Ole Lauridsen

Aligning seminars with Bologna requirements: reciprocal peer tutoring, the solo taxonomy and deep learning

Changes in public policy, such as the Bologna Process, require students to be equipped with multifunctional competencies to master relevant tasks in unfamiliar situations. Achieving this goal might imply a change in many curricula toward deeper learning. As a didactical means to achieve deep learning results, the authors suggest reciprocal peer tutoring (RPT); as a conceptual framework the authors suggest the SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) taxonomy and constructive alignment as suggested by Biggs and Tang. Our study presents results from the introduction of RPT in a large course. The authors find that RPT produces satisfying learning outcomes, active students, and ideal constructive alignments of the seminar content with the exam, the intended learning outcomes, and the requirements of the Bologna Process. Our data, which comprise surveys and evaluations from both faculty and students, suggest that RPT fosters deeper learning than does teacher-led instruction. Based on these findings, the authors also offer guidelines regarding how to implement RPT and how to overcome barriers.

Teacher Capabilities in a Multicultural Educational Environment: An Analysis of the Impact of a Professional Development Project.

Abstract With more programmes being taught through English in non-Anglophone contexts, higher education lecturers are faced with new challenges. This article briefly presents a professional development initiative carried out at departmental level as an intervention for all English Medium Instruction lecturers. In order to assess the effect of such an intervention, a mix of different data sets are used, moving from self-assessment by participants to observations of individual teaching practices in the classrooms. It is shown how corroboration of surveys and observation reports in an explicit feedback template can be used to evidence the value of the intervention in context.

En hvepserede: læringsstile i e-learning

The concept of learning styles is a hornet’s nest. In the last couple of decades, it has gained ground in constructivist learning activities; however, there has been no real con-sensus as to approaches, to definitions, and to integrating it in practice. Besides briefly discussing the must of integrating ICT in HE learning activities, this paper delves into the concept of learning styles and shows how the various subconcepts can be merged in such a way that learning styles become a useful operational concept.

Passiv og passiverbarhed på dansk og tysk

It is a general and undoubtedly true assumption that the passive has a higher frequency in Danish than in German. One of the reasons for this is that the Danish language allows passivization to a much larger degree than does the German, not least because of its special -s-passive. In both languages passivization depends on the non-identity of the grammatical subject and the semantic case objective; in Danish all verbs with this feature are fundamentally passivizable, in German only when besides that they involve an element of controllability. This fact reflects special historical circumstances, developed from reflexive constructions as a substitute for the crumbling medium, the -s-passive in its inmost essence does not demand an agent and was therefore originally attached only to non-agentive verbs. On the other hand the complex passive (the blive-/werden-passive) seems originally to have been used only in connection with agentive verbs; the German language did not develop a new passive after the disappearance of the medium and consequently only verbs, the contents of which can at least be controlled by the subject, were absorbed in the periphrastic passive.