Hi Ben

 

Welcome to LDHEN.  I think you are wise to set out in this way, seeking to get to know what students feel about existing provision and what kinds of learning development work they think should be offered.

 

I’d certainly echo Pauline’s suggestion about asking what advice about studying more experienced students would give to new colleagues; and her other question about what advice they might give to the University about study support provision.

 

Another of Tamsin Haggis’ articles (with Mireille Pouget) you may find helpful is “Trying to be Motivated: perspectives on learning from younger students accessing higher education” in Teaching in Higher Education, Volume 7, Number 3/July 01, 2002

 

Also interesting is Yorke and Longdon’s study on 1^st year experiences in UK HE – the full text is on the HEA site at:

 

 http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/FYEsurvey.htm

 

It’s good to hear that you intend to “embed discipline-specific provision” – is this function written into your role?

 

I wonder where you ‘fit’ in the University structure.  There is a cluster of themes we keep returning to on this list, including comparisons of the how the role(s) of ‘learning developers’ are constructed in different institutions. There is a great deal of variation, with some of us being seen as academics, some as ‘academic-related’ and some as advisors or (in former times) ‘study counsellors’. The use of administrative ‘APT&C’ contracts for some of our roles reflects an institutional-strategic view of learning development as ‘bolt-on’, ‘remedial’ and as primarily a ‘service’ rather than as integral to academic endeavour.  In some cases we work as, or with educational developers, and are as much involved in work with academics (in staff development or training) and/or in collaborative and consultancy work constructing and delivering programmes of study.

 

Some subscribers will remember that we began a ‘mapping’ exercise early in the life of LDHEN, to put together a picture of the range of posts, services, activities and the size of staff ‘units’ carrying out the kinds of work we do. After a couple of versions of this mapping document (the most recent work on this being undertaken by Ann Barlow of Manchester in 2005) it is still rather incomplete – and now somewhat out of date – but it can still be viewed as an Excel file on our JISCmail site at  http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/LDHEN.html  - go to ‘files area’ to view it – title: “LDHEN Service Spreadsheet”

 

Incidentally, would anyone out there be interested in taking up the task of re-working this document? I‘m sure members would welcome having it as an updated resource for information, comparison and planning. We currently have 234 subscribers - and around 50 UK HE institutions are represented – along with several others in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium and Germany ).

 

Best wishes

 

John

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-----Original Message-----
From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ben Yudkin
Sent: 13 February 2007 10:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Auditing learning development provision

 

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