Teaching and Learning at Flinders

Flinders University seeks to foster excellence, innovation and flexibility in teaching in order to enrich the learning environment and enhance effective learning by its students. It accepts that all learning must involve a complex interplay of active and receptive processes, but teaching at Flinders is underpinned by the assumption that students should, as much as possible, be engaged as active participants in the learning process. It follows that ideas and views expressed as part of that active engagement ought to be appreciated and respected by others involved in the teaching and learning process.

Through its teaching, Flinders aims for its students to:

• be challenged to master a coherent body of knowledge and engage with the intellectual foundations of one or more academic disciplines;
• develop intellectual and cultural curiosity;
• acquire a capacity and willingness to challenge assumptions and embrace new thinking;
• understand the ethical, social and moral implications of knowledge and responsible citizenship;
• develop transferable learning skills and a commitment to life-long learning;
• experience, particularly at undergraduate level, campus-based teaching and learning, and have the benefit of meeting and interacting on a regular basis with students and staff within a collegial academic environment;
• develop a better overall understanding of social, cultural, technological, scientific and economic issues as they affect the wider community, and a deeper level of understanding of these issues as they relate to a student? area of study;
• gain opportunities to interact, work and communicate with others effectively to achieve both collective and individual goals; and
• embrace a diverse range of perspectives on learning and an awareness of global, national, regional and local contexts, and develop a commitment to make contributions at all levels of society.

Key Principles

1. The University expects there to be a productive relationship between teaching and research and further expects its academic staff to be engaged in both teaching and research.
2. The University recognises that a variety of particular approaches and techniques are capable of producing effective learning. This fact, quite properly, will permit teachers to bring their individual perspectives and approaches into the teaching and learning environment. The University encourages diversity of this nature. At the same time, it maintains the view that certain foundational principles must operate.
3. The University takes the view that optimal student learning will be facilitated by teaching which:
   - focuses on desired learning outcomes for students, in the form of knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes;
   - proceeds from an understanding of students' knowledge, capabilities and backgrounds;
   - is sufficiently flexible in approach in order to respond sensibly to different learning requirements of students;
   - assists students to form broad conceptual understandings while gaining depth of knowledge;
   - encourages the informed and critical questioning of accepted theories and views to develop in students an awareness of the limited and provisional nature of much current knowledge in all fields;
   - demonstrates, especially through linking teaching with the latest research and scholarship, how understanding has evolved and is subject to challenge and revision;
   - encourages awareness of the ethical dimensions of problems and issues;
   - encompasses a range of perspectives drawn from groups within the community of different backgrounds and characteristics;
   - utilises instructional strategies and tools that enable different styles of learning;
   - allows interaction between students and staff, and among students, as a means of encouraging interchange of opinions, views and knowledge;
   - encourages students to become self-directed learners who will maintain an interest in learning throughout their lives;
   - respects students' rights to express views and opinions;
   - incorporates a concern for the welfare and progress of individual students; and
   - adopts assessment methods and tasks appropriate to the educational aims of the course and to the expected learning outcomes of the relevant topic.
4. The University endorses the notion that optimal student learning will be facilitated where students are informed about the teaching and learning process and are able, as much as is practicable, to contribute to the decisions that are made about it. Accordingly, the University expects its teachers to:
   - clearly and in a timely fashion communicate to students information about the structure of the program in the topic concerned as well as the processes for teaching, learning, assessment and evaluation;
   - engage students in discussion of ways in which study tasks can be undertaken;
   - provide feedback to students, through formal assessment and other means, on their progress towards achieving the learning outcomes of a topic; and
   - obtain and take into account feedback from students about their learning and the effectiveness of teaching procedures.
5. Flinders University is committed to fostering a teaching and learning environment which is based on best practice, which accords with the principles contained in the AVCC publication Universities and their Students: Principles for the Provision of Education by Australian Universities and other relevant statements and guidelines, and which can respond, as appropriate, to community expectations and national and State priorities for teaching and learning.