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

48 ❘
Teaching, supervising, learning
components support each other. Biggs outlines the critical components of teaching as
follows:
• the curriculum we teach;
• the teaching methods and strategies we use to facilitate student learning;
• the assessment processes we use and the methods of reporting results;
• the climate we create in our interactions with students;
• the institutional climate, the rules and procedures we are required to follow.
It must be taken as a given that whatever institution we are working in, we should
understand the mission and the regulations. These are factors not within our control. We
do of course have control over the classroom climate we create. Are we accessible to our
students, appropriately supportive, approachable? These issues matter, and do have a
bearing on how students respond and engage with learning.
The teaching, learning and assessment strategies are issues with which we need to
engage in a scholarly manner. It is our role to ensure that the learning outcomes we agree
upon are achievable, that we are clear about the levels or standards expected at different
stages and that the learning tasks and the assessment of learning are in alignment. If we
do not pay due attention to these issues, we may actually encourage surface learning.
Case study 1: Aligning teaching, learning and
assessment with learning outcomes in the creative arts
The National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries is a Faculty of the
University of Auckland. A key aim of the Faculty is to build a culture of
interdisciplinarity and collaboration at both institutional level (between the five
areas of architecture, art, dance, music and planning) and at the educational level
(among the programmes taught to students). In 2007, the Faculty launched an
initiative to promote the importance of drawing skills within the curriculum of
all disciplines, at undergraduate level. A series of staff workshops was held to
determine how best to do this, involving staff and students from different
disciplines.
The first task of the staff workshop was to determine a set of achievable learning
outcomes that would support a common curriculum in drawing, and could also
be ‘exported’ to cognate disciplines outside the Faculty. The aim was to include
outcomes and processes with clear cognitive, practical and affective dimensions
that could be delivered within relatively few teaching hours.
Learning outcomes
The staff team devised a two-hour intensive teaching project on completion of
which students would be able to: