SUNDAY 2ND AUGUST, 2015 – UWI TODAY
11
“Online teaching calls
for
more rigorous structured
teaching plans, preparatory
training and course content
that one can imagine. Many
people start and stop as it is
different from face-to-face
course delivery and a range
of other skills have to be
honed as an e-lecturer.” This
is the informed perspective
of Dr Andrew Campbell, e-lecturer at The UWI’s Open
Campus, Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology
and Durham College - Toronto District School Board,
who presented at the Best Practice in Higher Education
conference that took place at The UWI, St Augustine
late June. Naturally, his presentation at the conference
examined the present methods being employed by Open
Campus online instructors to engage online learners
thereby arriving at a set of best practices in the growing
course delivery method.
Today, more and more traditional post-secondary
institutions are taking the classroom online, offering
their students other means of engagement and opening
more full-time study opportunities to a more diverse
population. Acquiring and preparing educators to
facilitate online learning has its own set of challenges,
special needs, philosophies and a growing list of what
are the best practices in the area. The transition from
face-to-face teaching to online facilitation requires
special skills and an additional lens through which
most traditional classroom educators view students,
student engagement, assessment, and evaluation, based
on their own philosophy of teaching and initial teacher
preparation programme.
It requires for some face-to-face educators,
additional skills; and for others, a whole different
approach. Training is necessary not just for the technical
areas, but also in the areas of online communication,
online social presence, and online assessment. The
pedagogy of online teaching according to Dr Campbell
includes, “making students accountable for their own
learning which I fashion according to the SQ3R approach
(Survey, Question, Read, Recite and Review).”
He said that online course delivery is about 40%
content with the rest of delivery being about search and
sharing techniques, teach-back or learning via a flipped
classroom scenario where students are the ones in charge
of presenting on assigned topics. He added that these
are the techniques that drive online learning, growing
critical thinking skills.
When asked about the peculiarities of the West
Indian students as compared to those others he also
teaches, Dr Campbell said that the flipped classroom
scenarios are usually the ones that The UWI students
take some time to accept as they are still looking for the
lecturer who is the keeper of knowledge, the sage figure.
He also noted with a twisted laugh that only forThe UWI
students and across several islands at a time, the internet
goes down right in time for the delivery of a major paper!
Apart from these two characteristics, online
teaching and learning can be as intense and rewarding
as good face-to-face sessions. Dr Campbell wrapped his
presentation with the advice that as this trend grows, all
university lecturers should get appropriately trained.
Trending now
Online and
Anytime
Learning
B y R e b e c c a
R o b i n s o n
In his keynote presentation
on the second day of
the
Institutionalisng Best Practice in Higher Education
conference, Dr Dan Butin, Professor and founding Dean,
School of Education and Social Policy at Merrimack College,
discussed the key challenges and insights gained in the last
two decades for teaching and learning in higher education.
His presentation focused on best practices for student
engagement and high-impact practices and offered a vision
of fostering transformation from shallow to deep learning.
Professor Butin also made the claim that such a scholarship
of teaching and learning must
take into account the rise of
digital learning technologies,
student backg rounds and
aspirations, and the civic role of
higher education in our society.
Professor Butin grounded
his presentation in the seminal
works of John Dewey and
supported his premise that “one
can’t talk about teaching unless
someone is learning,” as well
as on his observation that that
there are numerous best practices
around teaching but few best
practices around learning,
although our research shows
that we are cognisant of how
learning works. He illustrated
our knowledge of how learning
works by reviewing research
over the last 100 years, from
a philosophy of teaching to a
science of learning. He identified
cognitive psychology, cognitive
science, learning sciences, discipline-based educational
research, and scholarship of teaching and learning as
respectively exploring the essence of how learning works.
The outcome of research in these areas was a move towards
student engagement. Professor Butin illustrated Dewey’s
(1938) suggestion in his book
Experience and Education
that the role of the teacher shifted from the sage on the stage
to the guide on the side. This concept evolved further with
Merrienboer’s (2012) four-component instructional design
for complex learning which illustrates the progression from
teaching to learning back to teaching.
Critical to Professor Butin’s presentation, though,
was his elucidation of high-impact practices in education
based on the work of Kuh (2008). Butin identified high-
impact practices as falling under three headings:
common
intellectual experiences
,
experiential education,
and
education
that matters
. He cited common intellectual experiences as
events such as learning communities, first-year seminars
and experiences, and collaborative assignments and projects.
Under experiential education, he highlighted undergraduate
research, diversity/global learning, and service learning or
community-based learning. For education that matters, he
cited internships, writing-intensive courses, and capstone
courses and projects. He suggested that high-impact
practices encourage and facilitate self-authorship, project-
BEST PRACTICE CONFERENCE
From Student Engagement to Transformation:
Best Practices for
Teaching and Learning
A summary of the keynote presentation by Professor Dan Butin at The UWI’s
Institutionalising Best Practice in Higher Education Conference
based learning, inquiry learning, and backwards design
curricula, usually in iterative processes. The culmination of
these high-impact practices is that students engage academic
content, their peers, mentors, and community towards an
improved future.
Nevertheless, Professor Butin questioned: While all
of the foregoing can and do work, why are there still so
many challenges to effective teaching and learning? For
one thing, he highlighted the fact that teaching is easy but
learning is hard; and that as learning is a process and not
merely a product, we need to help
students learn how to learn, and
turn them from passive learners
to become critically reflective
individuals with qualities of good
contributing citizens. Professor
Butin was highly critical of what
he described as the
Egg Crate
or
Factory Model
of education. He
indicated that in this model we
continue to isolate students in the
classroom, and focus on where we
can control our students even as
we engage in conversations about
access and quality. The obvious
challenges are further complicated
by the ‘massification’ of education,
the implosion of the academy,
and unacceptable or questionable
outcomes for student learning,
retention, and graduation rates.
Professor Butin suggested that
The UWI is at a pivotal point in its
systemof education.Therefore, it is
now imperative that we reflect on
our system and decide on whether teaching and learning
is simply transfer of information or transformation of
knowledge. He also suggested that it might be time for the
institution to move from the idea of the
flipped classroom
to the
flipped university
. He drew on the impact practices
to outline the features of the flipped university. Professor
Butin’s vision of the flipped university encapsulates three
core components: it is student-centred, project-centred, and
impact-centred. In a student-centred institution, the
lecture
is outsourced
,
discussion is central
to learning,
deep learning
occurs, and the instructor is a
curator
of knowledge. In a
project-centred institution, the
class is outsourced, learning
is authentic
, the
instructor is researcher,
and
outcomes are
central.
In an impact–centred institution,
the “checklist”
mentality is outsourced
,
deep and authentic learning evolves
through scaffolding
,
a distinctive university experience is
established,
and
transformation
is central. This leads to the
“engaged university.”The flipped university is an embedded
outline guided by political will, where boundaries of the
university are boundaries of the state or nation.
In this context, knowledge is transformed for the
betterment of society. Without this transformation of
thought and practice we can become obsolete in a changing
education, globalised context.The discussionmust continue
if the university is to remain relevant.
