Andrew Kerrigan of the Centre for Global Programmes shares best practice in engaging learners and propelling learning toward programme outcomes while teaching Twenty-first Century Skills.
Introduction
In March 2017, the Centre for Global Programmes ran a Creative Problem-solving module on a short-course for undergraduate students of Tohoku University, Japan. In response to a request from Tohoku for increased integration with York students, equal numbers of York students from all over the university were recruited to learn alongside the Tohoku students. Over six sessions, the students were introduced to a framework for creative problem-solving - from framing the problem, to pitching the solution to potentially resistant adherents of the status quo. Classroom sessions interspersed tutor presentations with small group work, thought experiments, reflective questionnaires, research, and discussion. As an outcome, the module required each mixed-student group to come up with an original strategy to solve a real-life problem close to home for which they all had expertise, namely how to encourage more York students to go on mobility projects in Japan. The module came to a close after three weeks with a poster presentation to York students and Study Abroad professionals, who understandably had a vested interest in engaging with the students’ strategies and rationales.This innovative programme is typical of the courses now being developed at CGP. While the Centre’s core business remains English language, culture and academic taster programmes, over recent years, the Centre has branched out into designing and delivering programmes on so-called Twenty-first Century Skills such as Creativity, Intercultural Competence and Employability. Despite this diversification, our programme designers and tutors bring to the teaching of content the same methodologies which underly best practice in ELT, that is student-centredness, a pronounced preference for content with a high surrender value, the closest possible fit between assessment, learning outcomes and programme content, and a sensitivity to pace and interaction patterns sufficient to maintain high levels of student engagement. Finally, as a support department, our programmes are non credit bearing, and the majority of our students come to York during their vacation period. In addition to enhancing students language or creative competence, there is often an explicit objective that the York programme should broaden ‘students horizons’, and encourage them to experiment and reflect. Despite this, our programmes are assessed, with students’ grades and reports sent back to to the partner university at course end. In addition, partners can award credit on the basis of so there is always the need to ensure valid and reliable measures of student learning.
It will be clear from my description of the activities and ethos of CGP that our staff are professional teachers and syllabus designers operating within an environment which gives them considerable freedom to innovate, particularly when it comes to pushing the limits of experiential learning and authentic assessment. Central to the York pedagogy, is the notion of learning by doing, of learning activities which promote active student engagement and of strategies to propel learning toward programme outcomes. Recent policy developments in HE have made the pursuit of excellence in teaching vital to the success of universities. There is, however, very few genuinely new ideas in education, and at a time when best practice in pedagogy is up for debate, it is precisely in forums such as these that ideas tried and evaluated within one teaching-and-learning context might find application in another.
Twenty first century skills
The Higher Education Academy defines twenty-first century skills as a set of “literacies, competencies and character qualities that are believed to be critically important to success in the modern world”, namelyliteracies (literacy, numeracy, citizenship, digital, and media); competencies (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration); and character qualities (curiosity, initiative, persistence, resilience, adaptability, leadership). (HEA, 2017).
These skills are of course nothing new. What is new is the consensus that in an age of increasing automation and fake news, success defined in individual terms, as well as that of developed and democratic nations, is heavily dependent on cultivating these skills. As a body of non-specialist skills and knowledge, twenty-first century skills have wide appeal, and can be taught to students regardless of the language or course of study. In this sense, they lend themselves to our Centre’s need to develop a programme for a varied cohort for students who wish to learn alongside York students. Opinions differ about how these skills are learned, and how explicitly they should be taught. However, our experience delivering these skills in mixed groups is that today’s students, regardless of origin, are looking for their university education to equip them with skills and knowledge that will allow them to gain a competitive advantage in their professional lives. Lastly, as a body of predominantly procedural rather than declarative knowledge, twenty-first century skills also lend themselves to development through experiential learning. In this sense, they complement well the existing practices of the CGP teaching team.
Experiential learning and authentic assessment
In 2014 CGP designed its first short-course for undergraduates of Tohoku University Japan. The main driver of this programme was recent legislation from the Japanese government making funding available for graduate mobility programmes with a specific emphasis on employability. The syllabus therefore contained an Employability Skills component including a focus on leadership, team-work, motivation and avoiding group-think.As practitioners with a background in ELT, CGP designers approached syllabus design from the perspective of a variant on Task-based Learning. Taking team-work as an example, within this paradigm, a standard small-group task requiring complex coordination was introduced, which students then worked to complete. At task end, a stage of feedback and reflection followed. If the tutor felt it necessary, key sub-skills flowing from the task were isolated and subject to analysis and micro-practice before goal setting and a subsequent round of practice.
While individual sessions on the employability skills took this form, a learning journal based around the STAR framework (Situation, Task, Action, Result) was completed by the student each week in order to consolidate learning and encourage transferability. This framework was chosen precisely to prepare the students for the final assessment, which took the form of a job interview for the role of student intern. One of the issues in developing authentic experiential assessment tools is finding a context that encourages the student to display learning for tutor evaluation, while maintaining the students’ involvement in and ownership of that experience. The intern interview task was widely perceived by the students as a task that not only synthesised learning on their programme, but also allowed them to practice packaging this learning for future professional gain. Finally, as with all of our programmes, the assessment criteria were written to be understood by the students, free from meta-concepts and ‘teacher-ese’. During a preparation phase, time was taken to explain these criteria to the students using concrete examples. The same criteria were also used after the assessment as a means of generous, specific and timely formative feedback, as well as onward goal-setting.
