Abstract:

Background:
This article relates to the professional development of those who teach in higher education. The authors are collaborating on a research project that aims to use the research on how students learn to enhance teaching within their respective programmes. One of the strategies that we are currently utilising to support professional development is reflection on student feedback. This paper describes and validates the feedback instrument that we are using.

Purpose:
While many institutes routinely collect end-of-semester data from students, often these instruments concentrate on what faculty do and hence are aligned with teacher-centric views of teaching and learning. Reflecting on the outcomes of this data is unlikely to promote the paradigm shift that we are seeking. Hence, in this paper we combined components from two existing instruments. The Approaches to Learning and Studying component of the Experiences of Teaching and Learning Questionnaire captures the degree to which the teaching and learning environment encourages learners to try and understand the module material as opposed to simply memorising content. The Student Response to Instructional Strategies aims to capture the extent to which active learning has been integrated into a teaching learning environment. By combining these two instruments we believe that we have a more effective questionnaire for faculty development as it combines cause and effect. Seeing that their learning environments are not as effective as they, perhaps imagined may motivate faculty to engage and continue to develop while the Active Learning component provides insights into key changes that may be necessary.

Methodology/Approach:
A multiple case-study approach was used to validate the instrument. Four cases of different engineering modules are presented. From our perspective, the primary difference is the degree to which each module aligns with student-centred views of learning. Each of the modules is analysed from that theoretical student-centred perspective and based on that analysis ranked. This theoretical analysis is then compared with the student data collected via our combined instrument.

Findings/Conclusions:
Two main results are established. The questionnaire can differentiate between learning environments that are strongly teacher-centred and those that are more student-centred but perhaps lacks the finesse to measure more subtle changes. The initial data would suggest that intrinsic motivation has a more significant impact on students approach to learning than the teaching strategy of active learning.

Implications:
The implication, and primary contribution of this article, is that we have developed an instrument to promote faculty development through reflecting on data that is aligned with contemporary conceptions of learning and teaching in higher education. This is important because while the effectiveness of active teaching strategies (Freeman et al; Problem based learning) is well established, the general consensus is that the adoption rates of research-based teaching strategies remains low (NRC, 2012; PCAST, 2012). Hence there is a renewed focus on more effective ways of supporting professional development and this contribution adds to that agenda. The primary limitation lies in the scale of the research – a small number of modules, each with less than 60 students and all within engineering disciplines – which impacts on the generalisability of the findings.

Keywords:

Professional Development, Student Questionnaires, Active Learning, Approaches to Learning, Motivation.