Teach Talk

Because so many of our achievements as teachers and educators are not tangible, a concrete thing we can point to as a symbol of our commitment to teaching and learning is a cause for celebration. So it was on September 28th when MIT dedicated the Teaching and Learning Triad, a group of three contiguous classrooms in Building 9 specifically devoted to new, innovative educational endeavors. The classrooms of the Teaching and Learning Triad include Learning Network Central (LiNC, 9-057), a distance learning facility; the Ford Motor Company Virtual Design Studio (9-152), which allows MIT students to interact in real-time with Ford engineers in Dearborn; and the Stephen P. Kaufman (1963) Family Classroom for Instruction in Teaching (9-151), which will be used for a variety of activities to help MIT faculty and TAs improve their performance in the classroom.

Part of the program to mark the opening of the Teaching and Learning Triad was a videoconference with Diana Laurillard, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University in the UK. Laurillard was invited to participate in the dedication of the Teaching and Learning Triad on the strength of her book, Rethinking University Teaching: a Framework for the Effective Use of Educational Technology (Routledge, 1993). When so much of what is written about education is either politically inspired or intellectually insipid, Laurillard's work is solid scholarship. She has much to say about higher education both on the micro level – that is, how it takes place in the classroom – and on the macro level – that is, the role of the university as social institution and as source and allocator of resources. This Teach Talk presents some of the key ideas found in Rethinking University Teaching; a transcript of Laurillard's address at MIT and clips of the videoconference are available at the Teaching and Learning Triad Web page http://caes.mit.edu/mvp/triad/.

Laurillard's book is sophisticated, rich, complex. She grapples with the big questions: What is the nature of academic knowledge? What do we know about how students learn? How can we wisely invest both our time and money in educational technology? To read Laurillard is to get a crash course in what we know about how to teach. In one volume, she offers the reader both an overview of the best in educational research, and a common-sense guide to teaching well. For me, Rethinking University Teaching was important in three ways: it reinforced my belief in the roles and responsibilities of teachers vis à vis their students; it helped me refine my thinking about methodological issues; and it broadened my understanding of the challenges associated with the use of educational technology.

The Responsibility of the Teacher

The core idea upon which Laurillard's work rests is that the aim of university teaching is to make student learning possible. At first blush, that notion may seem both self-evident and overly simple. But think of its implications. It means, as Laurillard argues, that much, if not most, of the responsibility for student learning sits squarely on the shoulders of the teacher. It implies that the job of the teacher is more than simply providing content. The instructor needs to consider the range of things to be learned in the classroom (e.g., skills, perspectives, approaches) and he or she must determine how best to achieve those learning goals. It means, too, that when students don't learn, we can't fall back on tried and true excuses: today's students aren't as smart, or hard working, or well prepared as their predecessors; they don't know how to manage their time well; they're not as motivated to succeed as young people once were (or, the updated version of that sentiment, they're only motivated by the desire to make money). All that may or may not be true, but if we are to understand the roots of students' failure to learn, Laurillard argues, we must first look to ourselves.

And here is one of the strengths of Rethinking University Teaching: Laurillard provides a blueprint for teaching well. In the words of one reviewer, "the book . . . is a master class in higher education . . . ." Although the thrust of Rethinking University Teaching is on how to design educational technology, in fact, what Laurillard offers can inform the learning process no matter if one is designing an entire curriculum, a whole course, a single class, or an interactive computer program.

The Importance of Methodology

Laurillard is clear: The way to good teaching is not through theory, but rather through methodology. The goal for educators is to be able to bridge that chasm between what students know and/or are capable of doing, and what we want them to understand and/or have the skill to accomplish. But Laurillard writes, "We do not have a learning theory or instructional theory complete enough to perform that trick, and I even doubt that such a thing is impossible." (p. 183) Yet, although "we may not be able to determine what ought to be done," she writes, ". . . we can optimise what we ought to be doing." (p. 183)

Laurillard's own approach to optimizing teaching and learning may appear at first to be overly complex, but my sense is that her methodology not only goes a long way toward guaranteeing pedagogical success, but also to assuring that time spent on the activities associated with teaching (including, e.g., planning lectures or preparing exams) is used as efficiently as possible.

In what is surely one of the most abstract discussions in the book, Laurillard maintains that to teach well we must understand something about the nature of academic knowledge, a kind of learning, she says, that is distinctly different from "everyday knowledge." The latter is contextualized, meaning it cannot be separated from the situations in which it is used. Academic knowledge, on the other hand, has a second-order character; it is knowledge about knowledge. Because it is mediated by the instructor, "undergraduates are not learning about the world directly, but about others' descriptions of the world," Laurillard explains. (p. 5) This has important implications for what we expect students to do with academic knowledge. Using as an example the teaching of Laplace transforms, Laurillard writes:

We have to help students not just to perform the procedure, but also to stand back from that and see why it is necessary, where it fits and does not fit, distinguish situations where it is needed from those where it is not, i.e., carry out the authentic activities of the subject expert. (p. 18)

So we must begin, Laurillard argues, with the goals we have for the class; these she calls our learning objectives. But it is not enough, she writes, to simply carve out a topic from the totality of knowledge that defines any discipline (e.g., "students are to understand Newton's Third Law"). Instead, to be effective, a learning objective must provide the instructor with a way to answer the questions: How will it be known "if the students do understand, appreciate, or see in a new way? What would count as evidence that they do understand?" (p. 183) Framed in this way, learning objectives guide the instructor to designing an approach to learning and constructing a class environment that allows students to acquire the kind of higher-order thinking skills that we want them to master.

Implicit, of course, in the question, "How will you know if the students understand?" is the question, "From what point are students beginning?" This is another crucial piece of Laurillard's argument. She writes, "It must be clear that it is impossible for teaching to succeed if it does not address the current forms of students' understanding." (p. 187). While Rethinking University Teaching provides an excellent overview of the educational research on student learning, Laurillard is savvy enough to realize that the majority of university faculty have neither the time nor the inclination to delve deeply into that literature. Nor are they going to become their own educational researchers.

Yet, every instructor has data at his or her disposal that provides a picture of his or her students as thinkers and learners. Exams and problem sets can be mined in order to identify common problems in understanding. Talking to students – even informally – can be a source of information. TAs can provide feedback on students' progress. (Laurillard cites an interesting finding from research that there are usually only a handful of mistakes that all students make in trying to understand some fundamental concept in a particular discipline. Citing an example from psychology, she notes students at first often misinterpret "short-term" memory in light of the kind of recall they're familiar with, not with "the theoretical concept that spans only fractions of a second.") Finally, Laurillard asks us to remember the places where we ourselves struggled with core concepts in our disciplines, for those memories, too, can be a source of information about where students may be faltering.

If we can identify common mistakes in apprehension, simplistic conceptions of the topic, possible errors in logic, or confusion over definitions, we can construct our lessons in ways that can circumvent these problems. Understanding the nature of the knowledge we provide, the specific objectives we want to meet, how we will identify whether or not we meet those objectives, and the nature of our students' thinking, Laurillard argues, will all lead to stronger teaching. From these pieces she produces a template for teaching design, an analytical prop, as she calls it. This template consists of decisions the instructor must make in the course of constructing a plan for what he or she will do in the classroom. In a simplified version, Laurillard's five-step template asks instructors to:

• create a plan for presenting the material (e.g., decide on the main point to be made, examples to be used, definitions to be included)

• examine the plan against what are likely to be students' misconceptions or errors

• modify the plan based on the above analysis

• ask students to reflect on the comparisons between theirs and the teacher's conceptions

• refine the interaction between the teacher and the learner based on this further feedback

As Laurillard herself writes of this approach:

It may look lengthy and complex . . . but the learning process itself is lengthy and complex, and this analysis amounts to a considerable simplification. Once internalised it becomes more automatic and skilled . . . . (p. 194)

The Challenge of Designing and Using Educational Technology

The third contribution of Rethinking University Teaching is Laurillard's extraordinarily thorough treatment of the utilization and development of educational technologies. Covering audio-visual media, hypermedia, interactive media (e.g., simulations), adaptive media (e.g., tutorial programs), and discursive media (e.g., videoconferences), Laurillard analyzes each in light of its ability to contribute to teaching-learning objectives. Can the medium help the teacher describe an idea he or she wants to communicate? Can it aid the student in describing the conception? Is it useful in helping the student achieve a goal? Can it provide the student with feedback on his or her attempt to master some skill?

Laurillard makes it clear she believes decisions about educational technology should be driven by teaching aims rather than the other way around. "Vast sums are made available to investigate the best way of using computers," she writes:

where the subject matter taught is incidental. The more rational approach, seldom adopted, is to offer vast sums to investigate the best way of teaching a particular topic, and through that to fund the use of computers as an incidental part of that strategy. (p. 7)

Because of the lack of research into the connection between how specific educational technologies can advance particular kinds of learning, Laurillard says the best we can do is to combine our understanding of learning objectives for a given topic with what we know about the strengths and weaknesses of the different media to make an informed guess about how specific technologies can be used most effectively.

Laurillard concludes Rethinking University Teaching with a sweeping examination of what it will take to develop and implement new educational technologies. She outlines the need for pilot programs, staff training, and resources to assess and evaluate how effective a specific medium is in reaching its goals. "We need to learn the lessons of each implementation," she writes, "and then use those lessons learned." (p. 8) She wishes for an organizational infrastructure that allows good teaching to be done without the impediments that have so far marred its development. And, in the end, she locates institutions of higher education within the social and political contexts in which they operate, and she asks us to work toward demanding those systems, as well, provide the support that is needed to enable teachers to make student learning possible.

I have only scratched the surface of the wealth of information available in Rethinking University Teaching. If Laurillard is to be faulted for anything, it is for the embarrassment of riches she offers the reader. This is not an easy book to read or digest, and it is liable to make those of us who are trying to do our best by our students feel either completely overwhelmed or woefully inadequate. But if we can take even one piece of advice Laurillard gives us, or follow even one tactic she suggests, we will have already come a step closer to improving our work as teachers.