• Student as Producer: Collaborative and engaged teaching – supporting a paradigm shift

Recent research shows that teaching and learning in higher education is going through a paradigm shift. In the 1950s Universities were characterised by the production of knowledge in which teaching played an important but secondary status. By the mid 1990s universities were becoming student centred with a focus on the student as learner and the learning environment. This focus on the learning environment lies at the heart of the learning landscape. But now the learning landscape is changing again, the focus is not so much on the student as learner, but the notion of student and teacher as collaborators, with the student capable of producing academic knowledge of value and substance. This principle includes problem-based and enquiry-based learning, but is best captured by the notion of research-based teaching. This move to a closer alignment between teaching and research is confirmed by the Learning Landscapes research and the new learning and teaching spaces that are being designed.

QUESTION?

The Learning Landscapes in Higher Education is being transformed from student centred teaching and learning towards a topography within which undergraduate students are being seen as collaborators in production of knowledge of value and substance. In what ways is this paradigm shift being reflected in new social learning spaces?

References

HEA: Research and Teaching – http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/research/teaching

SFC: Research Teaching Linkages http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/themes/ResearchTeaching/overview.asp, from April 2006

Neary, M and Winn, J. (2009) ‘Student as Producer – Reinventing the Undergraduate Curriculum’ in The Future of Higher Education: Policy, Pedagogy and the Student Experience, Continuum, London

SFC Scottish Quality Enhancement Themes – Teaching and Research Linkages – http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:9IFq67zM6IkJ:www.enhancementthemes.org/uploads/documents/Workshop12paper-AlanDavidsonResearchTeachingLinkages.doc+sfc+research+teaching+