M. Healey and B. Ilbery

Case study 7

Using a course textbook and study guide to support students while reducing contact time

Originators: Dr Mick Healey and Dr Brian Ilbery
Reproduced with permission from Cox, S. and Gibbs, G. (eds.) Course Design for Resource Based Learning - Social Science Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff Development (1994)

Background

The move away from a purely conventional course towards one based on required readings from a standard text and other sources was made as part of the natural development and innovation in teaching taking place in the Geography Division of the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences. The changes were facilitated by a grant from the university's Enterprise in Higher Education project. A particular issue for the staff was the need to develop group-work skills in students, driven partly the growing numbers in tutorials, but also by the desire to focus on skills for the world of work.

Context

This is a second-year course in economic geography - Location and Change - which has been in operation since 1988. Between 60 and 80 students take the course each year over 24 weeks. It is one of eight modules which Coventry students take in each year of a three or four-year degree course, which can include a sandwich placement. The course team comprises three people, two of whom wrote the course text. The other is a research student who helps with the tutorials.

Aims

Student numbers increased until tutorial groups contained 25 students, requiring new techniques if they were to be effective

The course is designed to develop students' knowledge of concepts and theories of location and change in economic geography. It also requires students to deploy group work skills, as the tutorial groups are as large as 25 and rely for their success on students' working effectively in groups.

Implementation

The textbook was written by two members of the course team in their own time. It was introduced experimentally in 1990, with a very strong emphasis on tutorials and without any lectures at all in the second half of the course. Many students were clearly unhappy with this arrangement, so the current compromise pattern was adopted for the first time in 1991/92.

Student induction

There is no induction for students because they have already experienced resource-based learning and group work at earlier stages of the course.

Student activities

The students attend both a lecture and a tutorial once every two weeks. This gives them an average of one hour's contact time per week with about four hours of self-study time, during which they are expected to read the required chapter(s) in the text and study other recommended readings. They also have to find time to complete an essay and a project for assessment. There is a conventional three-hour exam at the end of the module.

Because the students have access to the course text, the lectures can cover more ground than in a conventional course. The staff use the lectures to cover potential problem areas and to discuss additional examples of ideas and concepts introduced in the text. The tutorials use various devices to help the students to reflect on what they have read and heard in the lectures. Thus they might be asked to work in groups to write an essay plan or to compose overhead projector transparencies to summarise the main points of what they have studied.

Resources

The resources consist of a textbook and study guide.

A textbook written by the tutors is the main resource, and all students are expected to buy it. In addition they receive a brief study guide which lays out the plan of operation for the course, including dates and times, and set and recommended readings.

Costs

This is a relatively lean course in terms of staff time required:

Evaluation

The course produces a narrower range of performance than conventional courses, with few failures but also few very high marks

Students clearly like to have a course text that covers the majority of course material. 63% of 88 respondents agree strongly that 'the course text is a great help' (Healey and Ilbery, 1993). There is also some evidence that using a course text encourages students to read more widely - over 40% of those who responded to a questionnaire said they had read at least ten articles or chapters in addition to the course text. However, students' recent coursework suggests that a tightly structured course such as this tends to concentrate academic performance in the middle band, so that there are fewer excellent performances and fewer failures than might be expected on other, conventional, courses.

Human factors

Having set up the course, the text authors have passed it on to junior colleagues to run

In this case, the course team is small and the two senior members who pioneered the changes wrote their own text, which is now in use in other universities. Having developed it, they have now passed the day-to-day responsibility for operating the course to junior colleagues with whom they liaise closely. Although the students may not see as much of the course tutor as they might like, they seem to feel supported by having the core of the course available in the course text, and by participating in structured discussion in the tutorials, which they do not get in other modules.

Developments

The course team is currently considering a small increase in the number of lectures, because it is difficult to cover the material in the time currently available, and because they feel that lectures are an important social element, which many students appreciate.

Conclusion

It is not uncommon to have a course text, but in this instance the course team wrote their own, and made sure that there is plenty of support for students in the tutorials. The case demonstrates that, given sufficient support and motivation, conventional undergraduates can successfully complete a course where contact has been severely reduced.

References

M. Healey and B. Ilbery, 'Teaching a course around a textbook', Journal of Geography in Higher Education, vol.17, no. 2 (1993)123-9

M. Healey and B. Ilbery, Location and change: perspectives on economic geography, Oxford University Press, 1990