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Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching and Learning 2021
The blended and elementary nature of textbooks is generally intended to make them teaching and learning resources that are easily accessible to classrooms with students that have diverse background knowledge (Alred & Thelen 1993).
Introduction: The transition from undergraduate to postgraduate studies
In common with all science disciplines at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), the Geology honours is an important transition from the undergraduate level, which is a general Earth Sciences degree by coursework, to the postgraduate level, where a student does a research-based Master’s or Doctoral degree in a defined area of Geology. Teaching and learning at the undergraduate level centres on the guided transfer of accepted knowledge and skills, whereas fundamental components of postgraduate-level studies are challenging accepted knowledge, generating new knowledge and gaining learning independence. Undergraduate modules in Geology mostly use textbooks as the main resource, whereas postgraduate studies rely primarily on peer-reviewed research journal articles (hereinafter journal articles). This involves a fundamental shift in the style of learning.
The blended and elementary nature of textbooks is generally intended to make them teaching and learning resources that are easily accessible to classrooms with students that have diverse background knowledge (Alred & Thelen 1993). Thus, textbooks help lecturers facilitate teaching and learning of multiple subject matters (concepts, fundamentals, methods, etc.) in a much shorter time. Journal articles, on the other
hand, present essential application of the theory and the most up-to- date knowledge, but because they are in most cases documents that
are intricately involved in a specialised subject matter and rely on a significant component of assumed knowledge, this can make them inaccessible resources for teaching and learning in a classroom setting. This is especially pertinent in honours classrooms, where the qualification time is limited to one academic year and students come from different institutions, so may have widely varying degrees of prior experience in particular subject matter. Therefore, it is important for teaching and learning at the honours level to try to combine and strike a balance between textbook- and journal article-based learning so that it remains an effective transition (Hoeta 2021).
The Geology honours degree at UJ has a stand-alone research project module that accounts for 25% of the qualification’s credits. For many students at the honours level, it is the first time they encounter research that must extensively utilise journal articles, because research undertaken at the undergraduate level for assignments and lab or field reports does not mandate extensive literature review of journal articles (Figure 1). Without experience and guidance in the right approach, many students find scientific articles intimidating.