Students faced with greater pressures

The latest University of Otago students may enjoy more electronic support than their peers in earlier generations, but often face greater pressures, university senior staff said yesterday.

The university yesterday hosted the first day of a two-day "Spotlight on Teaching and Learning" gathering, attended by about 150 people.

One session featured presentations by biochemistry senior teaching fellow Tony Zaharic, zoology professional practice fellow Dr Lisa Russell and zoologist Dr Phil Bishop on "Students these days don't know how good they've got it".

These days, students who miss lectures can often update themselves on the notes they missed by accessing this information through shared computer systems operated by the university.

University Higher Education Development Centre (HEDC) head Associate Prof Rachel Spronken-Smith said research showed the increased availability of lecture notes electronically had actually not reduced lecture attendance at Otago.

Students learned in different ways, and the university was striving to support them in their preferred approaches.

Although more supporting materials were available before and after lectures than in previous generations, the latest Otago students also faced growing pressures through the continuing rapid expansion of knowledge in sciences and health sciences and greater competition to gain access to limited entry courses, including in health sciences, she said.

Dr Bishop said students faced growing pressures, including big challenges involving the use of internet-linked learning.

Learning to think critically continued to be vital, given that some information made available via the internet was inaccurate, and in many cases had been less subject to vetting than traditional book-based publications, Dr Bishop said.

This is the third such spotlight event hosted at the university and aims to foster sharing "innovation, best practice and research" over teaching and learning.

- john.gibb@odt.co.nz