From outcome to output: reflections on curriculum reconfiguration & student-centred learning

1. Learning in Partnership
From outcome to output:
reflections on curriculum reconfiguration & student-centred learning
Pt1: Reconfiguring the curriculum in the 21st
century learning environment
Pt2: Locating the student as producer with Xerte
Embrace uncertainty, encourage creativity, empower the learner
Kety Faina, Gordon Heggie, Jade McCarroll, Neil McPherson

2. Reconfiguring the curriculum in the 21st
century learning environment
massification
individualisation
commodification
commercialisation
marketisation
Challenges

3. Reconfiguring the curriculum in the 21st
century learning environment
“What kind of world is it that curricula in higher education are
preparing students for?
What kinds of capability, therefore, in general terms might curricula
be fostering?”
Barnett & Coate 2005, p. 53
Questions

4. Reconfiguring the curriculum in the 21st
century learning environment
“…the most important obligation now confronting the nation's colleges and
universities is to break out of the tired old teaching versus research debate
and define, in more creative ways, what it means to be a scholar”
Boyer, 1990, p. xii
“in traditional settings there is rarely any attempt to even begin to build a community
and connect students with academics. Students are kept at arms length. The
connections with research…more often than not are ignored”
Brew 2002, p.51-2
Tensions

5. reconfiguring the
curriculum
Reconfiguring the curriculum in the 21st
century learning environment
Drivers

6. Reconfiguring the curriculum in the 21st
century learning environment
Learning outcomes
Quality assurance
Structure learning
Provide measure of performance
However
Prescriptive
Restrictive
Dampen creativity
Outcomes to outputs
Learning outputs
Open to creativity
Support originality
Builds on the work of others
Encourages critique
Open ended
See Neary, 2010

7. Web
1.0
Web
2.0
Web
3.0
structured
dependent
passive engagement
self directed
independent
active participation self determined
interdependent
active ownership
Reconfiguring the curriculum in the 21st
century learning environment
From instruction to discovery

8. Reconfiguring the curriculum in the 21st
century learning environment
Healy & Jenkins, 2009, p. 56
“The principles of the teaching-research nexus should inform curriculum
development and delivery from the first year as a way of promoting a sense of
belonging to a community of scholars with a focus on discovery and creation of
knowledge”
(Kerri-Lee Krause, 2006, pp.6-8)

9. "We have spent enough time condemning consumerism in education, and now
we need to articulate the alternative. Student engagement is a great concept
but it needs to be deployed to radical ends. Students as partners is not just a
nice-to-have, I believe it has the potential to help bring about social and
educational transformation”
Wenstone, VP (HE) Higher Education, NUS. 2012
Students as partners and change agents

10. Learning in partnership in the Social Sciences
Heggie & McPherson, 2014
“Undergraduate education…requires renewed emphasis on a point strongly
made by John Dewey almost a century ago: learning is based on discovery
guided by mentoring rather than on the transmission of information”
Boyer Commission 1998: 15

11. Engaging interdisciplinarity, active learning & co-creation

12. Escaping the constraints of instruction and fixed learning outcomes
Developing the Social Science Curriculum
Understanding (L7), Investigating (L8), Researching (L9)
the Social World
A template for learning
-----
Engaging discipline knowledge
Embedding interdisciplinarity
Encouraging interest-based learning
Providing authentic research experience
Integrating negotiated learning
Embracing uncertainty
Empowering learners as teachers
Supporting personal development, lifelong learning and employability

13. From passive reception to inquiry-based production
Level 9 research-based module - 72 students
Engaging authentic assessment with Xerte
• Embracing uncertainty
• Enabling self-direction
• Encouraging creativity
• Empowering the learner
• Embedding learning in partnership
Researching the Social World B (pilot module)

14. From consumer to producer, from passive to active, from container to creator

15. Providing peer support in a a collaborative learning environment
Encouraging staff/student & student/student partnership
Organising and providing peer support in a collaborative and creative learning
environment
Learning in research mode – where the production of Xerte learning objects
differs from traditional assessment methods and mechanisms
What were the challenges?
The Learner Ambassador and the Xerte Champions

16. What is Xerte?
Xerte is a free open source tool
Xerte allows multi media resources to be
authored quickly & easily
Xerte is an interactive learning resource
Use of Xerte supports the development of digital
literacies
Xerte promotes & supports accessibility and
inclusivity
Source: adapted from the Xerte Homepage:
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte

17. Does it work? What students like about Xerte
The feeling of creating a tangible
object based on academic
research was much more
fulfilling that the usual essay,
exam, presentation
I like that its different,
Powerpoint gets a bit
boring. It is more creative
You have a finished product
at the end and can use it as
evidence of something you
created and you cannot
really do that with essays
Being able to put our
ideas into it to create
a lesson for others
I like that Xerte allows you to be
creative and display the assessment
in creative and visual ways . [It] gives
you a good feeling when you see the
finished Xerte and that you helped to
create it

18. .
“the purposes of open-ended exploration could be puzzling and unsettling to students
who held strongly reproductive conceptions of learning”
(Levy & Petrulis 2012: 96)
Providing peer support in a a collaborative learning environment
Getting used to more in class rather
than lecture based learning was strange to
begin with. Once I was familiar with it I felt
more comfortable talking to my lecturers
than with lecturers on any other modules
…while I appreciate it being student
led it did feel at times that we were
doing your job e.g. learning how a
Xerte works, making rubrics,
figuring out how to get the
information for assessment 1
Its good that you want to encourage
creativity but you are marking and your
views will inform what you think is a good
layout/structure etc. students should have
this info
The peer assisted learning
encouraged me to utilise
support from my peers, which
has made group tasks more
enjoyable
Hard at first, getting used
to something new, but the
extra help from the Xerte
champions being available
was encouraging

19. “The change that is required to address today's challenges is not vast or difficult
or expensive. It is a small thing…Simply ask, how would we do things differently
if we put learning first? Then do it….
“The problem is not insoluble. However, to paraphrase Albert Einstein, we cannot
solve our problem with the same level of thinking that created it”
(Barr & Tagg, 1996, p.xx)
We are not suggesting anything new……

20. Being able to take charge of my
learning and actively engage with the
lecturers as academic partners on my
work was highly confiden[ce] building
Learning by doing. I personally…
simply can't learn from the
traditional talking-for-an-hour-
about-new-ideas format of teaching
Perhaps we should listen to the student voice……
enjoyed being kept on our toes and
encouraged to keep thinking rather
than being given notes to copy.
You are more likely to remember
it if you learn as you do
It facilitates learning. That's all I
need in a teaching style, and the
current system fails at that.
I only found it scary because I was
introduced to this way of learning so
late in to my degree - do it earlier!!!
i think that it is the way
University should be

21. But, don’t just listen, let students become ‘change agents’
“The concept of ‘listening to the student voice’ – implicitly if not deliberately
– supports the perspective of student as ‘consumer’, whereas ‘students as
change agents’ explicitly supports a view of the student as ‘active
collaborator’ and ‘co-producer’, with the potential for transformation.”
Dunne & Zandstra, 2011, p.4
“It is to our own academic tradition and custom
that we should look to for progressive change”
Neary, 2009, p.23