Les acteurs associatifs locaux : les EFT, OISP et EI

Both policies and research on highereducation focus heavily onengaging students in pro-cesses of knowledgeconstructionandpreparing them for futurework situations character-ised by open-ended problems, shifting contexts of collaboration and new demands to exper-tise. Theemphasis onso-called‘student-centred’ approaches to teaching andcoursedesigns should be understood against this background. It implies that attentionshould begiven to the ways inwhich tasks and activities are designed to nurturestudents’ active exploration and construction of knowledge, as well as the learning opportunities such engagements entail (Land, Hannafin and Oliver, 2012;see also Chapter 1in thisreport). Activities often include forms of inquiry-based learning (IBL), which emphasise students’ investigative work with knowledge (Aditomo, Goodyear, Bliuc and Ellis, 2013). Such investigations, however, can take different forms. Activities could engage students in exploring existing knowledge, solving complex problems or generating knowledgeproducts through inquiryprocesses. The types of activities often varywith the knowledge domain, as they reflect specific ways of‘doing knowledge’ within each discipline (Aditomo et al., 2013; Damsa and Nerland, 2016).

The courses presented inthis report took different approaches toengage studentsin in-quiry activities. Some courses are largely organised around students’ constructionprocesses.

Thiswasthecase for the engineering coursepresented in chapter 2, in whichstudents’ project work formed a main activity structure throughout the course, and the biologycourse pre-sented inchapter 8, inwhich student groups workedtogether on a research project organised as problem-based learning. Other courses included smaller explorative activities in their coursestructures. This was the casein the use of role play inchapter 4 and the moot court exercisesinchapter 6. In the portfolio-based course (chapter 3), several inquiry tasks were organised to build on one another in the students’ learning processes.

Common to the inquiryactivitiesintheselected courses wasthat they were typically or-ganised asgroup processes. This means that they entailedcollaborative learning and collab-orative knowledgeconstruction. While such processes havebeen found to be conducive for learning when studentsmanage towork well together, they are also demanding in thesense that they require students to monitor and handle both the epistemic and the social aspects of

the collaborative process (Damsa, 2014). For instance, students are challenged to plan their jointconstruction process and keeptheir development ofknowledgeproducts on track, while simultaneously sorting outways to work together and handle disagreements among group members. These aspects of collaborative work also need to be learned and require pedagogi-cal support from teachers and/or the wider instructional environment. The case studies pre -sented in the previous chapters illustrate different strategies and challenges related to providing support for collaborative knowledgeconstruction, aswellashowthese strategies and challenges depend on the nature of the collaborative task itself. Incases inwhich students were to produce concreteproducts through activities that stretched over time (e.g. in chap-ters 2 and 8), the pedagogical support could more easily relate to the emergentknowledge construction and assist the students in different phases of the construction process, such as problem framing, exploration and solving. Through thesesteps, the teachers could demon-strate ways of thinking and doing inthe discipline and help to establish common grounds for the student groups from which the social processes could be organised.

At the same time, thewayinwhichthissupport wasorganised varied. Inthe engineering case(chapter 2), therewas a cleardivision oflabour between actors and learning contexts, such that lab sessions and coaching sessions were organised regularly and provided different kindsofsupport. In theFinnish biology course(chapter 8), eachstudent group wasassigned a single teacherwhofollowedandsupervised their work over time. Here, thesequencing of phasesinproblem-based learning formed the organising principles for the pedagogical sup-port. In the portfolio-based course(chapter 3), thestudents were offeredcontinual support, organised aspeerreview exercises, written feedback provided in the learning management system and voluntary feedback sessions related to the different course assignments. In cases that involved smallerexplorative tasks, such assimulationexercisesand role plays, the ped-agogicalsupport took a less formative character and wasprovidedin the form of task guide-lines(suchas those described in chapters 4 and 5) and reflective discussionsafter the task wasaccomplished (chapters 4 and 6). Whilst thesesmallerexplorative tasks also offer pro-ductive learning opportunities, they pose challenges for teachersand students, whomust find ways to explicitly connect the activities to the students’ overall learning processes within the course.

Seen together, the casestudies point to the importance of clarifying the overalllearning purposes of different inquirytasks and explorativeactivities and consideringhowdifferent activitiescan relate to othercourseactivities in productive ways. The analyses indicate that activitiesthatstretch over time and that are sequencedinways thatincludegreater teacher support across several phaseswill provide better opportunities for active knowledge con-struction and for making ways of ‘doing knowledge’ in the discipline explicit to the students.

Moreover, activities that involve the construction of products(i.e. students creating or making something that is materialised) offeropportunities to explicate the learning process and mon-itor achievements for students and teachers alike. Hence, we suggest that more discussion-based tasks shouldencourage the materialisation of discussion outcomes so that the learning process becomes visible,interimachievements can be furtherexplored and developed and the social organisation of collaborative processes can be supported.

Insum, the case studies presentedinthis report support the idea that designing student-centred learning environments is a generalroute to develop quality inhighereducation prac-tices, as suchenvironments allow for activeknowledge exploration andprofound learning experiences when they work well. However, they also demonstrate that putting such learning environments into practice is not straight-forward. The use of inquiry-oriented and knowledge-generatingactivitiesisdemanding for both teachersand students. Different ap-proachesinvolve different opportunities and challenges (see the preceding chapters for de-tails) and require the careful organisation of tasks, content and processes by the teacher. Hence, the idea of student-centredness should not be uncriticallyembraced, and boththe roles of the teacher and the student and the character of the knowledgedomain need to be acknowledged and explicated in the design of learning environments. Moreover, the very no-tion of student-centrednessrequiresan unpacking of how students are understood. In partic-ular, it matters how we understand this term inrelation to the (assumed) student population (and its characteristics) for which a programme or course is offered, the dynamics of the s tu-dent groups within acourse, and the individual students’ learning over time. These issues will be further discussed in the following sections.

10.2 ‘Real-world’ problems and the need to decompose practices for learning

Highereducationcourses and activities are increasingly expected to havegreaterrelevance for work. This has ledto a generalcallto include tasks and activities that resemble ‘real’ work practices inhighereducation courses and to provide opportunities for students to experience what skilful participation in thesepracticesentails. Forms ofinquiry-based learning are also often used for thesepurposes, organised around what havebeen termed‘authentic’ tasks and problems (Levy and Petrulis 2012).The casestudiesreported here used different approaches to realisethis objective, including simulation exercises, project work,explorations of real-world problems in the context of problem-based learning or research activities and efforts to integrate students’ work experiences into educationalactivities. Together, the casestudies highlight severalopportunities andchallenges related to how these activities may support student learning.

First, the courses that included simulation exercisesillustrate how theseexercisesprovide opportunitiesforstrong experiences of real-life situations that may affect students’ sense of self. In both the nursing case(chapter 5) and the organisation andmanagement case(chapter 4), weobserved that students began to reflect on their owncapabilities and potential for pro-fessionalwork. For the nursing students, the high-fidelity simulation with a manikinpatient appeared very realistic, and thestudents’ frightover ‘letting thepatient die’ wasemotionally intense. In this activity, the time organisation and the sequencing ofevents that called for the student nursing team’s immediate attention helped to make the task realistic. Related expe-riences were evident in the moot court exercise in the Norwegian law case (chapter 6), though,inthis course, students volunteered to takedifferent roles, meaning that it was pos-sible totake partintheactivity from an observer’s position ratherthan playing one ofthe professional court roles. In the management course role play, the students took different roles

in simulating a personnelrecruitment process. Interestingly, the students in thiscourse ex-pressed more anxiety when playing the role of a job applicant, even though the exercise was about recruiting new personnel to a work organisation. This reactioncan be understood in relationtothe students’ current life situation. Onaverage, the students were relatively young, and their most pressing life challenge was to succeedin getting a job. By contrast, visualizing themselvesas HR managers seemeddistant and unrealistic. These examples illustrate the im-portance of being aware of whattypes of practice arepracticed in a simulation exercise and clearly communicating the purpose of the activity. Moreover, itseems important to be explicit about the potential value of learning from failure. One of the clearadvantages of simulation environments is that it is possible to try out ‘real’ work activitieswithout taking the risks that failures in working lifemayimply.Despite this,both our studies and otherresearch have shown that students seem to be afraid of failing in these environments and that teachers also seem to be concerned about avoiding experiences of failure, which they believe could u nder-mine students’ trust intheir own capabilities (see, for instance, Jensen, Lee, Percyet al., 2016).

For students to be comfortable inthesesituations, therefore, it seems important to plan suf-ficient time for debriefing activitiesand reflectionexercises that can address their experi-ences and provide feedback and support that the students can build on in their further lea rn-ing.

Anotherway to enhance the relevance of learning activities is to include tasks that allow students to work onreal-world problems or takepart inprofessionalpracticesinthe educa-tional context. As noted earlier, student-centred learning environments typically include dif-ferent types of inquirytasks and knowledge-generating activities. Inseveralcourses, such as in the engineering case(chapter 2) and the two biologycases (chapters 3 and 8), we sawthat complex inquiry tasks, or sets of inquirytasks that ran over time, were highlydependent on students’ engagement. These activitiesalso included the use of profession-specific tools and resources, such as software and tools developed specifically to support knowledge-generat-ing practices in thesedomains. Hence, anotherfacet oftheseactivitiesis that the extent to which an activity resembles practices in working life depends on the students’ knowledge levels and skills. More advanced students may more easily develop projects and solutions that incorporate professionalstandards, while the projects of students who struggle to under-stand the knowledgedomain may be less complex. On one hand, thiscan be seen as a promise of inquiry-based learning in the sense that the activitiescan accommodate different student groups and enhance participation atdifferent levels (Northedge, 2003). For instance, students may be introduced to knowledgeresources and procedures from the worldofwork without taking fullresponsibility for ‘real’ work processes. On the otherhand, students’ different op-portunities to engagemore fully with complex tasks and problems may reinforce the differ-ences in their understanding and skills.

This also bringsattention to a thirdissue:namely, the paradox of how the work on complex problems and tasks can be prepared for and trainedineducational contexts. Creating tasks that resemble real work situations in education implies presenting students with realistic problem complexes, whichare typically multifaceted and bring several problems to the fore at once. Learning new skills and ways of participating inprofessionalpractices may, on the

other hand, require that the practice be decomposed into parts and specific skills or that seg-ments be isolated and addressed one at a time. Ways to balance theseconcerns for the parts and the whole must be consideredwhen developing and specifying each learning environ-ment, asshould opportunities for progressionduring the activity. Students may also benefit from experiencing the same typesofactivitiesacross courses in theprogramme, as,for in-stance, the engineering students did in terms of project-based work (chapter 2) and the man-agement students did inmore permanent collaborativegroups (chapter 4). Hence, a quality issue related to real-worldproblems and practicesinvolves developing progression princi-ples not only for knowledge content, but also for ways of working in the study programmes.