1.1: Before we begin...

Warm-up exercise

Look at the following quotes from students. What do they have in common?

• I like to work through things, parrot-fashion.
• I was absolutely convinced I was doing things in the right way, but I got 43%.
• The more they [lecturers] do and the less you do is better. [Talking about getting handouts with lectures rather than taking own notes.]
• It's so easy to get off on the wrong track, you never really know what they want [talking about essay writing].
• In the oriental tradition, teachers take care of the students – very straight – to give advice, or to instruct – they don't digress. The British way is to say: 'oh, it's a very good idea … but …' – in a way they digress, it's not straightforward.
  

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Discussion

All of the above quotes imply in one way or another that learning happens in a straight line. You move from one thing to the next, you learn 'parrot-fashion', as the first quote suggests, or there is a 'direct route' where you don't go 'off the track' or which is the 'right way' to do things. There is also a suggestion of a direct link between the tutor and the student. What the tutor teaches, the student learns, as if the tutor were handing over a piece of cake which the student ate. 

The first four quotes are from British students, but the last one comes from a Korean student. It is often seen as a cultural difference that western education is more ‘learner-centred’ while East Asian education is teacher-dominated. While this is broadly true and has much wider ramifications than discussed here, we see from the above examples that assumptions from at least some ‘western’ students’ viewpoints are that they will get ‘handouts’, both literally and metaphorically, from the teacher. Such a viewpoint does not seem to involve the active engagement of the learner. The student is just a passive receptacle for the teacher's or the textbook's knowledge, or a parrot!

Learning Is A Journey

Much of the above discussion can be related to the concept of a journey. Is the student responsible for mapping out her/his own route through university, or should the way be already paved by the tutor? The concept of a journey underlies life itself. We go through life and we experience all kinds of things along the way. Similarly, we talk about ‘going through’ university. Going through university is like a stage in life. For some people it happens after school and before ‘the rest of life’. For others it will happen later in life, after a few years of working perhaps, or after having children, or after losing a job and looking for a different kind of job by getting different or higher qualifications.

For whatever reason you set off on a university degree, it is as if you're going on a journey. Sometimes you will feel that you are sauntering along, taking everything in your stride, while at other times you will be very much aware that you're on a steep learning curve. The learning process is not smooth – its pace varies, as does the amount of effort and energy needed.

The mental journey of getting a university degree requires:

• a great deal of practical organisation as you go along;
• the mental flexibility to get round obstacles and cope with a wide range of social, psychological and intellectual challenges;
• the mental (and physical) stamina to stay on course.

Some elements of the university journey are well known in advance, while others are unknown. The fact that you progress through the university system means that you have to meet certain requirements at each stage. Every degree programme is different, but that kind of information will be mapped out in advance. This means that you will know things like the number of courses or modules that you can take in a year, the range that you can choose from, the number of assignments you have to do for each and how much each assignment is worth. In some universities, you can choose between different pathways through your degree, where you have quite a wide choice of modules in different subject areas, while in others you follow different aspects of the same subject, some of which are compulsory and some of which are optional.

You will also need to know such things as the ratio of assessed course work to end-of-year exams, and the weighting of assignments relative to each other and to the year in which they are undertaken. For example, some examination administrators talk about ‘exit velocity’, which means that the courses you take in your final year are worth more than those in your first year. There is therefore usually a hierarchical progression of difficulty and value to the courses you do each year.

All of this information is mapped out in course handbooks or student guides, which you will probably be given in your first week or so at university. As you receive a lot of information at this time, it is essential that you don't put such guides away and forget all about them, but have them ready to hand for quick reference. They are a bit like physical maps through the assessment system, telling you what you need at each stage in order to graduate.