Good practice guide - Student centred learning

Introduction

The Making a Difference: The 2025 Agenda identifies Flinders University’s “underlying ethos” as student centred. Connell, Donovan and Chambers (2016, p. 1), present student centred teaching as shifting the focus from lectures to engaging students in various ways which require their active participation. They also indicate the importance of “facilitating student work in cooperative groups and incorporating ongoing assessment of student conceptual understanding to provide feedback to both students and instructors”. This representation concurs with a range of others discussed by Hoidn (2017) who argues student centred learning (SCL) is based on constructivism and has the student as the central focus to teaching. Constructivism is a learning perspective or theory where building learning and developing knowledge occur through a range of activities and experiences which build on the student’s prior knowledge and/or where they are “at” when they enter the topic (Conner, 2014; Merriam & Caffarella, 1999). Students are guided through various processes, based on their learning needs so they develop “deep conceptual understandings” (Hoidn, 2017 p. 4). Transition pedagogy (also see GPG Teaching first year students) reflects how student centred learning and constructivism can be incorporated into the curriculum, although discussed in the GPG Teaching first year students in relation to first years, Transition pedagogy applies across all years (as students are always transitioning.

Students are at the centre of the Flinders learning and teaching experience. This is reflected and encouraged through:

• positioning students as ‘partners’ in their learning and the broader student experience
• providing a personalised learning experience
• flexibility for students

Positioning students as ‘partners’ in their learning and the broader student experience

Ollis and Gravett (2020, p. 11) define students as partners (in higher education contexts) as “a way for students and staff to work together to enhance learning and teaching” (Cook-Sather, Bovill, & Felten, 2014). There are many different approaches to engaging students as partners but according to Cook-Sather et al., (2014, p. 37) the three basic principles of “respect, reciprocity, and responsibility” ensure they work effectively. As explained by Mathews (2017) to allow projects to include a range of ideas and approaches while providing opportunities for all students to be partners in their learning and the broader students experience, institutions and their staff need to “direct attention to the experiences of a diversity of students as the focus of partnership work” (p. 3). Projects where students and staff might work together in partnership include:

• co-developing new knowledge through inquiry and problem-solving tasks (making connections between ideas that were not previously connected and developing new solutions to unsolved problems)
• determining assessment items and/or developing assessments in collaboration by asking students what evidence they could potentially provide to meet the learning outcomes
• reviewing teaching and learning activities (two-way feedback models)
• co-researching and co-authoring journal articles, book chapters etc.
• various aspects of film-making where staff and students co-create a film
• setting up the teacher as the owner of a company and students as employees who need to address the needs of customers (could work in marketing, video-making, engineering etc.)
• participating in all areas involved in theatre productions
• designing laboratory experiments and collaboratively writing up results
• including student input when developing curriculum or assessments (they may not be experts in the topic area or in learning design, but they are expert at being students

Provide a personalised learning experience

Personalised learning is closely linked to student centred learning and involves both individualisation and differentiation (Advance HE, 2019; Bartle, 2015). According to Advance HE, personalised learning:

Refers to a range of learning experiences and teaching strategies which aim to address the differing learning needs interests and the diverse backgrounds of learners. Often described as student centred learning this approach uses differentiated learning and instruction to tailor the curriculum according to need. Learners within the same classroom or on the same course work together with shared purpose but each have their own personalised journey through the curriculum (Advance HE, 2019)

Although engaged in their own personalised learning students are guided (by teachers) as they learn to master a range of necessary conceptual and factual knowledge in purposeful and authentic ways and may also be positioned as ‘partners’ in their learning. (Gordon, 2010; Järvelä, 2006). These authors also suggest personalised learning can help encourage students to focus on learning rather than assessment outcomes and therefore improve their overall learning achievement. Examples of personalised learning include:

• problem-based learning, where students are given a choice in problems to solve and how they might find solutions
• collaborative inquiry or project-based learning, where students choose the project they work on; their roles and/or the people they work with

Flexibility for students

Providing personalised student centred learning requires more flexible and adaptive approaches to teaching (Bartle, 2015; Gordon, 2010; Järvelä, 2006). While this may mean learning involves greater use of technology so students can learn when and where they choose, it may also involve increased opportunities for students to engage in different modes of assessments and have greater choice in how they are assessed. Examples of flexibility for students include:

• involving students writing their own assessment items and receiving feedback and a grade based on their capacity to devise a suitably complex, appropriate and innovative assessment which meets the learning outcomes of the topic
• flipped classrooms, as these provide students with a choice in when and where they participate in the non-class time activities