4 Promoting Staff Self-Regulation and Adaptation
Staff engagement is an essential component to the design and implementation of active learning, and Section 3 highlights approaches to communicating and influencing staff attitudes and beliefs about what good teaching is and the role active learning plays in that process, whether in-person or online (or a blend of both). This section explores approaches to engaging staff with developing their (active learning) practice and in turn influencing mindsets. Many of the contributions in this section focus on staff experiencing active learning as a learner themselves to facilitate a full appreciation of what a well-designed active learning experience offers, and the opportunity for peer collaboration to normalise active learning.
Grist et al. argue staff experience as a learner is essential, highlighting that active learning can challenge deeply held beliefs about education and that we cannot expect staff to appreciate the affordances of active learning and implement it effectively without first experiencing well-designed active learning experiences for themselves. They outline the design choices they have made to embody active learning principles in the academic development programmes they offer staff as well as learning from the evaluation of this practice including the impact on the facilitators’ own as well as participants’ active learning practice.
The experience of being an active learner was also deployed by Gordon et al. in the remodelling of a professional development module where module delivery has been reformed to embed active and participatory learning. This experience empowered participants to use active learning in their own teaching. Observing the influence and impact of task-based rather than content-based learning outcomes on the ability of the educator to design active learning and meaningful assessment, Jacob sets about making sure all the modules and teaching sessions they taught on a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching in HE (PGCTHE) used task-based learning outcomes. The programme participants were then in turn invited to reframe their own learning outcomes as task-based learning outcomes and then think about potential learning activities and assessments. Jacob reports that staff notice the improvement in student motivation and engagement when they make the shift to designing learning around tasks rather than content which influences their future practice.
Meanwhile, Gormley et al. offer challenge-based learning in the form of a hackathon on activating active learning as a way for staff to simultaneously experience active learning and develop its implementation. In their challenge-based learning approach staff participants worked in small groups to investigate and co-develop potential solutions to issues of passive, predictable teaching. Solutions generated by the hackathon as well as pointers for others to implement a similar approach in different settings are highlighted to support staff capacity building. Childs and Baker use mentoring circles as a way of providing structured opportunities for staff to be active learners and reflect on their own practice to support their professional development. Of course, an evidence base is important to guide and support that self-reflection and adaptation of practice, and Jacob highlights how staff can gain targeted evidence of the impact on desired student outcomes and learning, that extends beyond satisfaction to the engagement and other indicators that align with active learning (see Section 1, especially table 4).
Finally in this section, a case study by Prosser and Johnston illustrates partnering a continuous professional development framework with a pedagogical model for active learning. Their university has constructed a new building designed specifically to support flexible, collaborative, and technology‑enhanced learning. By employing the same active learning strategies, learning spaces and educational technologies that staff now have available to use with their students, they encouraged staff to rethink their assumptions about teaching and engage with the technological and pedagogical possibilities offered by the new space. Their case study highlights how simply providing the elements and resources such as rooms (learning spaces) and enabling technologies is not sufficient to make active learning happen for all. In line with the analysis offered in section one they recognised this and sought to act on paradigmatic matters to support a shift in staff mindset and provide the learning environment to catalyse reflection, self-regulation and adaptation of practice.
