THEME: The underlying principle of education at SDU - an example from a teacher

Active Teaching and Learning: Examining students’ experiences

As a lecturer, I value discussions with and participations of the students, and I aim at planning the lectures to equip students with necessary skills to actively participate in these processes. Being employed at the Faculty of Business and Social Science at SDU, I find inspiration in the University’s underlying principle of active teaching and learning and in the Faculty’s framework for pedagogy. In this contribution, I unfold how I operationalised the principle of active teaching and learning, and the students’ experiences. I conclude with reflections on the challenges I faced and on the potential of adopting this lecture planning approach to other teaching programmes at SDU. 

Background

In December 2021, I was enrolled in the lecturer training programme at SDU, and during the course of the programme I chose to investigate how diversified activities may facilitate activating teaching and learning. To contextualise, I taught the course Perspectives on Law and Society for 4th semester students at the programme Marketing and Management Anthropology. The course introduces theoretical and methodological perspectives on law and society, such as a Marxist approach to the analysis of law’s role in society. 78 students were enrolled in the course, the course began in February and ended in May, and there were 60 confrontation hours scheduled for the course which was concluded with a written exam. 

The approach

To break down the planning of activating teaching and learning, I drew on the Faculty of Business and Social Science’s framework for pedagogy that offers suggestions for diversified activities during and in-between lectures, for example the combination of face2face lectures, group work, and working questions. I would formulate guidelines for readings to help the students prepare for lectures by focusing on the essentials of the course texts. The guidelines for reading were inspired by the SOLO taxonomy as the students were first requested to, for example, identify Marx’ definition of law, and then to observe the application of the definition to the text’s analysis. In class, face2face lectures were planned to outline relevant concepts and their application with the main focus on the students’ active interaction with the texts through group work in class. I facilitated the group work by formulating working questions to operationalise the often-abstract concepts through analyses of real-life cases. The groups would share their responses either in writing through a shared online platform or in class discussion. Also, as the exam for this course was a written assignment, I wished to ensure coherence between class activities and the exam by inviting the students to complete smaller written assignment, for example light versions of previous exam questions, which I provided feedback on. These written assignments, including my comments, were as well shared via an online platform, thereby available to all. 

Investigating students’ experiences

The four elements; guidelines for reading, face2face lectures, group work, and smaller written assignment, were planned with the aim of supporting students’ active learning and course coherence. I wished to investigate the students’ experiences of the process, and I therefore formulated a survey targeting each of the elements, asking for example: Do the guidelines for reading help you to identify central aspects in the texts?, Do group work sessions help you to transform concepts and themes into analytical tools as they are applied to cases? and Do you experience coherence between the different learning activities? Due to the limited space of this contribution, I focus on the students’ experiences as they are reflected in their responses to these three questions.

According to the students’ responses, the guidelines for reading helped them structure their reading and identify relevant aspects in the text, thereby managing their preparation for lectures, as one writes: “otherwise I might feel overwhelmed”. Being overwhelmed might discourage students from taking on the tasks necessary for actively participating throughout the course, and the guidelines can thus be pivotal for supporting the students in this process. The group work sessions “helps to relate the concepts in a more practical way”, “especially when discussing different aspects of a concept with classmates who have a better understanding than me”, some replied, stressing the relevance of actively discussing and analysing abstract concepts through cases. Yet, other replied that “it’s not always super constructive” which calls for reflections on how to optimise the facilitation of students’ group work. Related to the question on the students’ experience of coherence, the students generally responded positive to this, and, as one writes: “I like how the concepts of previous classes are incorporated to the present ones as it helps to not forget about them”. As mentioned, the course consists of 60 confrontational hours, and the syllabus is comprehensive which stress the relevance of establishing a main thread throughout the course by linking concepts and cases to each other, thereby offering the students an overview of the course as a unified whole. 

Reflections

Throughout the course, I did experience challenges related to facilitating active teaching. This would concern students’ preparation before class and active participation in class. When students did not prepare it would negatively impact their ability to actively enter discussions and work with course texts during class. Also, some students informally shared with me their feelings of anxiety related to speaking up in class which would discourage them from actively participating in class discussions. As lecturer and employed at SDU, I support the underlying principle of active teaching and learning but I also experience a cross-pressure of expectation related to students’ expectations to lectures and teaching which do not necessarily match those formulated by SDU, stressing, for example, that students “are proactive, exploring and ready to learn”. To bridge this gap in expectations, I would for future lectures aim at discussing the underlying principle with the students and our respective roles as they and I “share the responsibility for implementing this principle”. 

My starting point in the use of diversified elements and in the SOLO taxonomy for planning activating teaching and learning is in no way restricted to teaching in social sciences. Rather, this approach to planning activating teaching and learning is to a large extent applicable across SDU faculties and programmes as the diversified elements and the SOLO taxonomy allow for lecturers’ own interpretation and implementation, considering the specific context of their course and exam to ensure coherence. 

Stine Piilgaard Porner Nielsen
Postdoc, Juridisk Institut
sppn@sam.sdu.dk