Report om student centered teaching methods – launch next week!

Dr Tine Prøitz, NIFU
Professor Monika Nerland, UiO

As a part of the project, researchers from sub-project C have been working on case studies of educational practices at the course level.

The report with key findings will be launched with a breakfast seminar at NIFU on 23rd of January, 2018, at 0830-1000. Tine Prøitz and Monika Nerland present the key results from the report.

Read more about the event here.

The case studies examine aspects that matter for the quality of educational practices in course designs that employ student-centered approaches. Whilst ways of engaging students more actively in their learning processes are high on the political agenda and a variety of pedagogical approaches are developed for these purposes, less is known about how such approaches are
enacted in practice and the challenges teachers and students face in this regard. The cases presented here illustrate different pedagogical designs and approaches and how they play out in different domains and program contexts. Each case study addresses three research questions:

  • What characterizes the teaching approaches and ways of engaging students in the course?
  • What challenges do students and teachers face with the given pedagogical approaches and learning activities?
  • What can we learn from this case about issues that matter for quality of educational practices?

The case studies used a common methodological approach combining participant observation, interviews with teachers and students, document analysis of course documents, and a questionnaire to the students targeting their course participation and experiences.

 

Rachelle Esterhazy: How can we help students make meaning of feedback?

Rachelle Esterhazy, UiO

PhD research fellow in the project, Rachelle Esterhazy (IPED, University of Oslo), has together with Crina Damsa published an article on Studies of Higher Education where she examines how students make sense of feebdack processes. They describe the key focus as:

This qualitative study proposes a feedback conceptualization informed by sociocultural notions, in which students co-construct meaning from the teacher’s feedback comments through interaction over time, with each other, the teacher, and relevant resources. Based on an in-depth analysis of undergraduate biology students’ discussions of feedback comments, we found that the feedback process takes the form of a meaning-making trajectory students move along by orienting towards and elaborating on both task-specific and general-knowledge content.

You can view the article here

Rachelle has also  written a blog post about her recent work on the blog of Centre ofor Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at University of Deakin in Australia. You can find the blog post here

New report about educational leadership in Denmark

The Danish team from CFA has conducted a survey among study programme leaders in Denmark. The survey mirrors the Norwegian survey that was conducted earlier in 2016. In particular, focus is on how study programme leaders engage in quality work.

Associate Professor Ebbe Krogh Graversen, CFA (Picture: CFA) from the Danish team comments:

Associate Professor Ebbe Krogh Graversen, CFA (Picture: CFA)Although the Nordic Higher Education system seems similar by many, it was surprising to find so many patterns of similarities between the Danish survey results and the comparable Norwegian survey. Furthermore, the detected differences seem to be explainable by differences in recent priorities, developments and reforms within Higher Education.

The Danish and Norwegian teams are currently working in further exploring the similarities and differences between the two surveys and some possible explanations for such patterns.

You can download the Danish survey here (pdf, in Danish).

View also the earlier published Norwegian survey results here (pdf, in Norwegian).

More detailed comparative analysis will be conducted in the coming months.

 

Project meeting in Oslo

Project participants met for a two day meeting in Oslo on January 4-5. During two intensive days of working with the empirical data and analytical lenses, the project team also made plans for the final year of the project that is now set to end in 2017.

Stay tuned for more news about publications!