Andrea Duff speaks with ATN Conference Keynote, Professor John Biggs
John Biggs – author of things academic and fictional – is spoken of with a good deal of admiration at Learning and Teaching Unit at UniSA. Seminal works such as Student approaches to learning and studying (1987) have provided the scaffolding for professional and academic development here at UniSA.
John (along with co-author and partner Catherine Tang) has recently released the third edition of Teaching for Quality Learning at University – a work which examines constructive alignment in teaching.
Both John and Catherine will be present at the upcoming ATN Assessment conference as keynote speakers (more from Catherine later). I spoke to John at his home in Hobart earlier this week.
John – could you describe for our blog readers your view of ‘engagement’ and how an educator’s view might differ from a student’s view?Engagement is getting the student to become actively involved in their learning in order to achieve the outcomes we would like to see in their learning.
In the past the teaching was left totally to the teacher. In other words, the teacher delivered the content and if the student didn’t get it, it was their fault. I call this the ‘blame the student’ model of teaching.
My work is ‘outcomes based’ but that is a dreadfully misused term. In the far left corner are postmodern educators who cast ‘outcomes based’ in a language which people just don’t understand. In the far right corner are those who use ‘outcomes based’ in a controlling, managerial, sense with reference to institutional objectives, for example benchmarking.
Constructive alignment is located in the classroom, and is concerned only with enhancing teaching and learning. Here the points of view of teacher and student are symbiotic. Students and teacher are all oriented towards the same outcomes. The student is engaged.
And what are the rules of engagement?
There are two aspects to these rules. Structural, which is to do with the design of the learning context. In constructive alignment, the verbs around what the student is required to do (for example, ‘reflect’, ‘apply’ or ‘analyse’) are stated in the intended outcomes, and then the teaching/learning context requires the students to enact those verbs. The assessment task needs to embody these verbs as well to see how well they may be enacted.
For example, I was teaching psychology to teachers and what I would do is get them do assignments and tasks which essentially told me how well they understood in the sense of being able to apply their knowledge, rather than in the sense of being walking encyclopedias on Piaget or Bruner. ‘Tell me what I just told you’ misses the point. It’s only to do with declarative knowledge. Enabling students to put the knowledge to work is the important thing.
The second aspect refers to what is essentially motivation. Students need to see that the tasks they are required to learn are valuable in a sense meaningful to them; and also that they can expect success in those tasks. If a student values the task, but sees little hope of succeeding in it, why proceed? Some teachers even emphasise the difficulty of tasks in an attempt to motivate students, but if they feel they have little chance of success it is more likely to de-motivate them. The best way of motivating students is by nurturing a sense of ownership. When students can feel this – they are off and running.
Were you engaged as a student? Reflecting back, what were some high points and low points in your own studies?
Yes (ish) but not until 3rd year.
I went to a very traditional university in Tasmania – lectures, tutorials – that sort of thing. I was very shy and not really engaged until 3rd year when I was working on my own project – collecting data and so forth. That’s when I became engaged in my studies. The outcomes were clear to me – conduct the research and test the hypothesis.
As a shy student I had to either hide behind other students or be well-prepared in advance of tutorials. I finally overcame my shyness when I was an honours student working with a group of students who knew each other well. A warm, accepting atmosphere is important for students.
High points: When I finally became immersed in my own research.
Low points: Boredom. Well…grey-dom. I had a teacher once with a very strong accent and I couldn’t understand much of what he said. It didn’t help that the subject was metaphysics. I bought myself Pelican books (whatever happened to them?), that popularised esoteric subjects and they saw me through.
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