10:00 Registration/Refreshments 10:30 Welcome 10:40 Consideration of the Theoretical Framework

HEA STEM (Engineering)Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in EngineeringJenna Tudor, Roger Penlington, Mike Bramhall

Programme 10:00 Registration/Refreshments 10:30 Welcome 10:40 Consideration of the Theoretical Framework 11:10 Concept mapping the context of learning and teaching 11:40 Coffee time activity 12.00 Encouraging Autonomy and Life Long Learning 13:00 Lunch 13:45 Developing the Framework 14:30 Further examples 15:15 Concluding Remarks 15:30 Close Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Aims The workshop will give opportunities for delegates to enhance their teaching and learning practice through activities/discussion around: • Theoretical frameworks to inform research into student perceptions and practices in HE. • The nature of students ways of thinking and practicing. • The key elements of teaching and learning context, as identified by students. Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

‘The recognition that students’ personal learning experiences may provide valuable data for understanding the nature of student learning is undoubtedly one of the most important discoveries of the past 40 years of research on learning in higher education’ (Scheja, 2006, p.422) Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Engineering Education The objective of engineering education is to educate students who are ‘ready to engineer’ (Crawley et al., 2010, p.6) Technological competencies are no longer enough for engineers; they must have a strong knowledge foundation in engineering sciences, have knowledge of technology, be good communicators, have good teamwork skills, business skills and be prepared for lifelong learning. (Spinks et al., 2006, p.3) Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Engineering Education The challenge: to prepare engineering students to learn in a workplace which will present increasing complexity throughout their professional life, and equip them with the skills of collaboration, management and innovation as well as awareness of knowledge creation. Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Rigorous Engineering Education Research To move forward there should be a particular focus on conducting fundamental research into how students learn engineering (Gabriele, 2005). Rigorous research in engineering education is that which is considered to make a difference in theory and in practice (Streveler and Smith, 2006). It should also be grounded in theory, have appropriate design and methodology, and ensure that implications for teaching are considered. Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Teaching and Learning Research The quality of learning outcomes have been shown to be linked to concepts of learning, approaches to learning and perceptions of teaching and learning (Taylor & Hyde, 2000). Surface learning does tend to dominate in engineering (Laird et al., 2008). ‘It is not so much the teaching-learning environment we provide that affects the learning approaches of individual learners, as their perceptions of it’ (Entwistle, 2009). Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Teaching and Learning Research ‘Context is not the additive influence of discrete entities but rather the simultaneous interaction of a number of mutually influential factors’ (Tessmer and Richey, 1997, p.87). Tessmer and Richey describe context as ‘an element that surrounds its members as a continuous presence’ and discuss how contextual elements can be engineered to facilitate learning and performance. Attempting to fix, what are assumed to be necessary skills, without ‘considering the learning context and the meaning of learning to the students is worse than useless’ (Ramsden, 1985, p.5). Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Teaching and Learning Research The ‘constructive paradigm’ infers that ‘each learner must construct his/her own knowledge’ (Agrawal and Khan, 2008, p.86). Instruction must create an active role for the learner, where learning is at the centre. A ‘complementary theory to constructivism’ (Bruce and McMahon, 2002) is constitutionalism, seen by Trigwell and Prosser (1997) to be consistent with a relational view of learning. Ramsden (1987) proposes a relational perspective of teaching and learning in higher education which is holistic and ‘links the improvement of the professional practice of teaching with research into student learning.’ Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Learning and teaching context Student’s Prior experience Student’s Situation Student’s approaches to learning Students learning outcomes Student’s Perceptions of their situation Models of Learning A constitutionalist model of student learning (Prosser and Trigwell, 1999). Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Models of Learning The’ 3P model of learning (Biggs) demonstrates how ‘presage factors’ such as perceptions of the learning environment can directly influence learning outcomes. To really understand how students view and experience teaching and learning it is proposed that evaluations should focus on what students’ perceive to be ‘key aspects of teaching’ (Williams and Brennan, 2003, p.33). Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Models of Learning Systems Model Of Study Processes (Biggs, 1999) Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Characteristics of the Student(eg. previous experiences, current understanding) Students’Perceptions of Context (eg. good teaching, clear goals) Students’ Approaches to Learning (how they learn eg. surface/deep) Students’ Learning Outcomes (what the learn quantity/quality) Course and Departmental Learning Context (eg. course design, teaching methods, assessment) Presage Process Product Models of Learning • Earlier version of the 3P Model of Learning. • Adapted from Trigwell and Prosser (1997). Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014 Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practicing in Engineering”

The Role of Perception • ‘Every task or situation has a perceived relevance’ (Booth, 2004, p.17) • ‘Students learn more and do better in courses where they perceive the knowledge gained will benefit them.’ (Hein and Hamlin, 2005) • Research studies suggest that if more emphasis is placed on the delivery system and the pedagogy, in addition to the institutional and interpersonal contexts of learning, then ‘curricular planning efforts will reap much greater payoffs in terms of student outcomes’ (Smith et al., 2005, p.1). Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Inner logic of a Subject Research by Entwistle (2008, p.21) suggests that there is actually an ‘inner logic of a subject and its pedagogy’. Entwistle explains that ‘approaches to teaching and the methods used to encourage conceptual understanding necessarily reflect the nature of knowledge and ways of thinking within a particular discipline’ (2008, p.29). He does however acknowledge that there is a way of thinking about the pedagogy that can be generalised. Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Activity 1; • Quick ‘post-it’ notes • What questions does this raise? • How may it influence practice within your discipline? • place these on a flip chart for use later in the workshop Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Ways of Thinking and Practising (WTP) • “The richness, depth and breadth of what students might learn through engagement with a given subject area in a specific context.” • “Anything that students learn which helps them to develop a sense of what it might mean to be part of a particular disciplinary community.” • Purpose of concept: To describe, understand and enhance high quality learning as understood by staff and students in particular contexts Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Main Characteristics of WTP • Specific to a discipline/professional area • Specific to a context (institution, programme, module etc.) • Discipline/professional area as a community • Two components: Thinking (cognitive)/ Practising/doing (performative) • Examples: • Particular knowledge and understandings • Subject-specific skills and know-how • Values and conventions governing scholarly communication • Meta-knowledge of how knowledge is generated • Tacit? Contested? Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Quality of Learning Concepts related to quality of learning at university (Entwistle et al., 2002, p.6). Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Examples: History • “Reading widely, definitely because of the nature of the interpretation of evidence, you really can’t take one person’s word for it because you find such differing views and interpretations so you really have to read as widely as possible.” • “To understand what’s really happening you have to understand what the antecedents there are [chorus of agreement from other students] what the past is.” Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Example: Biology • “S1: You have to find various papers and understand them by reading them and then you have to summarise what they're saying, obviously whether you agreed with that or not. And [...] there's lot of disagreement, you know they're not all saying the same thing or coming from the same line of thought. So they have different opinions. • S2: Yeah. So long as you've got evidence to back up your ideas with. As I say, it's not what it is just because it is, you've got to give evidence.” • “Nothing is ever clear-cut. So I think that's one of the main things we've learned as well, that nothing really proves anything. Well, not one experiment ... you have to back everything up with several experiments.” Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

WTP and Teaching • Helps to think about learning as conceptual change and becoming • teaching ≠ transmission of information • Creates awareness of why something is taught and why it is taught this way • Not easy to derive practical implications. Easier to focus on developing ways of practising • how can we teach ways of thinking? • Importance of making WTP explicit • Importance of assessment Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Learning context Conceptual map of the ‘inner’ teaching-learning environment (Entwistle, 2003, p.7). Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

The Context of T & L in Engineering Teaching and Assessing Student perception of specific institutional and discipline context Staff-Student Relationships Course contexts Students and Student Cultures Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Activity 2 • Collect tea or coffee and join colleagues at a table • use ‘post-it’ notes to populate the concept map with what we may already know or need to know of student perceptions green – teaching and assessing yellow – course contexts pink – staff-student relationships orange – students and student cultures Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Learner autonomy Professor Mike Bramhall Sheffield Hallam University Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Gathering Data from Students An appropriate methodology for gathering data regarding perceptions and practice is a Mixed Methods design. Where there is little know about students’ perceptions and practices a mixed methods exploratory sequential design can be utilised. Exploratory Sequential Design Overview (Creswell, 2003, p213) Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Sequential Research Design Adapted from Exploratory Sequential Design (Creswell and Plano-Clark, 2007, pp.58). Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Models of Learning: From a student perspective PRESAGE PROCESS PRODUCT A modified version of the 3P diagram to reflect the engineering context. Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Models of Learning: From a student perspective Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Intrinsic Motivation • ‘we're not scheduled for lectures and we're in Uni every day, studying; but I look forward to that.’ • ‘... by the end it had got to the stage where if I didn't have the formula I needed I knew enough theory behind it to mix and match and pull bits round’ • ‘always want to see how it goes, like, how the formula has been arrived at… because actually formulas, you can forgot, but how it comes you can remember, so when you see this problem, I think it’s a better way, it’s more interesting as well, like, to know, you can add everything together to one understanding.’ Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Intrinsic Motivation • ‘I gave up halfway through trying to understand it, just started to memorise formulas...’ • ‘I just do, if we've got anything marked…’’ Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Expectation of Professionalism • ‘Yes, when the lecturer seems confident and everything is planned out, it seems so much easier, you don’t have to stress about 'Oh should I write this down? Do I need to know this or not?‘’ • ‘He came in and was well organised and he told us what we were learning and he had the appropriate handoutsand he went through everything and by the end of the lesson you knew what you were learning and it was quite difficult, you had to concentrate but at least you knew what you'd learnt that lesson and stuff like that.’ ‘...nice to have the tutors that take the time to go through the questions after so that you can go away and pick up where you went wrong.’ • ‘his lesson structure was pretty good, yes, he explains a load of stuff at first and then finished off by working through an example with us... That's exactly what you need.’ Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Expectation of Professionalism • ‘I just feel that sometimes, you know, we come to university and we look at the lecturers as someone who has been in our position before, they know exactly how we feel, they might not have been in the industry but they’ve definitely been in education and they’ve thought 'Oh I want to take this higher, I want to teach somebody else' and sometimes I think the professionalism just isn’t there, that, especially me and some of the younger people look for guidance in. I mean timekeeping, some of the lecturers turn up late and I think that is really bad and I just think it's because I want to be a professional in my field and I want to get a Chartership and go up to management...’ • ‘…he's a good tutor but he can be a bit unprofessional sometimes. There's a few times in class where he kind of looks down on you a little bit, which I suppose yes, he's understood it, but he should be trying to help you get through it,’ Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Self Initiated Peer Support • ‘ ...the group I study with, they turned round and asked me if I wanted to study with them, so I took that chance.’ • ‘But that was mainly down to working with the team, like, with my mates and everyone, we all put something into it. So we all got to work it out together.’ • ‘over Facebook or something like that. They would all work at the same time; just ask questions and things like that. Just sort of chat online…’ Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Self Initiated Peer Support • ‘… we worked for a few weeks on it and got 100% on that one. But quite a lot of the [people on our] course came into our study area on the last day and quite a lot of people got high scores and we'd worked for two weeks and … After about 20 minutes I actually told the people to go away. I said, 'We've worked hard on this and I don't want you taking our ideas' but we'd already basically given the ideas to a few people.’ • ‘I do better by myself I think, unless I can't do it and then I'll ask my friends.’ Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Important Subjects Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Important Subjects ‘Yes. Because the top three [subjects; Mechanics, Energy and Maths], I'd say, to become an engineer you have to prove you can do this; and I'd say [the bottom subjects] are there to make you a better engineer.’ ‘I’ve certainly spent a lot of time doing [Energy, Maths and Design] but because of the assignments...’ Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Important Subjects • ‘I haven't put anywhere near as much time into Business and Manufacture.’ • ‘The Business part, I don't see me using it much in the future, that's the only thing.’ • The subjects I'm going to pay most attention to again are the core subjects simply because the other ones, I feel that I'm weakest in. All of them… I don't know. I mean, I know the ones that I want to do well, the core ones, just mainly because if I can get through them then I know I'll certainly be able to get through the others…’ Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Models of Learning: Further Examples Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Examples • Self evaluation and goal setting • Project proposal evaluation • Self and peer assessment in group work [WebPa] • Removing barriers • role play, critical evaluation and justification • Shared ownership • student input to large classes Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

Your earlier questions; • Importance of subjects • more/less important subjects, non engineers, non-attender, • Holistic programme • one size fits all, collaboration within staff group, use of models/literature – shared problems, inclusivity • Uncertainty, transition within learning, • student ownership of learning, formative/summative, low stakes submissions, dialogue with students about learning • Encouraging ‘deep’ learning, • authentic, real life, process vs. procedure, holistic programme, alignment of exercise and assessment • Inner logic, • our knowing the developing discipline, connectedness, membership, Effective Pedagogy: Learning from Students’ Ways of Thinking and Practising in Engineering” 7th February 2014

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10:00 Registration/Refreshments 10:30 Welcome 10:40 Consideration of the Theoretical Framework