September 2009 — Volume 3, Issue 5

Guidelines on Learning; towards Scholarly Teaching

University teachers should create the conditions where students are most
likely to learn, argues Professor Adrian Lee

After 32 years teaching microbiology to medical and science students at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, I moved into the university senior management team to become Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education and Quality Improvement). I had had an active and successful research career studying bacteria that live in the gut especially the Helicobacter species that cause peptic ulcers. However, I always had a special interest in teaching. I crossed to the dark side, ie, administration!, as I believed it should be possible for a great research university to also be a great teaching university and I wanted to help UNSW academics teach better for the benefit of their students. What I hoped for was more emphasis on the student learning experience. The goal was to move away from a focus on teaching, that is, what the lecturer told the students to a focus on activities that would help students learn. Our task as university teachers is to create the conditions where students are most likely to learn. This move from teaching to learning seems simple but it is hard in an environment where didactic teaching has dominated. A strategy I used to facilitate this change of focus, with help from a wonderful group of people at UNSW, was the creation of a set of “Guidelines on Learning” and an associated
website. The driving premise for the guidelines was simple.

• Our task as university teachers is to help students learn
• There is a vast research literature on how students learn and a wealth of good practice
  available
• As a research intensive university, our teaching should be informed by that research on
  student learning

Busy academics do not have the time to become familiar with this research literature. Thus, I drafted a set of guidelines that summarised the main points of what we know about student learning and modified them in discussion with Michele Scoufis now at the University of Sydney. There was much to help me do this and the priceless Chickering and Gamson article of more than 20 years ago was a great starting point. A subgroup of the UNSW Academic Board refined the guidelines, changed the wording and in the process assumed ownership. Sixteen guidelines were drafted and they were taken to the full academic board for endorsement.
They became the “Guidelines on Learning that Inform Teaching at UNSW” A website was created as a resource for staff with multiple links to references on each guideline and exemplar examples of teaching activities others had used that were good examples of the guidelines in action. This was a great step forward but it was not enough. Many universities have compiled similar sets of principles or guidelines but they are rarely read, little used, but always trotted out at audit time. The key is to have strategies to encourage staff to use such guidelines. Therefore, an essential part of the process at UNSW was the formation of a “Toolkit”.
Basically this was a simple downloadable MsWord template that for each guideline had spaces for the following:

• Example
• Reflection
• Constraints on applying this guideline
• Resources
• Staff development opportunities

The aim was to assist staff to reflect on the effectiveness of their practices. They were invited to use the Toolkit to review their classes, course, or program, and as a reflective tool. They were asked to reflect on their own teaching and give an example of an activity they use that is an example of that guideline in action. If they could not think of one then the idea was for them to consider why not and to look at the resource links for ideas of how they might.

As I retired from UNSW I felt the concept had not been taken far enough. I wanted to take it further. Thus to keep my brain active, I am continuing working on the guidelines concept and am working with other universities to develop their own guidelines website with exemplar examples. There has to be ownership of such a website. They have to be “Guidelines on Learning that Inform teaching at (Name of the University)”. All universities are different and so they have to modify the guidelines to satisfy their own culture, environment and staff and they have to have exemplars from their own staff. Examples are at Victoria University
(http://tls.vu.edu.au/learning_and_teaching/guidelines/guidelines_about_guidelines.html) and
MIT in Boston (http://web.mit.edu/tll/learning_guidelines_2007.pdf)

I have also created my own website which is intended to serve as a starter kit for other universities, so the wheel does not have to be completely reinvented. The url is: http://www.guidelinesonlearning.com/
 

A MsWord webcopy document with all the text and live links in this website is available for download from the site, as a first step to an institution building its own site. Alternately, if web expertise is not available, the web site template and database, which provides a duplicate of this site is also available. All that is required is an acknowledgement of the originators of the guidelines and UNSW. You are invited to look at the site and if you would like to consider your own site contact me at adrianlee2 [at] mac [dot] com.

An important addition to this website was the inclusion of a section with discipline specific examples. Also included is a section on embedding change across an institution. For “guidelines” to work they should be used in a way that allows staff to reflect on their teaching and having done so, supply ideas and examples that they can use or adapt for their own teaching. This is the role of the Toolkit, which I consider to be an absolutely essential part of this strategy. However this is not enough, there have to be approaches and incentives that make staff aware of the guidelines and ensure they are likely to use them. Examples of such embedding
strategies are:

• Inclusion of a comment in the template for course/unit outlines
• Reference to the guidelines in the academic promotion instructions
• Reference to the guidelines in instructions for preparing a teaching portfolio
• Use of the guidelines as part of the formal foundations course on learning and teaching for
  new staff
   

The need to embed change relating to quality in teaching and learning is discussed in a
paper written by Patrick Boyle and myself.

There is much published on a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL). I prefer SOLT! What the guidelines are is a compilation of the outcomes of SOTL. They are a resource that the busy research-active academic who wants to teach well can use to inform their teaching strategies by the guidelines site and using or modifying examples they find via the links to the exemplars. That is, they will be scholarly teachers. Many readers of this publication will indeed have excellent exemplars of guidelines in action in their own teaching. They are invited to submit them to me for inclusion in the site.

The beauty of retirement is that you can just do what you want to. One can play with the grandkids as well putting time in to projects like that described above. The Guidelines project is fun and hopefully will benefit students around the world by enhancing their learning experience. You are invited to be a part of it.

*Adrian Lee is an Emeritus Professor of the University of New South Wales. Since his retirement
in 2006 he has remained committed to promoting excellence in learning and teaching.