This document outlines strategies for engaging students in complex learning. It discusses the challenges of mass higher education, market pressures, modularization of courses, and emphasis on metrics. It then presents three strategies - reading and writing, research-informed teaching, and renewing teaching through relationships. Specific tactics are provided, such as formative blogging to encourage academic reading, incorporating student research into course design, and peer practice exchanges to refresh teaching approaches. The goal is to make complex learning more accessible to a diverse student population.

1. Surprisingly simple strategies to
engage students in complex learning
@solentlearning
@tansyjtweets
Tansy Jessop, SLTI
SLBC Away Day, St Mary’s Stadium
11 September 2017

2. Session outline
• Your thoughts on complex learning and the
challenges
• Context (or the 4 Ms): Mass HE, Markets,
Metrics and Modules
• The real stuff (or the 3Rs) of engaging
students (and staff!) in complex learning:
• Reading and (w)riting
• Research Informed Teaching
• Renewing teaching and learning

3. What is complex learning?
Go to www.menti.com & use the code 83 20 47
Type in three words or phrases which capture your
thoughts about complex learning

4. What is complex learning? (n=49)

5. What are the challenges of engaging
students in complex learning?
Go to www.menti.com & use the code 19 22 05
Type in three words or phrases to reflect what you
see as the big challenges

6. What are the challenges? (n=42)

7. Challenge 1: Mass HE
• Global phenomenon- 1,200 new universities in China in
20 years
• UK – 46 universities in 1990 with 350,000 students
• UK – 140 universities in 2016 with 2.3 million students
• 3 x the number of universities; 6.5 x as many students in
UK
• Changes in student demography, class sizes and subject
options

8. Challenge 2: Markets

9. University or…
• 108,000 Freddos @25p each
• 98 Freddos per day
• 6,293 Big Mac Meals @£4.29
• 5.7 burgers a day

10. Why would you NOT come?

11. Why would you come to university?

12. More expansive than markets?

13. Personal
growth
Citizenship
Social justice
and
transformation
Economy
and jobs
Character
and moral
virtue
Knowledge
and
intellectual
growth
Creativity

14. 3. Modules

16. 4. Metrics

18. The Real Stuff: the 3Rs
•Reading and (W)riting
•Research Informed Teaching
•Relationships: being known

19. 1. Reading and Writing

21. Academic reading: what students say
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.
You anticipate the questions coming up, and you learn the
materials that will definitely come up. It’s definitely a way
to focus your studies and to get a good mark, perhaps. But
is it is really the way to learn?

22. Your experience
Which of these
quotations resonates
and why?
Do you have any idea
why students don’t
read academic texts?
What strategies do you
have to encourage
students to read?

24. Research findings about academic
reading and writing
Significant learning gains
for students who
1) Read > 40 pages a week
of academic writing
2) Write > 20 pages per
semester for each unit

25. Writing heightens consciousness

26. Strategy 1: Formative blogging
• In-class
• On wordpress
• About controversial leading edge articles
• Personalised
• Comments on threads
• Digital footprints
• Weekly informal, conversational writing

27. Out of the silent seminar…
You have to evidence that you have read it
compared to a seminar reading. You are reading a
lot more as well as the set ones.
I go more in depth with the reading than with the
reading pack when I’d just highlight. It helps.
We sit in blog groups, all talk about it. Discuss the
readings. I think the discussion is more focused.

28. 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

29. Strategy 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

30. Strategy 3: Independent Directed Tasks
https://vimeo.com/214664726

31. Strategy 4: Writing in class
Use jottings and writing
exercises more in class
Thinking power x 30
Teaching for introverts
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ry369

32. Strategy 5: Visual ways in to writing

33. 2. Research Informed
Teaching@Solent
So, do we
have a lift
off?

34. Why RIT is important

35. Out of this…

36. Into the adult equivalent of this…

37. So how are we doing with RIT @Solent?
• RIT Strategy Working Group
• Three central/SEED research projects
• RIT in curriculum design via TESTA
• Workshops on RIT (Save the date: 4 October)
• Resources, publications and UCL Conference
• BCUR Undergraduate Conference
• Dialogue Journal; action research on PGCLTHE
• Your experience?

38. A model for understanding it
Teachers active
Students activeIt’saboutcontent
It’saboutprocess
Research-tutored
Research-orientedResearch-led
Research-based
Jenkins and Healey 2009

39. An example of research-based
https://vimeo.com/214664656

40. Two more ways to understand RIT
Research
influences
teaching
Action research
Scholarship of
teaching
Evidence-informed
practice
Teaching
influences
research
Preparation drives
research
Student fire new
questions and angles
Research
assumptions refined

41. And a distinctive Solent addition?
•Collector: ‘research-led’
•Detective: ‘research-oriented’
•Catalyst: industry academy impact
•Wayfarer: ‘research-based’
Joseph-Richard and Jessop (2017)

42. Your task
• Think of as many ways
in which you use RIT in
your teaching
• Write down on post its
• Place your post its on
relevant flip chart
sheets

43. RIT Strategies
1. Start with small tasks in first year: eg. interviewing
one another
2. Make it as ‘real-world’ as possible
3. Link it to academic reading, eg. give journal title and
get students to brainstorm content in pairs/write an
abstract before reading it (use as checklist)
4. Make it public: journals, presentations, conference
events
5. Use principles of choice, collaboration, curiosity, real
problems, things that are unfinished business for you

44. 2 x Solent students
Posters in Parliament
17 x students at BCUR
Watch this space:
Sheffield April 2017

45. 3. Renewing teaching and learning
Go to www.menti.com & use code 30 07 19
Choose two answers to the question:
What’s the best way to renew your teaching?

46. Best way to renew my teaching (n=38)

47. Peer Practice Exchange
• Proven to improve teaching, more
than anything else
(Lamers & Admiraal, 2017)
• Three models (Gosling 2002)
• Evaluation
• Developmental
• Peer
• PPE builds relationship, confidence
and reflective capacities

48. PPE tensions and issues
• Efficiency vs developmental
• Anonymity vs focus
• Choice of observer vs fresh eyes
• Formality vs informality
• Teaching vs research
• Frequency
• Disruptive vs seamless (and time trade offs)
• Training and rotating observers issues

49. 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.
Collini, S. 2017. Speaking of Universities. London. Verso.
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.
Jessop, T. and Tomas, C. 2016 The implications of programme assessment on student learning. Assessment and
Evaluation in Higher Education. Published online 2 August 2016.
Jessop, T and Wu, Q. 2017 Debunking common myths about RIT. Dialogue Journal. 69-78
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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Lemov, D. 2014. Teach Like a Champion. San Francisco. Jossey Bass.
Levy, P. and Petrulis, R. 2012. How do first year students experience inquiry and research, and
what are the implications for the practice of inquiry-based learning? Studies in Higher Education, 37:1, 85-101.
Lomas, L. and Kinchin, I. 2006. Developing a peer observation programme with university teachers. IJTLHE, 18.3.
Postman, N. !985. Amusing ourselves to death. Slingsby. Methuen.
Ramsden, P. 2003. Learning to Teach in Higher Education. 2nd. Edition. New York. Taylor and Francis.