Tuesday, October 31, 2006

About Teaching and Learning

The last two days have been very informative for me. I attended a Teaching and Learning colloquium where academics and stakeholders were exchanging ideas around and on issues of teaching and learning. Although I left the the venue with more questions and answers, I learnt one or two things. For now, I will just post the questions that came up in my mind, and hope in the subsequent discussions I will elaborate on them. The questions not in any particular order.
Is the teaching and learning field broken? Does it need fixing? What need to be fixed? Who should fix it?

Are educational institutions fighting for freedom through education or freedom for education?

What is the importance of teaching and learning? What is the importance of scholarship of teaching? What is the importance of the culture of teaching? What is the importance of learning materials?

What should students know in order to ask questions about the future? How would students be encouraged to define and create their world views? How do students learn? How do we teach? What is defined by the culture and heritage? How are we encouraging students to drive innovation in Higher Education? How are we realigning the teaching and learning in the wake of technological innovations?

Is good teaching a skill that can be taught? how?

How do we shape our schools and teachers for teaching and learning?

What are we using to evaluate the success of teaching and learning? Can we justify the use of the evaluation tool?

If marks are what motivates students to learn, then why don't we link evaluations to mark?

Why do academics fail to use or adopt elearning? For those who do, why do they use it?


What is the role and responsibility of government in improving the quantity and quality of educational output?

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