ED401 Reflective Writing 3

Pita Tuisawau (S82530500)

A. Summary of Biggs Chapter 7 Reading

Biggs starts of by calling for three major changes: lectures and tutorials instead of being
seen as activities to be seen as situations in which LTAs can be applied; lectures to be
student focussed rather than teacher focussed; and learning should happen beyond the
teacher directed classroom. He gives an example to demonstrate that what teachers
usually do differ from what students do with regards to ILOs like ‘explain’ in a big lecure
situation. Biggs then goes on to give guidelines in how to teach declarative knowledge in
large classes preceded by warnings on psychological constraints on learning where he
demonstrates the constraint of the attention span of 10-15 minutes for the average
student. He starts of with Mazur’s experience of interactive teaching with readings,
emails questions, quizzes, trick questions and discussions all in the one lecture and
follows this up with a description of Yamane’s course preparation assignment method.
Next he warns that note taking should be used as a TLA and not as an inefficient
recording device. Changing activities every 15 minutes is a good strategy to keep
concentration levels high in a large class activity. Olivia Leung links work-along
exercises to her lecturing. Others have tried one-/three-minute essays at the start, towards
the end and at the end of their lectures in an effort to assist the student to engage the
content. Again concept maps have been used initially by teachers and later students for
presentation and assessment where they are useful for ILOs requiring students to see the
whole and relationships in a given topic. Think-aloud modelling is another strategy that
could be used when presenting new tasks and problems in a large class activity. It allows
students to see how an expert would go about a task or problem. Biggs thinks that Peer
teaching is underutilised and is one of the most effective ways of teaching declarative
knowledge. The student tutor benefits from being an active learner. Biggs thinks that
tutorials will go the way of the Tasmanian tiger if lectures are replaced with the above-
mentioned interactive learning, student centred and flexible TLAs. In the section dealing
with interaction in small classes, Biggs talks of the importance of dealing in the proper
way with questions from students and gives tips on the different types (convergent,
divergent, high and low level) of questions one can use in this small group setting. In the
section on large classes, Biggs talks of the importance of managing and gives tips on how
to do this. He argues that learning partners for students will be a help in large classes not
only for easier management for teachers but for what the student will get out of it.
Finally, Biggs talks positively about the impact of the interactive use of educational
technology on large classes where it “dissolves the boundaries of time and space” and
enables the interaction of students and teachers with the content of their courses.

B. Discuss how you could apply these ideas in your own teaching
I have learnt so much from this reading. I used to only suspect and guess at the reasons
why lecturers did what they did in their lectures first as a university student and now as
an Instructional designer. I have mostly been working on the online and flexible &
distance side of things. I have always tried to use questions and quizzes before in my
presentations/talks without really thinking about them. Now after this reading I hope to
refine my use of them. Before the upcoming Moodle Gradebook workshop I hope to
personally meet and talk to participants as well as give them an online reading (on the
lighter side perhaps) to kickoff the pre-workshop discussion forum. Hopefully, I will be
able to, like Mazur get a feel for what the participants really need to know. I am hoping
the planned quiz and discussions will allow for participants to interact with each other
and peer tutor each other. I also will want to keep in mind Biggs warning of not
becoming the centre of attention because of my knowledge of Moodle. That the
participants should be the focus of this planned workshop.