Guidelines for Writing Study/Learning Guides
These guidelines provide suggestions on how to formulate a study/learning guide. This does
not cover the administrative details that you will include in your Administration Guide. The
Administration Guide template covers this area. The suggestions below are as important for
delivery via Stream as they are for hardcopy guides. Stream provides the opportunity for
study/learning guides to be dynamic and interactive.
The Study/Learning Guide is a guide, a road map, to the content/materials of the paper and
the learning environment. Your guide will motivate students, provide navigation and
encourage/facilitate interaction with the content and reflection on learning. If your
study/leaning guide is on Stream you will need to include opportunities for interaction
between students and yourself.
The amount of detailed guidance you provide will depend on the level your students are
learning at. More detailed guidance for first year students (100 level papers) and less for
advanced learners (700 level papers). The level of guidance may also depend on your
discipline area and on the knowledge and skills your learners bring to the subject.
Designing and writing a study/learning guide takes considerable time. Get started as early as
possible before the deadline date, find mentors and support staff who can provide assistance
(colleagues, departmental administrative staff, teaching consultants in the Centres for
Teaching and Learning on each campus).
Consider the following points
1.
Begin by considering who your audience/students are.
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Background/prior learning issues
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Demographic factors
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Motivation – is your paper a requirement for a major? Is it a core requirement of
the work environment?
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Resource factors – where, when and how will your students learn? How much
time will they have available? What access will they have to support facilities,
internet?
Knowing about your students (as best you can) will help you pitch your
commentary, your guidance and help you select readings and activities.
Guidelines for writing study/learning guides
2013
2.
Select content available from other sources – be mindful of student’s workload. What
can students be expected to do in 185 hours per a 15 credit paper? This covers time for
interaction, doing assignments and studying for exams, as well as directed learning.
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Textbook/s students are required to purchase, and articles and chapters from texts.
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Include only essential readings, and reference further readings for each topic that
students can access themselves.
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Consider Radio Podcasts and eTV, (recorded content from TV - contact the
Library for details).
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Check copyright allowances for readings and other media when making your
selections. (This will make it easier when you come to put the material together.
See http://copyright.massey.ac.nz for allowances and Copyright Advice on the
National Centre for Teaching and Learning website)
3.
You will then need to write:
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A guide/introduction/commentary to the textbook, readings and any other media
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All or some of the content of the paper
4.
When writing for distance students you are essentially writing for one person working
alone, often at night after work, with little or no support or access to support. You are
having a conversation with your student/s. In doing this try to anticipate the
queries/questions they will have and provide answers or pointers in your commentary
or direct them to where they can get the answers for themselves. Use the first person
when writing your commentary as this will engage the learners, humour is useful too,
as is expressing an appreciation of their situation from time to time.
5.
Divide the learning (content) into manageable and logical chunks (e.g. modules, units,
sections, parts, topics, weeks)
6.
Provide an introduction to the whole paper to begin (you may have done some or all of
this in the admin guide, if so recap important information)
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Outline how the paper is structured
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7.
Suggest order for the learning, eg. “Read the commentary first, followed by the
text, then the included articles, and the activity…”
Outline your expectations
Guidance/commentary will highlight the main points and guide students through the
material
Guidelines for writing study/learning guides
2013
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8.
Provide a brief introduction to each chunk and link to previous chunk/s – where
does this chunk fit within the paper’s framework? This helps students make
connections
Provide learning outcomes for each chunk as a guide to student learning
Be consistent with terminology throughout
Write a commentary/briefing notes about each chunk highlighting the main
points/concepts to be mastered
Refer to the readings, text and or other media and indicate when to use these
components – link to these if guide on Stream
Ask questions for the learners to consider while they read
Provide a glossary of jargon as applicable, suggest students make their own – use
the Glossary tool in Stream
A brief summary can be useful, to reiterate the main points (this can be done as a
recap or feedback after students have completed an activity. Keep this short.)
Provide additional reading list/and your references
Provide opportunities for active learning (learning-by-doing) within each chunk so
students can test themselves on the effectiveness of their learning. (too many can be off
putting.)
Suggestions:
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Start with an activity to help activate prior learning. (This could be incorporated
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with the link to the previous chunk, a previous paper)
Compare and contrast type activities help clarify ideas
Study questions within your commentary and or at the end of each chunk (these
are helpful if used to ‘prime’ the students before reading)
Quizzes, discussions, group work in Stream (remember it takes students longer to
do some activities online)
Others activities to consider may ask students to:
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explain concepts/theories in own words
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write a summary of the chunk
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locate evidence to prove ...
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9.
solve problems
predict how something might work in a different setting
apply concepts to their own environment
reflect on their own experiences/learning
all these can be utilised within Stream using a variety of tools
Technical issues (relevant if you are producing a hardcopy guide)
(consider the following if your paper is camera ready)
Guidelines for writing study/learning guides
2013
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have a contents page for each chunk depending on the size of the guide) and a
contents for the readings with full references (include the pages numbers used)
Page numbering – start numbering each chunk from one (this makes it easier to
make changes in the future, especially when adding new readings)
Reference consistently with expected student assignment style
Place readings either directly after the topic/unit/module they relate to or all
together at the end
Provide the full reference at the top of the first page of each included reading or
in the contents, or both.
Each new reading should start on an odd numbered page (a right hand side page)
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Each reading must be clean, that is, does not have ‘black’ around the text
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10.
Provide a detailed contents page with page numbers (sometimes it’s useful to
Readings on Stream
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Link to journal articles in the Library from Stream (contact library@massey.ac.nz
for persistent links). Many databases allow ONLY for linking to articles rather
than inserting PDFs on Stream. See “Locating Licence Permissions for Electronic
Journal Articles Used in Teaching” at
http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/research/library/find-information/articledatabases/database-licence-information.cfm#locating
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Ensure each reading inserted as a PDF is ‘clean’, that is, does not have black
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around the text and that they are up the right way so students can read them
online.
Provide the full reference at the point of link (include the full reference in the
field below the toolbar when inserting and naming the link. The reference will
appear in the Resources in the Activity block.)
See “Stream and Copyright” web pages for guidance of what can be used and
suggestions on how to attribute in Stream http://www.massey.ac.nz/?c213a1435m
Contact
Teaching Consultants
Centres for Teaching and Learning on each campus
Albany – slc-alb@massey.ac.nz
Manawatu – teaching-pn@massey.ac.nz
Wellington – wnlearn@massey.ac.nz
Guidelines for writing study/learning guides
2013
Guidelines for writing study/learning guides
2013