LearnHigher: teaching your students about learning

It’s the end of the autumn term, which means my office has a tin of Roses and cake available, and last week I came in dressed as a Christmas pudding. But for the students you’re teaching, the university closure period might entail stress about January assessment deadlines and exams as well as catching up with friends and family or seasonal indulgence.

Often, as a teacher, you notice the worries your students have about how to prepare themselves for exams, or how to research or write their assignments. It’s not always easy, however, to work out what you can do about it. It’s also common to assume that students might have come to university fully cognisant of what it means to revise or write a report or essay – but they will only know how to do these things if someone has explicitly explained to them, so it’s best to discuss this in class.

The website LearnHigher can help with both of these things – it includes an array of free, peer-reviewed resources for teaching students about different aspects of learning in Higher Education. LearnHigher has got a whole section on assessment. This includes items that focus on exams: such as a revision podcast that you could recommend to your students, or slides that you could use to teach your students about memory and revision. It also has lots of useful material on writing assessments: from teaching your students how to interpret their assessment questions, to brainstorming ideas and then paraphrasing the research they use.

It’s worth taking a look around LearnHigher to see if there’s anything that you could use or adapt when teaching your students, or provide to them as a resource. And if you have anything relevant, as a member of the website’s working group I can confirm that we’re always looking for new materials if you’ve got something you’d like to share!

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