We were tasked by Sabine Little to examine the following question by interviewing Tim Herrick, an academic in The Institute for Lifelong Learning (TILL):
In what way (if at all) has your interest in inquiry-based learning influenced your department, and what has this meant for the student experience?
TILL struck us to be unlike any other Department in the University. Its students study a whole range of subjects part-time either towards gaining a qualification, such as a Certificate in Higher Education or a more traditional BA/BSc (Hons) degree, to develop their academic skills as part of a Foundation Program (preparation for University study), or simply for fun. In the words of an academic from TILL “one of the characteristics of mature part-time studies is greater student diversity in terms of ethnicity, disability, social background…” Clearly, in the face of these scholastic and demographic trends, there is some poignancy to looking at the issue of how inquiry-based learning (IBL) has influenced the Department and, in turn, seeing what this has meant for the student experience.
Having been set this task, we had the chance to conduct a semi-structured interview with Tim Herrick, for approximately one hour. We structured our interview around three main themes which we felt would provide an insight into our research question: a) current IBL practice in the Department; b) student experience of IBL; and c) future prospects for IBL. The main conclusions we drew from this are summarized below.
We found that IBL per se, that is as a pedagogical tool, was embedded in much of the teaching work of the Department, but that the Centre for Inquiry-Based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences (CILASS) provided substantial impetus to developing inquiry-based activities within the curriculum through two projects. Initially, it funded a project for students on the Foundation Programme; it then went on to support a department-wide project, for students on any of the BA/BSc programmes. However, a word of caution seems appropriate at this point. Tim stressed that, given the diversity of courses and disciplines taught within TILL, the impact of IBL (and hence CILASS) was going to be mixed. In particular certain disciplines emphasizing the acquisition of subject-specific knowledge displayed a greater reticence vis-a-vis IBL. That being said, two generalizable conclusions can still be drawn regarding the impact that CILASS, and by extension IBL, have had on the Department.
Firstly, CILASS seems to have been important in a material sense, providing the necessary “funding, material resources, and ‘buy-out’ time” to allow academics to pursue IBL-type activities. Secondly, our interview suggested to us that CILASS had had a perhaps less appreciable effect on the Department by rendering IBL as an explicit pedagogical tool. Although academics within TILL were no strangers to the sorts of teaching techniques traditionally associated with IBL, the projects CILASS funded allowed the Department to become more reflexive about its own teaching by identifying the “nature of the beast”. Teaching innovations that were introduced were the subject of both formal and informal evaluation procedures; students were encouraged to discuss the projects through MOLE while a staff-student panel was also established. The fact that Tim saw a lot of future to the program even beyond the CILASS-funding period was therefore suggestive of this trend. Finally, he was also at pains to stress the importance of research output associated with IBL.
In terms of its effects on students, IBL seems to have had an overall positive impact. This tended to follow some reticence on the part of students to engage in some of these activities. The value of groupwork in particular was repeatedly called into question by participants in one interdisciplinary CILASS-funded module, who argued that they had little to gain from talking to students from other subject areas. Indeed, it became clear throughout the interview that one of the greatest challenges that Tim and his colleagues in TILL faced was overcoming the view commonly-held by students of the (University) learner as the passive recipient of (mostly subject-specific) knowledge. Ultimately, however, most students were able to see the gain from working together and engaging with their peers.
The purpose of the Departmental CILASS project in IBL has been to map mature students’ existing (non-academic) skills (e.g. life skills, employment-related skills) onto academic skills. In this sense, the most important impact that IBL seems to have on students is to boost their confidence. Tim discussed the case of one student who, after studying for a qualification at TILL, went on to study for a degree in Archeology in a University Department. Although she had been out of school for many years and was beginning a course at the same time as a cohort of 18-year olds having just completed their A-levels, Tim stressed that the IBL she had engaged in while doing her foundation course at TILL in Sheffield “had given her an edge” in terms of preparing her for independent study.
So what can we conclude about the impact of IBL in TILL? We found that although the Department’s students had unique teaching needs, IBL seemed to have made a positive impact on their confidence as learners. Likewise, CILASS seemed to have made a contribution to TILL by explicitly identifying IBL as a pedagogical tool and providing the means to pursue it. This made both students and academics in TILL more reflexive about their learning/teaching while providing an extra outlet for research for the latter. This is not to say that IBL can necessarily be seen as the answer to everyone’s pedagogical problems, but rather that it has initiated an open debate on the merits of diverse teaching methods in TILL and subjected them to critical scrutiny. This should benefit all students within the Department.
Gabriel Siles Brügge and Kamal Bhana
Sheffield, November 2008
Source: gabrielsiles