This document outlines strategies for engaging students in complex learning. It discusses six strategies: 1) connecting to prior knowledge, 2) using writing as thinking, 3) having high expectations, 4) crossing boundaries, 5) using dialogue, and 6) surprising students. Some example activities are provided for each strategy, such as having students write journal article abstracts, participate in directed independent tasks, and provide mid-module feedback through critical incident questionnaires. The overall goal is to make learning more interactive, challenging, and relevant to better engage students.

1. Six surprisingly simple strategies to
engage students in complex learning
@solentlearning
@tansyjtweets
Tansy Jessop, SLTI
CPD Workshop
15 September 2017

2. Session outline
• The context
• Your thoughts and ideas
• Six strategies

3. The context: student as consumer?

4. Why would you NOT come?

5. Why would you come to university?

6. More expansive than markets

7. So, what is complex learning?
Go to www.menti.com and use the code 42 83 46
Type in three phrases that sum up complex learning
for you

8. So, what is complex learning?

9. Your best ideas
If that is complex learning, what are your three best
ideas for achieving it? Draw on your own experience.
Go to www.menti.com and use the code 48 34 43

10. Your best ideas

11. Six strategies
•Connect with prior knowledge
•Writing as thinking
•Challenging and high expectations
•Crossing boundaries
•Dialogue
•Surprise them!

12. 1. Make that connection!
• Students jot down why this is important before you teach it
• Students predict the three main points (use mentimeter)
• Students outline what they would like to learn from the
session in groups on flipchart paper
• At end, you compare your session outcomes with theirs and
see what you have done on completion
• Students write down three questions they have about the
topic that they would like resolved
• Students write down three things they already know about it
on post its (or on mentimeter)
• Students talk to each other in pairs about any of these things

13. 2. Writing as thinking

14. We know it’s important; we know it’s
not happening enough!
A lot of people don’t do wider reading. You just focus on
your essay question.
I always find myself going to the library and going ‘These
are the books related to this essay’ and that’s it.

15. You are a student. This is a title of a journal article.
Please write the abstract based on the title.
“For whom the bell trolls: the impact of cyber-bullying
on the self image of teenage girls in Liverpool”
Remember the abstract essentials:
What - why - how - what you found - so what
Idea 1: Journal abstract activity

16. Abstract essentials
1. What the article is about
2. Why this is important
3. Methods
4. Findings
5. Implications for theory/practice

17. Idea 2: Journal abstract activity
• 1 x interesting, funky, controversial journal
article in your discipline in plain English
• Remove/ blank out abstracts
• What is an abstract?
• Students read article silently and on own in class
• Students write own abstract for missing one
• Read out attempts
• Compare with original and vote on best student
abstract

18. Idea 3: Formative blogging
• In-class
• On wordpress
• About controversial leading edge articles
• Personalised
• Comments on threads
• Digital footprints
• Weekly informal, conversational writing

19. Into engagement…Over the whole three years this is the
most engaged I’ve been in my readings. I
really liked doing this. I wish we had done
it more. Maybe start it in the first year.
.
…it is also a bit chatty and informal.
Even though I’m putting in readings,
it’s different. It’s a nicer relaxed way
of talking about literature

20. Idea 4: Writing in class
Use short informal writing
exercises more in class
Thinking power x 30
Teaching for introverts

21. Idea 5: Visual ways in to writing

22. 3. Set challenging and high
expectations
Significant learning
gains for students who
1) Read > 40 pages a
week of academic
writing
2) Write > 20 pages per
semester for each unit

23. It’s a foreign field…

25. Idea 1: Journal jigsaw activity
• Teach students speed reading technique in class
• Read first and last sentence of each paragraph.
• Pre-cut well-structured journal article into title,
abstract, headings, paragraphs and references
• Challenge students to assemble article in
meaningful order (pairs)
• Show order on screen – first prize to those who
get it closest to original or can justify better
ordering

26. Idea 2: Developing research skills
• Year 2 module seminar
• Students bring 1 x book, 1 x chapter, 1 x journal
article, 2 x popular culture articles
• All related to a particular topic: film and gender
• Students present and defend their choices to
small groups
• Reach consensus on best sources and why
• Incorporated into reading list

27. Idea 3: Independent Directed Tasks
https://vimeo.com/214664726

28. Out of this…

29. Into the adult equivalent of this…

30. 4. Crossing Boundaries
• Educate the whole person
• Art, poems, novels, comedies,
multi-media
• Personal stories
• Eg. Construction Management
• Educate for the real-world
• Not just ‘applied projects’
• Be politically savvy and
relevant
• Eg. Bell Pottinger in PR

31. 4. Being Dialogic

32. Mass HE is squeezing out dialogue
with the result that written feedback,
which is essentially a one-way communication,
has to carry almost all the burden of
student-teacher interaction
David Nicol 2010

33. What students say
Because they have to mark so many that our essay
becomes lost in the sea that they have to mark.
It was like ‘Who’s Holly?’ It’s that relationship
where you’re just a student.
Here they say ‘Oh yes, I don’t know who you are.
Got too many to remember, don’t really care, I’ll
mark you on your assignment’.

34. Feedback as dialogue
The many diverse
expressions of
dissatisfaction with
feedback can be taken as
symptoms of an
impoverished and
fractured dialogue
David Nicol 2010

35. Feedback as Dialogue

36. A two-way dialogue?
Your essay lacked structure and
your referencing is problematic
Your classes are boring and I
don’t really like you 

37. We know that….
Feedback is the single most important factor in
learning (Hattie 2009).
Formative feedback contributes to significant
learning gains (Black and Wiliam 1998).

38. Chat to your neighbour about…
• …feedback which helped
you to grow and see new
angles
• ….feedback which landed
like a lead balloon
• …the characteristics of
good feedback.

39. Dialogic feedback
• Who starts the conversation?
• Cycles of feedback
• Personalise, and use technology
Lecturers to
students
• Peer feedback
• Peer feedback with rebuttals
• Comments and Q&A
Students to
students
• ‘One minute’ papers
• Mid-module feedback
• Critical Incident Questionnaires
Students to
lecturers

40. Students to lecturers:
Critical Incident Questionnaire
Stephen Brookfield’s Critical Incident Questionnaire http://bit.ly/1loUzq0

41. 6. Surprise them…

42. References
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Barlow, A. and Jessop, T. 2016. “You can’t write a load of rubbish”: Why blogging works as formative assessment.
Educational Developments. 17(3), 12-15. SEDA.
Brookfield, S. 1995. Becoming a critically reflective teacher. Chapter 6. Understanding Classroom dynamics: The
Critical Incident Questionnaire. San Francisco. Jossey Bass.
Carr, N. 2010. The Shallows: How the internet is changing the way we read, think and remember. New York. Newton
and Company.
Collini, S. 2012. What are universities for? London. Penguin.
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Healey, M., 2005. Linking Research and Teaching: disciplinary spaces in R. Barnett, ed, Reshaping the university: new
relationships between research, scholarship and teaching. Maidenhead:
McGraw-Hill/Open University Press, 30-42.
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Evaluation in Higher Education. Published online 2 August 2016.
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Jessop, T. , El Hakim, Y. and Gibbs, G. (2014) The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: a large-scale study of
students’ learning in response to different assessment patterns. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education.
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what are the implications for the practice of inquiry-based learning? Studies in Higher Education, 37:1, 85-101.
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Postman, N. !985. Amusing ourselves to death. Slingsby. Methuen.
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