How authentic does authentic learning have to be?
Hello everyone, I am Kaku, an Academic Cooperation Researcher. In this article, I would like to introduce a paper discussed in our English Literature Seminar and share my thoughts on it.
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Paper Title: How authentic does authentic learning have to be?
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Journal: Higher Education Pedagogies
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Volume/Pages: Vol. 3, no. 1, 495–509
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Year: 2018
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Authors: Kate Roach, Emanuela Tilley, and John Mitchell
Overview of the Paper: The core of this paper is to investigate how authentic learning can be realized and evaluated in the context of higher education, specifically in the field of engineering. The goal of the research is to better understand how students perceive authentic learning experiences and to support and maximize the use of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) throughout degree programs.
The Faculty of Engineering Sciences at University College London (UCL) decided to reform its existing undergraduate curriculum to increase opportunities for students to apply technical knowledge in practice. The lessons introduced in this paper are part of a series of PBL projects applying authentic learning designed to support the development of skills and competencies while learning technical and engineering knowledge. This study focuses on a first-term compulsory PBL called “The Challenges” for undergraduate engineering students. The reason for focusing on PBL is that it was originally used in medical education to build knowledge by modeling professional practice experiences. The core of PBL is to promote student autonomy, teamwork, and problem-solving skills. PBL takes various forms, from single-disciplinary problem-solving to interdisciplinary, open-ended problem-solving. Design-based problems are particularly suited for this type of open-ended PBL in engineering education.
So, how can we bring PBL problems closer to the problems students will have to solve in their future workplaces? The researchers in this paper focus on authentic learning. Authentic learning originates from research on workplace training and emphasizes that learning should be integrated with practical application. This type of learning requires students to apply knowledge in real or near-real settings to promote deep cognitive development. Barab et al. (2000) point out that while there is overlap between PBL and authentic learning, not all PBL is authentic learning. They argue that authentic PBL must provide an open-ended, creative, and inquiry-based learning experience for students.
The Faculty of Engineering incorporated various authentic learning PBL activities into the undergraduate curriculum with the aim of improving students’ technical knowledge and professional skills through authentic learning. “The Challenges” is a PBL aimed at improving students’ technical abilities, theoretical knowledge, and professional skills through a combination of real-world problems and interdisciplinary collaboration to prepare them for their future careers. “The Challenges” consists of two five-week exercises, Challenge 1 and Challenge 2, where students work in teams to solve problems from the first day of enrollment until the end of the first semester. The contents are as follows:
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Challenge 1: Related to the major field, aimed at orienting students to the new faculty and selected field.
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Challenge 2: A learning activity to solve interdisciplinary problems centered on a broad social issue, Global Health.
A qualitative approach was used in the study to analyze responses from 305 students to evaluation questions about “The Challenges.” The main purpose of the evaluation was to assess what learning objectives the students achieved after completing “The Challenges.” A Student Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ) was conducted online during or immediately after the final session of “The Challenges.” The evaluation items are classified into check items and free-description items. First, students check each of the learning goals they feel they achieved. Then, students respond to free-description questions. The responses to the free-description questions were analyzed using an inductive approach.
The focus of the analysis was on the responses to the following three questions answered by students in the SEQ:
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What did you like most about “The Challenges”?
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If you could change one thing about the two lessons, Challenge 1 and Challenge 2, what would it be?
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Having finished “The Challenges,” which learning objectives do you think you have achieved?
As a result of the analysis, “The learning activities feel authentic” was the most frequently cited reason why students liked the class. Many student responses mentioned contextual knowledge, with the majority giving short answers referring to “actual workplace environments” or “what engineers do in their daily work,” while some students gave more detailed impressions and showed interest in “contextual knowledge.” The overall trend in the data overwhelmingly supports task-related authenticity. The authors inferred that while the students were not in the actual places where such real-world problems occur, the classroom learning activities completely simulated the process from encountering, discussing, analyzing, solving, and producing results for a problem, so the students’ learning experience was authentic.
My Thoughts: Recently, while developing a concept for my doctoral dissertation, I have been organizing and reviewing papers on authentic learning. In doing so, I realized that the definition of authentic learning is still ambiguous. I read this paper with the question: To what extent is a class considered authentic learning? One thing that emerges from this paper is that what is important for authentic learning is to enable students to experience the process of solving real-world problems in the classroom. Unfortunately, this paper does not specifically describe the learning problems in “The Challenges” or how the learning activities were designed, as suggested by the title. I hope that more papers verifying the effectiveness of lessons designed for authentic learning will be published in the future.
