2000 Tips for Lecturers

Phil Race

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136359750
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Brings together a range of expert tips and guidance for all those lecturing and teaching in higher education. With ideas on all aspects of HE teaching, it covers a range of issues that can crop up in daily working life, and is both a lifeline to new teachers and a handy sourcebook and refresher for more experienced educators.

Chapter 1
Towards student-centred learning

Teaching-learning situations and processes
1.	Different teaching-learning situations
2.	Exploring learning processes
3.	Helping students to learn how they learn
4.	Designing a new programme
5.	Developing students' key skills
Making the most of learning outcomes
6.	Why use learning outcomes?
7.	Where can learning outcomes be useful to students?
8.	Designing and using learning outcomes
Communications and information technologies
9.	Using communications and information technologies

This chapter introduces very briefly some of the themes that pervade most of the rest of this collection of suggestions for lecturers.

The range of teaching-learning processes practised by lecturers extends far beyond standing up and giving lectures. We start by exploring some of the most common teaching-learning- situations, and linking these to the learning processes we wish our students to engage in. Some immediate suggestions are then offered regarding curriculum design, and ways in which students' key skills can be deliberately developed through the curriculum.

The next section in this brief chapter is on learning outcomes. These too are mentioned throughout the book. There is now increased emphasis that learning outcomes are appropriate, that teaching is designed to help students to achieve them, and that assessment instruments and processes really set out to measure students' achievement of such outcomes. It has never been more important to express learning outcomes well right from the outset.

The intended learning outcomes are the most important startmg-point for any teaching-learning programme. Learning outcomes give details of syllabus content. They can be expressed in terms of the objectives that students should be able to show they have achieved, in terms of knowledge, understanding, skills and even attitudes. They are written as descriptors of ways that students will be expected to demonstrate the results of their learning. The links between learning outcomes and assessment criteria need to be clear and direct. Learning outcomes indicate the standards of courses and modules, and are spotlighted in quality review procedures.

This chapter ends with a short overview of the use, in student-centred ways, of communications and information technologies. This overview is intended to provide headlines only, and introduces a theme that recurs in much more detail in several parts of this book.

1. Different teaching-learning situations

You won't always be able to choose how best to deliver a particular part of the curriculum. When you do have such an opportunity (for example, when planning a new course or curriculum element, or when revalidating existing provision), you may find it useful to think about a range of possibilities. Ideally, you should seek to explore several different methodologies for the delivery of any element of the curriculum, but each alternative will have its own advantages and drawbacks, both economically and pedagogically:

• Full-time taught courses, lecture based. These remain the most usual provision in most higher education institutions, and have potential benefits associated with social interaction between students, and between lecturers and students. Several parts of this book offer advice, for example, on preparing lectures and designing assessment to match such course delivery.
• Part-time taught courses. Here there may be limited opportunity for social interaction among students, but teaching may be similar or common to that in full-time provision.
• Work-based training programmes. These are essentially teaching-learning situations that involve students having placements arranged in a suitable employment location for a given period of time. The relevance of the content of the training to the students' overall needs is more easily guaranteed.
• Open, flexible and distance learning programmes. These cover situations where students work through specifically designed self-study materials (often print-based) on their own. This may be alongside conventional college-based delivery, or at a distance from the institution, at times and places of their own choosing, and at their own pace. The institution provides tutorial support, counselling and assessment.
• Resource-based learning. This includes learning workshops, open access and drop-in centres where the institution offers tuition, counselling and learning support plus access to materials and equipment. The materials may be print-based, computer-based or multimedia in nature, and there may be opportunities for group and individual contact with lecturers, as well as access to college-based assessment provision.
• Online learning. This methodology includes computer-based learning, which may be college-based or done at networked computer facilities at the students' home or workplace locations. Tutorial support and learning materials are networked to the computer terminals where students study, and their study times can be varied to suit their individual requirements. Virtual or real-time group working is also possible along with one-to-one lecturer contact.
• Collaborative learning. This methodology is used when it is intended that students work together in small groups for significant parts of their learning. It can be arranged as a college based process, or for students to undertake in the actual situations they are learning about.
• Independent study pathways. These are particular elements of the curriculum which individual students are able to choose or adapt to their particular needs or requirements. They may involve using print-based or computer-based learning resource materials, on or off the college campus. By definition they are individualized but will normally involve lecturer contact and support.

2. Exploring learning processes

One of the most important factors that predetermines students' success m learning is confidence. We need to give our students every chance to develop this confidence, and one of the best ways of us helping them to do this is to assist them to gain greater ownership of, and control over, the processes they apply during their learning:

• Help students to want to learn. They may need to be helped to increase their motivation by showing them the benefits they will gain from the achievement of their intended learning outcomes. When possible, enhance their motivation by making learning fun, interesting and rewarding. Don't mistake lack of confidence for lack of motivation.
• Needing to learn something can be almost as productive as wanting to learn it. When students know why something will be useful to them, even if they find it difficult, they are more likely to maintain their efforts till they have succeeded.
• Provide students with learning-by-doing opportunities. Most learning happens when students practise things, have a go, and learn by making mistakes and finding out why. Care needs to be taken to ensure that learning-by-doing is focused on practising useful, important things, and not just anything to keep students busy!
• Look for ways of giving students as much feedback as is reasonably possible. Students need to find out how their learning is actually going. Feedback from lecturers is very useful, but lecturers can also facilitate students getting feedback from each other, and from various kinds of learning resource materials. It follows too that feedback must be timely for it to be of optimum use to students.
• Help students to set out to make sense of what they are learning. It is of little value learning things by rote, or becoming able to do things without knowing why or how. Getting students to think about how their learning is happening is one step towards helping them to develop a sense of ownership of their progress. Learning is not just a matter of storing up further knowledge; it is about being able to apply what has been learned, not just to familiar situations but also to new contexts.
• Provide students with cues about how they are expected to learn from the ways in which we teach them. If we simply concentrate on supplying them with information, they are likely simply to try to store this. If we structure our teaching so that they are practising, applying, extending, comparing, contrasting, evaluating, and engaging in other higher-level processes, they are likely to see these processes as central to the ways they should be using for their learning.
• Use assessment to drive learning productively. Students are often quite strategic in structuring their learning to be able to do the best they can in the contexts in which their learning is to be assessed. Assessment formats and instruments can be used to help students to structure their learning effectively, as well as to give them appropriate timescales within which to organize their learning.
• Encourage students to learn from each other. While much can be learned by students working on their own, with handouts, books and learning resource materials, they can also learn a great deal by talking to each other, and attempting tasks and activities jointly.

3. Helping students to learn how they learn

This is the most important thing that human beings ever learn. In an educational institution, it is vital that everyone is folly aware of the natural processes underpinning human learning, so that they can take control of these consciously, and develop them systematically. The following suggestions may help you to keep learning-to-leam uppermost in your teaching, and in your students' approaches to learning:

• Remind students how long they've been learning to learn. Ask them to reflect on just how much they actually learned during the first two or three years of life. Remind them that most of this learning they did more or less under their own steam, without any conscious thought about teaching, or even learning. Remind them that they still own the brain that did all of this, and can still use it to learn vast amounts of new knowledge, skills and competences.
• Ask students about their learning in school. They will have learned large amounts of information, and will have forgotten most of this! Also, however, they will have learned a great deal about how to take in knowledge and information, and will still have this skill.
• Remind students that they will never stop learning to learn. Get them to talk about learning to senior people they know, and retired ones too. Ask them what they have learned only recently. Ask them how they learned it. Ask them what they found out about themselves while learning it. Then ask them which of these was the most important and most interesting to them.
• Provide programmes for students to learn about learning. Training programmes can help students to tune in to the power of their own minds. A good learning facilitator can help students to gain control of the processes by which they learn most efficiently. Many students find it useful to explore how their minds work in the company of other students, and learn from each other's experiences.
• Provide resources to help students to learn about their own learning. Not everyone is comfortable attending a training programme about learning to learn. Some students fear that inadequacies or deficiencies may be exposed. Computer-based or print-based packages that help students explore their own learning in the comfort of privacy may be more attractive to such students.
• Get students asking themselves: 'What did I learn about myself when I learned this?' Learning to learn is closely connected with understanding one's own mind, and one's own preferences and choices.
• Get students asking: 'What really worked when I learned this?' The chances are that the factors that made one element of learning successful will be transferable to their next element of learning. There are long words for this, such as 'metacognitive processing', but it's simply about helping students to be looking inwards at what works for them when they learn, and what doesn't.
• Get students teasing out what slows their learning down. The more we all know about how the brakes work, the better we can use them only when we need them.

4. Designing a new programme

Designing a new area of curriculum is an exciting but complex task, requiring the integration of a whole range of interdependent elements. The following set of tips is designed to help you do so in a systematic way in sequence. These are most likely to be of use to you if you are (or will be) in the role of course leader for the new programme. Further suggestions about many of the steps listed below are given throughout this book; this list is just a start-up menu:

• Identify the market for your programme. Few new programmes these days are offered to a captive, pre-determined market of potential students. You will need therefore to have good evidence of a real demand for your proposed programme. It will be useful to identify the competition — other institutions offering a similar programme. Can you show that either the market is sufficiently large or that you can offer something very different to attract a sufficient number of students? Your institution will require you to show how your programme will sit within the existing course portfolio.
• Clarify the rationale for the new programme. You need to be sure of your reasons for its particular flavour and its ultimate viability. Can you run it with the human and physical resources you can get? Can you provide for a sufficiently large number of students? Specifically consider: the unique characteristics of the group it is aimed at; the programme's aims, intended learning outcomes, and the qualification or accreditation that it will lead to.
• Clarify how it will be costed and funded. This is a daunting process if it's your first time, and we advise you to gather know-how from other colleagues in your institution who have already planned and implemented a new programme. There may well be formal institutional checklists and guidelines for you to follow.
• Decide upon a time frame. Curriculum design is a complex and time-consuming process. Mistakes are made if the process is rushed. If a programme is to be designed from scratch, sufficient time should be allowed to negotiate and incorporate internal as well as external quality assurance processes. Time is also needed to market the course effectively. Be realistic about a start date!
• Expect to become involved in the recruitment of students. It is often found that, particularly with new programmes, students receive inappropriate guidance and advice, and can end up taking a course for which they are not suited. Retention statistics are increasingly under ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Towards student-centred learning
• Chapter 2 Lectures
• Chapter 3 Small-group teaching and learning
• Chapter 4 Designing and using learning resources
• Chapter 5 Assessment
• Chapter 6 Feedback, evaluation and external scrutiny
• Chapter 7 Looking after yourself
• Chapter 8 Getting published
• Index