The Role of the Teacher in Higher Education
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"The aim of teaching is simple: it is to make student learning possible...To teach is to make an assumption about what and how the student learns; therefore, to teach well implies learning about students' learning" (Ramsden, 1992).
At University level, we hope that students will provide their own motivation and their own discipline, and bring their own, already developed cognitive abilities to bear on the subject matter. Nevertheless, the teacher still has a crucial and demanding role to play in the process of student learning, by creating a context in which the students' desire and ability to learn can work most effectively.
The task of the teacher in higher education has many dimensions: it involves the provision of a broad context of knowledge within which students can locate and understand the content of their more specific studies; it involves the creation of a learning environment in which students are encouraged to think carefully and critically and express their thoughts, and in which they wish to confront and resolve difficulties rather than gloss over them, it involves constantly monitoring and reflecting on the processes of teaching and student understanding and seeking to improve them. Most difficult of all perhaps, it involves helping students to achieve their own aims, and adopt the notion that underlies higher education: that students' learning requires from them commitment, work, responsibility for their own learning, and a willingness to take risks, and that this process has its rewards, not the least of which is that learning can be fun!
These are not easy tasks, and there is no simple way to achieve them. Still less are there any prescriptions that will hold good in all disciplines and for all students. How we teach must be carefully tailored to suit both that which is to be learnt and those who are to learn it. To put it another way - and to add another ingredient - our teaching methods should be the outcome of our aims (that is, what we want the students to know, to understand, to be able to do, and to value), our informed conceptions of how students learn, and the institutional context - with all of its constraints and possibilities - within which the learning is to take place.
Most teachers will have had experience of 'traditional' university teaching and learning. UTS recognises that students can learn in a variety of contexts and environments. UTS's strategic initiative in Flexible Learning is an example of this.