authentic learning and graduate attributes - the learner conference 2013 university of the aegean

Using authen,c learning to develop graduate a4ributes

Vivienne Bozalek University of the Western Cape

[email protected]

Structure of presenta,on

•  Curriculum alignment vs authen,c learning for achieving graduate a4ributes

•  Graduate a4ributes •  Authen,c learning – elements •  Research done at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) on authen,c learning

•  A case study illustra,ng authen,c learnng and graduate a4ributes

•  Conclusion

Developing graduate a4ributes

•  Increasing emphasis of graduate a4ributes in higher educa,on

•  How best to develop these a4ributes in higher educa,on and embed them in curriculum

•  One possible way is through construc,ve alignment (Biggs, 2012)

•  Another possibility is through authen,c learning (Herrington et al., 2010)

What are Graduate Attributes?

Graduate a4ributes are the quali,es, skills and understandings a university community agrees its students should develop during their ,me with the ins,tu,on and consequently shape the contribu,on they are able to make to their profession and society ... They are quali,es that also prepare graduates as agents of social good in unknown futures.’ (Bowden et al., 2000)

What would UWC Graduate Attributes for the 21st Century look like?

Two tiers of graduate attributes (Barrie, 2004)

Tier 1 ‘complex interwoven aspects of human ability’ (Barrie, 2006:3) •  attributes that allow graduates to prosper in an uncertain world of change

(Barnett, 2004) UWC Charter generic attributes: •  scholarship, citizenship and the social good, lifelong learning

Tier 2 * Clusters of personal skills and abilities (UWC charter) •  Inquiry-focused and knowledgeable •  Critically and relevantly literate •  Autonomous and collaborative •  Ethically, Environmentally and Socially Aware and Active •  Skilled Communicators •  Interpersonal flexibility and confidence to engage across difference

UWC Charter of Graduate Attributes First Tier

SCHOLARSHIP: A critical attitude towards knowledge: UWC graduates should be able to demonstrate a scholarly attitude to knowledge and understanding within the context of a rapidly changing environment. UWC graduates should have the ability to actively engage in the generation of innovative and relevant knowledge and understanding through inquiry, critique and synthesis. They should be able to apply their knowledge to solve diverse problems and communicate their knowledge confidently and effectively.

CRITICAL CITIZENSHIP AND THE SOCIAL GOOD: A relationship and interaction with

local and global communities and the environment: UWC graduates should be engaged, committed and accountable agents of social good. They must aspire to contribute to social justice and care, appreciative of the complexity of historical contexts and societal conditions through their roles as professionals and members of local and global communities. They should demonstrate leadership and responsibility with regard to environmental sustainability.

LIFELONG LEARNING: An attitude or stance towards themselves:

UWC graduates should be confident Lifelong Learners, committed to and capable of continuous collaborative and individual learning and critical reflection for the purpose of furthering their understanding of the world and their place in it.

Graduate Attributes and curriculum alignment 2013/07/11

UWC Charter of Graduate Attributes SecondTier

1.  Inquiry-focused and knowledgeable: UWC graduates will be able to create new knowledge and understanding through the process of research and inquiry

2.  Critically and relevantly literate: UWC graduates will be able to seek, discern, use and apply information effectively in a range of contexts.

3.  Autonomous and collaborative: UWC graduates will be able to work independently and in collaboration with others, in a way that is informed by openness, curiosity and a desire to meet new challenges.

4.  Ethically, Environmentally and Socially Aware and Active: UWC graduates should be critical and responsible members of local, national, international and professional communities. They should also demonstrate a thorough knowledge of ethical, social, cultural and environmental issues relating to their disciplines and make professional and leadership decisions in accordance with these principles.

5.  Skilled Communicators: UWC graduates should recognise and value communication as a tool for negotiating and creating new understanding, interacting with diverse others, and furthering their own learning. They should use effective communication as a tool to engage with new forms of complexity in social and working life.

6.  Interpersonal flexibility and confidence to engage across difference: UWC graduates should be able to interact with people from a variety of backgrounds and have the emotional insight and imagination to understand the viewpoints of others. They should be able to work in a productive team, to lead where necessary and to contribute their skills as required to solving complex problems.

Graduate Attributes and curriculum alignment 2013/07/11

Herrington’s nine elements of authen,c learning

•  Authen'c context •  Authen'c task •  Expert performance •  Mul'ple perspec'ves •  Collabora'on •  Reflec'on •  Ar'cula'on •  Coaching and scaffolding •  Assessment

Authen,c Context

Second Life – 3D immersive environment

Looking aWer a fish as an authen,c learning task

Authen,c learning using a fish tank

Blog on fish tank

Access to expert Performances and modelling of processes

Guest lectures: Remix Company

TELL ME YOUR RACE THEN I WILL

GIVE YOU OUR IDENTITY

Guest lectures: local ar,st: Bernie Searle

Performing poetry

Gabeba Baderoon Diana Ferrus

Collabora,ve construc,on of knowledge

Collabora,ve construc,on and assessment of knowledge

Reflec,on (Schön 1983).

Reflec,on in ac,on and reflec,on on ac,on(Schön 1983).

Community, Self and Iden9ty: A Virtual Learning Community across two South African Universi9es

Poul Rohleder Wendy Lee Fish Amanda Ismael Lisa Padfield

Deborah Platen

ZPD This is the teaching space; this is the

knowledge gap!

Teacher provides skills, strategies and links to be able to complete the task

Coaching and scaffolding

Outcome of deep learning, Rela,onal conceptual understanding.

The student: world of experience, Unstructured Knowhow &/or Surface learning

Mediated learning for understanding

Assessment •  Use Powerpoint to prepare a presenta,on on the rela,onship between iden,ty,

community and professional prac,ce. The presenta,on should cover: No,ons of community, self and iden,ty. Remaining ques,ons, tensions and contradic,ons for the group. Implica,ons of the above for professional prac,ce in social work, occupa,onal therapy and psychology. You will be assessed on the basis of your presenta,on, and the notes used for the presenta,on. Cri,cal and crea,ve presenta,ons are encouraged. Your presenta,ons should contain references to the workshops, pos,ngs and readings. They should show an understanding of the complexity of the no,ons of iden,ty, community and the human professions, and should reflect a cri,cal apprecia,on of different viewpoints. In your presenta,on, ensure that you have considered how raced, gendered and classed histories and differing experiences and values inform professional iden,,es and prac,ces. Your powerpoint presenta,on should be no longer than ten slides, containing a maximum of 80 words per slide (to be presented in 15 minutes; 5 minutes for ques9ons).

•  Part of Na,onal Research Founda,on (NRF) project •  Target group: lecturers that are known to be open to/engaged with

technology •  Sent by email to contacts in all public HEIs ins,tu,on (22) in August/

September 2011, snowball sampling •  Content: 3 parts, demographic, tools and open ended ques,ons

around prac,ce with Emerging Technologies (ET) •  Respondents: 262 (by 30 September 2011) •  Selec,on of 20 respondents, for further indepth interviews on how

emerging technology is being used to provide and authen,c learning experience for students

•  Sub-‐set of 10 UWC staff members were interviewed as part of this research.

•  The collected data was analysed independently by two researchers of the NRF project using the following coding system: 0 – no evidence, 1 – weak evidence, 2 – strong evidence of authen,c learning elements. Discrepancies were averaged aWer discussion.

Indepth interviews at UWC

Lecturers interviewed at UWC

Elements engaged with by UWC lecturers

Inter-‐rater scores for authen,c principles of UWC lecturers who were interviewed

Elements Graduate APribute Tier 1

Graduate APribute Tier 2

Case study of physiotherapy lecturer

Authen,c Context

Barne4's idea of complexity and uncertainty scholarship lifelong learning

Cri,cally and relevantly literate (2) Ethically, environmentally and socially aware and ac,ve (4)*

In order to teach physiotherapy, the educator has developed wri4en cases to improve the clinical reasoning process; …. … We introduce and encourage the idea of uncertainty and we try and give the students opportuni5es to learn how to be comfortable with the complexity and uncertainty of the clinical context and then to give them skills to navigate that uncertainty-‐ rather than just being flawed and overwhelmed by all the different variables…. We need to give them skills now for then to able to go into the real world and say I don’t have this answer, now what do I know, what do I need to find out, how will I find out.


Graduate APribute Tier 2


Authen,c task

scholarship

Inquiry-‐focused

In the past we would have lectured on a series of condi'ons and say these are the condi'ons that you need to be aware of now what we do we give them a case and each case runs every 3 weeks every week we introduce complexity to the case so we add more informa'on -‐ some'mes we give readings, some'mes there is a video that they have to go and watch but all the 'me we are building on what they know and then what they need to know and we are trying to make the cases typical presenta'ons of what you might expect in a South African context



Expert performance

Inquiry focused (1) cri,cally and relevantly literate (2)

One of the 1st assignments we did in this module was we gave them a task where they had some readings and they had to develop a list of criteria that they would use to establish credibility in online sources

Mul,ple perspec,ves

Interpersonal flexibility (6) You can have clinicians who would disagree on appropriate management strategies for pa5ents and how do you nego5ate kind of a compromise between what you think is right and what someone else thinks is right so we do try and model that. What we will oOen do is students will ask me a ques'on and I will say well this is what I think but let me just grab this other person who I know has a different view and then we pull facilitators into the conversa'on and then we discuss the difference in the view point and model to the students that oOen 'mes there is no right answer.



Coaching and scaffolding

Cri,cally and relevantly literate (2) Interpersonal flexibility (6)

So in terms of scaffolding students have to have a base and from that base they can build, if the base is shaky we try and design the case so that its difficult for them to proceed without having an understanding of what they did in the beginning. Feedback -‐ we try and encourage all the facilitators to give feedback in the form of a ques5on rather than saying this is wrong, this is right, this is excellent. So even this is excellent is not useful feedback because students has no way to go from that. … we guide facilitators on how to give feedback so in terms of the scaffolding I think we try and always say why do you say that? What are you basing that on?

Reflec,on Skilled communicators (5) Interpersonal flexibility (6)

We model reflec'on we go on and on about how reflec5on is really important for professional development, there is just this block with the students where its just thinking we talk about if you don’t have any emo5onal investment in what you are doing then but the students are very resistant to reflec5on.



Assessment Cri,cally and relevantly literate (2)

At the end of every term the students have to submit a clinical file which is a collec'on of documenta'on that they have gathered that relates to their pa'ents’ contact so there is a clinical evalua'on tool where there are pa5ents documenta5on notes, reflec5ons, they have set learning objec5ves

Collabora,on Autonomous and collabora,ve (3)

They are in different groups. When they go out in a clinical prac5ce they are in one group and in the classroom they are in a different group and the idea is that students learn things on a clinical experience and they bring it back to the classroom experience so on the Monday morning they set aside 'me where they discuss the pa'ent they saw the previous Thursday and we try to get them to bring their own clinical stories back into the classroom and then the facilitators can discuss those experiences. We try to build in collabora'on we don’t give them notes they have to collabora'vely build the notes in their groups with inputs from facilitators.

Ar,cula,on Skilled communicators (5) Inquiry focused (1)

At the end of every case each group has to have a set of case notes where they have drawn up about their understanding of this par'cular pa'ent. Every group must do a full case presenta5on that they are graded on at the end of each case. We challenge every single statement that the student makes that is not explicitly guided by a reason…

Discussion •  Resonance with what would be required for a beginner

physiotherapist – desired a4ributes •  Coherence between graduate a4ributes and authen,c

learning •  To acquire graduate a4ributes students need to be ac,ve

learners – inquiry-‐focused approach to teaching •  Learner’s needs must be responded to sensi,vely •  Lecturers shouldn’t set themselves up as sole repositories of

knowledge •  Can use emerging technologies to promote authen,c

learning and graduate a4ributes (Google Drive) •  Cri,cal ci,zenship and the social good not really achieved in

the case study – the other two ,er one a4ributes scholarship and lifelong learning were achieved

Conclusion •  The case study provided an example of how effec,ve the elements of authen,c learning can be in developing the values, skills and a4ributes that a university student should have acquired at the end of their degree

•  It would seem that only by engaging students in authen,c tasks which have their focus on real world consequences and learning, is it possible to develop the requisite a4ributes for employability

•  Authen,c learning is thus a useful framework through which to develop graduate a4ributes as it is forward-‐looking, providing a way of situa,ng learning in its context for future use in the workplace and as cri,cal ci,zens, which graduate a4ributes are aiming towards.

References •  Barrie, S. C. 2006.Understanding what we mean by the generic

a4ributes of graduates. Higher Educa'on 51(2): 215–41. •  Barne4, R. 2004. Learning for an unknown future. Higher

Educa'on Research and Development 14 (3): 247-‐260. •  Biggs, J. 2012. What the student does: teaching for enhanced

learning. Higher Educa'on Research and Development, 31(1): 39-‐55.

•  Bowden, J., Hart, G., King, B., Trigwell, K. and Wa4s, O.2000. In Generic Capabili'es of ATN University Graduates. Available at hXp://www.clt.uts.edu.au/ATN.grad.cap.project.index

•  Herrington, J., Reeves, T. C. & Oliver, R. 2010. A guide to authen'c e-‐learning. New York & London: Routledge.

•  Schön, D. A. 1983.The reflec've prac''oner: How professionals think in ac'on. New York, USA: Basic Books.

•  Vygotsky, L.S. 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes (trans. V. John-‐Steiner, M. Cole, S. Scribner and E. Souberman). Cambridge, Mass.:

authentic learning and graduate attributes - the learner conference 2013 university of the aegean

Education

uwc graduates

uwc graduate attributes

uwc charter generic

new knowledge

new understanding

relevant knowledge

critical attitude

social justice