University Challenge...
on Tara's Ethiopian Adventure (Ethiopia), 11/Dec/2009 08:50, 34 days ago
When I was at university I remember my lecturers telling me that, in our final exams, if they only saw the information they had given us in our lecturers we would get a very poor mark. University was about becoming an independent learner, knowing how to find information out for yourself and learning how to learn. It seemed at times that this was more important than the actual content we covered. Certainly I imagine it is more often the skills we learn at university that are what attracts future employers than the facts we learnt.Although my main focus here is to give the current‘teacher trainers’ the skills they need to train excellent high school teachers for the future I am also trying to improve quality of teaching within the university (at least with my HDP candidates). The HDP course encourages the lecturers to take on board concepts like‘active learning’ and‘formative assessment’. At times it seems a bit hypocritical as I don’t remember many of my lecturers using these methods particularly. But then I remember that our lecturers were generally supplemented with tutorials where all these concepts were fully embedded.Some of the candidates, especially those in the languages department, are already experts in active learning but then they are blessed with relatively small classes (40-50 students). Others seem very reluctant to hand over the learning to the students. They struggle with the fact thatmost courses are very content heavywith little emphasis on skills. They havelarge classes(at times up to 120) and are worried that if they don’t spoon feed the students the answers they will never cover the course and the students will never understand.Lecturers who do try to try to get the students to think for themselves often come across a lot of resistance from thestudents who expect the teacher to do all the work. Most students have no experience of active learning methods from primary school or high school and so do not understand the value of working in groups or solving their own  problems etc. They also don’t necessarily know how best to work in groups, give presentations or carry out their own research. I remember when I was at university, as well as the courses which taught content, we had courses which developed our skills of independent learning (and that was after 12 years in school where we had probably also been trained to be independent learners).Although some lecturers have taken on board methods such as‘presentations’ to give the students a more active role in the class I was disappointed to find that often, the content for the presentation was given in note form to the students before they presented. This meant that all they were really doing was reading the lecturers notes out loud. When I questioned this and asked why the students were not left to find out the answers for themselves I was reminded about the lackof reference material. For over 4000 students there is a small library less impressive than most secondary school libraries in England. If they were told to look in the library for books they may be lucky to find one or two related to the topic they are studying. For a class of 100 students it wouldn’t be practical for them to all access these books. So what about the internet? There is no free access to computers for students. Some get access as part of their course but only during lesson time and for the rest there are a number of internet cafes just outside campus. Most students do not have the money.Then, even if reference material is available (or the lecturer has given them a photo copy of the most relevant book in the library), there isn’t really anywhere that they can work sensibly in groups to prepare for a presentation. Due to the government’s efforts to increase the number of students in HE (probably to meet some millennium development goal or other)there just simply aren’t enough resources for the students. It seems at present the emphasis is on quantity rather than quality of education (I suppose that is why I have been drafted in to try to deal with some of the‘quality’ issues... but without the resources to support this it is a real challenge). Currently most of the first year students are accommodated in temporary accommodation. These are made of corrugated iron and house up to 30 in a room in bunk beds. When I first saw them, they actually reminded me of a war time concentration camp. There are no lockers or anywhere safe to keep their possessions (they just store them on their beds) and no desks to work at. If students are lucky they may find an empty classroom to do their work in. The library has apparently been allocated a few extra books but with no room to display them they are mostly kept in a store room only accessible by special request.Another issue brought about by the current trend to increase numbers of HE students is that fact thatstudents are being accepted into universities with lower grades than before. This makes the task of the lecturer even more challenging as they are expected to bring the students up the same level as before but starting from a lower position. These weaker students need much more support and struggle to keep up with the lectures. Although‘active learning’ and‘formative assessment’ may help them to identify and fill gaps in knowledge and skills most lecturers feel that the content heavy curriculum allows no time for this.Another major challenge is the fact thatall lectures are given in English. The English of the lecturers themselves is not always that good let alone that of their students. Outside of lessons there is very little opportunity to use or hear English and so they do not have much chance to develop their English language skills. If they are lucky they may have access to BBC world service or a newspaper written in English but generally lesson time is the only time English Language is used. All the more reason why the lecturers feel they have to give them‘perfect’ notes. When some of the students struggle to communicate basic concepts in English how are they going to communicate complex ideas using subject specific vocabulary.So, for many of the lecturers they feel their role is to give the students all the information they need to know to answer the exams (after all where else will they be able to access this information) and they will be happy if they see this exact same information repeated back in the end of semester examinations. A far cry from the expectations of my university lecturers when I was a student.