim through it and got completely the wrong meaning, just because I assumed it would be a different meaning ... I thought ... I must be reading it wrong or something. So I just read through it a second time very slowly. Sometimes I would read it aloud, that kind of helped ... It was very much easier to understand ... I think actually this time I understood what they were talking about rather than just made up what they were talking about by making little references back to it …

There’ll be a topic in the book which the question comes under, and then you hunt through that section to see if they’ve got any... Hopefully, they’ll have the exact question and you can copy it straight down without doing any work at all ... Usually you have to hunt out the various related equations, then you just apply these to the problem. That’s all really.

Strategic learning• Well-organised form of Surface approach; the

motivation is to get good marks. • Learning construed as a game: acquisition of

technique improves performance. • Insofar as learning is not a game, it breaks

down.

• Atherton J S (2011) Learning and Teaching; Deep and Surface learning [On-line: UK] retrieved 19 September 2011 from http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/deepsurf.htm

The lecturer told us his marking scheme, and 16 of the possible 20 marks went for the design, building and

performance of the bridge. It was a model bridge, and only 4 marks, 20% of the marks, were available for the report. So obviously I didn’t put much effort into that at all ... I’m well aware that I’m here to get a degree you know, you don’t write what you think, you write what the tutor wants you to think. And in engineering in

general there’s not much room for that. I think there would be a lot more room for it in subjective things,

and I would do it even more then, presumably.

Concrete Experience

Reflective Observation

Abstract Conceptualis-

ation

Active Experimentatio

n

In practice and also in the

‘microteaching’

This is what we want to encourage

“Theories” – your own and

others’

What we hope you do when you teach

Reproduced with acknowledgement to James Atherton (2009)

Kolb’s experiential learning cycle

Product and Process

• Learning as Process

• Learning as Product or outcome

• Learning and teaching as a subject of inquiry, a field or discipline in its own right– pedagogy, andragogy

Social Learning

Q: Is learning purely a possession of the individual that can be found inside their heads?• Learning is in the relationship between people• We educate for learners to become part of a

community of practice, e.g. a disciplinary community. (See Lave & Wenger)

• There is a connection between knowledge and activity

Summary

• Deep, surface & strategic• Learning Cycles• Process and product• Social and individual

Summary: good practice

• encourage student-tutor contact• encourage student-student co-operation• encourage active learning• give prompt feedback• emphasise time on task• have and communicate high expectations• respect diverse talents and ways of

learning(Chickering & Gamson, 1987)

independent of the mode of engagement