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LEARNING TO LEARN FOR LIFE That lifelong learning is necessary, everyone is now convinced. But what do you need to know and be able to do to be a lifelong learner? And how do we prepare today’s students -the learners of tomorrow- for this during their education? Lynn Van de Broeck, postdoctoral researcher at the ETHER research group, gave an instructive keynote on this subject at the LESEC Annual Event on 6 June 2023 in Leuven.
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earning for Life’ was the theme of the annual meeting of the Leuven Engineering & Science Education Centre (LESEC), a dynamic community of researchers and practitioners contributing to the advancement of education in the Science, Engineering & Technology Group of KU Leuven. The moment was well timed because during the same period, the university and its partner university colleges launched KU Continue, a lifelong learning platform that groups all continuing education initiatives in more than a dozen fields. The choice of keynote speaker was also a hit. In the ETHER research group, Lynn coordinates two projects on lifelong learning (LLL): REFL³ECT on self-regulation in LLL and TRAINengPDP, a European project that aims to give LLL a place in the personal development process of (future) engineers. Seven competencies In her keynote, Lynn addressed two questions. What competences are required to be prepared for a life full of learning? And -secondly- how can educators support the development of student’s LLL competencies? From an extensive literature review, the ETHER researchers distilled seven essential competencies, including e.g., motivation and self-regulation, a professional should possess to be a live long learner. At the same time, they compared different methods of measuring these competences. From seven possibilities, two validated questionnaires were selected for use in further research. First, however, the researchers wanted to know how students but also lecturers perceive these competences. “This survey revealed some remarkable differences,” Lynn said. “Lecturers emphasise the importance of LLL in general, whereas students seem to value the attitudinal and concrete aspects of LLL more, such as motivation or information literacy. It was also noteworthy that while teaching staff recognised the importance of the competences, they did not consider them their primary teaching goals. The degree of assessment scored even lower, but that may be because these competencies are often difficult to assess.”
courses and 1,600 predefined learning outcomes spread across the programme. “Barely 1% of the learning outcomes focused on LLL competencies”, said Lynn. “Moreover, some competencies were often found to be more present in courses that are not part of the core engineering curriculum. And there was no competency development throughout the programme at all. Of course, learning outcomes are not always a perfect representation of what goes on in the lecture hall. But nevertheless, this result indicates that there is still a lot of work to be done regarding LLL competency development in the curriculum.” Lynn listed some possible approaches. “The use of student-centred teaching methods such as problem/project-based learning. Also, a stronger and explicit focus on self-regulation through e-portfolios, personal development plans and the use of peer and self-assessment. On numerous points, lecturers who filled in a survey declared to agree. Student-centred teaching and the use of peer and self-assessment and communication, for example, were counted as part of their responsibilities. They also agreed on the fact that reflective practice and self-regulation tools are important for the future.” Integrated “If we are serious about LLL, then the associated competences need to be co-integrated into the curriculum,” Lynn concluded. “They are not a by-product but deserve to be translated into concrete learnable and testable outcomes. There is no magic bullet. The key is to start systematically building these life-necessary competences from day 1 of training. This assumes a longitudinal and planned approach. You cannot expect all lecturers to be comfortable with this from the start. Therefore, the TRAINeng project will develop a toolkit to support lecturers.” Curious about other results of these projects? Lynn tells more about it in an episode of the SEFI podcast.
Yves Persoons Learning outcomes To what extent are LLL competences present in the learning outcomes? The researchers screened existing engineering
https://open.spotify.com/
episode/4CUjT6Am7qiH5wueupZ8Am?sj=51c91460add24170
https://iiw.kuleuven.be/onderzoek/ether
