Oct
15
“we cannot claim to be fulfilling our responsibility to develop graduates capable of high-level critical inquiry if their contact time merely comprises listening to us in lectures and then listening to us in conversation with the most able and most vocal in seminars.
We cannot claim that we are offering students a high-quality experience if we leave them to develop and practise the most advanced skills of independent inquiry on their own. We must be as open to change and as innovative as we expect our students to be, and consider what the least confident learner is doing in every class-contact hour. How does that activity develop their graduate attributes? If they are not spending the time with us in activities that contribute directly to developing these attributes - if we are providing a baseline of knowledge and leaving all else to some mysterious process of “independent learning” - we are abdicating responsibility for achieving the primary goal of higher education teaching.” Mary Malcolm at University of Abertay Dundee on nurturing critical minds.
We cannot claim that we are offering students a high-quality experience if we leave them to develop and practise the most advanced skills of independent inquiry on their own. We must be as open to change and as innovative as we expect our students to be, and consider what the least confident learner is doing in every class-contact hour. How does that activity develop their graduate attributes? If they are not spending the time with us in activities that contribute directly to developing these attributes - if we are providing a baseline of knowledge and leaving all else to some mysterious process of “independent learning” - we are abdicating responsibility for achieving the primary goal of higher education teaching.” Mary Malcolm at University of Abertay Dundee on nurturing critical minds.
