Tackling an First-year Engineering Threshold Concept

Laurillard, D. (2012). Teaching as a Design Science : Building Pedagogical Patterns for Learning and Technology   Retrieved from http://UQL.eblib.com.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=957058

Cowan, J. (2004). Education for high level capabilities. Beyond alignment to integration? : University of Aveiro and netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development.

In ENGG1100 a topic that is often challenging or troublesome for students to grasp would be mass balancing. It requires students to be able to identify that a system contains multiple different components that can move independently of one and another and you can study each and any of these by itself to learn more about the system. Additionally when the system contains multiple operational units, there is an level of thinking required which is to see that each system can be studied individually and you can break any larger system down into smaller parts.

It's an unusual way of thinking and not one that you'd ever use growing up in an average household. I suppose one way of dealing with it would be try a scaffolded approach and to fade that scaffold away over a few weeks. Perhaps this could be achieved by using cooking as a base example since it is more applicable to students' past conceptions. For this approach I would need to (Laurillard, 2012):

• Break down complex tasks and get the learner to complete them using actions that are currently in their repetoire.
• Provide opportunities to test their actions.
• Provide feedback that allows them to further develop their actions.

 After reading Cowan (2004) book chapter it definitely affected my design. He puts the reflective practice into perspective (see my other post) and I can see how I could possibly apply it in such a way that the students won't find the reflective exercise trivial like in past classes. I also think I need to re-evaluate the learning outcomes of mass balance teaching in first year as there is so much to teach with so little time. What do I really want to get across?

Education for higher level capabilities

Cowan, J. (2004). Education for high level capabilities. Beyond alignment to integration? : University of Aveiro and netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development.

This paper is written from a constructivist point of view where knowledge is generated not transmitted. The driver being that assessment is not in line with learning outcomes and that students are satisfying the assessment but not achieving the outcomes. The following table from Cowan (2004) shows some great examples of misalignment and then contrasted by a triangle diagram showing good alignment.

 
Similar to the previous article discussed, these seems to be a strong focus on evaluating at the end of a design curriculum. But how, is not very clear.

The article talks about a standard of marking where are given 2 examples, one that is sound and one that is above sound and then asked to grade it. Then their own assignments will be graded by the teacher based on the same scale. Feedback provided is minimal if they achieved a sound grade and only points that made them increase or decrease away from sound standard are returned to students. However I feel this isn't the best way to approach things as this doesn't tell the student what they have to do to improve!

A way that I like which could be implemented is the Reflection-for/in/on-action model which is using an activity to promote 3 stages of thinking:

• For - what do I need to know to tackle the question?
• In - what do I currently know, what is the next step?
• On - what did I learn from this, what can I take away to use in future questions? This in particular as this is would appear very outcome orientate for students. What common theme or skill/method occurred in this family of questions? What makes these questions the same?

 It also places emphasis on getting students to evaluate their own work against the criteria as an effective way to learn. Although I foresee logistical issues on how to run such an exercise.

This book also pointed out a glaring weakness in misalignment of assessment for ENGG1100. I'm asking them to show me a PFD but never teach them it.

I think with reflective tasks the most important thing is to link it back to student interests. They need to see how the reflective task will help them get better grades. It also points out that we shouldn't be teaching to try and cover X amount of content but rather to the capabilities of our target audience (i.e. the students).

So many potential issues this book points out, I like it. Things like self-assessment will help lower discontent when students get back their marks, true. Getting students to tell the tutor what they have done that week is also a form of self assessment as well and I can foresee that being effective.

As a finishing statement that I just read by relevant author Paul Ramsden: didactic learning tools such as lectures which can be considered largely transmissive are still relevant and valid, it all depends on how you implement them to achieve your learning outcomes.

What it takes to teach - Curriculum Design

Laurillard, D. (2012). Teaching as a Design Science : Building Pedagogical Patterns for Learning and Technology   Retrieved from http://UQL.eblib.com.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=957058

This chapter discusses the different factors that play a role in curriculum design, most notably things like:

• Motivational approach of students vs that of teachers
• Pre-requisites required by professional governing bodies
• Learning outcomes
• The knowledge students currently have
• Logistics

It focuses on discussing the factors that as teachers we can impact and employ best practice upon. Therefore issues such as logistics which affect the types of learning activities implemented are not discussed here.

I particular the first 3 pages were not enjoyable to read as it talked too much about what was coming up in the chapter and gave a history lesson which could be best summed up as: lots of different people came up with ways to improve learning but many of them contradict each other or are unrealistic as they didn't originate from a classroom environment. A similar observation is stated by Entwistle.

I especially liked the line as it is relevant to my Confucian vs. Socratarian argument for my paper:

"...experiential learning methods over more didactic approaches, because learners are more likely to be engaged in trying to achieve a goal that makes sense to them. Didactic teaching has to work harder to engage the learner's interest." 

It also mentions something about having students influence and shape your learning outcomes but this type of curriculum design is never seen anywhere. It would seem to me that the waffle-load of text is pretty much just trying to say design your course based on your learning outcomes and work backwards. 

A section that made some sense describes the need to make sure as a teacher you are designing to figure out how your students think and learn. Also identifying their 'alternative conceptions' that they had previously. and the new ones they are developing along the way. But like much of the article, it's so general; I'm not sure I can take anything specifically useful out of it. 

I liked the idea of designing an intrinsic feedback system where the students learn by comparing their answer to a model answer to work out where they went wrong and learn themselves. The predict-observe-explain model is also a nice way to teach. It helps iron out threshold concepts where students can predict what they think will happen, be confounded when something doesn't happen then after an explanation they can formulate a new conception. This learning strategy is titled cognitive conflict.

I find a huge conflict in these papers in that they all try to promote getting the students to generate their own learning. Yet if you talk to the majority of undergraduate students, they don't want this type of learning, they'd much rather be told what to do and not have to reflect on their own learning processes. Whilst I agree that reflection and self-learning is much better deep-learning-wise and will lead to much better results down the track; what good is it if student don't engage in the learning activity because they don't want/not motivated to learn that way! My backing point of this would be when this article mentions that we should design activities with students' motivation and expectations in mind (Fig. 5.1 in the article).

What a boring article is my summary.