A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

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Teaching, supervising, learning
• Teachers should consider reducing the amount of didactic teaching.
• Teachers should avoid content overload; too much material will encourage a surface
approach.
• Think about possible threshold concepts in your discipline and how these can be
taught for optimal learning, including how they can be relearnt when earlier
understanding is inadequate.
• Basic principles and concepts provide the basis for further learning.
• Assessment has a powerful impact on student behaviour.
OVERVIEW
What is important about teaching is what it helps the learner to do, know or understand.
There are different models of learning that it is useful for the university lecturer to
be aware of. What we do as teachers must take into account what we understand about
how students learn, generally and in our own context. The rationale for the choice of
teaching and assessment methods needs to consider how students learn, and the
make-up of our student intake, rather than infrastructure or resource constraints, or
inflexible ‘requirements’.
REFERENCES
Becher, T and Trowler, P (2001) Academic Tribes and Territories, Buckingham: Society for
Research in Higher Education/Open University Press.
Biggs, J (1987) Student Approaches to Learning and Studying, Hawthorn, Victoria: Australian
Council for Educational Research.
Biggs, J (1993) ‘From theory to practice: a cognitive systems approach’, Higher Education
Research and Development, 12(1): 73–85.
Biggs, J (1999) Teaching for Quality Learning at University, Buckingham: Society for Research
in Higher Education/Open University Press.
Biggs, J and Collis, K F (1982) Evaluating the Quality of Learning: The SOLO Taxonomy, London:
Academic Press.
Biggs, J and Moore, P (1993) The Process of Learning, New York: Prentice-Hall.
Boud, D, Keogh, R, Walker, D (eds) (1985) Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning, London:
Kogan Page.
Breen, R, Lindsay, R, Jenkins, A (2000) ‘Phenomenography and the disciplinary basis of
motivation to learn’, in C Rust (ed.) Improving Student Learning Through the Disciplines,
Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development.
Bruner, J S (1960) The Process of Education, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bruner, J S (1966) Towards a Theory of Instruction, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Cass, M E, Rzepa, H S, Rzepa, D R, Williams, C K (2005) ‘An animated/interactive overview
of molecular symmetry’, Journal of Chemical Education, Online, 82(11): 1742–1743. Link: