Postgraduate study

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Postgraduate study
Keele UniversityInternational Postgraduate
Students Induction

• Dr Stephen Bostock FSEDA

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Agenda

• Warm-up questions with cubes
• What is learning?
• What is scholarship?
• University work
• Postgraduate work
• Two approaches to studying

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How to use the cubes
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Is this your first visit to Britain?

• Yes
• No

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Have you ever studied at postgraduate-level
before?

• No
• Yes

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Where are you from?

• China
• India and Sri Lanka
• Malaysia
• Europe, North America
• Other places

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Is your course

• IT and Finance
• Human Resource Management
• IT
• MBA
• Other

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Is English your

• First language
• Your second language
• Second language but the language of all your
  education
• Other

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What is learning?

• Write down what will your style of study be here,
  do you think? How will you learn on your
  postgraduate course?
• In twos or threes, compare your notes for three
  minutes.
• Can you agree? Have you changed your mind?
• Which of the alternatives on the following slide
  comes closest to your own view?

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Student views of learning 3

• A quantitative increase in knowledge
• Memorization, learning to remember
• The gathering of facts and methods for later use
• The abstraction of meaning gaining new, general
  concepts that change our view of the world
• An interpretative process for understanding
  reality analysing our experiences to better
  understand the world

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Levels of understanding

• Data, facts
• Information data that are useful in a context
• Knowledge (of concepts, facts) and skills (being
  able to perform procedures)
• Functional knowledge being able to use
  information to make judgements and exercise
  skills to solve real, complex problems
• Wisdom soundness of judgement (OED), knowing
  when knowledge is relevant
• Having 1 or 2 is clearly not academic or
  scholarly knowledge but even 3-5 may not be
  scholarly.

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Scholarship

• A scholar (from the Shorter Oxford English
  Dictionary)
• One who studies at a university, a member of a
  university
• A learned or erudite person
• One who is quick at learning
• One who acknowledges another as his master, a
  disciple

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Scholarship

• the disciplined and logical study of a
  particular domain organised and critical
  knowledge (Mike Brough, Keele)1
• Erudition acquired book learning (Shorter
  OED)
• Academic, university learning
• Higher Education
• Expected of all teaching staff

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With your cube, vote soon on the following

• I dont agree
• I dont know
• I agree

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Are these examples of scholarly knowledge? (1)

• Knowledge of the times of the buses to Stoke
• Being able to recite The Merchant of Venice (W.
  Shakespeare) from memory
• Copying and pasting text from relevant web pages
  to answer an assignment

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Are these examples of scholarly knowledge? (2)

• A review of the principles and practice of
  scheduling in transportation
• A critical review of the literary style of
  Shakespeares tragedies
• An abstraction and synthesis of material from a
  range of paper and electronic sources to give a
  coherent view of a subject, with acknowledgements
  to the sources

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What was the difference between scholarly and
non-scholarly knowledge?

• Write down your answer
• Compare your answers in twos or threes

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Scholarship and research

• Research traditionally means generating new
  knowledge discovery. It depends on scholarly
  knowledge, or it is one form of scholarship.
• Other forms of scholarship are synthesis
  (writing a text-book), enterprise (applying
  knowledge to real world problems), and university
  teaching.2

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Teaching and research and scholarship
Teaching
Enterprise,Application
Synthesis
Discoveryresearch
Scholarship
Academic, scholarly, erudite knowledge or wisdom
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Scholars

• Are well informed, knowledgeable, expert
• Are aware of others views of their subject and
  how they are distinct from their own view
• Acknowledge the ideas and work of others
• Search for the truth regardless of authority
• Can make critical, reflective judgements in
  uncertain, complex circumstances they solve
  ill-formed problems in a subject domain
• Understand the limits and partial nature of
  knowledge in their domain the more you know,
  the more you realize we dont know

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Scholarship and Education

• At school
• We learn knowledge and skills but
• Student work is not scholarly, it is not a
  personal synthesis of views, it does not
  acknowledge sources
• At university
• Simple bookwork is not enough
• Scholarly work is expected, not just more, or
  more complex, knowledge and skills

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Undergraduate and postgraduatewhats the
difference?

• Vote soon with your cubes
• 1. Undergraduate Honours level
• 2. Postgraduate level

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Is it 1. UG (Honours degree) or 2. PG
(Masters degree)?

• a systematic understanding of key aspects of
  their field of study, including acquisition of
  (gaining a) coherent (integrated) and detailed
  knowledge, at least some of which is at, or
  informed by, the forefront of defined aspects of
  a discipline Quality Assurance Agency,
  November 2000 The framework for higher education
  qualifications in England, Wales and Northern
  Ireland (my parentheses)
• 1 - UG

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PG equivalent

• a systematic understanding of knowledge, and a
  critical awareness of current problems and/or new
  insights, much of which is at, or informed by,
  the forefront of their academic discipline, field
  of study, or area of professional practice

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Is it 1. UG (Honours degree) or 2. PG
(Masters degree)?

• a conceptual understanding that enables the
  student to devise and sustain arguments, and/or
  to solve problems, using ideas and techniques,
  some of which are at the forefront of a
  discipline
• 1 UG

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PG equivalent

• a conceptual understanding that enables the
  student to evaluate critically current research
  and advanced scholarship in the discipline

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Is it 1. UG (Honours degree) or 2. PG
(Masters degree)?

• A conceptual understanding that enables the
  student to evaluate methodologies and develop
  critiques of them and, where appropriate, to
  propose new hypotheses
• 2 PG

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UG equivalent

• A conceptual understanding that enables the
  student to describe and comment upon particular
  aspects of current research, or equivalent
  advanced scholarship, in the discipline

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Is it 1. UG (Honours degree) or 2. PG
(Masters degree)?

• Be able to critically evaluate arguments,
  assumptions, abstract concepts and data (that may
  be incomplete)
• 1 UG

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PG equivalent

• Be able to deal with complex issues both
  systematically and creatively, make informed
  judgements in the absence of complete data
• Be able to demonstrate self direction and
  originality in tackling and solving problems, and
  act autonomously in planning and implementing
  tasks at a professional or equivalent level

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How to study at university level4
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Ask yourself

• Am I using a deep or a surface approach to study
  in this session?
• Now write a few lines in your own first language
  to explain the difference between deep and
  surface approaches to study.
• Now, if necessary, translate them into English,
  and explain them to the person sitting next to
  you. Then listen to their account.

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References

• Some of the ideas on scholarship are based on a
  presentation by Mike Brough, Keele, to the MSc in
  IT.
• Boyer, E.L. 1992 Scholarship Reconsidered
  priorities of the professoriate Princetown
  Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of
  Teaching
• Prossser M. and Trigwell K., Understanding
  Learning and Teaching, 1999, London SRHE, p.38
• A good source on deep and surface approaches is
  Ramsden P. Learning to teach in higher education
  1992, London Routledge