The Future of Education

Developing scientific reasoning and adaptive expertise, founded on the research-based comprehension promoted in the disciplines, are usually considered as the essential aims of academic studies. In practice, this complex goal is often hard to achieve. This is partly due to a lack of suitable guidance methods used in the departments. The staff of university libraries face this problem through students’ questions, often starting with a “what”, but turning into a “how” question. Based on these genuine necessities, a new collaborative model to implement guidance to students has been developed at the University Library of Jyväskylä, Finland. The model has been constructed on three intertwined principles: 1) to promote student agency, 2) to produce a diverse, but explicit open access e-learning material, and 3) to co-operate across the units in guidance. The learning material includes a work process that models the central stages of research, such as research orientations and setups, research questions, concept analysis, academic resources, search strategies, reliability and research ethics. Concrete tools for planning the foregoing research process are also included in the material. Cooperation across units aims to develop a new guidance culture. This combines academic contents (what) and work processes (how), and uses a multiple range of pedagogical methods (e.g. flipped classroom and peer tutoring) and technologies for different types of training and disciplines. A model for shared tutoring responsibility is also necessary to avoid the lacking in research skills, and to avoid the misbelief that students already know the crucial points, or that it is someone else’s job to train them. Students’ feedback concerning this developed guidance model has been very positive, e.g. ”This development work shows the brilliant responsibility of the library personnel for students’ learning. And, at the same time, it fortifies the student’s sense of security for learning, thanks to this mindset of a ‘whole village project’.” In our poster, we will concretize the whole guidance process, its agents and the sectors included in it.

Keywords: learning communities, student agency, research process, guidance, modelling.

References:

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