Ways of learning

A number of participants brought along objects that represented how they learn.

Figure 32. Cosmos book (Dave, Stage 3, object 2)

Dave brought along a book on the Cosmos to represent how if he ‘find[s]

something like, really interesting, then [he] find[s] that a lot easier to learn’. This idea of relevance, interest and enthusiasm for a particular

subject will be explored further in Chapter 6 around aspects that participants struggled with.

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Georgia spoke about how body language helps her to learn, linking back to the visual learning practices discussed in 4.1.

‘When the teacher is teaching, the body language has a lot of effect on me, you know ... how they demonstrate things and sometimes … some people are very expressive and they use ... their body language to demonstrate ... what they are trying to say and it has ... a really has a big influence on me. I would always remember that because the teacher did for example this act, you know. It kind of goes into my brain, you know and stays there’ (Georgia). She also discussed use of coloured pens

(see 4.1) and related this and her awareness of body language to her visual learning practices.

For Helen and James, both graduate entrants to pharmacy, online

resources and the practices surrounding these had a significant impact on

Figure 33. Body language, hands

(Georgia, Stage 4, object 3a) Figure 34. Body language, body (Georgia, Stage 4, object 3a)

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the way that they learned in the MPharm course and Helen represented this with her USB stick.

Figure 35. USB stick

(Helen, Stage 4, object 2)

‘I brought this along to represent, I suppose, all kind of e-learning and ... kind of everything is online these days … I find that a big change because I … did a degree before ... this is all totally new and … I find it really, really useful and kinda much … much better being able to stay up to date with things’. Throughout the MPharm curriculum, but in the final year in

particular, there is quite a lot of learning material and support delivered online. Students work both individually and in groups on projects and case studies using a problem-based learning approach and are supported through discussion forums by academic staff and e-tutors (pharmacy practitioners who are contracted to facilitate discussion and learning online).

Linking back to the social interaction practices described earlier, Helen found the online forums really helpful to her allowing her to post and move on from issues she was struggling with; ‘it’s really handy because if

you’re at home when you’re having a problem, you can just put

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I could kind of get to a point with something and then maybe post my, my ... questions or what I think and then totally leave it until the next day or two days later when I have more information. Sometimes I find that other than getting really stressed out with something and trying to push through it like you know … It’s good to do that.’

James brought along his portable hard-drive to represent how

‘information technology has helped me through the pharmacy course’ and

how access to electronic resources differed significantly to his previous degree. He saw the volume and accessibility of information and resources as something that, for him ‘made the learning process way easier’ and was something he felt he would also use in the future. When he started ‘filtering’ and analysing the information he used pen and paper as he found that ‘it takes a lot longer to write a sentence than to think it’ and so this helped his ‘reasoning process’.

Many e-learning approaches to curriculum design are heavily influenced by constructivist underpinning (Felix 2005) allowing ‘learners to construct

their own knowledge through resource-rich, student-centered, and interactive learning’ (Zhang et al. 2004 p.78) and this appears to be

James and Helen’s experience of online learning.

Kat brought along two interesting pictures which represented how she learned.

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Figure 36. Bath (Kat, Stage 4, object 3)

The first of these was a bath and for her this represented the ‘eureka moment’, the point at which ‘you get a sudden and brilliant connection

between things and suddenly [snaps fingers] everything falls into place’.

She described this as the ‘gold standard … the best thing that happens

when you are learning’ and that ‘it’s brilliant when it happens’. Kat

described that when she has been studying pharmacy it has often happened ‘when I'm sitting being taught and … someone else is making

connections that I could not have made for myself at that point … and they make them and its amazing and you think, wow I get that now, that's brilliant!’ This links to the idea of threshold concepts (Meyer and

Land 2003) with crossing the threshold likened to moving through a door into ‘enlightenment’.

For Kat one interesting aspect of this was that she could not remember the specific instances of when this had happened, simply remembering that it had; ‘when you look back … it’s really hard to think of them

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can't pick them out individually because they're just part of your understanding ... erm ... they don't seem amazing after they've

happened’. Land et al. (2005 p.58) argue that these thresholds are often

characterised as highly significant moments when they occur but that it is often difficult to ‘gaze backwards across thresholds and understand the

conceptual difficulty’ being experienced and this appears to echo with

Kat’s experience. Threshold concepts will be returned to in Chapter 6 in considering participants’ struggles.

Returning to the title of this chapter, the second picture Kat brought along was of a spider’s web which she felt represented how she learned.

Figure 37. Spider’s web (Kat, Stage 4, object 2)

‘When I think of how I learn, I think of a spider’s web and the reason I say that is because I think these, the out, the vertical lines of the spider's web are, ... how you build your knowledge and the connecting ones are your understanding between the knowledge’ (Kat).

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For Kat, learning was about making connections and understanding and she had insight into how that occurred in her mind; ‘When I'm learning

something that's purely in my head, I think the connections you make between the information are the same as when you are actually doing something physically in front of you, you're making the same jumps in understanding, it doesn't necessarily need to be in front of your eyes to do that, to connect things together, so I think that's what happens inside my head.’ This contrasts to the ‘not a very good kind of [factual] learning’

she described in relation to the BNF (Chapter 4.3) and links to

Waterfield’s (2010) knowledge practices which Kat appears to find more satisfying.