Enhancing Learning
In 2008 cohesiveness in the curriculum, embedding graduate attributes, alignment of assessment with practice and content, and the graduate attributes have all been identified as key areas of development for learning and teaching improvement at UNSW.
The following important points should be noted in relation to enhancing learning.
Graduate attributes should be contextualised to provide relevance within learning and should be centred upon the needs of UNSW graduates to meet the requirements or demands of their intended professional lives, not on teachers' opinions about what students ought to know.
To further enhance learning it is essential that learning outcomes are explicitly stated to enable coherence in programs to be established. Appropriate modes of assessment need to be developed that interrogate the desired outcomes, and graduate attribute and assessment tasks need to be developed parallel to development of Graduate Attributes.
The alignment of Graduate Attributes and means of assessment should determine content and ways of delivery, not the opposite as too often happens.
Theories of Learning and Teaching abound. They generally encompass ideas of learning as a dialogue between learner and teacher. Learning in the context of specific disciplines relates strongly to knowledge. McAlpine, Weston et al (1999) suggest that this knowledge is composed of 4 distinct categories: knowledge of content, of the learner, of pedagogy and knowledge of context.
It is important that learning goes beyond the all too common focus of content driven courses.
Learning & Teaching @ UNSW staff are available to help academics in the development and delivery of revised curricula to actively enhance student Learning.
For help and information please contact Adele Flood.
