New Ways of Teaching for New Ways of Thinking Professor Michael Worton

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New Ways of Teaching for New Ways of
ThinkingProfessor Michael Worton
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• Higher Education has been changing radically over
  the last decade
• The next decade will see even greater changes,
  as many countries prioritise HE as well as
  school education and invest considerably in them.

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So, what is changing?

• Students are travelling more and more to
  different countries for their HE
• Students have different expectations in terms
  both of their HE experience and of their
  employment prospects
• Employers expect broader skill sets as well as
  disciplinary knowledge
• Faculty are increasingly mobile
• Governments increasingly expect HE to deliver on
  national priorities
• Universities are beginning to define themselves
  again as a public good, whilst also operating
  more efficiently as big businesses

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Strategy
Key drivers today of HE institutional strategies
Interdisciplinarity
Internationalisation
The return of social and moral values to the
curriculum
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• Teaching is changing
• Learning is changing
• Thinking is changing

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The Infinite Library

• An exciting idea, vision and future reality
• Also a cause for anxiety
• Why anxiety?
• Because it challenges our conceptions of
• how much we can know
• how much we can learn when knowledge is
  constantly expanding - and changing and is
  managed by no single authority
• Knowledge and reality in the virtual world are
  consensually constructed by communities of
  readers and texts
• Hierarchies between teachers and learners are
  dissolved
• Yet scepticism also needs to be taught

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Technology and Student Research in Learning
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Students Curation of Research Questions

• A web-based teaching and learning tool developed
  for UCLs first Applied Studies course.
• Students draft essays in response to a research
  question, then publish them online via a wiki for
  peer scrutiny and discussion.
• The student hosts discussion of his/her
  research question, and draws on the comments to
  revise their original essay at the end of the
  term.
• Students in universities in other countries
  participate in this online activity.

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Wikipedia article drafting

• Students are encouraged to write articles for
  submission to Wikipedia.
• They are trained in determining the key facts and
  in drafting full but concise articles
• Deliberate mistakes are included in the article
• Students check over time to see when (or
  whether!) corrections have been made to the
  article

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Synchronous seminars

• Language and Culture seminars between students in
  London and in Aarhus, Denmark
• Work with blogs, wikis and other new technologies
  incorporated into course design
• Moodle used to create a common room for all the
  students, including as a way of maintaining
  community during the year abroad.

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Listen again and again and again

• Began with Listen again facility, allowing
  students to stream/download the audio portion of
  lectures for revision purposes.
• Now expanded with the launch, across UCL, of
  Lecturecast, a system which allows lectures to be
  recorded and made available to students for
  revision.

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Computer-based interactive engagement exercises

• Enhance numerical, practical and subject-based
  conceptual skills in Molecular Biology
• E.g. a virtual laboratory exercise allows
  students to experience all aspects of an
  experiment (including calculations, safety,
  equipment used and data handling)
• Exercises are viewed through a course VLE site.

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New approaches to traditional subjects
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Student contracts in the classroom

• The undergraduate module The History of
  European Political Ideas introduces a
  contractual model of teaching that aims to
  develop a political and learning community
• Students are presented with a draft contract in
  the first session that they are encouraged to
  debate, amend and eventually sign
• The form of the contract draws on the tradition
  of authors studied in the course (e.g. students
  agree to give up freedoms, to take on
  responsibilities and to perform duties for their
  individual and collective good)
• Students also gain a say in how the course is run
  
• Crucially, students have the opportunity to
  renegotiate the contract as they learn more about
  political ideas.

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Post-disaster Interdisciplinary Scenario Seminar

• For Masters students in Development Planning,
  Earthquake Engineering, Disaster Management and
  Planning
• Students in mixed teams are challenged, e.g., to
  develop a recovery plan for the 2005 Kashmir
  Earthquake (Pakistan) based on data sourced 2
  months after the event
• The scenario logically articulates the chain of
  consequences resulting from the earthquake within
  the specific setting of Pakistan.
• It is designed to provoke a careful examination
  of all the assumptions on which interventions are
  based, including the impact on long-term actions,
  the potential disruption of resettlement, the
  vulnerabilities of the built environment and
  rural-urban nexus.
• This complexity is useful both for testing
  students' abilities to respond effectively to
  practical problems and also as a reflective tool
  to elaborate conceptual insights on disaster
  theories and debates
• UN staff and NGO activists attend remotely via a
  Skype connection, interacting with participants
  in the different phases by providing input,
  answering questions and commenting on the
  recovery plans developed by the students.

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Experiential and Community Learning
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Legal Action and Research for Communities Scheme

• A framework for LLM students (entry by
  competitive application) to carry out research
  and provide advice to local communities
• The course examines environmental justice from
  theoretical and practical perspectives, assessing
  the barriers to environmental justice and the
  realities of social exclusion and environmental
  injustices
• Based upon fieldwork, and policy and advice work
  in local communities in London
• Training and on-going support provided by
  Capacity Global, a social enterprise, non-profit
  making organisation, together with close
  supervision by a UCL professor
• Specific training includes
• identifying communities at risk
• providing legal advice
• conducting legal outreach work
• using the Sustainable Communities Act 2007
• fostering local environmental activism
• using EU anti-discrimination law to redress
  environmental injustices

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Participatory research

• London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
  (LSHTM) was asked to provide work experience to
  pupils from Barking and Dagenham
• Response was to employ them as trainee
  researchers and scientists.
• Invited pupils to research how their everyday
  experience of living in one of Londons most
  deprived communities affects their health and
  well-being
• Widening participation and outreach activities
  thus combined with leading-edge participatory
  research in an intellectually stimulating but
  practical way.
• The initial research has since been broadened to
  include a wide range of subjects such as the
  impact of disease on global warming, malaria and
  asthma.
• Pupils are invited to LSHTM where they meet
  scientists, hear about their work, access
  lectures and specialist laboratories. They are
  then supported to develop research hypotheses and
  test them. Once completed, they present their
  findings to LSHTM seminars of staff and students
• Participatory research involving young people is
  now a standard feature of LSHTM research policy

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Community views on Healthcare

• Community groups invited to make films about
  their feelings and experiences of healthcare
• Training provided by professional film-makers to
  them, but without input from healthcare
  professionals
• Films shown as seminar-workshops for students,
  teachers and clinicians
• Film-makers and community members invited to
  further workshops
• This helps students to understand better how
  different kinds of communities respond
  differently to healthcare activities
• Challenges the teachers to re-think their
  teaching methods
• Has led to participatory research whereby
  community members help to define research
  questions

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A new UCL programme for the 21st century

• Called a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences (BAS)
• A programme explicitly and determinedly
  interdisciplinary
• Focus throughout on skills development and
  employability
• Language learning at its core
• International methodology also at the core
• Core programmes
• Foundations of Knowledge
• Quantitative Methods
• Qualitative Methods
• Object-Based Learning
• The Knowledge Economy
• A language to be studied in each year
• Work placements, internships or placements in
  charities or NGOs
• A research project in the final year
• Possibility of a year abroad

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And in the future?

• The world is irrevocably globalised and
  interconnected
• Research and teaching are now necessarily
  interdisciplinary
• Our curricula and our teaching methods need to
  reflect this and respond to it
• Our university communities need to change,
  blurring both hierarchies and disciplinary
  boundaries
• Communications within universities and with our
  many existing and new communities must change too
• Universities, their staff and students need to
  recognise, proclaim and implement their
  responsibilities

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And then

• We really can change the world

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• Professor Michael Worton
• Vice-Provost
• UCL
• michael.worton_at_ucl.ac.uk