Ben
There is not much of an evidence base about what students actually do
in their study practices and these are probably shifting with
opportunities created through various electronic and digital means.
There is always a problem in this type of research in making sense of
the difference in what students say they do and what they actually do.
LearnHigher is giving some research focus this year to student study
practices in student use of text base resources. A JISC funded piece of
research LearnHigher undertook last year demonstrated that resources are
used centrally within pedagogic practices but tutors do not claim to
teach students how to find and use these. Early indications from our
study on the student side suggests that students believe that tutors do
teach then how to find and use resources. There is clearly some
mis-match in perceptions. In June this year LearnHigher will be running
a research symposium to share its findings in these areas.
Good luck with your new job. I am sure you are right to work in
embedding in discipline based contexts. Add-ons do not work, and though
one to one support can be very effective it is not scalable.
Best wishes
Jill
Jill Armstrong
LearnHigher Director
Liverpool Hope University
Hope Park
Liverpool L16 9JD
Tel: 0151 291 3289
Fax: 0151 291 2033
mailto: [log in to unmask]
>>> Ben Yudkin <[log in to unmask]> 02/13/07 10:39 am >>>
Dear Colleagues, An appeal for suggestions of background literature
regarding student experiences of learning support (and confusion in the
absence of learning support). Oxford University has just appointed, for
the first time, a Learning Development Adviser (yours truly). I'm
working with a few interested academics to suggest ways of enhancing
student learning; but before that, I'd like to get an insight into what
students think of the existing provision, such as it is, and where they
think it could be improved. Part of the intention is to discover what
the common difficulties are (e.g. "I don't know what to do with reading
lists") and to find out whether there are insights that students reach
by accident late in their careers that it might be possible to teach
them much earlier (e.g. "Oh, so *that's* what a cogent argument in
History looks like"). My remit is to try to embed discipline-specific
provision and to expand it through the development of e.g. formalised
peer support -- I don't have resources for things like remedial English
or Maths teaching, useful as that would be. In the first instance, I'm
hoping to do some semi-structured interviews with a handful of students
to try to get some insight into existing provision and areas that need
improvement. I'd like some kind of evidence- based rationale for the
questions I ask, and am trying to find literature that suggests
appropriate areas to concentrate on. If anybody has any suggestions of
existing studies, or indeed suggestions for interview questions that I
may not have considered, I'd be delighted to hear from them. With many
thanks, Ben
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