Learning in partnership

Learning in Partnership

From outcome to output: reflections on curriculum reconfiguration & student-centred learning

Pt1: Reconfiguring the curriculum in the 21st century learning environment

Pt2: Locating the student as producer with Xerte

Embrace uncertainty, encourage creativity, empower the learner

Kety Faina, Gordon Heggie, Jade McCarroll, Neil McPherson

Reconfiguring the curriculum in the 21st century learning environment

massification

individualisation

commodification

commercialisation

marketisation

Challenges


“What kind of world is it that curricula in higher education are preparing students for?

What kinds of capability, therefore, in general terms might curricula

be fostering?”

Barnett & Coate 2005, p. 53

Questions


“…the most important obligation now confronting the nation's colleges and universities is to break out of the tired old teaching versus research debate and define, in more creative ways, what it means to be a scholar”

Boyer, 1990, p. xii

“in traditional settings there is rarely any attempt to even begin to build a community and connect students with academics. Students are kept at arms length. The connections with research…more often than not are ignored”

Brew 2002, p.51-2

Tensions

reconfiguring the curriculum


Drivers


Learning outcomesQuality assurance

Structure learning

Provide measure of performance

HoweverPrescriptive

Restrictive

Dampen creativity

Outcomes to outputs

Learning outputsOpen to creativity

Support originality

Builds on the work of others

Encourages critique

Open ended

See Neary, 2010

Web 1.0

Web 2.0

Web 3.0

structureddependentpassive engagement

self directedindependentactive participation self determined

interdependentactive ownership


From instruction to discovery


Healy & Jenkins, 2009, p. 56

“The principles of the teaching-research nexus should inform curriculum

development and delivery from the first year as a way of promoting a sense of

belonging to a community of scholars with a focus on discovery and creation of

knowledge” (Kerri-Lee Krause, 2006, pp.6-8)

"We have spent enough time condemning consumerism in education, and now

we need to articulate the alternative. Student engagement is a great concept

but it needs to be deployed to radical ends. Students as partners is not just a

nice-to-have, I believe it has the potential to help bring about social and

educational transformation”

Wenstone, VP (HE) Higher Education, NUS. 2012

Students as partners and change agents

Learning in partnership in the Social Sciences

Heggie & McPherson, 2014

“Undergraduate education…requires renewed emphasis on a point strongly made by John Dewey almost a century ago: learning is based on discovery guided by mentoring rather than on the transmission of information”

Boyer Commission 1998: 15

Engaging interdisciplinarity, active learning & co-creation

Escaping the constraints of instruction and fixed learning outcomes

Developing the Social Science Curriculum

Understanding (L7), Investigating (L8), Researching (L9)

the Social World

A template for learning

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Engaging discipline knowledge

Embedding interdisciplinarity

Encouraging interest-based learning

Providing authentic research experience

Integrating negotiated learning

Embracing uncertainty

Empowering learners as teachers

Supporting personal development, lifelong learning and employability

From passive reception to inquiry-based production

Level 9 research-based module - 72 students

Engaging authentic assessment with Xerte

• Embracing uncertainty• Enabling self-direction• Encouraging creativity• Empowering the learner• Embedding learning in partnership

Researching the Social World B (pilot module)

From consumer to producer, from passive to active, from container to creator

Providing peer support in a a collaborative learning environment

Encouraging staff/student & student/student partnership

Organising and providing peer support in a collaborative and creative learning environment

Learning in research mode – where the production of Xerte learning objects differs from traditional assessment methods and mechanisms

What were the challenges?

The Learner Ambassador and the Xerte Champions

What is Xerte?

Xerte is a free open source tool

Xerte allows multi media resources to be authored quickly & easily

Xerte is an interactive learning resource

Use of Xerte supports the development of digital literacies

Xerte promotes & supports accessibility and inclusivity

Source: adapted from the Xerte Homepage:http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte

http://xertestudents.uws.ac.uk/play.php?template_id=100

Does it work? What students like about Xerte

The feeling of creating a tangible object based on academic research was much more

fulfilling that the usual essay, exam, presentation

I like that its different, Powerpoint gets a bit

boring. It is more creative

You have a finished product at the end and can use it as evidence of something you

created and you cannot really do that with essays

Being able to put our ideas into it to create

a lesson for others

I like that Xerte allows you to be creative and display the assessment in creative and visual ways . [It] gives you a good feeling when you see the finished Xerte and that you helped to

create it

.

“the purposes of open-ended exploration could be puzzling and unsettling to students who held strongly reproductive conceptions of learning”

(Levy & Petrulis 2012: 96)

Providing peer support in a a collaborative learning environment

Getting used to more in class rather than lecture based learning was strange to begin with. Once I was familiar with it I felt more comfortable talking to my lecturers than with lecturers on any other modules

…while I appreciate it being student led it did feel at times that we were doing your job e.g. learning how a

Xerte works, making rubrics, figuring out how to get the

information for assessment 1

Its good that you want to encourage creativity but you are marking and your

views will inform what you think is a good layout/structure etc. students should have

this info

The peer assisted learning encouraged me to utilise

support from my peers, which has made group tasks more

enjoyable

Hard at first, getting used to something new, but the extra help from the Xerte champions being available

was encouraging

“The change that is required to address today's challenges is not vast or difficult

or expensive. It is a small thing…Simply ask, how would we do things differently

if we put learning first? Then do it….

“The problem is not insoluble. However, to paraphrase Albert Einstein, we cannot

solve our problem with the same level of thinking that created it”

(Barr & Tagg, 1996, p.xx)

We are not suggesting anything new……

Being able to take charge of my learning and actively engage with the lecturers as academic partners on my work was highly confiden[ce] building

Learning by doing. I personally…simply can't learn from the traditional talking-for-an-hour-about-new-ideas format of teaching

Perhaps we should listen to the student voice……

enjoyed being kept on our toes and encouraged to keep thinking rather than being given notes to copy.

You are more likely to remember it if you learn as you do

It facilitates learning. That's all I need in a teaching style, and the current system fails at that.

I only found it scary because I was introduced to this way of learning so late in to my degree - do it earlier!!!

i think that it is the way University should be

But, don’t just listen, let students become ‘change agents’

“The concept of ‘listening to the student voice’ – implicitly if not deliberately

– supports the perspective of student as ‘consumer’, whereas ‘students as

change agents’ explicitly supports a view of the student as ‘active

collaborator’ and ‘co-producer’, with the potential for transformation.”

Dunne & Zandstra, 2011, p.4

“It is to our own academic tradition and custom that we should look to for progressive change”

Neary, 2009, p.23

Learning in partnership

Education

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