Abstract
As instructors in higher education, we are responsible for student learning whether in undergraduate, master's or PhD programs. The extent to which we are successful in this responsibility depends on our ability to design and enact effective instruction. This paper draws on research about learning, particularly the notion of significant learning, as well as a research-based model for designing instruction to propose a range of ways to ensure students actively engage in embedding the knowledge we hope they will.
Setting the scene
As instructors in higher education, we are responsible for student learning whether in undergraduate, master's or PhD programs. Given this responsibility, we need to know what it is we want students to learn and make judicious design decisions about the instructional strategies that can help students approximate this learning. In this paper, drawing on research about instruction, including some of my own, I highlight two key ideas that I believe we, as instructors, need to bear in mind when we design instruction. These can be articulated as two questions: What do I mean by learning? What factors influence (facilitate and constrain) student learning?
What do I mean by learning?
What do we want to achieve as teachers? In considering this question, I find the notion of significant learning (Fink, 2003) particularly useful.1 As Fink (2003) suggests, students will always learn something (even things we do not intend), but teachers who care about their students want them to learn something valuable – that is something of use beyond the course itself. Fink proposes that a way of conceiving of this significant learning is that it has six elements which collectively, through their synergy, contribute to significant learning. He calls these six:
Foundational knowledge: knowing subject matter
Application: using subject matter
Integration: seeking connections for this knowledge in a range of contexts/subject fields
Caring: investing in, valuing, the knowledge we know and use
Learning how-to-learn: reflecting on/assessing our own learning strategies
The human dimension: living/working effectively with others
Importantly, the six elements are not hierarchical, but relational, interactive. In my view, three of these aspects are ones we may take for granted in higher education, for instance, subject matter knowledge. But the three others, for instance, caring, may not be.
I'll begin with subject matter. Such foundational knowledge is at the base of most other kinds of learning. That is, we need to know something. By ‘know,’ I mean understand, remember, and be able to recall the concepts and relationships related to a particular subject, whether it is in history, biochemistry, anthropology or physics. We can only truly claim to understand and recall concepts and relationships if we have ‘used’ them: verified their meaning, scope, etc.
This principle speaks to another element of significant learning, application, using concepts and relationships in some kind of ‘action.’ In higher education, action rarely means physical movement. Rather it implies using our own words – not the teacher's or the book's – to describe the meaning and scope of concepts and relationships. Writing and explaining/describing things to others are keyways to facilitate this kind of thinking. It is only by these active uses of concepts and relationships in various kinds of thinking (critical, creative, practical) that learners can practice a) generating relevant examples (as well as counterexamples), b) problem-solving, c) managing complex projects, and d) communicating with others. Ideally, we can apply our knowledge in both academic and practical ways.
Thus, another element of significant learning is integration: seeking, seeing and understanding the connections between different ideas/concepts and underlying principles and relationships, both within and beyond specific contexts, for instance, school, work, leisure. At its most basic, application can involve thinking about other academic courses where the concepts and relationships are pertinent. While these first three elements, particularly the first two, are relatively commonplace in thinking about supporting student learning, the remaining three may fall somewhat outside our normal view of our responsibilities as higher education teachers.
Caring refers to our investment in the knowledge we hold and are using. For instance, most of us care deeply about our subject area and want students to value it as well – would even encourage some to continue studying in this area. What is critical here is that any learning experience – whether in daily life or informal learning settings – can change the extent to which an individual values or does not value things, activities, etc. – even though they and we may not be aware of it. For instance, regularly going with parents when they vote may lead us to want to vote as soon as we are allowed. On the other hand, listening to valued others deride the importance of voting may lead us to take little interest in elections. So, as teachers who want to support significant learning, we need to attend to this element of caring: What intended values are embedded in the instruction we design? Further, what new feelings, values, beliefs, and interests students are developing as a result? And, finally, are they the ones we are aiming for?
The fifth element is learning-how-to-learn, helping students reflect on and assess the strengths and weaknesses of the learning processes and strategies they are each using. As teachers, our goal in furthering significant learning is to help students improve, be more effective as learners in the future. For some, this may be a novel idea and might seem challenging to integrate within instruction. However, achieving this need not be difficult. For instance, one in-class strategy is to: a) ask students to write their answer to a question you give them, b) then assess and write down the degree of confidence they have in their answer (on a scale of 1–4); and c) finally write the reasons for this and what they might want to do to improve. Then, you can lead a short plenary discussion about what they have learned from the exercise and how they might use such questioning as a self-checking strategy.
The last element if significant learning is the human dimension, living/working effectively with others. Here the goal is to help students learn to interact more effectively with others and to be more self-aware of their influence on these interactions. Easy in-class strategies for this are to ask students to write the answer to a question and then talk to the person next to them in order to generate a synthesized answer. You can add learning-how-to-learn to this strategy if you ask them to rate their answer first after they write it, and then after they have generated a synthesized response. This kind of activity can lead to a) new/modified knowledge about themselves or new visions of what they want to become, as well as b) new understandings of why others act the way they do.
While I believe that significant learning should be what I and other teachers are aiming for, we need to remember that a broad range of factors is influencing our students and we need to be attentive to these in designing instruction for significant learning if we want to be relatively effective. So, I turn to this aspect of learning now.
What factors influence student learning?
There have been many explorations and descriptions of the contexts in which we learn. I take the broadest perspective, experiential, a view that argues we are constantly learning through all of the experiences we have from the time we are born (Kolb, 1984) – though that significant learning may not be recognized or intended. This means that we, as teachers, are responsible for leading in just one of the contexts in which our students learn as they engage in their daily lives – yet the remainder of their lives will be influencing their engagement in our instruction. In fact, the research tells us that the totality of a student's experiences creates the learning environment, not just what we do in the classroom. So, we need to be aware of and respond to as many of the factors as we can.
In trying to analyze these multiple influencing factors, I find it useful to draw on an empirically derived model developed in the first instance from research on PhD experience (McAlpine & Norton, 2006) which has proved useful in analyzing other educational/learning contexts. In this model of nested interacting contexts (Fig. 1), the inner-most context is the class – when you and your students are together. But your time together constitutes only part of the time that students will be working on your course(s), so the class is nested within and interacts with your students' time outside-of-class. And, of course, students are taking other courses within their programs. In some cases, many of the students in your course(s) will share the same program, though we cannot depend on this. And these courses, plus other activities, will influence how and how much they invest in your course. Further, programs are nested within university regimes and practices which can offer affordances, such as libraries and spaces for students to meet, as well as constraints, such as minimal IT or financial support. And beyond this, the national context, represented in things such as economic and social stability, plays a role, as does the international one, for instance, the EU Bologna Agreement. This model of nested interacting contexts can be viewed as constituting the geo-historical learning environment that you and your students are situated within, whether that is X university in Budapest in 2023 or Y university in Barcelona in 2024. The more we understand these influences and how we, as teachers and students, interact with them, the more effective we can be in designing significant learning. So, what I want to do now is explore these contexts in more detail as regards how they can influence your efforts at creating significant learning. Not surprisingly, the more inner contexts are easier for us, as teachers, to influence. But we can still often have some effect as we move outwards, particularly if we act collectively.
Nested contexts influencing learning
Citation: Journal of Adult Learning, Knowledge and Innovation 7, 1; 10.1556/2059.2024.00108
Class context
The in-class context is easy to positively influence for significant learning (even in a one-time session) as you have relatively good control over the factors influencing students within this small current context in which you are altogether – though individuals will still arrive with other pre-occupations and concerns as will you. Traditionally, and still often, in teaching, we design this time for ‘telling’ students things, for giving a ‘lecture.’ In other words, we focus on describing the foundational knowledge of the subject, the concepts and relationships, with the idea that the time for students to engage in application and integration will be out-of-class. The classroom architecture often reinforces this perspective – with the student chairs all facing forward to a white/blackboard and a lectern for the teacher – and in many cases, a tiered amphitheatre of seats. Further, students have had years of training that it is their job to be quiet and listen to the teacher.
However, the research suggests that to use this approach overlooks evidence we have about effective student learning (McAlpine, 2004)2 – a brief overview is in Appendix. In-class, individuals generally have difficulty actively listening to an oral argument for much more than ten minutes, yet most lectures last much longer than that. They can get distracted by, for instance, not being sure what they should focus on, or not being sure they are following the argument. So, their thinking veers off as they try and figure out what they didn't understand, or what is important. Then, out-of-class, they carry these uncertainties and misunderstandings about the concepts to the ‘homework.’ Not unsurprisingly, they are unsuccessful and frustrated. In both cases, the issue is that they have not been given the opportunity really early on to practice/apply the new ideas and relationships, that is, to assess their understanding. So, it is essential for them to act – to think by writing, responding to your questions, or talking to a partner on a regular basis throughout the class. In this way, they will see if they understand; you will learn where there are misunderstandings that you can clear up; and they are better prepared for the out-of-class work. So, here are some strategies for supporting significant learning even in an amphitheatre:
Begin the session by giving a) an explicit learning goal, i.e., ‘By the end of the session, I expect you to ……;’ or b) a question you want them to answer as they listen to your lecture.
Be sure to include examples in your talk (modelling application). If these are not just in the subject area, but in other subjects and beyond higher education, you also model integration.
Plan to take pauses every 10 min or so in order for students to act on your lecture and you to assess their comprehension. Strategies you can use:
- ○Ask students a question; this can be within the subject, in another subject, or in the wider world. You can ask them to write their answer or speak with the person next to them. Whether in a large or small class, you can ask for a show of hands or ask just one or two to state their answer.
- ○Ask learners if they have a question; then wait a good ten seconds to let them generate and state the question.
In this way, you give students the opportunity to ‘use’ the knowledge, to apply and maybe integrate it, and you can assess whether further instruction is needed.
Course context: in- and out-of-class
Again, this context is relatively easy to influence towards significant learning – as we are often responsible for whole courses. What is critical here in designing is to create clear intentional linkages between in- and out-of-class-time for the totality of the course as students expand their learning of the subject. Here there are a range of factors influencing significant learning on the students' part, i.e., the investment they can make in the learning for your course (just as there are in your case of investing in teaching the course). The student factors include the number of other courses they are taking, when the formal assessments in those courses are, the extent to which students have accessible spaces to work, the library and IT resources, whether students have to work in order to manage financially, whether they have long commutes and family responsibilities, etc.
With this in mind, here are some out-of-class strategies for supporting significant learning:
While it is common when planning out-of-class student work to design it for post-class, students can be given many activities pre-class that then can be drawn on in-class. This means that students submit their responses before the class which you can then use to assess their understanding and draw on in class. This approach helps students prepare for class and can stimulate more discussion in class as all have engaged in the precipitating activity.3 Relatively uncommon, but helpful to you as a teacher, is the following:
- ○Ask students to read a paper or text that you may have written (rather than lecturing them) and say they should come with at least two questions.
- ○Ask students to seek out information in the library (it is best to let the librarians know what the task will be). Then, have them do something (act on it) in some way and report the results.
Traditionally, formal assessments have come at the end of the course and are high risk, i.e., over 50% of the final grade – so they create stress which can reduce students' learning capacities. As well, this summative, judgmental assessment comes too late for you or the students to ‘correct’ the instruction and their learning.
- ○An alternate approach is to distribute the formal assessments (and the percentage of grades assigned) across the course to provide you and the students with both formative, i.e., learning information, as well as summative judgments.
Customarily, formal assessments are exams or an academic essay (foundational knowledge and application through writing). This limits the potential for learners to demonstrate their ability in the other elements of significant learning. Assessing these elements calls for non-traditional methods; interestingly students report enjoying these assessments more than traditional ones as they appear more authentic. Here are two examples that can be adapted to any field:
- ○Ask students to write two explanations of a single event in history; one for a class of third graders and the second for a roommate who is a science computer major. These explanations at different levels of complexity show their ability to apply and integrate the foundational knowledge as well as the human dimension.
- ○Ask students in physics to prepare a 3-page letter to Copernicus explaining how and why his theory of X has been altered. To achieve this, students must have the foundational knowledge about the theory and be able to apply and integrate the historical contexts contributing to the discoveries have forced the theory to be altered – in ways that will be meaningful to Copernicus (human dimension).
Program/department/faculty context
The program context is harder for you to influence on your own. Partly this is due to the many departmental/faculty actors contributing to the program, for instance, the other teachers in the program as well as the Program Director, the Program Administrator, and the Program committee. The difficulty in influencing this context is also due to the program existing as a university policy/regime since to be recognized it has been ‘codified’ as required and approved. So, a useful way to influence changes is to serve on the Program Committee – or at some point, take on the role of Program Director. But, in the short to medium term, you can seek out like-minded colleagues from other program courses and discuss some possible synergies. Your goal is creating more coherence across the program – in order to enhance student learning and help students manage their learning investment better, for instance, helping them see integration across courses.
With this in mind, here are some concrete program-wide strategies for supporting significant learning which you can work towards even with just a few colleagues. What you are trying to do here is create the same learning conditions as in your own course. So, for all relevant courses, you might begin by discussing these issues:
Read each others' course outlines and see where potential symmetries exist in order to aid student knowledge integration. Use this reading and discussion to see the ways in which your courses are linked/overlap/reinforce each other. For instance, see if there are references that are the same, or learning tasks/activities that align with other courses.
- ○Make adjustments to your course outlines based on this.
- ○Find ways to highlight these symmetries explicitly to the students in your own course: mentioning them in-class and noting them in any out-of-course documents.
Avoid big, formal traditional assessments (e.g., exams) at the same time in term.
- ○The rationale for this is that students can feel overwhelmed if they are being graded for a number of courses at the same time. Given their time is limited, their response is often to engage in surface learning, that is, to learn enough to pass but not in any depth or with an intent to retain the knowledge – so undermining your efforts at significant learning.
Distribute student assessments across the term.
- ○The rationale for this is partly to make it easier for students not to feel drawn to using surface learning in any of their courses. But it is also a recognition that they are learning, expanding their understanding as they participate in the course, and regular opportunities to be assessed on their progress will help them (and you).
University context
This context is not surprisingly the hardest to influence as policy decisions and program approvals and adjustments are made amongst senior administrators and within university-wide Education Committees. Thus, having a voice involves being selected or elected as a committee member. The critical work in this context is ensuring that student out-of-class time is well resourced in order for them to more effectively invest in significant learning. Your and your colleagues' efforts here will help not just your students but also your teaching. Here are some things to work towards with your colleagues, things we know enhance student satisfaction, well-being and progress:
Libraries: Good actual and virtual resources and accessible staff trained to help students
IT: Easy access and accessible staff dedicated to helping students
Workspaces: Plentiful and designed for both individual and group work
Psychological counselling: Free and accessible access, i.e., not long wait times
Learning (dis)abilities support: Trained staff who can assess and work with students and staff to find workable ways to address the challenges
Financial support: Aid for students experiencing financial difficulties
Sports/other activities: Access to leisure time activities that are free or low in cost
International and new student support: Extensive orientations through the first year as students adjust; dedicated housing for the first year
Career counselling: Staff knowledgeable about the labour markets and trained to help students apply for posts before they graduate
You might think this is a ‘wish list’ which is not easily achievable. I would agree that universities rarely have all of these in abundance. However, it is true that all of these things influence how students experience and invest in their courses and programs, so are well worth working towards. That is why you often see student union representatives sitting on these committees.
National/global context
These are factors that you cannot influence though they impact your university, you and your students. So, it is helpful to be mindful of them. National socio-economic conditions and governmental policies and regimes play a powerful role in how governments and societies view and support higher education. We can see this, for instance, in the fact that in most US universities students pay very high fees, whereas in many European countries, fees are lower, or non-existent due to government funding. Another example is the way in which countries vary in their view towards international students. Some countries actively seek them, and others have strict visa requirements which make acceptance there difficult. Similarly, assessment of higher education programs will vary with some countries not having national oversight, e.g., the US, and others, like the UK, having clear criteria related to student well-being, quality of learning, and sometimes employability, as well as regular reviews of all programs through the Quality Assessment Agency.
Moving beyond the national to the global, we have all in the past years experienced the impact of the pandemic– and the life and work disruptions this produced. In the case of university teaching, this meant quickly moving instruction online, often with neither teachers nor students having the IT resources they needed or the knowledge to use them effectively. It also meant that students lacked direct access to many of the resources afforded by being on campus. Another instance of international change, this time planned, was the European Bologna Agreement, which led to the European Credit Transfer System. One of its goals was to facilitate student mobility across programs and countries – something that has successfully becomes a feature of European higher education today. As well, in the EU, other higher education organizations have emerged to better integrate higher education knowledge exchange, for instance, the European University Association, and the League of European Research Universities. These kinds of influences seem distant from the class and course contexts, but still have a powerful influence.
Conclusion
I began by arguing that as instructors in higher education, we are responsible for student learning, so we need to know what it is we want students to learn and design instruction that can help our students approximate this learning. I set out a framework drawing on the available evidence and ‘unpacked’ two central concepts: significant learning as the goal of designing instruction and the structural nested contexts that influence student learning and our teaching. I emphasized particularly that if we are really intent on enhancing student learning, we need to attend to the totality of the learning environment, the multiple nested contexts, that influence student learning.
I hope I have convinced you of the value of focusing on significant learning and the six elements that collectively can lead to such learning. I hope also that you have a sense of the range of factors that can facilitate and constrain learning, particularly where we, as teachers, have the most potential to use these factors positively. Some of these we can influence on our own in real time. But others require collective action over much longer periods in order to enhance the learning of future students. In other words, we need to view enhancing student learning as a collective undertaking.
References
Bloom, B. (Ed.), Engelhart, M., Furst, E., Hill, W., & Krathwohl, D. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook 1: Cognitive domain. New York, US: David McKay.
Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, US.
Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, US: Prentice-Hall.
Krathwohl, D. (2002). A revision of Bloom's Taxonomy: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 212–218.
McAlpine, L. (2004). Designing learning rather than designing teaching: A model of instruction for higher education that emphasizes learner practice. Active Learning in Higher Education, 5(2), 119–134.
McAlpine, L., & Norton, J. (2006). Reframing our approach to doctoral programs: A learning perspective. Higher Education Research and Development, 25(1), 3–17.
Appendix: A research-based model for designing instruction that emphasizes learner ‘action’ – using foundational knowledge in a range of ways
There are four phases in this model for designing instruction whether for a class, a unit, or a course. The application of the four phases begins when the learning experiences are being planned. Central to the model are the following:
Viewing student practice, that is, using/practicing foundational subject knowledge in different ways, as an important component of learning, one that is often overlooked in higher education
Recognizing the need for students to do some initial practicing of the knowledge in class in order to be more effective in their out-of-class learning.
Engagement: The aim here is to help students become focused and engaged, not distracted by external factors as their learning starts as we know motivation will tend to increase if students understand why they are doing what they are doing. This is particularly important since students have full lives outside of the university; they are also likely engaged in learning for a number of courses and it may not be easy for them to understand how the intended learning in all the courses can be integrated in pertinent ways into a personally relevant coherent whole. So, when they come to class or when they undertake learning out-of-class, you can help them through your design to re-situate themselves in the learning they are engaged in for the course. Examples of activities that can facilitate engagement in- and out-of-class include:
Explicitly describing the learning outcome that is the focus of the learning, whether orally at the beginning of class, or in writing on any out-of-class documents, e.g., assignments, course outlines, etc.
Ask students as out-of-call work to prepare a question about the previous class, readings, etc. and to submit it before the start of class; they know that, if called on, they are expected to be able to coherently present their question.
It is important to remember that while engagement is important, it should not take a lot of time.
Informing: Instruction usually involves presenting some information, whether oral or written. Written information provides students with reference materials for later use, and oral information offers students opportunities to clarify expectations, misconceptions. This element of instruction traditionally involves foundational knowledge of the subject matter, for instance, introducing the main ideas in a paper in class. What we often forget is that we have to be equally vigilant about providing information related to any learning tasks/assignment, for instance, providing information on an assignment in a written form, distributing it in class and then answering questions that arise as the students work through the assignment sheet. If the task is to be done in-class, then the steps can be written on a slide so that students can follow where they are in the process. Both types of informing – subject matter ad learning tasks – are important as they together open the door for significant learning.
Practice/using the knowledge: We often hear lecturers commenting on wanting to ‘cover the content.’ This approach has meant that students have been provided with foundational knowledge but often left to achieve the assignments on their own with minimal structure to prepare them. Students are, in effect, forced to figure out what the expectations are. We can address this serious omission by intentionally designing instruction around students ‘using’ the content in a structured way.
In the model, practice is viewed as a much more extensive, time-rich process than any of the other three aspects. Through their practice, they have the opportunity to assess the extent to which they are achieving the expected learning before summative grading takes place. Traditionally, practice has been viewed largely as an activity that takes place out-of-class, that is, on the students' own time, or in tutorials and different kinds of labs. The model is a concrete reminder that we need to use in-class time to prepare students to use their out-of-class practice time effectively (just as in-class time spent on informing – lecturing – may be designed to follow-up on or prepare students for out-of-class informing - reading).
Instructional responsibility in relation to practice is to provide a learning environment with initial high structure and formative feedback though with both decreasing over time. When students are beginning to learn something new, for instance, the beginning of a course, more structure and feedback are required. As students gradually acquire understanding and their thinking becomes more sophisticated during the course, the teacher has less responsibility for these aspects of learning. The practice phase is effectively leading students to act independently, to provide their own internal structure and feedback in order to be prepared for summative grading at the end of the course.
Summative grading: The gradual reduction of external structure and feedback during practice means that students have experienced a comparable environment to summative assessment (e.g., exam, final paper), so this assessment should hold no surprises. In other words, the teacher's aim is to ensure that the activities experienced during the practice phase accurately represent what will be assessed summatively. There needs to be good alignment between the practice and assessment phases. Particularly in the case of final exams with a heavy weighting, this alignment can be made clear to students through, for instance, making available to them previous exams with information about the types of answers expected, and also notifying them of the types of problems that are important and likely to be on the exam.
An earlier perhaps better-known approach emerged much earlier: Bloom's taxonomy of the cognitive domain (1956), revised later by Krathwohl (2002). However, I consider Fink (2003) more inclusive as it incorporates effective and social elements.
See this reference for a detailed exploration of strategies to better link in- and out-of-class student learning – one that is applicable in class and course contexts.
Some teachers may decide to link grades to these activities; if so, then it is important to avoid giving a grade for submission, but rather for the quality of the response. This doesn't mean you need read all the responses every time; you can tell students you will assign the grade on the basis of having read a third (or a quarter) of their responses over the period of the course.
