Interchange - University of Edinburgh · what makes for good teaching and student learning? ... Interchange Summer 2007 2 ... argued that scholarship means ‘the new interpretation

InterchangeIssue 1: Summer 2007 www.tla.ed.ac.uk/interchange

Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment, The University of Edinburgh, Paterson’s Land, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh EH8 8AQ • tel:0131 651 6661 • email: [email protected]

1. Does ‘The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning’ refer to teaching that is generally considered ‘well done’?

2. Does it represent a form of teaching that is informed by the latest research findings in one’s discipline?

3. Is it concerned with teaching that is based on evidence of what makes for good teaching and student learning?

4. Does it describe research on teaching and learning in one’s particular discipline?

5. What is meant by ‘scholarship’ anyway?

This introductory essay to our inaugural issue of Interchange will address each of these questions. The intent is threefold:

• to unpack the concept of the ‘Scholarship of Teaching and Learning’ and show how it informs the teaching-research relationship;

• to offer a rationale for why in this day and age engagement with the SoTL is an imperative for universities;

• to indicate how SoTL could be further developed and promoted at The University of Edinburgh.

Unpacking the meaning of SoTL

The term ‘scholarship’ has slightly different meanings depending on where one looks. In response to the Universities Funding Council’s decision to separate funds

CONTENTS

Reflections

The Scholarship of TeachingCarolin Kreber 1

Insights

How Do Chinese Students Learn and Study?Rui Xu 7

Profile

Jane Dawson, School of Divinity 10

Guest

The ‘Poor Raymond’ Investigation: Enthusing StudentsPat Bailey 12

Update

Study Skills Advice for StudentsDaphne Loads & Velda McCune 16

Book Review

My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student by Rebekah Nathan 18

News

The Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme 5PG Certificate in University Teaching 17Forthcoming Events 19Guides to Integrative Assessment 20

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning -- No One WayCarolin KreberProfessor of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and Director, TLA Centre

In recent years the phrase ‘Scholarship of Teaching and Learning’, or ‘SoTL’ for short, has become rather popular in the UK as well as internationally, most notably in the US, Canada and Australia. However, what precisely the expression stands for is rarely made sufficiently clear by those employing the term. Let us consider these five questions:

Interchange Summer 2007 www.tla.ed.ac.uk/interchange2

for teaching and research, Lewis Elton (1986, 1992) argued that scholarship means ‘the new interpretation of what is already known’ and that it is fundamental for both research and teaching. In the UK, therefore, interest in SoTL, at least initially, was motivated by an attempt to highlight the relationships between teaching and research.

In the United States, by contrast, the early debate around the ‘scholarship of teaching’ focused on the recognition of, and rewards for, teaching (Healey, 2000). In 1990, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching produced a widely-cited report entitled Scholarship Reconsidered (Boyer, 1990) which introduced an entirely new way of thinking about academic work. A four-faceted model of scholarship was proposed:

• the scholarship of discovery,

• the scholarship of integration,

• the scholarship of application (later changed to engagement),

• the scholarship of teaching.

Though each of the four domains of scholarship was seen to be distinct, academic work was perceived to be grounded in all four.

The impetus for the proposed model was the widely shared perception that traditional research leading to the advancement of knowledge in the discipline (referred to as the scholarship of discovery) was the only activity that counted as scholarship at American

universities, and the only one that was adequately rewarded at the time of promotion and annual appraisal of staff. Efforts geared towards enriching teaching and learning environments (or towards those associated with what the new model referred to as the scholarships of integration and engagement), were perceived as seriously undervalued. In the United States, therefore, early interest in the scholarship of teaching was aimed at raising the status of teaching within the academy.

Although the Boyer Report stimulated lively debate, it soon became apparent that there was a serious problem with it. The report had failed to articulate clearly what precisely was ‘scholarly’ about teaching or, put differently, under what conditions the teaching-learning transaction constituted a form of ‘scholarship’. Or had it in the end been the intent to suggest that all university teaching would qualify as an act of scholarship?

The latter would hardly make sense on three grounds. First, it is surely no secret that teaching, though often carried out appropriately and at a high level of quality, can also be done rather poorly and inappropriately. It is doubtful that we would want to refer to such practice as SoTL.

Second, the notion of ‘scholarship’ is typically associated with a ‘deep knowledge base’, an ‘inquiry orientation’, ‘critical reflectivity’, ‘peer review’ and ‘sharing’ (Andresen, 2000). Applying these five criteria to teaching would mean to be curious about teaching and learning phenomena and moved to reflect critically on particular problem areas encountered in the practice of teaching and student learning. It would involve applying what is known about teaching and learning (from generic and discipline-specific pedagogical literature) to the problems encountered in one’s teaching. It would include critically reflecting on the possible effects of any changes made and interpreting the results in persuasive and defensible ways. Finally, it would entail sharing the insights gained from this work with those who can use them to inform their own. The likely consequence of these practices would be the advancement of teaching, and one would hope the enhancement of the student learning experience, rather than the continuation of problematic teaching.

Third, and we will come back to this point later, the Scholarship of Teaching is not about celebrating traditional teaching practices if they are no longer effective in a system of mass higher education. Furthermore, it is linked to creativity, innovation and change. Elton (2000) expressed this most succinctly: “The scholarship of teaching is concerned not so much with doing things better but with doing better things”.

Scholarship of Teaching and

Learning

Scholarship of Engagement

Scholarship of Discovery

Scholarship of Integration

Reflections

Interchange Summer 2007 www.tla.ed.ac.uk/interchange�

Ten years after Scholarship Reconsidered had appeared, Lee Shulman, then President of the Carnegie Foundation, suggested that

... we develop a scholarship of teaching when our work as teachers becomes public, peer-reviewed and critiqued. And exchanged with members of our professional communities so they, in turn, can build on our work.

My intent up to this point has been to answer the first and the last of the five questions posed at the very beginning of this essay. In relation to the last question, ‘What is scholarship anyway?’, we have seen that scholarship is associated with features such as creativity, innovation, application of ‘a deep knowledge base’, ‘critical reflectivity’ and ‘peer review’. Since the same criteria apply also to research, it stands to reason that SoTL should be valued on a par with research. We can now also articulate what SoTL is not: it is not a way of celebrating traditional teaching and assessment practices that may no longer be effective in a system of mass education, or indeed innovative ones, unless these are based on sound evaluative research. In relation to the first question, ‘Does SoTL describe teaching that is generally considered ‘well done’’?, we can say it does not unless other criteria are fulfilled as well. We can also, at least partially, already answer the second question, ‘Does SoTL represent a form of teaching that is informed by the latest research findings in one’s discipline?’, though the answer to that one is a little more complex.

Clearly, at university-level, and in particular at research-led institutions such as The University of Edinburgh, teaching is informed by long-established as well as recent research outcomes as discussed in books, journal articles, websites, conference papers and so forth. In addition, many staff are actively engaged in ground-breaking pure or applied research themselves which also informs and enriches their teaching (though probably to varying degrees depending on whether a course is taught at pre-honours or post-graduate level). However, as important as these linkages between research and teaching are, they are not, in essence, what SoTL is about. This is so because the ‘deep knowledge base’ associated with SoTL is not limited to knowledge of our discipline and how it advances but, critically, includes knowing about how the discipline can best be learnt and taught. Lee Shulman coined the term ‘pedagogical content knowledge’ in reference to the latter to contrast it with ‘content knowledge’ (the knowledge of the discipline or subject taught).

The disciplinary dimension of SoTL

The perception that SoTL needs to be firmly embedded within the disciplines and is best promoted

through disciplinary ties, has been reflected in the launch of national umbrella organisations such as: The Learning and Teaching Support Network in the UK (now part of the Higher Education Academy), the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the United States, and the Carrick Institute for Teaching and Learning in Australia. All of these organisations provide discipline-specific resources on teaching and learning and offer opportunities for academic staff to engage in inquiry projects focused on particular aspects of teaching and learning within their disciplines.

Discussing the nature of discipline-based pedagogical inquiry in their book Disciplinary Styles in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Huber and Morreale (2002) offer numerous examples of how the research processes typically associated with particular disciplines (for example, experimentation in physics, ethnography in sociology, or case studies in law), are useful for carrying out inquiry projects on teaching and learning in these disciplines. SoTL, therefore, is not limited to any one particular way of engaging in this kind of work but invites a variety of different approaches. The authors also note that it is not only the preferred methodologies but also the questions which particular disciplines are prone to ask about teaching and learning that may differ. Much could be learnt about university teaching and learning, and the field of SoTL itself be advanced, if the questions, and the methodological approaches used to investigate them, were then ‘traded’ or shared across disciplinary boundaries. Finally, notwithstanding the value of recognising disciplinary differences one should also not lose sight of the fact that there are certain common themes in teaching and learning that cut across disciplinary boundaries.

Questions to be explored in an inquiry project on teaching and learning may be as diverse as:

• How can I best help students grasp particularly challenging concepts in my discipline?

• How can I provide a learning climate in my courses that increases students’ confidence to participate authentically in class discussions?

• How can I help my students to engage with the material more deeply?

• How can I encourage them to become more self-regulating and self-directed learners?

• Whose voices are dominant in my classes and whose are typically silenced and what are the underlying reasons and consequences of that?

• What misconceptions do students new to my subject commonly hold and what are effective ways of helping students construct more valid conceptions?

Reflections


We can now also answer the third question, ‘Is SoTL concerned with teaching that is based on evidence of what makes for good teachiing and student learning?’. In today’s climate of performance accountability, we hear a lot (and, some of us feel, a bit too much) about the need for our practice to be ‘evidence-based’. In the context of SoTL, what is encouraged is evidence-informed teaching. Evidence, or reasons, for one’s practice, may come from discipline-specific and generic sources on teaching and learning we can consult or, at times, from our own inquiry into teaching and learning phenomena in our disciplines.

SoTL and the teaching-research nexus

The Scottish Higher Education Enhancement Committee (SHEEC) decided in March 2006 to bring forward and initiate work on the Research-Teaching Linkages theme. As with all Scottish ‘enhancement themes’, the focus is on enhancing the learning experience of students on taught programmes. The subtitle of the theme is ‘Enhancing graduate attributes’. The theme invites us to challenge the narrow conceptualisation of the teaching-research nexus as ‘teaching which is informed by the outcomes of traditional discipline-based research’. One may ask, how does this traditional view of the research-teaching linkage contribute to the enhancement of graduate attributes? Can students also be exposed to the thinking processes leading to knowledge creation in the discipline, and how do we, at present, ensure that this happens? In what ways might the student learning experience be enriched if students were directly involved in the process of research and in knowledge creation?

The latter is the idea of a shared inquiry between students and teachers in the service of scholarship that Wilhelm von Humboldt had in mind for the University of Berlin in the early nineteenth century, a philosophy that became highly influential not only in Germany but also in other countries. However, its realisation in teaching had to await the advent of problem-based and enquiry-based learning (see Hutchings and O’Rourke, 2002). The change from a system of elite to one of mass higher education in the twentieth and particularly early twenty-first centuries surely may make such intense collaborative inquiry more difficult, but it should not make it unfeasible. As the teaching of some colleagues shows, undergraduate student involvement in inquiry-based learning in still possible. Inquiry-based learning approaches engage undergraduate students directly in the process of knowledge construction. These learning experiences have been linked to students developing graduate attributes needed not just for postgraduate study but importantly for effective participation in their professional and civic lives after undergraduate studies.

SoTL, therefore, is concerned not only with researching how, and how well, students learn under certain conditions but importantly also with exploring questions concerning the goals and purposes of higher education. If, through critical reflection on goals and purposes, the enhancement of generic attributes is identified as an important goal, the next steps in SoTL would involve:

• identifying what these attributes would look like in particular disciplines,

• designing learning environments suitable for promoting them, which in many instances will involve processes encouraging active inquiry-based learning, and

• eventually evaluating the success of these projects.

Important questions to be posed in any SoTL project therefore include:

• What constitute significant and meaningful goals and purposes of teaching in my field and how do these interact with the wider purposes of university education?

• What do I know about student learning and development in relation to these goals?

• What do I know about designing teaching and learning environments that would help to bring about desired forms of academic learning and development? (adapted from Kreber & Cranton, 2000).

The Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences (CILASS) at the University of Sheffield (www.shef.ac.uk/cilass) takes the view that in order to promote inquiry-based student learning, it is important to involve academic staff in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. What is argued is that it is through SoTL that we learn to design learning environments that best serve our students (Kreber, 2007).

Why universities should be supporting SoTL

In the mid 1990s an influential article was published in the widely read American Change magazine (http://critical.tamucc.edu/~blalock/readings/tch2learn.htm). Essentially, the authors of the piece observed that a shift from a teaching to a learning paradigm was required in order to prepare students adequately for the future. It did not take long before the words ‘and learning’ were added to the phrase ‘Scholarship of Teaching’, leading to the now common acronym SoTL.

Similar ideas were picked up by Huber and Hutchings in their recent book The Advancements of Learning:

Reflections


Building the teaching commons (2005), where they argue that university teachers today need to be better prepared “to meet the challenges of educating students for personal, professional and civic life in the twenty-first century”. Drastic changes in learning environments over the past decade, with respect to students, content, assessment practices, and advances in technology, would not only invite pedagogical inquiry but make it a necessity. As a consequence they suggest “the scholarship of teaching and learning is an imperative today, not a choice”.

Importantly, it has been recognised that not only staff but also students need to be invited into SoTL as their success in meeting the challenges associated with the complexity of today’s world hinges on them acquiring a better understanding, a metacognition, of themselves as learners through student-centred teaching and learning.

Further developing and promoting SoTL at The University of Edinburgh

There is no doubt that SoTL is already underway in some departments and practised by individual enthusiasts. But how can we develop it further and promote it more widely?

As we have seen, SoTL involves, ‘a deep knowledge base’, an ‘inquiry orientation’, ‘critical reflectivity’, ‘peer review’ as well as ‘sharing’ or ‘going public’ with the insights and innovations resulting from the inquiry process. A deep knowledge base, an inquiry orientation and critical reflectivity are promoted, not the least, through professional development programmes in university teaching offered at many campuses in the UK. As of this year, TLA will be offering a Post-Graduate Certificate programme for staff interested in professional development of their teaching and in approaching it in a way which is underpinned by scholarship. For further details see the TLA website and the article in this issue of Interchange on the PG Certificate in University Teaching (page 17).

The criteria of ‘peer review’ and ‘sharing’ require some further exploration. As important as published articles on teaching and learning are, it cannot be stressed enough that the ultimate purpose of SoTL is not to contribute to the research literature on teaching and learning, although whenever staff do disseminate their ‘SoTL work’ in this way it should be recognised as one valuable outcome. The chief motivation behind SoTL ought to be that ‘what was done’, ‘how it was done’, ‘why it was done’ and ‘what was achieved as a result’ was in the best interest of students, not in the best interest of the RAE (let alone the QAA). In the end, “Not all things worth counting are countable and

The Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme

This year, the TLA Centre will launch the ‘Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme’. Rather than rewarding past teaching excellence of individual staff, the new scheme is unique for five reasons:

• it is geared towards small teams of staff from a particular school;

• grants are made available for either discipline-specific pedagogical research projects (Type A) or development projects (Type B) aimed at enhancing teaching, learning or assessment practices within that School (projects that cuts across individual Schools will also be supported);

• projects that are designed to inform the implementation of the Teaching and Learning Strategies recently developed by the three Colleges will be given priority;

• links to the Scottish enhancement themes are encouraged (see http://www.qaa.ac.uk/scotland/qualityframework/enhancementthemes.asp);

• the project has to involve post-graduate students as research assistants or collaborators.

The rationale for the last point is that postgraduate students’ involvement in projects will provide them with an opportunity to develop needed expertise in teaching, learning and assessment in their subject area while pursuing their postgraduate degree. Hence the scheme will further contribute to their development as academic practitioners.

Groups of staff can apply for grants of £5000, £10.000 or £15.000. The deadline for the first grant competition will be in the autumn semester. Details of the scheme can be found on the TLA website. TLA will be offering grant application workshops each year and will provide assistance in the dissemination of the projects on various levels, for example, through this newsletter. An annual institutional SoTL Conference is anticipated.

not all things that count are worth counting” (Albert Einstein).

Furthermore, though SoTL will be gladly embraced by those academics who experience a love of teaching, the principal motivation for our SoTL work ought not be limited to whether we find it personally rewarding, as this may put our self-interest above the needs of students. Only if an equally strong reason for why we engage in SoTL is that we perceive an imperative to

Reflections


Useful SoTL website links

Organisations

Carnegie Foundation, USA – www.carnegiefoundation.org/general/index.asp?key=21

Higher Education Academy, UK – www.heacademy.ac.uk/SubjectNetwork.htm

Carrick Institute, AUS – www.carrickinstitute.edu.au/carrick/go

Conferences and Societies

International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSoTL) –www.issotl.org

Annual SoTL Conference City University London – www.city.ac.uk/edc/sotlconference/

Annual SoTL Conference Georgia University, USA – www.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/conference/

Journals

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (IJSoTL) – www.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/

International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (IJTLHE) – www.isetl.org/ijtlhe

Mountainrise: An Electronic Journal Dedicated to SoTL – http://mountainrise.wcu.edu/

act in the best interest of students, will SoTL be an ‘authentic practice’ (Kreber, 2007).

‘Going public’ and sharing one’s work among peers are important features of scholarship and they should not be relaxed in the case of SoTL. However, the very nature of SoTL impels us to choose venues for disseminating our work that reach those audiences that are most likely to appreciate and build on it—and most importantly, it would seem that the audience would have to include students. Often, it will make sense, therefore, to start disseminating this work to one’s departmental colleagues and students and then share it more broadly across departments within the institution. Note as well that the new PG Certificate in University Teaching encourages participants to share the insights gained from small scale inquiry projects with other course participants. Moving from there to presenting one’s work at national and international SoTL conferences to colleagues from one’s own as well as from other disciplines is very valuable not least because of the dialogue that often ensues in these contexts. If in addition the work appears in a reputable journal, even better. TLA encourages dissemination at all these levels.

We can now also answer the fourth question ‘Does SoTL describe research on teaching and learning in one’s particular discipline?’. SoTL involves inquiry into particular questions related to teaching and learning that often originate within one’s own disciplinary context. While some of this work may eventually evolve into full-fledged pedagogical research in a programme or discipline, it is important also to recognise much more modest or small-scale efforts aimed at critically reflecting on one’s own classroom teaching and sharing what was learnt with students and colleagues, as a way of engaging with SoTL.

References

Andresen, L.W. (2000) A usable, trans-disciplinary conception of scholarship, Higher Education Research and Development, 19(2), pp. 137-153.

Boyer, E. (1990) Scholarship Reconsidered. Washington, DC: The Carnegie Foundation.

Elton, L. (2000) ‘Danger of doing the wrong thing righter’, in Evaluate and Improve Conference Proceedings, Open University.

Elton, L. (1992), Research, Teaching and Scholarship in an Expanding Higher Education System, Higher Education Quarterly, 46, pp. 252-268.

Elton, L. (1986), Research and Teaching: symbiosis or conflict, Higher Education, 15, pp. 299-304.

Healey, M. (2000), Developing the scholarship of teaching in higher-education: a discipline-based approach, Higher Education Research and Development, 19(2), pp. 169-189.

Huber, M.T., and Hutchings, P. (2005) The Advancements of Learning: Building the teaching commons. The Carnegie Foundation Report on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.

Huber, M.T., and Morreale, S.P. (2002) Disciplinary Styles in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Exploring Common Ground, Washington, DC: AAHE and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Hutchings, B. and O’Rourke, K. (2002) Introducing Enquiry-Based Teaching Methods in Literary Studies, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 1, pp. 73-83.

Kreber, C. (2007) What’s it really all about? The scholarship of teaching and learning as an authentic practice, International Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Vol. 1(1). http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/current.htm#invitedEssays

Kreber, C. (2006) (ed.), Exploring research-based teaching. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass/Wiley.

Kreber, C., and Cranton, P. A. (2000), Exploring the scholarship of teaching, Journal of Higher Education, 71, pp. 476-495.

Reflections


How Do Chinese Students Learn and Study?Rui Xu

Dr Rui Xu, a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Ningbo University in China, has recently completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Her thesis focused on mainland Chinese Economics students’ approaches to studying and the influences of their teaching-learning environments.

Not only the official statistics but also your own experiences as a university lecturer or tutor will tell you that there are now an increasing number of Chinese students in British universities. The majority of them are from mainland China, rather than from Hong Kong or Taiwan. There is limited research on mainland Chinese students’ experiences of teaching and learning, but as it is likely that you will encounter them in your everyday teaching practice, it may be useful to have some ideas about this group of students.

In this article, I try to provide some information about how they study, what motivates them to study and what they expect of their teachers, based on my recently completed doctoral study at The University of Edinburgh. Since the data I collected came solely from a large group of Economic students in a mainland Chinese university, I do not intend to draw any conclusions about the differences between varied Chinese ethnic groups or of cross-disciplinary applicability. However, my findings may offer some interesting insights that could provide lecturers and tutors with a basis for understanding the confusions and misunderstandings that can arise in lectures, seminars or tutorials.

How Do Chinese Students Learn?

A common misunderstanding is that Chinese students are passive learners who focus only on memorising course materials. And it would not be a surprise if you find very quiet Chinese students who are keen on taking down every word you say and try their best to take them in afterwards. However, studies on Hong Kong students’ ways of studying show that it is misleading to think that the memorisation you observe is simply equated with rote-learning, and such a simple equation is very likely to lead you to the kind of confusion known as the ‘Paradox of the Chinese learner’.

What this paradox captures is that while Chinese students could be perceived as passive rote learners

because they seem to rely on memorisation very much during studying, they nonetheless usually show the high levels of understanding and achievement that generally are associated with trying to seek meaning during study. Many educational researchers, especially those based in Hong Kong, have carried out sufficient studies to help us understand the paradox. In brief, they point out that Chinese students could be attempting to both understand and memorise the material; memorisation and understanding are not seen as opposite, as is generally believed in the Western world, but rather as complementary and equally necessary parts of learning.

In my recently completed study, 552 mainland Chinese Economics students from four academic years filled out an inventory containing measures of their approaches to studying, and 88 of them participated in the follow-up interviews. The findings generally suggest that such a view of memorisation and understanding was prevalent among this group of students. In addition, they distinguished clearly the differences between ‘rote-learning’, ‘memorising for understanding’ and ‘memorising based on understanding’. Furthermore, there seemed to be a commonly shared sense among the students that ‘rote-learning’ was used for different purposes than ‘memorising’ complementing ‘understanding’. As the students pointed out, they usually memorised so as to reinforce knowledge or information that should be retained for use in future circumstances. Those circumstances could be exams, but in the long run, it was important that what they learned would be useful for solving real problems.

The study also adds support to the claim that Chinese students are diligent or hard-working, although when facing exam pressure, some students who showed a lack of interest in what they were learning appeared to use their hard-work to cope minimally with exam requirements. In such cases, rote-learning became an efficient way of taking in enough materials in a limited time, while excluding the need to make an effort to understand the content first. However, the findings from the study also showed that if we as teachers

Insights


could cultivate students’ interest in the subject during everyday teaching and make exams more likely to assess understanding, students were very likely to react in a more positive way.

What Do Chinese Students Expect from University Education?

To react better to students’ needs requires an understanding of what they really want. It is not rare to find that there are studies indicating that Chinese students look for instant value from education, for example, its contribution to career success and improvement in financial status. Since these are extrinsic purposes for studying, it is concluded that students focus on achievement at the expense of understanding. Chinese students’ keenness for cues for exams has been widely used to support such a conclusion.

However, some researchers have already questioned such a conclusion, and suggest there is a compatibility between intrinsic and extrinsic orientations among Chinese students. In other words, the presence of some kinds of extrinsic orientations might not necessarily induce a less desirable way of studying. The study reported in this paper provides more information for a better understanding of this issue, and the table below summarises the kinds of expectations expressed by those students involved in the interview study.

Among those varied types of orientations, the majority of the students report that ‘acquiring knowledge and skills that can be used in specific future employment’ was the most important reason for joining higher education, followed by ‘improving oneself into a more independent and confident person’, ‘obtaining a qualification’, ‘studying a subject of interest to them’, ‘enjoying university life’, ‘preparation for further studies and research’, and ‘undertaking personal responsibilities to families’. More importantly, the majority of the students reported a profile of orientation in which varied types of orientations, either intrinsic or extrinsic to studying, were interwoven. Furthermore, since they held a hybrid orientation, their ways of studying were not solely influenced by any one of them, but their interpretation of the logical relationships between those different aims they were pursuing.

These findings remind us that when facing Chinese students, it appears necessary to understand the relationships between the varied aims they intend to achieve. For instance, it would not be a surprise to hear the following comment, which showed explicitly that although the instant reaction to the question on the purpose of attending higher education was to obtain a certificate for employment, the student also showed his awareness that he would obtain knowledge and skills through education.

I: Why did you decide to become a university student?

Insights

Category Main concern(s) captured

Academic Intrinsic Studying a course for its own sake because of intellectual interest in its content

Extrinsic Obtaining grades good enough to secure a move up the academic ladder

Vocational Intrinsic Acquiring knowledge and skills that can be used in specific future employment

Extrinsic The value of a degree certificate in improving employment prospects

The value of certificates to signify possession of generic skills in improving employment prospects

The value of a postgraduate degree in improving employment prospects

Personal Intrinsic Improving oneself into a more independent and confident person through engaging deeply with course content

Extrinsic Proving oneself to others/Avoiding losing face

Becoming more skilled in dealing with inter-personal relationships

Social Improving parents’ welfare, e.g. happiness, dignity and living standards, through making progress in academic studies

Categories in orientations to education as displayed by a group of mainland Chinese Economics students


S: Its certificate is working in today’s job market.

I: That’s it?

S: While, it’s a very obvious reason and I admit that if it’s not that useful I may have chosen to do something else. […] However, it will be too simple to think that a certificate is everything. Only that you really learn something, your certificate is a real certificate, and can help you to obtain a job.

What Do Chinese Students Expect of Their Teachers?

There have been many studies that show that a culture based on a Confucian heritage gives teachers great status. For instance, people are taught a duty to obey and respect teachers, and an excessive focus on generating ideas goes against the Confucian ideals of modesty. Correspondingly, a Confucian heritage requires teachers to be a moral as well as a knowledge model, to be efficient in leading their students and responsive to students’ individual needs. These features were also established by my research. Students expected their teachers to be knowledgeable and skilled as a teacher, and to care for students as people. These findings contribute to my following suggestions for your interaction with Chinese students.

Firstly, you may make your students feel confused if you tell them straightforwardly that you do not know the answer to a question. This will cause students to doubt your teaching capability rather than encouraging them to explore the answer for themselves. The reason for saying this is that Chinese students are more likely to believe that their lecturers should have a sound knowledge of the subject. Knowing this can

Insights

also help you to overcome the confusion you may feel when Chinese students do not participate in the seminars or tutorials, in which they are allowed more chance to speak and ask. What contributes to such a situation is not that students don’t want to question, to discuss and to speak out their own ideas, but that if they fail to hear final words from you, they feel that the discussions lead them nowhere.

Secondly, besides the capacity to give answers to questions, Chinese students are very likely to judge your skill as a teacher on the following abilities, which they think will let them benefit from your teaching:

• ability to cover sufficient content in textbooks

• ability to present materials clearly and systematically

• ability to tell what is not included in the textbook

• ability to comment on current events critically

Thirdly, Chinese students usually expect their teachers to have appropriate attitudes and values concerning the job of being a teacher, which is not only to present knowledge, but also to share your personal experiences with students. In this case, keeping a distance to be neutral might not be a good idea, for students would like to know more about you to close up the distance. The closer the distance, the more likely you are to get your student involved in the subject you teach.

If you are interested in knowing more about Chinese students you can read my PhD thesis ‘Students’ Experiences of Learning and Teaching in Undergraduate Economics in a Chinese Mainland University’ which is in the TLA Centre Resources Centre as well as the University Library. Or you can contact me at [email protected]


Jane DawsonInterview by Kate Day

Where did your interest in teaching come from?

I think mainly from seeing good teachers teaching. I was lucky that a cousin of mine who taught History was prepared to let me come along after I had done my PhD and research to actually see what it was like for a week. I shadowed her and we talked a great deal about teaching and I was pleasantly surprised and, more importantly, convinced that it was possible to teach history interestingly and excitingly in a secondary school. Also I was lucky enough to have done a little bit of teaching in universities, both as a PhD student and as the first Glenfiddich Research Fellow at St Andrews.

It is quite difficult to run through all the different people, but I’ve learned from seeing good teaching in practice, seeing people who lecture well and watching good teachers in other contexts. For example, one of the best teachers I think I have come across is my teacher at the gym. I have learned an enormous amount just watching what she does and how she does it: the enthusiasm, the way she communicates, all sorts of little things. Interestingly enough, I found that some of the methods which quite clearly worked for most of the class were not working for me. That was a very good lesson: realising that you must provide as many different ways of teaching the same content as you possibly can. The things that work naturally for the person who is teaching aren’t always the things that work best for the person learning.

Obviously history is a passion, and the basic motivation to convey that passion about my subject is what makes me want to teach history. I have been fortunate in that I have been interested in history since I was really quite small and have been privileged enough to be able to continue that interest right through into working life.

What brought you into the e-learning arena?

That’s quite difficult. I’m certainly not a great lover of technology – I am a sort of converted technophobe. I don’t particularly like machines and I certainly don’t

care remotely how they work, so for me it’s very much that I was looking for ways of doing the things I wanted to do and some of the technology helped me to do that.

I think the other key thing is that I have had people around me who have helped me with the technology. Here in the School of Divinity we are extremely lucky to have proper support staff and a full-time computing officer in Jessie Paterson, and if I hadn’t had Jessie none of this really would have happened. The other key person is Kirsty Murray. We all talk together so that the technology is never something separate, and Jessie speaks ‘normal speak’, so we don’t have a problem in trying to convey what we want to do and being given an answer that we don’t understand. So, I think that the ease with which the technological solution has been available here has been crucial.

But I fell into it rather than purposefully striding towards it. It happened. One thing led to another, it gathered its own momentum, things started working, or they partly worked and I wanted them to work fully. But that’s true of all different changes in teaching. The main impetus has been wanting to do things you can’t do any other way.

Has it all been pluses?

No. It definitely hasn’t all been pluses. There were a couple of times at the beginning of using the Virtual Learning Environment where I said, ‘This is just being such a nuisance!’ and I can remember stomping around one summer saying ‘That’s it. I am fed up!’ That was partly technological glitches and less the actual VLE. It was such a barrier to get over that the whole thing became really difficult. Again, we’ve been very lucky in having people like Nora Mogey and the people in MALTS who have been good at listening to problems when we’ve said ‘Look, this just doesn’t work. Please can we have this sorted? This is really irritating for someone who is actually teaching.’

But generally it’s been very positive. I think one of the most positive things has been learning to work

Dr Jane Dawson is a Senior Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History in the School of Divinity. In 2005 she won a Chancellor’s Award for her contribution to the field of e-learning. She has combined e-teaching using WebCT with traditional teaching to develop new ways of teaching history. In 2006, the e-learning team in the School of Divinity also won the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology’s national award for history teaching. Kate Day from the TLA Centre asked her about her keen interest in teaching.

Profile


in a team – not just a teaching team, but one that comprises people with very different expertises. And, having someone with a very scientific background saying, ‘Why do you do that?’ over something which to most historians is obvious and natural meant having to think about what it was we were actually doing, which has been very, very good. For most academic staff, teaching is not generally team teaching and that’s not always been easy, though usually it’s been fun. Learning how to really work as a team as opposed to working alongside colleagues is rather different but very stimulating. Also I was talking through courses with a junior colleague who was full of ideas. I was getting lots of stimulation from that on my own subjects and was also challenged about different ways of doing things. Sometimes I would say, ‘Well I think because I’ve got quite a lot of experience that that won’t work very well’ or ‘Yes, I’ve never thought of that’ or ‘It’s not the sort of thing I would naturally do but it’s worth trying’. So that’s been one of the big pluses for me that rejuvenated my teaching. When you’ve been teaching on and off for more than thirty years you do get stale. It has made me re-think all the things I have been doing, do them slightly differently and therefore do them freshly.

What has been the impact of the formal recognition of your activities?

There was obviously a link between getting the Chancellor’s Award and the National Award: I am sure that the fact that my own university had been prepared to recognise my work helped our application to the National Award. Apart from that I was very touched personally that a lot of people, not simply in the School but elsewhere, were generous enough to write in and congratulate me and us. It was nice that the whole area was recognised because I think it was quite important that this wasn’t simply a recognition for what I or the team here had done, but more a recognition that teaching and the relationship between teaching and research was important for the University. I do think it’s quite important to have an award for teaching.

Do you have any sense of the award pigeon-holing you?

That’s interesting. No I don’t think it does. Because I am Director of Research in the School I have another role, so I don’t think I have simply got that one label.

Given your strong interest in teaching, your research and your other administrative roles, how do you manage to balance all the various commitments?

With huge difficulty! The e-learning and e-teaching – I tend to talk about e-teaching rather than e-learning –

has been a considerable time consumer. Partly that’s been running the small grants which have funded it, but also it has necessitated a great deal of course preparation and re-jigging of courses. Every course has been changed by the use of e-learning, in my view for the better. The momentum of it has meant that probably we were doing a lot more changing of courses than we would have done just running them normally. One expects to develop courses and review them each year, but this process is probably a lot greater.

The plus side is that it’s been good for my teaching – it’s revived things, it’s rejuvenated things – but the down side is that it’s been very time and energy consuming and that has affected my research. Though I have managed to keep that going, I think there has been a loss of time there. There have been some good cross-overs between developing courses and my own personal research and writing because we were concentrating quite a lot on resources that have also helped me in my research. The specific things we were looking for and finding then introducing to students were actually interesting to me, and in a more general sense I learned better how to use the internet for my own research. It’s not just one way. Not at all. And that’s a more general point I would like to make, that most people when they talk about teaching and research see it entirely as a one-way process – that somehow research feeds into teaching in content or methodology. Teaching also feeds into research. Not just simply in terms of content but I think in helping you think. I don’t see them as separate categories in the way that they are so often portrayed.

Juggling administration and other School roles is really quite tricky. It is worrying that in the general RAE atmosphere teaching is seen as the thing that always get squeezed and that upsets me a great deal. Most schemes can buy you out of your teaching but I don’t want to be bought out of my teaching, I want to be bought out of my administration.

In some ways the most important thing in the last few months has been to let other members of the team take a more front line role with me moving one step back. I would regard that as one of the more successful parts of the whole thing. It has become a team thing. That’s good because probably most of my ideas have been tried out and I want other people to be doing things, I want to learn from the things they do.

For more information about e-learning in Ecclesiastical History at Edinburgh University, see Getting History Students Going with a VLE, available from the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology’s web site at www.hca.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/Briefing_Papers

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The ‘Poor Raymond’ InvestigationPat Bailey, School of Chemistry, University of Manchester

In the attached paper, I describe a first year exercise involving problem solving, lab experiments, and team work – all essential skills for graduates in any degree with a practical component. As I am a teacher of chemists, the specific example is a chemical one, as the success of such exercises depends critically on the students engaging with a problem that they see as relevant. In the accompanying slides, I highlight:

a. The educational reasons for running such an exercise; the ‘Poor Raymond’ investigation is meant to enthuse them in the middle of semester one, and help them to realize that they already have the know-how to contribute to a (fairly!) realistic chemical problem.

b. A summary of the three stages of this exercise – the introduction (very brief ‘acting’ from the lecturer, and then they are on their own), the lab sessions (where they must work as a team to complete what needs doing), and the final interactive feedback session.

c. Some unexpected outcomes, including issues of errors/confidence, validity of their conclusions, and the shocking realization that there isn’t always ‘a correct answer’!

d. Finally some guidelines for running a successful exercise, of which the most important are probably:

• starting from ‘cold’

• being willing to be an actor

• running to a tight timetable

But how does one devise an exercise such as this one? Let me run through how I did it for ‘poor Raymond’.

Stage 1. I’m not a great advocate of being driven by ‘intended learning outcomes’ (ILOs) in educational planning, but they are the starting point for these types of exercise. In this case, my aims (which you could rewrite as ILOs), in this order of importance, were:

i. to enthuse them early in their course

ii. to get them working in teams

iii. to awaken their problem-solving skills

iv. to start developing their communication skills

You might be able to list other ILOs from the exercise, but they were not the primary objectives. In this case, I wanted a problem that was heavily based in their discipline, so they could see the relevance of what they were learning, and could apply it – and this feature also made this much easier to ‘sell’ to colleagues, who often view such exercises as ‘soft options’ (whilst complaining that the students forget the chemistry that they learn earlier in their course, and that they lack many of the key skills that are important for research!).

Stage 2. Choose the scenario. This isn’t all that hard, but you do need to try mapping forward how your scenario might play out. Crimes often provide ample opportunity for an amateur sleuth to contribute (e.g. scientist, engineer, medic, lawyer), providing a good backdrop for the exercise – e.g. car crash, murder, theft. ‘Poor Raymond’ was my second or third idea, because I could use chemistry that was suitable for newish 1st years, and because I could see how to use a team to explore several parallel lines of enquiry within limited teaching slots. Once I thought it was a fair idea, I mulled it around for a couple of weeks (i.e. thought about it when travelling by car or train, or when

Professor Pat Bailey is Professor of Organic Chemistry and Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Manchester. In 2005 he received a National Teaching Fellowship for his contribution to the development of key (transferable) skills in science programmes. In May 2006 he presented his ‘Poor Raymond’ Investigation at the TLA Course Organisers’ Forum, having previously contributed a paper on the exercise to the Science Learning and Teaching Conference in 2005.

Guest

Interchange Summer 2007 www.tla.ed.ac.uk/interchange1�

out for a walk), seeing how I could set up the problem in a realistic way, and how it might be the basis for achieving my ILOs.

Stage �. I didn’t produce a draft ‘hard copy’ until I had the key features mapped out in my mind. In other exercises I’ve developed (e.g. court case on a patent dispute, new potential drug from a rare plant, undercutting the production costs of a competitor), practical work was not required – but in all cases, the students had to work in teams (which I chose), gathering data and interpreting it, before producing some sort of team report or team presentation. One of the key things is to work through the detail, and carefully plan the timing of workshops (these are crucial), practicals, private study, and submission times. For example, you can have a wide-ranging workshop discussion in which lots of ideas are pooled, but you need to know when to tell (or steer) them to select the one you want for further study.

Stage �. Have the confidence to just do it! It’s easy to chicken out, and tell them about an exercise that they need to do – but just go in boldly and act it out, and you’ll be amazed at how the students join in and become involved.

Two aspects that I’ve not discussed are student participation and assessment. My advice for all such exercises is to assess them, and give marks that are commensurate with the effort you expect, not just a token grade – and if you think team work is important, then you have to be willing to give team marks. Linking assessment and team work together has, in my experience, always led to excellent student participation, with peer pressure probably having a bigger impact than the actual mark they hope to gain. I’ve run such exercises for all years, in groups of 15-150, ranging from one-hour workshops to multi-week exercises requiring 20+ hours of work. You can adapt them to many levels, use them to develop a wide range of skills, and get the students really fired up for their subject. Go on - give it a go!

Summary

“The death of my brother Raymond has shocked and saddened us. But, although the police are treating the case as death by misadventure, we suspect that foul play was involved.” So opens our exercise known as ‘poor Raymond’, which is tackled by all of our first-year chemistry students mid-way through their first semester. Although the exercise has many worthy educational benefits, one aspect of it is the most important – that the students enjoy, and are inspired by, a realistic problem for which their scientific skills and views are valued.

In brief, they are introduced to a storyline in which there has been a suspicious death; in order to persuade the police to look seriously at the case, they have been asked (in groups of about six amateur chemists) to assess scientifically three clues that might indicate foul play. They need to decide how to analyze the samples (e.g. a splash on a lab-coat, some pills in a bottle, a liquid found in the locker of the deceased); although they are given some guidance, they must plan the experiments, divide the tasks among their group, and go into the labs to analyze the evidence. Having obtained their results, they submit a short team report, and also meet up with all the other ‘amateur chemists’ to discuss the results they’ve

obtained. We hope that the students benefit from the following features of the exercise:

• we thoroughly engage them in a plausible storyline that is based in their own subject.

• they discover that they already know enough science to be able to tackle a difficult problem.

• they have to go into the labs and design/conduct experiments.

• they learn that there are no ‘right’ answers (only balance of proof).

• they start to learn how to work as a team.

Most of all, the ‘poor Raymond’ exercise fires up their enthusiasm in the all-important first year of their degree course.

Background to the exercise

In common with many degrees in science and engineering, our students arrive at the start of year one eager to begin tackling real problems in their subject. However, there is a strong tendency for us to use year one to simply lay the foundations, ensuring that they learn the fundamental theories and safe laboratory skills, whilst less effort is sometimes given

The ‘poor Raymond’ investigation: a team-work exercise to inspire new students

From: Proceedings of The Science Learning and Teaching Conference 2005, pp. 53-58, The Higher Education Academy, 2005. Reproduced by kind permission. For details of this year’s conference see page 19.

Guest


to the essential aspect of inspiring and motivating our students.1 Many courses now use PBL2 and transferable skills exercises3,4 to add variety and extend the range of skills that students develop, and our course is no exception. However, it is quite difficult to design material that is suitable for the first term/semester of year one, when students arrive with varied training and limited knowledge within their discipline. We wanted to design an exercise to which everyone could contribute, in which their limited knowledge would be sufficient, that would involve some ‘hands-on’ science, and for which their views would be valued. We chose a forensic science scenario, but one in which they took on the role of ‘capable amateur’, trying to amass sufficient evidence to persuade the police to engage ‘the professionals’.

Structure of the exercise

The exercise is run over a one week period as follows:

Thursday (1hr lecture slot) Introduction to the exercise

Monday (3hr lab period) Conduct experiments

Tuesday (3hr lab period) Conduct experiments

Thursday (1hr lecture slot) Debriefing (discuss results/submit reports)

What do the students do?

Introduction: We carried this out as a role play, with the scene being set, and the exercise presented, by ‘the brother of poor Raymond’. The students arrived with no prior information about the exercise, and no handouts are given until the scene is set. This tactic really helps to engage the students, who are then divided up into groups of about six – in semester one, one can either reinforce tutorial groups, or help the students to mix by assembling the groups appropriately. The introduction takes about 20 minutes, and then the students are free to plan the experiments as they think best, and/or to agree to meet up later to plan them. They receive two handouts, one outlining the case and the other giving tips and suggestions.

Experiments: The experiments are designed to be too hard to be all carried out within the two lab sessions unless the tasks are divided up amongst the group; however, they are short enough that most of the analyses can be carried out in the first lab day, so that they can (often as a group) return to some aspect of the experiments that seemed ambiguous, or for which they would like to obtain additional data. They are asked to prepare a one-page team report for the police, and also decide what steps they might take to

preserve the integrity of material that might be re-analysed professionally.

Debriefing: They must not only submit their report, but also be ready give their results to the whole class – not actually too demanding, but it gives them some practice at sharing results with a bigger group. This feedback session is very important, as the students start to make some judgment of the validity/reliability of their results. We have run it with around 15 groups, and so can select five groups to provide their results on each of the three experiments, each time checking with the rest of the students to see how much agreement there is. This is effectively the same as repeating the results as an analytical scientist would, although the variation isn’t analysed statistically. A key aspect of the debriefing is when the students ask “What is the right answer?” Although there effectively is a correct solution, in that the samples were prepared artificially, a critical aspect of the exercise is that the ‘correct’ answers are the results the students obtain – to act out the role-playing realistically, there are no ‘right answers’, just a balance of scientific evidence that leads to a proposal – quite a revelation for many first years!

Assessment

The exercise forms part of the transferable skills exercises called ‘Communicating Chemistry’. The marking scheme for this is provided at the start of the course, and all exercises receive a letter grade (later converted to a mark). Only those students whose names are on the submitted report receive a grade; similarly, everyone in the group who contributes to the experiments and the report receives the same mark. Other exercises in the communicating chemistry course are carried out individually, in pairs, or in groups.

Conclusions

Student feedback on the exercise has been excellent, with this part of their course being singled out for special praise. Perhaps a surprise is the efficiency and quality of the results obtained by the students when they are left largely to their own devices! Across the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, an important aspect of retaining students has been the introduction of first year projects, so that the students can actually start applying their discipline to realistic (if not genuinely real) problems early in their degree programmes.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dr Jennifer Matthews for helping in the running of this exercise, and to Tony Schofield for preparing samples and developing the guidelines for demonstrators.

Guest


References1 Anders, C. and Berg, C.A.R. (2005) Factors related to observed attitude change toward learning chemistry among university students, Chemistry Education Research & Practice, 6(1), 1-18.2 Belt, S.T., Evans, E.H., McCreedy, T., Overton, T.L. and Summerfield, S. (2002) A problem based learning approach

to analytical and applied chemistry, University Chemistry Education, 6(2), 65-72.3 Bailey, P.D. and Shinton, S.E. (1999) Communicating Chemistry: A Teaching Manual for University Teachers, London: Royal Society of Chemistry, p. 141.4 Bailey, P.D. (1997) Coaxing chemists to communicate, University Chemistry Education, 1(1), 31-36.

Poor Raymond

The death of my brother Raymond was a great shock to me, and to all his friends and family. At 20 years old, keen on all racket and team sports, he was found dead at his place of work, MacKenzies Winery, just 3 days ago. Although the inquest has yet to be held, preliminary enquires by the police suggest ‘death by misadventure’. He had been taking a mixture of pain-killers and anti-inflammatory tablets (aspirin and ibuprofen tablets found in his pockets) to help him play squash through a shoulder injury, and an adverse reaction with alcohol at a work’s celebration apparently led to a fatal reaction. Raymond had already raised concerns with me about the practices of his present employer, for whom he’d worked for a couple of years. Although leaving school at 16 and going straight into a job, Raymond was a bright guy, and the ‘Research and Development Assistant’ role he took on was little more than a general skivvy. And the firm didn’t seem keen or supportive when he wanted to understand about the underlying science, or when he suggested that he might try to obtain a University degree in chemistry after taking A-levels in evening classes.

Yesterday, one of his close colleagues came to see me. Michael Fletcher had worked alongside Raymond, and the two had discussed their concerns about the additives that the company was using to improve the wines they were selling. To increase the value of the wine, the company was illegally adding flavourings to the vats. Raymond had managed to smuggle some of this liquid into a vial, which Michael had found in Raymond’s locker; they suspected that two components were present, which made the wine sweeter and smell more fruity.

In the step to help remove the insolubles from the wine-making process, the company was meant to add innocuous tartaric acid, but Raymond suspected that a more efficient but illegal alternative was being used. Some of this had splashed onto his lab-coat, and Raymond had cut this out, hoping to isolate and identify the additive, thought to be an aromatic acid.

Finally, Michael had retrieved an almost empty unlabelled bottle from the lab bins. It contained a small amount of a white powder. Michael wondered if one of the firm had been worried that Raymond was finding out too much, and had decided to lace his lunch with drugs, hoping he might then fall asleep on the job and so give the firm an excuse to sack him. If true, this had had unexpected and fatal consequences.

The police suspect nothing, so I need to obtain proof of foul play. I’m hoping you can identify the wine additives from the samples collected by Raymond. Also, if the powder in the bottle were to turn out to have the same mixture of analgesics that Raymond had in his bloodstream (path lab results still pending), then this would be an extraordinary coincidence that the police would have to follow up. As trained chemists, you need to:

1. Identify the two components in the liquid additive.

2. Identify the solid on the lab coat.

3 a) Gain evidence for the composition of the powder, remembering that ibuprofen and aspirin packets were found on Raymond.

b) Think about procedures you would carry out to try to ensure that forensic data obtained from the bottle would subsequently stand up in court.

Remember, we’re not in a position to carry out a rigorous forensic analysis. What we do want to do is to see if we think Raymond’s death was suspicious, and obtain enough evidence to persuade the police to carry out further investigations. In teams of 5–7, you need to plan what you will do, check your method with a colleague (the demonstrators are suitable experts), carry out the analyses next Monday/Tuesday, and report the results at a meeting on Thursday.

Guest


Four years ago, a new post was created within TLA with the remit of helping students to become more effective learners. This was linked to a recognition that increasing student diversity, without a parallel increase in staffing, meant that more students were likely to encounter a lack of fit between their profiles of study skills and what was required on their courses. While it is ideal to handle support for effective learning in an embedded manner within programmes of study, it was felt that an additional generic system of support would be a useful safety net. Study skills support for students is therefore provided alongside the guidance and advice that TLA staff can offer on how to build opportunities for students to reflect on their learning into courses and programmes of study.

Velda McCune initially took the study skills support for students forward, but has now taken up a Lecturership within the TLA Centre. Study skills support is shared amongst the TLA staff. Because staffing for the student study skills work is limited we try, as far as possible, to meet students’ requests for advice through a programme of workshops and online resource materials (see www.tla.ed.ac.uk under ‘for students’).

Despite these efforts students still favour one-to-one study advising tailored to their particular needs; there is typically a one-month waiting list for these sessions which are usually with Daphne Loads. This one-to-one advice has been particularly well received by students, the overall response rate for the most recent anonymous feedback exercise was 55% and the feedback was very positive. Further, over 15% percent of the students responding indicated that the support was helpful in terms of preventing them from leaving Higher Education altogether.

To offer a deeper insight into this one-to-one advice work, Daphne has interviewed a student who has been working with Velda for some time. In the rest of this article, we report on the findings from this interview. (Some details have been omitted or changed to protect the student’s anonymity.)

Daphne: Why did you seek study advice?

Peter: My course is interesting, but very, very challenging. There is so much information and everything has to be retained. Every year you think that’s it, it can’t get any harder, but then it

does! I had failed my exams but I didn’t see any flaw in what I was doing before, so I didn’t know what I needed to change. I’d spoken to my DoS and she suggested Velda.

Daphne: What exactly were you expecting?

Peter: I expected someone to tell me what to do, to give me the blueprint for study and for them to say “well go away and do this.” I guess I didn’t expect so much onus to be put on me: I thought I was going to be given all the answers!

Daphne: Was anything particularly helpful?

Peter: After the first meeting, I remember I had some homework! I had to make a study plan for myself: the kind of things I wanted to achieve, or expected to achieve, the kind of things I wanted to do. I had great plans and great ideas about what I wanted to achieve, but it was unrealistic…I started off thinking I was going to achieve this and later on I realised that it just wasn’t going to happen. We reviewed what I was doing every session and I began to see that “..okay this is not realistic.”

Daphne: Were there any times throughout the process when there were things that were not so comfortable or not so pleasant?

Peter: I didn’t enjoy hearing the truth actually! That’s true. That was the most negative thing for me. I’m very much a perfectionist and so when Velda first said to me “Well, you can’t do everything and you need to look at things differently!” I didn’t enjoy it and I actually felt like I wasn’t going to…come back at one point because I thought that Velda didn’t understand…and she really somehow needed to make sure that there were 40 hours in the day so that I could get to do what I needed to do! That was hard on a personal level.

Daphne: Do you feel there was anything missing in terms of study support?

Peter: I’d have liked more support in the School. While Velda was doing her bit to “get me” as a whole person it would have been useful if there was someone who was actually there as

Update

Study Skills Advice for StudentsDaphne Loads and Velda McCune


well to give that specific support in my subject. They say that there’s help if you ask for it, but I found getting help very difficult, just because the people who are giving lectures are all busy and they have their own schedules. Also when I was having to do resits I felt at times that I needed more support, but Velda couldn’t see me in a certain week because she was booked up.

Daphne: Has your understanding of learning developed since your work with Velda?

Peter: I guess now I kind of understand that taking ownership for my own study has an effect, in that I set the goals and the boundaries so I’m not actually having to report to anyone else. So there’s also that big pride as well when I do it for myself.

Daphne: If a student was unsure about asking for study advice, what would you say to them?

Peter: I would tell them that it’s good to get the ideas out of your head. So that you can be objective about your goals without feeling that there’s someone evaluating you or there’s some competition. You set the standard and it’s good to bring in other people and discuss with someone else.

Daphne: What would you say to someone who suggested that students at university shouldn’t need this kind of help?

Peter: I would say that people aren’t perfect and there’s always a need to fine-tune what you’re doing. Although you’ve made it to university it doesn’t mean you have all the answers, and being at university is supposed to be an education – you’re supposed to be learning more about yourself as well as learning more about the course that you do. And if there are ways to learn about how you can be more effective, then I think that’s a good thing – there’s always potential to do more, to be better, to learn more.

Peter’s comments pick up on some important themes which have general relevance for our study advice work. His description of the sessions as involving a gradual process of learning how to learn more effectively, rather than being handed a ‘blueprint’ for the right way of studying reflects an important principle behind our work. Peter also acknowledges the emotional impact of facing up to study difficulties and dealing with those effectively and this is something we commonly see in our work. The challenges that students face in having to change their habitual ways of learning perhaps explain why most students do not seek study advice until something has really gone wrong.

We hope that this short article offers a useful initial insight into the study skills advice provided for students within TLA and the wider context for that work. If you would like to know more about the service please contact the TLA Centre ([email protected]). If you have a student who is seeking advice then please ask them to email [email protected] giving brief details of their concerns.

New professional development opportunity for new and experienced staff:

PG Cert. in University Teaching

The new postgraduate certificate programme in University Teaching to be launched by the TLA Centre this June offers both new and experienced teaching staff the opportunity to enhance their knowledge and skills in selected areas of teaching, learning and assessment. Members of staff have the option to pursue the exit award – the postgraduate certificate, which involves 60 credits (the core course plus four optional units). Alternatively, staff may participate in selected courses without the intent of fulfilling the requirements for the award.

The following courses are on offer:

Orientation to Teaching at Edinburgh (2 days, 0 credits, mandatory for new staff)

Core course (20 credits)

• Developing my approach to teaching

Optional courses (10 credits)

• Engaging with student diversity

• Promoting student autonomy and engagement

• Working with postgraduate students

• Understanding learning and studying

• The disciplinary dimension of teaching

• Assessing students

• Designing courses

• Course organization and management

• Learning and teaching online

For further information on the programme and individual course options, please consult the TLA website at www.tla.ed.ac.uk.

Update


My Freshman Year What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student

Rebekah Nathan, Cornell University Press 2005

Miesbeth Knottenbelt (TLA Centre) in conversation with Charles Jedrej (Social Anthropology) and Sarah Purves (EUSA Advice Place)

What is it like to be a first-year university student? This is a readable account of an anthropology professor-turned-’freshman’ in her own institution – a large North-American university (‘AnyU’) – with a quest to understand her students better. Using a pseudonym, she spent a year’s sabbatical doing what a first-year student in her university does – living in dorms, going through induction, attending classes, taking exams, joining students’ clubs, and so on – making detailed recordings and some systematic enquiries along the way. Many interesting themes emerge in the account. Here are some we discussed over a coffee ...

At AnyU, despite the institutional rhetoric, the student community appeared as a collection of small heterogeneous groups, each conducting their busy lives in different ways, and featuring jobs to earn money, sports and social clubs, and other commitments alongside studying. There was little awareness of, or contact between, these groups. Studying itself is busy too: many classes of different kinds, taking place in different locations, complemented by different forms of support, and delivered by many different people. It was clear that what the institution offered (a large range of courses, different ways in which they are provided, a range of student clubs, eating facilities, accommodation etc.) all helped to bring about this disconnected heterogeneity. This heterogeneity also had, of course, implications for how the institution coped with its increasing number of international students.

Faculty and their students lived in separate cultural worlds, with clearly marked boundaries that separated them and which were reflected in various ways. Students minimised their contact with staff and did not discuss their subject content outside classes – and in classes only if it could not be avoided! The few exceptional students who did were seen as colluding. What did they talk about amongst themselves? Surprise, surprise! Sex and alcohol and matters to do with growing up and getting by.

The perfect student, then, was the busy student who managed to fit in employment and a social life and get away with it by ‘shaping the schedule’ (e.g. fitting all studying into two or three days midweek), ‘limiting the workload’ (doing only what was necessary and avoiding getting caught out) and ‘taming their profs’ (keeping contact on their own terms). The perfect student could then get on with what really mattered – learning about themselves.

The account raised a number of questions for us:

Was she just naïve? Her findings would not necessarily be surprising to anyone who had spent time in Edinburgh student accommodation. It is amazing how little time some students manage to spend on studying and how busy they are with other things. However, we agreed that it might be useful to have this picture documented in an account like this.

How appropriate was her methodology? The account was, on the whole, quite convincing. But anthropologists don’t normally recommend using a pseudonym and her study raised a number of questions about the ethics of being under cover.

What was the significance of her findings? For us, it raised questions about what universities are really for. Are they a transitional zone for growing up? And what different notions do students, academic staff, management and funding bodies have about the purpose of higher education?

Did the book teach us anything about course provision? It provided insights into why students might not turn up at certain times, might draw on extra reading, or why appealing to their strategic sense can sometimes work better than to their inherent interest in the material.

So ... the verdict? An interesting read and a good way to remind academics of the complexity of students’ lives and how this impacts on their learning.

Book Review


News

Forthcoming Events

Interchange is the newsletter of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment at The University of Edinburgh. It aims to share ideas and information about learning and teaching across the University and more widely. Contributions are welcome from staff and students: contact [email protected].

At the University of Edinburgh

Higher Education Colloquium: Research-Teaching Linkages

18 June 2007, 10.00 - 4.00, John McIntyre Centre, Pollock Halls

The aim of the colloquium is to explore the relationships between teaching and research more closely and to understand better how studying within a research-intensive environment adds to the student experience.

www.tla.ed.ac.uk/events/Colloquium2007/Colloquium2007.htm

TLA Learning and Teaching Forum: Choice within the Curriculum

9 November 2007, Paterson’s Land, Holyrood Road

www.tla.ed.ac.uk/services/LTforums/LTforums.htm

Postgraduate Certificate in University Teaching

Orientation: 3 - 4 Dec 2007

Developing my approach to teaching: 5 Dec 2007

Options: 6 Dec 2007 & 24 Jan 2008, 7 Dec 2007 & 25 Jan 2008

For details see page 17 and www.tla.ac.uk/courses/PGCert/index.htm

For the TLA Centre’s regular programme of events and activities see the TLA website at www.tla.ed.ac.uk

Elsewhere

The Science Learning and Teaching Conference 2007

19 - 20 June 2007, Keele University

This national conference, organised by three of the Higher Education Academy Subject Centres, aims to bring together practitioners in the teaching of science disciplines in higher education to share their experiences, identify common challenges and to provide an opportunity to share effective practice. There are a number of themes including: creativity, effective feedback, research in teaching and learning, the secondary-tertiary interface and flexible delivery.

www.sltc.heacademy.ac.uk/

The Higher Education Academy Annual Conference: Engaging Students in Higher Education

3 - 5 July 2007, Harrogate

www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/conference.htm

Improving Student Learning – For What?

The 15th Improving Student Learning Symposium, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, 3–5 September 2007.

The theme for this symposium – ‘for what?’ – is designed to challenge contributors to consider the purposes of mass higher education in the 21st century. And more specifically, in introducing innovations to improve student learning, what are we actually trying to achieve, and what is that learning for?

www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/isl/isl2007/index.html

Society for Research into Higher Education Annual Conference 2007: Reshaping Higher Education

11-13 December 2007, Thistle Hotel, Brighton, Sussex

Society for Research into Higher Education Postgraduate and Newer Researchers Conference

10 December 2007, University of Sussex

www.srhe.ac.uk


News

The four guides in the Integrative Assessment theme each focus on a key aspect of an integrative approach to enhancing assessment, i.e. one which brings the various strands of assessment together in a coherent way that addresses the desired goals and takes account of opportunities and constraints in the setting concerned. All the guides are available in printed form and are also freely downloadable from the Scottish Enhancement Themes website at: www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/themes/IntegrativeAssessment. The guides have been written and compiled by Professor Dai Hounsell, Dr. Rui Xu and Ms Chun Ming Tai, Centre for Teaching Learning and Assessment, The University of Edinburgh, in consultation with a network of institutional contacts drawn from across the Scottish universities, representatives of Higher Education Academy Subject Centres, and members of the Scottish Enhancement Steering Committee on Integrative Assessment.

Managing Assessment Practices and Procedures

Guide No. 4

The effective management of assessment practices and procedures, this guide argues, is fundamental to an integrative approach to enhancing assessment. Yet while most dimensions of assessment are generally well-managed, there are also aspects which have often not received the weight of attention they seem to warrant in the contemporary university. These aspects are: managing assessment for as well as assessment of learning; enabling evolutionary change in assessment; and wider sharing of responsibilities for managing assessment practices and processes.

Gloucester: Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education

ISBN 978 1 84482 656 8

Monitoring Students’ Experiences of Assessment

Guide No. 1

This guide examines strategies to monitor how well assessment in its various manifestations is working, so as to build on strengths and take prompt remedial action where helpful. It explores

• why it is important to check how systematically we are monitoring our assessment practices

• what aspects of assessment are generally well-monitored at present, and those which tend to be under-monitored or rarely looked at

• how to enhance our monitoring of assessment, choosing from a range of options


ISBN 978 1 84482 647 6

Blending Assignments and Assessments for High-Quality Learning

Guide No. 3

The starting-point for this guide is why it might be important not only to assess students’ progress and performance by a variety of means, but also to consider what combination or blend of assignments and assessments in a course or programme of study might be optimal. The guide goes on to explore four important considerations that can shape how assignments and assessments are blended: blending for alignment of assessment and learning; blending for student inclusivity; blending to support progression in students’ understanding and skills, and blending for economy and quality. Examples and case reports are outlined from a cross-section of subject areas and course settings.


ISBN 978 1 84482 649 0

Balancing Assessment of and Assessment for Learning

Guide No. 2

This guide discusses ways of striking an optimal balance between the twin central functions of assessment, i.e. to evaluate and certify students’ performance or achievement, and to assist students in fulfilling their fullest potential as learners. It highlights some undesirable side-effects of imbalances and explores four strategies to rebalance assessment: feed-forward assessments, cumulative coursework, better-understood expectations and standards, and speedier feedback. Each strategy is illustrated with examples from a range of course settings and subject areas.


ISBN 978 1 84482 648 3

Guides to Integrative AssessmentA Scottish Enhancement Theme

Documents

Interchange - University of Edinburgh · what makes for good teaching and student learning? ... Interchange Summer 2007 2 ... argued that scholarship means ‘the new interpretation