University student approaches to learning science through writing

This study investigates the approaches adopted by students to a university writing programme designed to help them learn first‐year undergraduate science. The research design includes phenomenographic analyses of 19 interviews and 50 open‐ended questionnaires, as well as quantitative analyses of the qualitative data. The main results of the study are the close association between the quality of the students’ approaches to writing, including when they use technology, to the way they think about writing as a way of learning, and to the level of achievement they reach. The results suggest that writing programmes designed to help students learn science would be improved if their tasks embed issues such as what learning is possible through writing, how new technologies can be used to support meaningful writing and who should be offering models of how to approach university writing most meaningfully.     

Ambience in social learning: student engagement with new designs for learning spaces

An imperative to develop the social experience of learning has led to the design of informal learning spaces within libraries. Yet little is known about how these spaces are used by students or how students perceive them. Field work in one such space is reported. The general private study practice of undergraduates was captured through audio diaries, while activity in the learning space was directly observed, and students provided reflective perspectives in focus groups and through spot conversations. Results suggest such spaces are popular and yet stimulate limited group work. Yet other, less intense, forms of productive collaboration did occur and a taxonomy of four such types of encounter is offered. Of particular importance to students was access to a ‘social ambience’ for study. The results encourage institutions to design for a mixed economy of student choice over learning spaces and to consider modes of encouraging diversity in their use.     

What academic language and learning advisers bring to the scholarship of teaching and learning: problems and possibilities for dialogue with the disciplines

Higher education policy is seeking, in the interest of ‘quality assurance’, to reward teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Academic language and learning (ALL) advisers, who work closely with students to improve their performance in their courses of study, have much to contribute to SoTL. ALL advisers who adopt an ‘academic literacies’ approach share with lecturers in the disciplines an engagement with issues of ‘‐ography’ (i.e. writing in and for a discourse community)—including the relationships between epistemology, form, and language—yet, misconceptions about ALL advisers’ work can prevent discipline lecturers from consulting them when thinking about questions of teaching and learning in their own field. This paper discusses ALL advisers’ access to insights into students’ experiences of learning and of being taught, with relevance both for particular disciplines and for academic culture across the disciplines; their contributions to SoTL; the difficulties they encounter in trying to communicate across the borders of the disciplines; and ways of improving this situation in the context of the new emphasis on encouraging improvement in the quality of teaching.     

Rethinking the contributions of young people with learning disabilities to iPad storymaking: a new model of distributed authorship

Digital technologies such as iPads are now ubiquitous in classrooms and family homes, enabling new possibilities for all learners but particularly for those with disabilities. Existing literature explores how children with learning disabilities create and benefit from personalised digital stories but does not unpack theoretical understandings of their ‘authorship’. This paper addresses this gap by proposing an original model of ‘distributed authorship’ with three axes of distribution—interpersonal, technological and temporal—to account for the authorial contributions of young people with learning disabilities. Five families were given an iPad with Pictello storymaking app and instructed to use it with their young person in any way which was engaging for them. Data generation over 12 weeks included weekly diaries, home videos, semi-structured interviews and story collection. Findings indicated that whilst ability to directly engage with the app varied, all the young people could be said to exert authorial influence on the stories distributed across three axes: support from others, support from the technology itself and incorporation of prior embodied agency. The study has theoretical implications for our understanding of ‘authorship’ as well as implications for pedagogy and practice by reconceptualising severely disabled children as literate learners and co-authors.     

Encouraging student engagement in a blended learning environment: the use of contemporary learning spaces

Research shows that some non‐traditional students find the university environment alienating, impersonal and unsupportive. The ‘Quickstart’ project combines traditional lectures and seminars with a sequence of carefully designed online tasks, aimed at lessening the impact of the start of year uncertainties for new students. One thousand students across two geographic locations participated in the programme. The project was evaluated by considering three sources of data: data generated by server statistics of 40,358 successful requests for pages in the first four weeks of teaching; student anonymous responses to an online end of course questionnaire as well as extracts from their reflective journals; and the student experience as viewed through the eyes of a researcher in the classroom. Findings offer insights into how the students blend classroom time with their own time; and student perceptions of their own learning experiences. A collaborative learning experience involving travel to a contemporary learning space (the Tate Modern Art Gallery) mitigated the possible isolating effect of the use of technology; instead the technology enhanced the discussion and participation in activities. The students visited the Tate Modern and then facilitated their discussions by sending each other SMS text messages; they bonded very quickly in the seminar groups, where weekly online tasks that had been prepared individually ‘outside’ the classroom were the focus of group discussion and debate ‘inside the classroom’; their end of semester reflective writing showed very clearly how valuable the early ‘friendship’ groups had been for them settling into university life.     

Learner Assessment through Subjective Theories and Action Research

This paper deals with students’ and university teachers’ self‐concepts on the basis of subjective theories: It is proposed to show how students and teachers are guided in university classes by their self‐images and how these determine their behaviour in such sessions. In a project carried out with students in the summer of 1997 in a literature course, subjective theories were connected with action research. Students and teachers collected data that helped them reflect on their behaviour, especially their own participation during sessions (from the students’ side) and on teacher control and dominance (from the teacher's side). Student diaries, video documentation of some of the sessions and interviews with students at the end of the semester were analysed with regard to learning processes and respective insights into students’ and the teacher's subjective theories.     

Lifelong learning from natural disasters: transformative group-based learning at Philippine universities

This study explores reflective experience during transformative, group-based learning among university leaders following a natural disaster such as a typhoon in two Philippine universities. Natural disasters are recurrent phenomena in many parts of the world, but the literature largely ignores their impact on lifelong human learning, for instance regarding preparing the university setting for future natural disasters. The study used interviews and document analysis, drawing on a body of interrelated works in transformative learning theory, critical educational theory and conceptions about group processes and reflective practice to understand university leaders’ lifelong learning from natural disasters as experiential, transformative, reflective and group oriented. The findings document that university leaders’ reflective, transformative learning depends on individuals’ experience of natural disasters as disorienting dilemmas, and that reflection is facilitated by decisive group dynamics rather than only personal reflection. Facilitating a learning space for transformative, reflective learning in university settings might assist university leaders to enhance disaster risk preparedness, for instance through local policy change.     

Evaluating writing instruction through an investigation of students’ experiences of learning through writing

Learning through writing is a way of learning not only the appropriate written expression of disciplinary knowledge, but also the knowledge itself through reflection and revision. This study investigates the quality of a writing experience provided to university students in a first-year biology subject. The writing instruction methodology used is Genre-based literacy pedagogy, designed to help both with learning disciplinary knowledge and its appropriate written presentation. Evaluative research methodologies from Student Learning Research are used and include the use of three closed-ended questionnaires and an open-ended questionnaire. The results of the research suggest ways of improving the writing instruction by better understanding the previous writing experiences of the students, improving the instructional materials, clarifying goals of the writing tasks at key stages in the writing process, and helping students to improve their approach to the writing experience.in final form: 23 August 2004     

A Systematic Approach in Student Reading

Abstract

The Faculty Writing Fellows Seminar was designed to develop university instructors’ skill in writing instruction: The 2015–16 professional development project offered faculty at Southern Oregon University a chance to read writing-pedagogy research, collaboratively develop their teaching practices, and—most importantly—put themselves in the shoes of student writers. The seminar had a positive impact on instructors’ teaching and students’ writing. Instructors showed growth in confidence, empathy, knowledge, and instruction. Their students’ essays outscored essays by students in nonparticipating instructors’ classes. The study argues for professional development that simultaneously builds pedagogical knowledge and skills and incorporates emotional and psychosocial aspects of teaching and learning.     

A situative metaphor for teacher learning: the case of university tutors learning to grade student coursework

In the continuing concern about academic standards in the higher education sector a great deal of emphasis has been placed on quality assurance procedures rather than on considering how university tutors learn to grade the quality of work produced by students. As part of a larger research project focused on how tutors grade student coursework, this paper offers a new metaphor for such tutor learning, based on a sociocultural perspective. The research project used think‐aloud protocols recorded as university tutors graded student coursework, and this was followed by semi‐structured interviews. The voluntary participants consisted of 25 lecturers in four contrasting domains—humanities, art and design, medicine and teacher education—in three universities, two teaching‐led and one research intensive. We developed a metaphorical framework that helps to understand the work and learning of the lecturers and tested it by applying it to analysis of the tutor interview data. Grading, writing feedback, second marking and moderation are important situated professional learning opportunities for tutors to debate and reach agreement on the academic standard demonstrated by student coursework. The metaphor considers professional learning as interplay between the vertical domain of public knowledge and the horizontal domain of teachers' practical wisdom. The metaphor presented in this paper is proposed for critical consideration and wider use by academics, teachers, academic developers and teacher educators as an aid to better understanding of teacher's professional learning.     

Narratives of learning communities in environmental education

Abstract

This article introduces the core concepts that emerged from five environmental education action research studies conducted by a group called Learning Communities in Environmental Education, Science and Mathematics (CEAMECIM) from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande (FURG) in the south of Brazil. The studies focus on teacher education processes in learning communities involving teachers, researchers and environmental educators, and the critical writing and reading texts of classroom recordings to problematise participants’ teaching practices. CEAMECIM used action research cycles to examine narratives of educational action, narratives from teachers concerning their development as environmental educators, and narratives of their development of a sense of belonging, with a particular focus on critiquing social models that are based on hierarchies and individuality. From this analysis, we propose a new perspective on being and learning how to become a learning community, crystallised by the belief that ‘we are more when we are together’.     

Implementing interactive courseware into EFL business writing: computational assessment and learning satisfaction

The implementation of interactive courseware within a task-based learning (TBL) approach was conducted for English Writing for Business to Chinese students in an applied foreign languages department housed in a university of technology. The development of the interactive courseware is based on Mayer’s multimedia learning theory, which allows learners to construct verbal and visual cognitive representations and integrate them; its language learning focus is keyed to Chapelle’s suggested criteria for development of multimedia CALL (computer assisted language learning). According to the curriculum, students had to accomplish three tasks rooted in the real world workplace: inquiry, negotiation, and complaint. Evaluation of the interactive ESP courseware into TBL instruction was based upon data from students’ pre- and post-writing performance measured by three different types of online computational assessments. In addition, a questionnaire survey about learning satisfaction was administered. The results indicate that students had significantly better post-writing performance and showed greater satisfaction after self-studying with the courseware-implemented instruction, which effectively integrated content knowledge, integrative English skills and writing practices embedded in the courseware. This instruction could be a potentially useful for teaching business writing by providing both content knowledge and its related integrative language practice.     

探析90后大学生班级学风建设路径

学习是大学生最基本的职责与任务,学风建设是学生学习目的、学习态度和学习纪律的综合反映。当今90后大学生个性特征明显,自律性不强,学习意识不足等因素致使班级学风建设存在一定问题。本文试图通过对大学生班级学风建设重要性的分析,探寻出适合当今90后大学生班级学风建设的有效路径,以给高等学校班级学风建设提供有利借鉴和帮助,使大学生在良好学风建设班级中,顺利完成学业,培养学习意识,促进大学生全面发展。     

Supporting students to develop collaborative learning skills in technology-based environments

The paper focuses on the question of how to advance collaboration through the Web and support lifelong learning. First, the theoretical framework and architecture of a new web‐based tool, the ‘IQ Team’, is introduced. IQ Team is an interactive online assessment and support system to learn social skills needed in cooperative work, and belongs in an interactive online assessing and tutoring system, ‘IQ Form’, developed for the Finnish Virtual University. IQ Team has three main elements: (1) interactive self‐evaluation test banks, (2) online tutoring sets and (3) learning diaries. In the creation of IQ Team, the validation process was conducted with two samples (n = 259 and n = 275). The online students’ social skills in different groups were explored, and the feedback data from different user groups were analysed. The online students scored high values for social skills, and no differences were discerned between university, Open University and technical students. The qualitative data (n = 35) were collected in order to get users’ feedback of the tool. The qualitative data consisted of interviews, open‐ended questions and online discussions. The users of IQ Team reflected that the tool benefited them to become aware of their group work skills and developed their collaborative learning skills. IQ Team provides a powerful tool for online instruction and communication in higher education and in the Open University to promote joint‐regulated learning.     

Lifelong learning and the reform of the teaching practicum in Australia

This paper reports the findings of a project—‘Lifelong learning and teacher education’—undertaken by the Centre for Lifelong Learning, Australian Catholic University, under the auspices of the Australian Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training. The study was designed to investigate the operationalization of lifelong learning in Australian teacher education. The study revealed that there is a range of existing, innovative practices regarding partnerships between schools and higher and further education that are in keeping with emerging ideas about lifelong learning. Moreover, some of these take the form of collaborative action research projects focused on improving the learning occurring in the partnership schools. This paper describes some current approaches in Australia to collaborative action research by teacher educators' and their partnership schools and shows how they contribute to lifelong learning. The approaches are then analyzed to suggest ways of advancing lifelong learning within Australian Education Faculties thus helping to make lifelong learning more of a reality for all.     

Developing and Improving: A Study of the Middle School Students' Writing Ability in the Second Language Education

With the development and advancement of social and cultural communication between China and other countries in the world,the second language education is very popular with Chinese people.And usually,it will take the young for nearly16 years to learn a second language,especially English.Most of them learn English from primary school until university.Besides having routine English classes at school,they also pay extra time and money to learn English in their spare time in many training companies.And now,English education has already become an industry in China and some training companies such as New Oriental English,are familiar to common people.And a crucial problem is that,after so many years of hard work,most of them are even having basic writing difficulties.The systemic and effective teaching method of writing in a second language education in China is being researched.This thesis attempts to cultivate the students’subjective initiative in second language education activities,raise the students’learning consciousness,and enhance their lasting interests in learning so as to reach the goal to improve the students’writing ability in second language education.     

基于学习风格的大学生英语学习策略训练研究

学习风格和学习策略是两个紧密相连的概念,学习风格直接关系到大学生第二语言学习策略的选择和运用,从而影响大学生第二语言学习的效果。在大学英语教学中,教师和大学生都要建立学习风格和学习策略意识,教师要注重运用性别差异的策略训练、与大学生学习风格相匹配的策略训练和故意失配的策略训练,引导大学生合理选择自主学习策略,提高大学生自主学习的意识和能力,进而提高学习效率。