This post is about the things I learnt in the first Face-to-Face session of FULT1901 (Foundations of University Learning and Teaching) 2019 Term 1.

What is FULT?

Photo from the first FULT1901 Face-to-Face Session. Most people were well into their careers and I was the odd one out! Tea was provided. People pixelated for privacy.

Basically a pseudo-course (no UoC, it’s part of staff training) provided to UNSW teaching staff on how to effectively teach. It seems to be available to casual tutors even those who are still undergraduates since they enrolled me 😀

Approaches to Learning

There are different approaches to how students choose to absorb the content for future usage.

Deep approach

The deep approach is where the student attempts to understand on an intuitive level, contemplating the ideas and material in an effort to reach that understanding.

For example, some students watch lectures to understand the concept, without caring to take notes.

Surface approach

The surface approach is where the student attempts to remember the content for future application e.g. an assessment task, and does not plan to retain the information beyond that.

For example, some students remember just enough content to write under each memorised heading.

Strategic approach

Wasn’t really talked about, but it’s when a student picks and chooses to apply the different approaches to different tasks of learning at hand strategically.

Student Panel

An undergraduate student panel talked about their experiences and answered some questions. (Was a bit awkward since I was also a student but among lecturers)

Things students liked:

• Combined courses – where students can apply cross-course content during the course.
• Volunteering (as in, tutors putting in extra effort) tutors, who create learning material for individualised learning.
• A lecturer used twitch.tv, which made asking questions very easy.

Teaching Philosophy Statement

They got us to write a Teaching Philosophy Statement, which is useful for promotions and for joining teaching societies and also for promotions. Did I mention they’re good for promotions yet? (Not that it matters to me…)

My teaching philosophy statement, which I got only 7 minutes to write. There was a discussion exercise afterwards.

This teaching philosophy statement will need to be expanded and then researched & sourced into a 500 word essay, due in a few weeks! Haven’t written a proper essay since high school, so it’ll be fun times…