Karen O’Rourke

Centre for Excellence in Teaching and LearningLeeds Metropolitan University, UK

I keep hearing voices........I hope I’m MAD!

May 2009

A starting point....enquiry-based learning

EBL represents a shift away from passive methods, which involve the transmission of knowledge to students, to more facilitative teaching methods through which students are expected to construct their own knowledge and understanding by engaging in supported processes of enquiry Kahn and O’Rourke, Guide to Enquiry-Based

Learning, www.heacademy.ac.uk

• Enquiry Based Learning is a natural form of learning, borne out of our innate sense of curiosity and desire to understand

• It is generically applicable, and has grown from modelling learning in a number of subjects

EBL• Interlock skills with disciplinary content

• Values performance and process as well as product

• Values existing knowledge and experience

• Enhances self-awareness and reflection (PDP and CPD)

• Encourages feedback

What is problem-based learning?

The principal idea behind PBL is….that the starting point for learning should be a problem, a query or a puzzle that the learner wishes to solve

(David Boud, 1985)

Some key characteristics....

• Learning driven by a process of enquiry or investigation• Involves complex, intriguing, authentic, stimuli• Student (or learner) centred• Demands action• Develops skills• Connects theory and practice• De-mystifies research• Supported /supportive process• Encourages feedback• Social • Enjoyable

‘….leaving behind the dusty lecture halls, to find out about our subject….done through interaction with other students and academics, and evidence found in places – books, the internet, and the big wide world itself’

What we expect from students….• Accept responsibility for their

learning• Work as a team• Identify own learning goals• Determine a plan of activity and

negotiate responsibility for the work

• Share findings and collate research

• Complete the task to deadline• Undertake assessment activities • Give and receive feedback

PBL is morally defensible in that it pays due respect to both student and teacher as persons

with knowledge, understanding, feelings and interests who come together in a shared

educational process.

Margetson, D., The Challenge of Problem-Based Learning,

Boud and Feletti, Eds, (Kogan Page) 1997

Learner Centred....

Let’s start with the students....

In the first couple of weeks I was worried, I was thinking ‘this isn’t for me, I’m not going to learn anything’. I thought the course would be quite woolly, I couldn’t see how it was going to work

I was surprised there weren’t any set texts. It’s much more left up to us

A lot of people were nervous because it was something new and we didn’t know what was going to happen

I think if I had come in the first year and been dropped into this situation, I would have freaked out. I quite liked being anonymous in the first year

 

If I had come to an Open Day and was told that I would have to do a research project I would be out the door!

We tried to allocate roles - chair, scribe, etc – but I thought that was too rigid and could be detrimental

In terms of time spent it has far exceeded my other courses and I, at first, resented the degree to which it occupied me

It may be naive but I didn’t expect to meet selfish and unmotivated people on my course

I have friends who have been forced to do group work and have been assigned groups and they go and no-one else turns up or some people do all the work and others don’t contribute

The written work counts for 40% - you can take it as an essay or a report. I’m not going anywhere near a report because that would be scary because you don’t know what is meant by report and you’re not going to take a risk in your final year to write a report properly

We’d expect the lecturer to tell us exactly what to do, expect loads of direction

We are the little people, we just sit and listen

The tutor voice

The centre of the teaching and learning process must become the student. In the words of Heidegger, “the teacher is ahead of his apprentices in this alone, that he has still far more to learn than they....he has to learn to let them learn”.

(Prof Lewis Elton, THES, 21 July 2000)

Of the best leader, when the job is done, the people say ‘we did it ourselves’

Lao Tzu in Tao Te Ching

Our group really felt proud of the way we had taught ourselves

Our task is to make ourselves not needed!Prof Kirsti Lonka, Tampere, 2009

All of us hold the key to loads of information. We are all sources of information as much as the bookshelves and the teacher.

The students just don’t get it! It’s all going wrong!

You can come and go as you please. It means that because there is such a casual feeling towards it, [PBL] it lends itself to people just chatting about this, that and the other. And that dynamic is really important

The nature of the [PBL] course means that the tutor has to be accessible because the students become actively involved in the problems and the groups take on a life outside the class

But I need to get all the content into the students.... the ‘bulimic’ approach....?

The content from this course has really stuck in – long term! A lot of the courses you can do very little all year and then cram for two weeks. In this course, because it was problem-based you had to plan and you learned so much

PBL encourages students to explore new, untouched areas, this would not happen in a traditional tutor-led course, where you are encouraged to follow the path/spoonfeeding of the tutor

We did a reflection on how we had come together to do our last presentation and we were absolutely astounded at how much we had learnt, about the problem and about group skills

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire

W B Yeats

What happens when EBL students pose a problem!

The voice of the Researcher

….five other people researching a topic and sharing information has led to a wider breadth of knowledge than I have previously experienced….

ResearchI originally thought research was a big thing to do, it required lots of people and money. I thought it was scientists and stuff. I know it’s not now. I know I can do it. It’s about being critical, looking at what other people have done, then finding a methodology and asking questions.

First Year Student, Early Childhood Studies, Northumbria University, UK

Research

I soon learned that it did not require a great brain to do original research. One must be highly motivated, exercise good judgement, have intelligence, imagination, determination and a little luck. One of the most important qualities in doing research, I found, was to ask the right questions at the right time.

Julius Axelrod (Nobel prize winning scientist)

Let’s hear it for the Educational Developer!

It is no surprise that educational developer roles are often undertaken by individuals who have not had a traditional academic pathway. As a result, educational developers are often accustomed to and adept at adaptation.

(Higgs, B. And McCarthy, M., eds The Changing Roles of Teachers andLearners in Higher Education in Ireland: an introduction, NAIRTL 2008)

Educational Development – it’s a tough job!Prof Kirsti Lonka, Tampere, April 2009

Using my language!

The last few weeks I’ve had a taste of proper EBL action, helping out with a Modern Languages session and sitting in on a Geography focus group (which made me feel a lot better about focus groups in general as it was not nearly as scary as I had imagined!).The last week I’ve been concentrating on putting together an overview of EBL style study in Undergraduate English and American studies, looking at course outlines that might involve EBL but not yet recognise it as such. That’s finished now so hopefully, with Julia, we can start working out who might be interested in acknowledging EBL elements on their courses. I think the main conclusions so far have been that people are already including EBL on their course….they just don’t know it yet! During the next few weeks I’m going to start doing the same thing for Postgraduate studies too.This Friday, Jamie and I are going to the first Theology meeting, to make our faces known and then I anticipate an exciting weekend of endless reading!Hope everyone is getting along great!

Using my language!

The last few weeks I’ve had a taste of proper EBL action, helping out with a Modern Languages session and sitting in on a Geography focus group (which made me feel a lot better about focus groups in general as it was not nearly as scary as I had imagined!). The last week I’ve been concentrating on putting together an overview of EBL- style study in Undergraduate English and American studies, looking at course outlines that might involve EBL but not yet recognise it as such. That’s finished now so hopefully, with Julia, we can start working out who might be interested in acknowledging EBL elements on their courses. I think the main conclusions so far have been that people are already including EBL on their course….they just don’t know it yet! During the next few weeks I’m going to start doing the same thing for Postgraduate studies too. This Friday, Jamie and I are going to the first Theology meeting, to make our faces known and then I anticipate an exciting weekend of endless reading!Hope everyone is getting along great!

(taken from an undergraduate student blog)

...and I thought I was the enthusiastic multi-tasker!

Last friday i met up with Sally Freeman in pharmacy to discuss how the medicinal chemistry project funded by CEEBL last year is developing. It would appear that this course has now been embedded into the programme and is now worth 80% of the module ( the other 20% being practical work).Therefore the module is now assessed purely through EBL, and not through examination. I will be working on this project again this year and hope to put a draft together of a paper to go into Pharmacy Education over the next few weeks.There may also be the possibilty of presenting a poster on the project at the RPSGB conference. Meanwhile,I met with Liz Theaker this afternoon and I will be running some focus groups over the next few weeks to review how the new curriculum is being recieved in dentistry.I am also planning to redesign the personal development records within pharmacy following on from our workshop on the 22nd November. I have found an expert in the field of continuing professional development and am meeting with her next monday. Hopefully we will be able to come up with some solutions to make it more student friendly and also correlate more with the records we will have to keep when we are practicing pharmacists.

Different undergraduate student, same blog!

The student voice – keeps coming through!• As the group gets together, friendships develop and students get to know one another better. Not only have we

been able to provide academic support to each other, we have begun to socialise outside the classroom

• I felt as if I was at UNIVERSITY rather than at school. You feel like you’re SUPPOSED to be here

• It [learning] means more than books – it really demonstrates that there is respect and trust both ways

• I was taking it in because I was interested in it and it wasn’t just reading for the exam. It was work I wanted to do because I chose to do it

• We’re almost learning by accident, it’s like intravenous.

 

• You go out of a PBL with your head buzzing, rather than feeling you’ve just passively sat there

• The discussions....it’s amazing! Hearing all the different viewpoints....seeing how things develop

• When you see someone else is on the same track and you’re all learning the same thing, that can give you a big confidence boost, it pushes you a bit more because you want your work to be just as good as theirs

• You have responsibility to the whole group, not just yourself, everyone has to pull together

Employability • Team working and leadership• Inter-personal skills

– Negotiation and persuasion– Decision making– Handling conflict– Sharing

• Communication skills– Presentation, explaining, questioning – Networking

• Managing projects and meetings• Evaluation, judgement, appraisal• Entrepreneurship, ‘intrapreneurship’ and

social enterprise

attitudes are important to employers….

Interested, enthusiastic and flexible graduate….and….keen, motivated and ambitious

individuals….

are frequently encountered phrases and the words

dedicated passionate self-starter energetic

systematic committedabound

BioSciences Subject Centre Newsletter2007 www.heacademy.ac.uk

Am I MAD?

‘Evaluating Learning Change’, Hutchings, B. and O’Rourke, K.

‘Guide to Enquiry-Based Learning’, Kahn,P. and O’Rourke, K.

www.manchester.ac.uk/ceebl

Karen O’Rourke

Centre for Excellence in Teaching and LearningLeeds Metropolitan University

k.orourke@leedsmet.ac.uk

May 2009