The reflective learning cycle presented in the book models how learners can link theory and practice through engaging in a cyclical sequence of activities: describing, feeling, evaluating, analysing, concluding and action planning. This model has been particularly influential in teacher development programmes and in professions allied to medicine.

You will be emailed download links after check out.

First Words on Teaching and Learning was first published in 1996 as a set of pages on the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development's website. It was intended primarily for new lecturers at Oxford Brookes University, UK.

You will be emailed download links after check out.

Small group discussion fulfils several important goals of higher education. It encourages students to organise their thinking by comparing ideas and interpretations with each other and to give expression, and hence form, to their understanding of a subject. It is therefore immensely important as a vehicle for learning. Small group discussion has extrinsic value too. There is an increasing need for professionals to demonstrate oral skills in committees and in more general communication with clients and colleagues. Cooperation and teamwork have become essential features of most work situations, as have skills in listening, drawing out information, and persuading. There are greater expectations of the graduates' ability to communicate and this is further underlined by the high standards set by radio and television which make for more critical audiences. But perhaps most importantly, small group discussion can or should give students the chance to monitor their own learning and thus gain a degree of self-direction and independence of the tutors, in their studies. All these purposes are of excellent pedigree. Yet often they are not realised to a satisfactory level and both tutors and students may end up with a sense of frustration.

You will be emailed download links after check out.

What do we think we know about student learning, and what are the implications for improving that learning?

There is a lot of published research about student learning and this is an attempt to summarise that literature and to take stock of what we think we know already. But it comes with the following health warning. It is a personal viewpoint and, while I have tried to summarise ideas that I think are widely accepted across the sector, that is not to say that they would be unanimously supported.

You will be emailed download links after check out.

A number of reasons commonly given for lecturing and claims commonly made for the efficiency of lecturers are examined for their basis in empirical evidence and common sense. Most of these claims are found to be somewhat weak. It appears that lecturing takes place rather more often than can be reasonably justified. The real reasons for the popularity of lecturing amongst lecturers are then examined. Of the twenty reasons for lecturing examined here, the first nine have little substance and the last eleven are avoidable.

You will be emailed download links after check out.

First published as: The international state of research on assessment & examinations in Higher Education
Chris Rust, Oxford Brookes University, UK
This paper was presented to the Symposion zur Prufüngsforschung (Symposium on Assessment Research) at the University of Hamburg, Germany, on 20th August, 2013.


You will be emailed download links after check out.