Newsletter 12, June 1996
| Newsletter 12, June 1996
Supporting Teaching and Learning |
This contribution originally appeared in the FAST Report for the Faculty of Cultural and Educational Studies (CES). The full report has been widely circulated within the faculty, but copies are available on request, from Marianne Dee on extension 3500, for staff in other faculties who would be interested in seeing a copy. It is reproduced here as it is considered to be of more general relevance. We welcome your views and comments on it.
Higher Education reflects the external environment because it is ultimately influenced and at times ruled by it. The decision to merge the Department for Education and the Department of Employment is a reflection of the link between education and training. The job market and the labour movement has changed dramatically since the 70s: employers are hiring more part-time workers; full-time employment is falling and employers expect staff to be increasingly flexible, able to learn fresh skills and operate new technologies. "In the labour market of the 1990s lifelong employability requires lifelong learning" (Corney, 1995).
Our Mission Statement is clear about achieving mass higher education. Anyone working in Higher Education over the past six years cannot have failed to experience the enormous growth in the numbers and type of students entering higher education. If you combine this with the reduction in the numbers of full-time staff, then it is fairly evident that there has to be some change in the way we deliver education. We are now moving towards an emphasis on the learning end of the spectrum.
We are seeking to create autonomous learners, with skills and aptitudes which can be continuously called upon throughout their lives.
A further reason for this response has to be an acknowledgement of the great leaps forward which are being made in the field of Information Technology. Without the skills base with which to manage this area of knowledge, we cannot truly say we are preparing our students for life in the real world. In order for this learning to be effective, it needs to be contextualized to the students’ experience at any given point in time. Active learning focuses on the learner and allows the student to learn within a structure of personal learning achievements based on solid learning objectives.
Joy Higgs (1990) maintains that “learners’ attitudes and performances are strongly influenced by their experience of past independent learning activities and the enjoyment and success they experienced in these activities and the abilities developed from past learning experiences”.
More importantly, the characteristics of such information handling skills has long been a major factor in enabling students participation in lifelong learning (Candy, 1994). Clearly this has to be a desirable aim if we wish to maintain “the business” of Higher Education.
As professionals in the field of information, we are under severe pressure to respond to new developments ourselves. We therefore recognize the pressure staff and students are under to cope with new developments; we are all having to deal with “professional updating”.
Over the next five years, we hope to see the development of vastly improved Learning Centres which incorporate the range of technology and printed materials necessary to produce quality of learning. Without the development of more focused training and more co-operative systems between the LSS units, we will not be able to make really effective use of this investment.
The CES FAST would like to improve the links between the Faculty and ourselves in order to ensure that all staff and students benefit from the services available.
Staff and students need to be kept abreast of new developments if they want to improve their learning capacity. We believe that the formalizing of training sessions in LSS is the route to a successful exchange of knowledge and information. The need for core transferable skills that improve learners’ abilities to retrieve, handle, interpret and present information has never been greater.
Leeds Metropolitan University is one of the few academic libraries in the country which utilizes the skills of Tutor Librarians. They are trained professionals, often with a degree in another subject, who are skilled in the arts of information management and retrieval. Computing Advisors similarly are trained experts who can advise staff and students on the range and most appropriate computing package/program to suit the needs of a particular learning situation. They cannot promise to teach your students how to use packages which you have timetabled into your teaching programme, but they can help you to set them up and advise on how appropriate they are. In Media and Educational Development Services (formerly Media Services), a range of experts is available to advise on presentation skills and the use of technology in the delivery of teaching and learning. An example is the use of video production, which could be of lectures, independent learning initiatives, or role playing, interview practice etc. These services can be invaluable if you are involved in external work and wish to ensure anything you use to present information has been produced to a professionally high standard.
Learning Support Services are called “support” because they carry a range of skills and services which underpin the learning experience.
As a consequence of both external and internal factors, the pressure on staff to respond to a changing environment is difficult whilst juggling so many tasks:
and the ever increasing workload of lecturers can mean that the resource end of the equation can be forgotten. This may include:
These are handled later rather than sooner and the resources necessary to support a particular activity may not be in place for the students at their point of need.
We know that using the library is no longer a task which we can be sure that all teaching staff, research students, masters, returners and postgraduates are familiar with. It never really was. It is a myth to believe that all staff and learners with a postgraduate qualification are literate in library use, particularly in the age of the electronic library. It has never been a traditional part of HE or education generally to teach learners how to learn. Each semester sees improvements in the services we can offer to staff and students. We use our Service Level Agreement as a basis on which we can identify any shortfalls. We respond both to student feedback at course committees and to the LSS User Group as forums which can inform us and flag areas of service which need attention. Liaison through the CES FAST is one forum which aids the communication process and helps to keep users up to date with new developments.
As Tutor Librarians, we have a symbiotic relationship with our colleagues in Media and Computing Services. Without the expertise of the Technicians we would never get started; without the teaching and advice of the Computing Advisors we’d be far less effective; without back up from our Media and Educational Development Services colleagues we could not enhance our delivery. It is the aim of LSS to pass these skills on so that lecturers can proceed with the business of managing their teaching and learning strategies much more effectively, and students can manage their own learning as far as they need to.
The long-term benefits should be enhanced performance in their current academic studies, as well as the confidence to use and apply those skills at any point in their lifetime.
The success or failure of the support services rests on the relationship between LSS staff and the Faculty.
If we accept that updating is crucial in a changing environment, recognize the importance of core skills, and acknowledge the importance of relevance and point of need for all learners, then partnership becomes a critical factor in the success story.
LSS could also be involved in staff inductions and staff development exercises. New staff, in particular, require a foundation course in the range of facilities available which can enhance their preparation and inform them of possible potential for learning and teaching.
There have already been some success stories within CES and the Library which are a direct result of good communication channels and active involvement between staff in the school and staff in the library. We would like to build upon these, and, with that in mind, debates regarding the best way forward are ongoing between the FAST and CES Co-ordinator for Teaching Learning and Assessment.
Current good practice can be identified already in a number of areas, and the three which are described below are good examples of:
The skills for learning are those which start with basic information handling skills, including a familiarity with the tools that students need to use if they are to progress through their degree and finish with a successful outcome. The induction process is the starting point but we need to always bear in mind the limitations of it.
Students receive a 45-minute orientation with LSS in their first week in the University. This should ensure that they know there is a library, where it is, that they can use it and who their tutor librarian is. They are asked to do a simple exercise in the library designed to familiarize them with the library catalogue and the locations of the growing range of materials and media they need to know exist.
Most of our students have always received this induction. It is only as useful as the student makes it themselves and bears no relation to any need to know or find information.
We then bring back the students into the library, a few weeks later, as soon as they have some work to do. In liaison with the lecturers, who develop a directed task around their topic(s), we create a simple exercise which encourages them to find out specific information using a range of sources and a range of skills. One important factor is that they work co-operatively and share information with each other, and then finally with the whole group at a feedback session. The point about the exercise is that they want to find the information for two reasons: one is that the work is assessed and that they will be feeding back into a collective pool of information; and the other is that they also know that more and more of their work will be library based, and therefore success is dependent on these skills for learning. The approach is one of building blocks; their directed tasks become slightly more advanced each time they use the library, until they have a further taught session with their tutor librarian who teaches them some literature-searching skills which allow them to utilize the tools they are now familiar with in a much more sophisticated way. Eventually, they are able to use all the resources available and can manipulate them for their own specific needs.
These skills for learning should stay with them throughout their academic life.
The skills for research are encompassed in the two taught modules on the Postgraduate Certificate in Research Methodology. The library makes an input to “Managing the Research Process” which aims to:
Library teaching input in the form of information handling resources and skills relates directly to these aims, takes the form of three sessions:
Subsequently, the learning contract may identify areas for the students’ development which arise in the context of the module.
The skills for life can best be illustrated by development work on a number of the Masters courses, as well as work with the Benefits Agency and Leeds City Council, through the faculty LISAS scheme. All of the students involved in these schemes are highly-motivated, mature individuals. Many of them are senior professionals in their field, and are attending the course because they need to update their expertise and respond to and reflect on whatever changes are taking place in their professional lives, or because they have identified a gap in their service to the community they serve.
To take some examples would best illustrate the approach to learning skills adopted here.
It has to be understood that the support services offering skills updating in a vacuum is a nonsense. Its value is limited and its effect is ephemeral. It is only through real partnership on work ongoing already in the schools that involvement of the learning support staff can give added value.
Marianne Dee, CES FAST Co-ordinatorCandy,Philip. (1994) "The Ally Within". IN Innovations in Higher Education. (18) Spring 1994. p.189-204
Corney,Mark. (1995) "Three Coins in the Future". IN Guardian,Careers Section, 24/6/1995.p.2
Higgs,Joy. (1990) "Planning learning experiences to promote autonomous learning". IN Developing Student Autonomy in Learning. David Boud (ed) (London: Kogan Page, 1990)
