Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 8 | Page 66

HIGHLIGHT #4 | 66
HIGHLIGHT #4
Title
Reflections of the Annual
Learning and Teaching
Symposium 2017
Authors
Dr. Rachel Berkson and
Dr. Adam Moolna
DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.21252/
KEELE-0000017
School
School of Medicine, and School
of Geography, Geology and the
Environment, respectively
Faculty
Faculty of Medicine and Health
Sciences, and Faculty of Natural
Sciences, respectively
Abstract
This highlight contains the reflections
of two individuals who attended the
2017 Annual Learning and Teaching
Symposium and volunteered to offer
their thoughts here.
The focus for the annual
teaching symposium this year
was “Teaching International
Students” and the intention,
through collaboration and
dialogue, was to generate new
understandings and develop
confidence in professional
teaching practice among the
event participants. The event
showcased two prestigious
keynote speakers:
• Supporting
international
student success: teaching
and assessment strategies
that work. Professor Sally
Brown, Leeds Metropolitan
University
• Inclusive
curriculum:
creative approaches to
making
online
spaces
and resources work for
all students. Dr Megan
Lawton,
University
of
Wolverhampton
REFLECTIONS OF THE ANNUAL LEARNING AND TEACHING SYMPOSIUM 2017
Dr. Rachel Berkson
Lecturer in Bioscience
Keele University School
Medicine, Keele University
of
Reflections from a Lecturer in
Bioscience from the School of
Medicine
Like
all
the
best
internationalisation events, this
year’s teaching symposium
on ‘Teaching international
students’ was really about
teaching all students. Overseas
students have no monopoly
on issues, and anyway all
students
are
international
students, destined to live and
work in a globalized world.
Prof Sally Brown and Dr
Megan Lawton have very
different styles, but put
across a common message:
inclusion needs to be built in
from the beginning. It’s no
good reacting to a problem by
trying to change something
in an inflexible course or
make a special exception for
a given student. Inclusion in
the sense of not just having
one assessment tool (typically
a long written exam), or one
style of feedback (marginal
notes in an essay), and not
making teaching a slave
to one particular element
of technology. A positive
approach to inclusion could
involve designing learning
activities around methods and
outcomes rather than being
fixed to particular examples
that only draw on one cultural
context.
Prof
Brown
talked
HIGHLIGHT #4 | 67
very
compellingly about the idea of cultural humility. When teaching in
an international context, or rather, when teaching in a university full
stop, asking students to provide examples from their own contexts
may mean discussing examples that as teachers we are not fully
familiar with. But we still have discipline expertise to guide the
students through analysis and discussion of the examples they bring.
At the same time, students from different backgrounds may have
very different expectations of the relationship between student and
teacher, and the idea of student co-creation of learning which is
fashionable in UK HE can itself be a barrier to many. These cultural
differences can be approached respectfully and incorporated into a
flexible teaching system.
Dr Lawton explored further the idea of how student knowledge
and even expertise can be incorporated into teaching. For example,
students may come up with some examples related to a given
concept that are specific to their home country, and these can be
reused for a course offered in the UK or via a different international
partner—now the whole curriculum is more diverse without having
to be rewritten top-down. Or a cohort of students who struggled
with self-assessing their level of ‘digital literacy’ prepared a visual
essay about what they understood by the term. That helped those
particular students to get to grips with the idea, but also provided
material for future classes to use as a starting point. Students don’t
just have one identity, and want to be respected as individuals but
not singled out as a person from a particular group.
The discussions sparked by these two keynote talks also had some
good insights. Of course, we talked a lot about pedagogic problems
we’ve encountered teaching very mixed groups, but we tried to
be solution-focused and bring up practices that help. Very few
of the suggestions were specific to overseas students, of course.
Better explanations of everything from the meanings of academic
terms of art, to information about what is expected in a course or
assessment item and being transparent about the reasoning behind
educational choices are helpful to students from any background.
Existing students may be best placed to explain the subtleties of UK
academic (and general) culture, and institutions can encourage and
support this rather than trying to push students into official channels
while losing any control over what students may be learning from
their peers.
There are big challenges here but the symposium was taking a very
encouraging stance around encouraging better teaching, based
on both research evidence and personal experience. Rather than
trying to fire-fight and address problems that arise when students
for whatever reason can’t engage with education as we would want
them to.