Learning is a verb. It is an activity, requiring students to organise knowledge, skills and competences. Knowledge, skills and competences are not simply given by the teacher and accumulated students. I strongly believe that they are constructed through interaction. I understand learning as the result of continuous interaction among students, as well as between students and the material, as facilitated by the teacher. In short, learning occurs when individuals are engaged in concrete social interaction.
The implications are that learning necessitates 1) community building, 2) active engagement and 3) case-based application of knowledge.
- Community building
My approach to teaching is very much learning-oriented and student-centered. I see my role as a facilitating one. It is all about establishing a good learning environment. Creating an environment that is good for learning entails good relations between the teacher and the students, and more importantly among the students, since learning is the result of exchange between them. - Learning through active engagement
An important means through which students can actively engage in interaction is group work. If well prepared and sufficiently scaffolded, group work has many positive effects on learning. It requires students to explain concepts to others, to broaden perspectives, to increase their engagement, to collaborate in a team effort and it exposes and removes misunderstandings. - Case-based application of knowledge
The final aspect of learning as an activity to constructing through interaction is the application of knowledge on real world cases. This aspect relates to the transfer of knowledge. The more different kind of cases students come across upon which they can apply knowledge, the more transfer there can occur between different contexts. Application of knowledge alone helps to order and process what is learned, but by applying to different cases, students will learn to connect learning to different situations in the world outside of the university. Case-based learning helps to develop competences by understanding theory as you put it into practice, learn how to recognise patterns at higher levels of abstraction and to solve problems.