Developing Inquiry for Learning: Reflecting Collaborative Ways to Learn How to Learn in Higher Education

by Ovens; Peter

• ISBN13: 9780415598774
• ISBN10: 041559877X
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2011-07-25
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Developing Inquiry for Learning shows how university tutors can help students to improve their abilities to learn and to become professional inquirers.Participation in higher education is widening and students have increasingly diverse needs and learning styles and many bring powerful expectations that learning tends to be a passive process. University tutors required to teach ever larger groups are finding increasing difficulty to meet these needs and help people to become more independently motivated and more collaborative learners. In the innovative and proven approach developed by the authors however, students are guided to perform action research into their learning practices, actions and reflections. Using a rolling programme of cyclical inquiries and whole group 'conferences' on improving learning, students write 'patches' on learning development which are then shared across the year group online. Each student's cumulative set of patches, together with their regular reflective writing, provide the basis for assembling a composite final assignment, a 'patchwork text', for assessment. This style of curriculum and assessment organization encourages regular peer feedback and formative assessment, as part of the whole module process, to build personal confidence within students both as learners and as professionals.While providing teaching materials and examples of students' responses, including the use of Blogs, Wikis and Discussion Boards, the book also analyses and theorises on the deeper characteristics of the difficulties being addressed, using several theoretical perspectives. Readers are thus equipped to adopt, adapt and experiment with their own developments in their teaching and curricula with relevant frameworks of theory and values.