Incorporating Learning Skills into Post-Secondary Courses

An Instructor's Guide to Principles and Strategies

		An Instructor's Guide to Principles and Strategies The Learning Skills Association of British Columbia

This project developed from the intention of members of the Learning Specialists Association of British Columbia to connect with, and contribute to, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. We believe that we can provide a coherent and intelligent understanding of learning in higher education, based on our unique position as learning specialists. Our interests lie in learning, as such, rather than in the content of any specific discipline, where learning might be seen as a means to an end and not necessarily as a topic of interest in its own right. We have compiled this publication on the basis of our understanding of learning and as an expression and application of our vision of learning in higher education.

Typically, learning skills are directed towards students and taught by learning specialists and counsellors by way of courses, workshops, and one-on-one consultations. This approach is very successful—for the students who attend. The problem with this approach is that only a relatively small percentage of students take advantage of the services. Therefore, it makes sense to reach out to instructors in hopes that they will start to learn more about learning principles, processes, and strategies and incorporate this understanding into their teaching.

The broad range of strategies here are designed and presented to provide useful teaching suggestions based on an understanding of the underlying learning principles. Also included are suggestions for ways to apply the strategies within courses and some resources for further reading. These suggestions are intended to present an integrated and coherent vision of learning that may apply to all disciplines. We hope that they are congruent with an important goal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: to foster, within all disciplines—and for all members of each discipline, novices and experts alike—a way of conceptualizing the learning processes themselves as worthy of deliberate study and strategic application.

We hope, with this publication, to offer you some useful strategies for fostering learning in your students in higher education. Further, we hope to arouse your interest in the learning process itself, as it is enacted in your discipline, by all levels of learners. Finally, we hope to provide some ways by which you can pursue this interest and generate useful findings that will contribute to the functioning of your discipline. In this way, we can work together to move forward your discipline-specific knowledge, individually and collectively.

We consider this to be an organic sort of document and hope that it will grow and change according to the needs of the users. We have posted this as both a WORD document and a PDF document, so that it can be added to or changed at any time, for personal use or for sharing with others.

Learning Specialists Association of British Columbia (LSABC) 2007
Compiled and edited by Arleigh Trail (Vancouver Island University)and David Palmer-Stone (University of Victoria)