Karen O

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Karen ORourke Centre for Excellence in Teaching
and Learning Leeds Metropolitan University, UK I
keep hearing voices........I hope Im
MAD! May 2009

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A starting point....enquiry-based learning

• EBL represents a shift away from passive
  methods, which involve the transmission of
  knowledge to students, to more facilitative
  teaching methods through which students are
  expected to construct their own knowledge and
  understanding by engaging in supported processes
  of enquiry

Kahn and ORourke, Guide to Enquiry-Based
Learning, www.heacademy.ac.uk
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• Enquiry Based Learning is a natural form of
  learning, borne out of our innate sense of
  curiosity and desire to understand
• It is generically applicable, and has grown from
  modelling learning in a number of subjects

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EBL

• Interlock skills with disciplinary content
• Values performance and process as well as product
• Values existing knowledge and experience
• Enhances self-awareness and reflection (PDP and
  CPD)
• Encourages feedback

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What is problem-based learning?

• The principal idea behind PBL is.that the
  starting point for learning should be a problem,
  a query or a puzzle that the learner wishes to
  solve
• (David Boud, 1985)

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Some key characteristics....

• Learning driven by a process of enquiry or
  investigation
• Involves complex, intriguing, authentic, stimuli
• Student (or learner) centred
• Demands action
• Develops skills
• Connects theory and practice
• De-mystifies research
• Supported /supportive process
• Encourages feedback
• Social
• Enjoyable

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.leaving behind the dusty lecture halls, to
find out about our subject.done through
interaction with other students and academics,
and evidence found in places books, the
internet, and the big wide world itself
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What we expect from students.

• Accept responsibility for their learning
• Work as a team
• Identify own learning goals
• Determine a plan of activity and negotiate
  responsibility for the work
• Share findings and collate research
• Complete the task to deadline
• Undertake assessment activities
• Give and receive feedback

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Learner Centred....

• PBL is morally defensible in that it pays due
  respect to both student and teacher as persons
  with knowledge, understanding, feelings and
  interests who come together in a shared
  educational process.
• Margetson, D., The Challenge of Problem-Based
  Learning,
• Boud and Feletti, Eds, (Kogan Page) 1997

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Lets start with the students....
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• In the first couple of weeks I was worried, I
  was thinking this isnt for me, Im not going to
  learn anything. I thought the course would be
  quite woolly, I couldnt see how it was going to
  work

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• I was surprised there werent any set texts.
  Its much more left up to us
• A lot of people were nervous because it was
  something new and we didnt know what was going
  to happen

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• I think if I had come in the first year and been
  dropped into this situation, I would have freaked
  out. I quite liked being anonymous in the first
  year
•  

If I had come to an Open Day and was told that I
would have to do a research project I would be
out the door!
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• We tried to allocate roles - chair, scribe, etc
  but I thought that was too rigid and could be
  detrimental

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In terms of time spent it has far exceeded my
other courses and I, at first, resented the
degree to which it occupied me
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It may be naive but I didnt expect to meet
selfish and unmotivated people on my course
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• I have friends who have been forced to do group
  work and have been assigned groups and they go
  and no-one else turns up or some people do all
  the work and others dont contribute

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• The written work counts for 40 - you can take
  it as an essay or a report. Im not going
  anywhere near a report because that would be
  scary because you dont know what is meant by
  report and youre not going to take a risk in
  your final year to write a report properly

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Wed expect the lecturer to tell us exactly what
to do, expect loads of direction
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• We are the little people, we just sit and listen

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The tutor voice

• The centre of the teaching and learning process
  must become the student. In the words of
  Heidegger, the teacher is ahead of his
  apprentices in this alone, that he has still far
  more to learn than they....he has to learn to let
  them learn.
• (Prof Lewis Elton, THES, 21 July 2000)

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• Of the best leader, when the job is done, the
  people say we did it ourselves
• Lao Tzu in Tao Te Ching

Our group really felt proud of the way we had
taught ourselves
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• Our task is to make ourselves not needed!
• Prof Kirsti Lonka, Tampere, 2009

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• All of us hold the key to loads of information.
  We are all sources of information as much as the
  bookshelves and the teacher.

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The students just dont get it! Its all going
wrong!
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• You can come and go as you please. It means
  that because there is such a casual feeling
  towards it, PBL it lends itself to people just
  chatting about this, that and the other. And
  that dynamic is really important
• The nature of the PBL course means that the
  tutor has to be accessible because the students
  become actively involved in the problems and the
  groups take on a life outside the class

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• But I need to get all the content into the
  students.... the bulimic approach....?

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• The content from this course has really stuck in
  long term! A lot of the courses you can do
  very little all year and then cram for two weeks.
  In this course, because it was problem-based you
  had to plan and you learned so much
• PBL encourages students to explore new,
  untouched areas, this would not happen in a
  traditional tutor-led course, where you are
  encouraged to follow the path/spoonfeeding of the
  tutor

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• We did a reflection on how we had come together
  to do our last presentation and we were
  absolutely astounded at how much we had learnt,
  about the problem and about group skills

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Education is not the filling of a pail, but the
lighting of a fire W B Yeats
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What happens when EBL students pose a problem!
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The voice of the Researcher

• .five other people researching a topic and
  sharing information has led to a wider breadth of
  knowledge than I have previously experienced.

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Research

• I originally thought research was a big thing to
  do, it required lots of people and money. I
  thought it was scientists and stuff. I know its
  not now. I know I can do it. Its about being
  critical, looking at what other people have done,
  then finding a methodology and asking questions.
• First Year Student, Early Childhood Studies,
  Northumbria University, UK

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Research

• I soon learned that it did not require a great
  brain to do original research. One must be
  highly motivated, exercise good judgement, have
  intelligence, imagination, determination and a
  little luck. One of the most important qualities
  in doing research, I found, was to ask the right
  questions at the right time.
• Julius Axelrod (Nobel prize winning
  scientist)

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Lets hear it for the Educational Developer!

• It is no surprise that educational developer
  roles are often undertaken by individuals who
  have not had a traditional academic pathway. As
  a result, educational developers are often
  accustomed to and adept at adaptation.
• (Higgs, B. And McCarthy, M., eds The Changing
  Roles of Teachers and Learners in Higher
  Education in Ireland an introduction, NAIRTL
  2008)

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• Educational Development its a tough job!
• Prof Kirsti Lonka, Tampere, April 2009

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Using my language! The last few weeks Ive had a
taste of proper EBL action, helping out with a
Modern Languages session and sitting in on a
Geography focus group (which made me feel a lot
better about focus groups in general as it was
not nearly as scary as I had imagined!). The last
week Ive been concentrating on putting together
an overview of EBL style study in Undergraduate
English and American studies, looking at course
outlines that might involve EBL but not yet
recognise it as such. Thats finished now so
hopefully, with Julia, we can start working out
who might be interested in acknowledging EBL
elements on their courses. I think the main
conclusions so far have been that people are
already including EBL on their course.they just
dont know it yet! During the next few weeks Im
going to start doing the same thing for
Postgraduate studies too. This Friday, Jamie and
I are going to the first Theology meeting, to
make our faces known and then I anticipate an
exciting weekend of endless reading! Hope
everyone is getting along great!
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Using my language! The last few weeks Ive had
a taste of proper EBL action, helping out with a
Modern Languages session and sitting in on a
Geography focus group (which made me feel a lot
better about focus groups in general as it was
not nearly as scary as I had imagined!). The last
week Ive been concentrating on putting together
an overview of EBL- style study in Undergraduate
English and American studies, looking at course
outlines that might involve EBL but not yet
recognise it as such. Thats finished now so
hopefully, with Julia, we can start working out
who might be interested in acknowledging EBL
elements on their courses. I think the main
conclusions so far have been that people are
already including EBL on their course.they just
dont know it yet! During the next few weeks Im
going to start doing the same thing for
Postgraduate studies too. This Friday, Jamie and
I are going to the first Theology meeting, to
make our faces known and then I anticipate an
exciting weekend of endless reading! Hope
everyone is getting along great! (taken from
an undergraduate student blog) ...and I thought
I was the enthusiastic multi-tasker!
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Last friday i met up with Sally Freeman in
pharmacy to discuss how the medicinal chemistry
project funded by CEEBL last year is developing.
It would appear that this course has now been
embedded into the programme and is now worth 80
of the module ( the other 20 being practical
work).Therefore the module is now assessed purely
through EBL, and not through examination. I will
be working on this project again this year and
hope to put a draft together of a paper to go
into Pharmacy Education over the next few
weeks.There may also be the possibilty of
presenting a poster on the project at the RPSGB
conference. Meanwhile,I met with Liz Theaker this
afternoon and I will be running some focus groups
over the next few weeks to review how the new
curriculum is being recieved in dentistry. I am
also planning to redesign the personal
development records within pharmacy following on
from our workshop on the 22nd November. I have
found an expert in the field of continuing
professional development and am meeting with her
next monday. Hopefully we will be able to come up
with some solutions to make it more student
friendly and also correlate more with the records
we will have to keep when we are practicing
pharmacists.
Different undergraduate student, same blog!
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The student voice keeps coming through!

• As the group gets together, friendships develop
  and students get to know one another better. Not
  only have we been able to provide academic
  support to each other, we have begun to socialise
  outside the classroom
• I felt as if I was at UNIVERSITY rather than at
  school. You feel like youre SUPPOSED to be here
• It learning means more than books it really
  demonstrates that there is respect and trust both
  ways
• I was taking it in because I was interested in it
  and it wasnt just reading for the exam. It was
  work I wanted to do because I chose to do it
• Were almost learning by accident, its like
  intravenous.
•  

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• You go out of a PBL with your head buzzing,
  rather than feeling youve just passively sat
  there
• The discussions....its amazing! Hearing all the
  different viewpoints....seeing how things develop
  
• When you see someone else is on the same track
  and youre all learning the same thing, that can
  give you a big confidence boost, it pushes you a
  bit more because you want your work to be just as
  good as theirs
• You have responsibility to the whole group, not
  just yourself, everyone has to pull together

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Employability

• Team working and leadership
• Inter-personal skills
• Negotiation and persuasion
• Decision making
• Handling conflict
• Sharing
• Communication skills
• Presentation, explaining, questioning
• Networking
• Managing projects and meetings
• Evaluation, judgement, appraisal
• Entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and social
  enterprise

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attitudes are important to employers.

• Interested, enthusiastic and flexible
  graduate.and.keen, motivated and ambitious
  individuals.
• are frequently encountered phrases and the words
• dedicated passionate self-starter
  energetic
• systematic committed
• abound

BioSciences Subject Centre Newsletter 2007
www.heacademy.ac.uk
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Am I MAD?

• Evaluating Learning Change, Hutchings, B. and
  ORourke, K.
• Guide to Enquiry-Based Learning, Kahn,P. and
  ORourke, K.
• www.manchester.ac.uk/ceebl

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Karen ORourke Centre for Excellence in Teaching
and Learning Leeds Metropolitan
University k.orourke_at_leedsmet.ac.uk
May 2009