Part I: Teaching Challenge, my struggle, and some thoughts about how to solve it.
My teaching challenge is to bridge the gap between the expectations of teachers and learners in a university setting on learning outcomes. Teachers often expect students to use knowledge from the course to apply it to real life situations, while some learners are more focused on achieving the highest grade with minimal effort. This situation can be seen often when a large part of students’ concern is about grade which is the only performance measure for their achievement after the course. Therefore, students used to ask a lot of detailed questions about the exams, how to prepare for the exam, which part of the course will be covered in the exam rather than which part of the course is useful for their future professional life.
To address this challenge, I will draw upon theories of Argyris (1991) single-loop and double-loop learning. Single-loop learning is a process in which learners focus on achieving a goal or outcome without questioning why they are doing it. In a university setting, this could be seen as students focusing solely on achieving the highest grade possible without considering how they can apply their knowledge outside of the classroom.
This type of learning is often seen as “surface” or “shallow” learning because it does not involve any critical thinking or reflection on why they are doing what they are doing. Students in single loop learning just follow the class settings, or the learn-for-grade settings and optimize their efforts on the grade objective. Typically, I commonly get two types of single loop learning students. The one who studies just enough to get a passing grade. On the other hand, there are also students who study hard to get good grades. The former type of students usually disengages in the class while the later type of students used to ask strategic questions to know how the exam should be. However, both types of single loop learning students will tend to forget what they have learned after the final exam and have no interest in solving any further problems using what they have learned. We can clearly see this phenomenon when teachers introduce advanced concepts or exercise that was based on the knowledge that students supposed to have in their previous courses. The shallow learners, who used to not pay attention about acquiring knowledge from previous courses, will have a very hard time to remember what they have learned, let alone solving new problems.
Double-loop learning, on the other hand, involves learners questioning why they are doing something and reflecting on how their actions will affect their future outcomes. Double-loop learning students in the class used to relate the teaching material with the real-life problems and bring up a discussion in the class. These typical questions can be: “Do you know in which real-life problem we can use these concept/techniques to solve?” or “How that concept/techniques are being used in the real-life?” “What kind of jobs that I can do after learning these techniques”? etc. This type of learning encourages critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Double-loop learning will help students transcend the notion of learning for grades and encourage learning-to-solve real-world problems. In a university setting, this could be seen as students reflecting on how their knowledge can be used in their future profession and understanding why certain topics are important for them to learn. The double loop learning can also drive creativity, innovation, proactively on making change rather than passively react to change (Malone, 2003, p. 80).
To bridge the gap between teacher expectations and learner goals, I believe that double-loop learning should be encouraged in university settings. How can we do that, I reflect on some measures that we can take as follows:
First, I think that communicating single loop and double loop learning to student in the beginning of the course is vital. By doing that we can manage the right expectations among students. We also help students begin to reflect on why they are studying this topic and how their knowledge can be applied in a realistic issue. Of course, in the best case scenarios, students can have both two goals of acquiring knowledge, skills while still having a good grade. Hence, their final grade can reflect their true level of knowledge and skill.
Second, teachers need to update themselves on the new professional knowledge and spread these current issues to students. By knowing these issues, we can engage them to think more about the solutions that they can produce. Then discussing their solutions from multiple angles will help students become more familiar with the way we solve a problem outside the school door.
Third, if the university has adequate resources, inviting guest lectures from the industry to provide a real-life perspective for the students are also important. The guest lectures will not only provide current profession knowledge, but also shed light on the current market’s expectation on new graduate employees. These knowledges would benefit students a lot on by-pass the single loop scheme of learning for grade. Students will have to challenge that learn-for-grade view and update the market’s view so that they can meet the outside world’s expectation. This will help them strengthen their profiles on the job market after graduation.
Fourth, teachers should facilitate an environment where students feel comfortable asking questions and engaging in meaningful dialogue about course material. This could include providing opportunities for students to discuss course material with each other or with teachers outside of class time, creating assignments that require critical thinking skills such as problem solving or research projects, or providing feedback that encourages reflection rather than just focusing on grades.
Fifth, teachers need to bring up the discussion on teaching at the university level on how we can evaluate students to eliminate the learn-for-grade issue. There is no doubt that it is a difficult and complex problem to produce an optimal solution. Sometimes, pedagogic quality also needs to be harmonized with economics. For example, an oral examination is a perfect tool for evaluating students and encouraging students to acquire deep knowledge. However, such a type of examination is limited to a small size class and requires a lot of human and economic resources. In the later part of this document concerning constructive alignment approach, I will discuss some ways to design exams to better evaluate students while still balancing out the spending resources.
Sixth, the university should also create an incentive scheme to reward critical thinking. If students produce solutions for real-world problems, we should have a mechanism to encourage them to pursue these ideas. Many universities are now creating their own “Start-Up lab” or “Start-Up Incubator.” This idea is that universities become one of the earliest shareholders of these Start-Up companies. The University will also support knowledge, expertise, and experience to their own students’ companies and help their growth. The investment profit will come back to the university and can be used for Research, and Education to increase the university’s quality. We can cite some examples: The Berkely SkyDeck, Havard Venture Incubation Program, MIT Delta V, Stanford StartX. In Norway, we can think of: Start Up Lab at UiO, Bi Start Up.
In conclusion, my teaching challenge is the gap between teacher expectations and learner goals in a university setting by encouraging double-loop learning among students. By creating an environment where double-loop learning is encouraged, teachers can help bridge that gap between teacher expectations and learner goals. Furthermore, by fostering an environment where critical thinking skills such as problem solving and research projects are encouraged, teachers can help prepare students for success after graduation by equipping them with the necessary skills for their future careers.
However, I also know that these above discussion and suggestion need to also consider of different constraints that can prevent the double-loop learning process. These can be resistance to change from both students and the university, or a fear of failure when applying new set of measure while still being uncertain about whether the desired outcome can be reached, or finally a lack of both human and economic resources.
Part II: Constructive Alignment Approach. How a better design of learning outcomes, teaching activities and exam process can help students become a deep learner. Referring to the discussion above, students can be either single-loop learner (shallow learners) who only focus on grade or double loop learners (deep learners) who focus on why should we learn and how that knowledge and skill that they learn can be applied elsewhere. In addition to the above discussions about some measures that we can take to improve students to become deep learner, I spend this part to discuss in depth the constructive alignment approach (Biggs, 2012; Biggs & Tang, 2011) to solve the problem.
Constructive alignment is a pedagogical approach that entails designing a learning experience that fosters the students' construction of knowledge and its application to real-world scenarios, by aligning teaching, learning activities, and evaluation process with the intended learning outcomes. The framework, introduced by John Biggs, emphasizes the significance of setting clear learning objectives, developing appropriate assessments, and creating teaching and learning activities that facilitate the attainment of these outcomes. This approach is centered on the principles of active learning, student engagement, and evaluation as a means of promoting the development of higher-order cognitive skills. In constructive alignment, the desired learning outcomes are identified first and then, teaching and learning activities are designed accordingly to support the achievement of these objectives. Assessment tasks are also aligned with the intended outcomes to ensure that students are evaluated based on the competencies and knowledge that are deemed most crucial.
In summary, constructive alignment strives to establish a learning experience that is meaningful, coherent, and relevant to the students' daily lives, while also fostering the development of the knowledge and skills that are essential for success in real-world scenarios. Therefore, it turns out that constructive alignment approach is a suitable way to engage student to become a double loop or deep learners. The struggle that I used to face when teachers and learners have different expectations and motivation can be solved by a well-designed framework. The goal here is to make the single loop learner (shallow learner) who just learn for grade can have similar learning outcome like the double loop learner (deep learner). To do that we have to design mandatory learning activities, and evaluation process that make the learners for grade work like the deep learners. In that sense, no matter that you learn for grade or for solving real-world problem, in the end, by preparing for mandatory class activities, and exams, you learn along the way skills and knowledges from the course.
Now we should bring to the abstract discussion with real-life examples. This semester, I am one of the responsible for a course named ECO2002: Data Science for Finance. It is a Bachelor course where we want to transfer financial knowledge to students on some complex’s topic such as: Portfolio Management, Risk Management, Statistics and Machine Learning Techniques in financial applications. Besides the knowledge we want that the students can have actual skill in using digital tools such as Excel or analytical programming languages such R or/and Python to solve financial problems. A description of the course with learning outcomes, learning activities, and evaluation process can be found via this link. We follow the constructive alignment approach in writing learning outcome in a positive, concrete way, using stronger verb. However, the design of learning activities and evaluation process is a bit adaptive and changing from year to year depending on the student’s feedback.
For example, last year we use a programming language called R for the course. Students need to acquire both complexes statistical, and financial concept while learn how to do computer programming. It turned out that was too much for students and a lot of them struggle to learn and acquiring skill. Following the structure of observed learning outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy (Biggs & Tang, 2011), we as teachers expect students to be on the “Relational” or “Extended Abstract” level when it comes to learning financial, statistical techniques, and computer programming. However, the reality is that most of students have not had any experiences with computer coding before, hence being on the “Pre-structural” level of the SOLO taxonomy. Therefore, this year, by reviewing the learning outcome and assuming the student’s level of understanding of this batch is not much different than last batch, we decide to alleviate the coding part while still focusing on the financial and statistical part. To do that we introduce two simpler tools than R which are Excel and Stata as a way to help students focus more on the learning part of financial and statistical techniques.
We make that compromise at the student sake. Obviously, for real-life complex problems, Excel and Stata are not always the optimal choice in the industry. However, by focusing on simple tools, and explaining the basic process, basic principle to students, we hope that they can have a strong base to build upon. Another intended change in designing learning activities is to engage more discussion in the class. We observe that students were easy to get loss in the class and pay little attention. One of the possible reasons is that their mind was fatigue when dealing with a lot of difficult mathematical, and statistical models in finance in class. We intend to apply two set of methods that can change this phenomenon. One is to require students pre-read the material in class. It’s hard to do that but we can always design a credit system to award good discussion from students. If they want to gain that extra grade, they have to better prepare and make discussion. Second, we need to re-design the way we transfer knowledge. Most of the time, lecturing is the main techniques. We are thinking of a combination between lecture and discuss and aim to set a goal to have a break at every 20 minutes for discussion. It is because, it is hard for students to fully concentrate in a long time when dealing with difficult and complex concepts.
We also intend to review our evaluation process. Right now, we have a mid-term exam and a final exam. A mid-term exam is usually a case study that require students to use all the gaining knowledge and computing skills to solve it. The mid-term consists around 40% of the grade while the final one consists about 60%. The final exam is a combination between answering questions and case solving. We think that this design is good to make students work hard to prepare for the exams. By preparing for the exams, they can gain both knowledge and skills that we intend to transfer in the learning outcome.
However, we think that we can do more to improve the evaluation process and help students to get more knowledges and skills. One of the ideas is to break the mid-term exams into smaller chunks of group exercises. Instead of one big mid-term exam, there can be two to three exercises sets with real case studies. Students have to solve the case and present it to earn grade. Passing all group exercises will then be a requirement for them to sit in the final exam. Of-course, to do that, we require more human resources from teachers, but it will benefit the students in different ways. First, by breaking down into smaller exercise sets, we can design more detailed case studies that can evaluate students better. Second, small exercise sets give us a flexible in the delivery time then we can give out exercise sets of certain topics before giving lectures about that topic. Doing that will motivate students to learn about the topic to come up with the solutions before the class. Then in class, we use lecture to improve their self-learning. After that, there will be a session for them to present the case-study solution and receive feed-back from teachers and fellow-students. In this setting, the students have at least three times to learn hence improve the learning outcomes. The presentation of the case-study solution also helps teachers to better evaluate the actual level of the students.
In summary, given the double loop learning versus single loop learning, or deep learners versus shallow learners is a fact and we cannot avoid that in a class setting. Different solutions at the abstract level solutions can be provided in the first parts. In the second part of this document, we discuss a more micro level solutions to make students transform to a deep learner. In that sense, students can have both good grades, good knowledges and skills by following a set of well-designed learning activities and evaluation process.
References:
Argyris, C. (1991). Teaching Smart People How to Learn. Harvard Business Review, 69(3), 99–109.
Biggs, J. (2012). What the student does: teaching for enhanced learning. Higher Education Research & Development, 31(1), 39–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2012.642839
Biggs, J., & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for Quality Learning at University. McGraw-hill education.
Malone, S. A. (2003). Learning about learning: an AZ of training and development tools and techniques. CIPD Publishing.