Pre-symposium Workshops (6 March 2007, Tuesday)

Registration for Pre-symposium Workshops is CLOSED.

Cost: $52.50 (Inclusive 5% GST) per participant, per workshop.

Vacancies are limited and will be given on a first-come, first-served basis.

Registration for Pre-symposium Workshops is CLOSED.

Pre-Symposium Workshop 1 (6 Mar, 0900-1200)

Teaching Perspectives and The Design of Effective Learning Environments

Professor Dan Pratt

Professor of Adult & Higher Education

Faculty of Education and Faculty of Medicine

The University of British Columbia

Canada

For over twenty years, Professor Pratt and his graduate students have been exploring the way teachers in further education go about their work. (e.g., Pratt and Associates 1998) Among over 250 teachers studied, they found five significantly different ‘Perspectives on Teaching’. By name, the five perspectives are: Transmission, Apprenticeship, Developmental, Nurturing and Social Reform. Each perspective is best suited to particular learning environments and orientations to teaching.

Each perspective will be introduced with a research study or findings from research that tells us something about highly effective teaching within that perspective. Workshop participants will consider how the five perspectives and research findings apply across different teaching venues, for example, large group didactic lectures, one-on-one clinical teaching, and small group PBL tutorials.

Part of the workshop will be devoted to helping participants interpret their individual perspectives on teaching as revealed in the Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI). In this interpretive work, participants will consider how their teaching profile compares to educators from over one hundred countries.

At the end of the workshop participants will be able to:

1. Discuss research findings that characterize highly effective teaching;

2. Identify beliefs and intentions that govern perspectives on teaching;

3. Compare and contrast their own TPI profile with other TPI profiles;

4. Understand and appreciate perspectives different from their own;

5. Consider the fit between perspectives and effective learning environments.

To make the workshop more engaging, participants are invited to take the Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI). The instrument is freely available on-line at: www.TeachingPerspectives.com

NOTE: As you take the TPI, it is important that you focus on one, and only one, teaching venue. The venue might be a large classroom, a small seminar, a PBL tutorial, or a workplace setting. It doesn’t matter which one you choose. However, it is important to focus on only one subject, one set of learners, and one teaching venue as you take the TPI.

You are welcome to take the TPI as many times as you wish, focusing on different students and circumstances.

Bring three copies of your profile(s) to the workshop.

Pre-Symposium Workshop 2A (6 Mar, 1330-1700)

Problem-based learning online: contained or uncontained learning spaces?

Maggi Savin-Baden

Learning Innovation Group

Coventry University

United Kingdom

Head of Research Centre for the Study of Higher Education

Coventry University

United Kingdom

This session explores a number of concerns that relate to adopting PBLonline. The argument of this of workshop centres on the notion of unrealised complexity; which is that we do not really know or understand fully what it is we have created in PBLonline. PBLonline is an approach to learning that is both varied and flexible and which introduces questions about what it means to be a problem-based learner in an online setting. The workshop will begin by exploring why people have begun to develop PBLonline, moving to examine some of the models, media and environments in use. The second segment of the workshop will ask participants to examine the interrelationship of technology and pedagogy, suggesting that this relationship still requires considerable exploration - but that PBLonline can creates new kinds of learning spaces.

Pre-Symposium Workshop 2B (6 Mar, 1330-1700)

Environment, Experience, and Experiment - PBL in Science Higher Education

Dr. Derek Raine & Dr. Sarah Symons

Interdisciplinary Science Centre

Department of Physics and Astronomy

University of Leicester, UK

This workshop focuses on the issues involved in sustaining and renewing PBL in a science environment. A case study of a PBL problem in a university science department will be used as a basis for analysis. The case study includes problem development and implementation, assessment and student feedback. The workshop will allow participants to address topics arising in science education and problem-based learning, including diversity, interdisciplinarity, and curriculum enrichment.