Learning development: why I think it matters

I have worked in learning development for almost a decade. Before that, I was a lecturer in history (and worked here in the UK and also in the USA). The field of learning development is one that most of us don’t know about or consider, but I think it’s playing an increasingly important role in the lives of students. I consider myself very lucky to work in a department – LEADS – that leads (!) the discussion around learning development in Scotland. 

The area of learning development is relatively new; it was established in the UK in the 1990s as universities expanded and brought in new students. Initially, people working in learning development were brought in to ‘top-up’ the skills of students new to university. This tended to involve working with students who didn’t generally go to university to try to catch them up with the students from more traditional backgrounds.  

The problem with this approach was that it viewed these students as having a deficit – as having something missing that could be added to – and that it didn’t pay much attention to the skills and experiences of those students new to the university sector.  

People working in learning development were very aware of this problem, and looked to change it over time. Learning developers initially taught what would broadly be called ‘study skills’. They looked to teach the skills that universities decided were missing from their students. The difficulty here was that by trying to teach ‘study skills’, the suggestion was that challenging, life-long-learning opportunities could be distilled down into an hour-long session on ‘revision technique’. In other words, this approach focused on just the surface skills that students should develop, without really thinking about how or why they were developing these skills. The most important of these skills was seen to be academic writing, and over time most departments of learning developers have shifted their focus to deal largely with the development of students’ academic writing. 

Most of my work has been in developing students’ academic writing abilities, and I’ve always tried to focus on what Lea and Street (2006) would call academic literacies. This means that I’ve tried to work with students to make meaning of their work and assignments, and to understand the university’s and academia’s ideas of what it means to be a successful student. I’m always keen to try to tell students that being good at studenting means to understand the rules of the game. Once you understand the rules, figuring out what to do becomes much easier. My job is to know the rules and to explain how they work.  

In other words, I think that I teach students how to become part of the university by teaching students what the university – and what academia – expects of them, and by teaching them how to do what is required in order to succeed. 

 Here at Glasgow, we take an academic literacies-based approach to everything we do. If you’ve been to any of our classes, you’ll know that we aim to not just tell you what to do, but we tell you how to do it and, most importantly, why it should be done that way. Our set-up is unique: we have College-specific Effective Learning Advisers who have PhDs in relevant subject areas and who work alongside the subject lecturers in delivering academic literacies-based teaching. We also have teams of GTAs, again from the relevant subjects, who mark and teach on the UK’s largest writing course, the Academic Writing Skills Programme (AWSP), and across the year for us in LEADS for students. We also have dedicated maths and stats advisers, and International student advisers who have backgrounds in teaching International students in a variety of different roles. This means that, for students here at Glasgow, there is always someone trained in academic literacies, and someone who knows the ins and outs of university work, to explain concepts, ideas and debates to students. 

We are the people who translate the requirements of the university into intelligible, digestible information for students. We teach students how to excel in all areas of academic work and study, and we prepare students for a life of critical evaluation, analytical investigation, and being able to see beyond fake news. 

I think that learner developers are now at the heart of many British universities, and as the challenges of the twenty-first century become evermore complex, we’ll continue to equip our students with the necessary skills in analysis, research, investigation and multidisciplinary communication. 

Written by Dr Andrew Struan, Writing and Study Skills Co-ordinator

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