DRAFT ONLY
FLEXIBLE HOLISTIC FACILITATED LEARNING METHOD
A discussion paper prepared by Andrew Boden, student # 961007/5, based on his experiences in
the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd years of the BE (mech) / BComm (general management) combined-degree
course.
Thursday, May 21st, 1998
Submitted to:
 Mrs Jaye Johnston, UWA Student Support Services
 The Dean of Engineering
 The UWA Teaching and Learning Committee
 The Information Technology in Education Committee?????????
DISCLAIMER
Though care has been exercised in the underlying rumination, content and preparation of this Discussion Paper, the author
assumes no responsibility for its accuracy and effectiveness and will therefore not be responsible for loss or damage
incurred by any individual through reliance on this information. This Discussion Paper represents the personal beliefs and
opinions of the author. Any inaccuracies or offensive statements contained herein are unintentional and are herewith
apologised for in advance. Such apologies notwithstanding, the author considers any person reading this document to be
doing so of their own free will. The reader should be aware that the primary intended purpose of this discussion paper is to
encourage constructive open debate.
LECTURES
The advantages of lectures over a set of lecture transcripts are:
 the incorporation of tone-of-speech into the content delivery; and
 the capability to respond immediately to queries.
In practice, students tend to ask very few questions, and lecturers are often constrained by time when answering any
questions.
The material can only be delivered at one pace in a lecture, rather than at the pace most suitable to each individual student.
Difficulties arise concerning lecturers’ accents, handwriting, and diagram-drawing, which difficulties students are often
reluctant to criticize, not wishing to seem uncharitable towards a person who is after all going to the trouble of teaching
them. This problem is probably greater at UWA than at other universities, because of the high proportion of students
entering directly from secondary schools (where there is a large student-teacher power distance; and especially in private
schools, where behavioural management is an active and institutionalized component of the school regimen) and their
slightly younger age.
Mistakes made by the lecturer occur within a moving time-frame rather than on a transcript-page, and are therefore less
likely to be picked up (although the possibility exists that, in the case of transcripts, individuals might assume that any
suspected mistakes would be picked up by someone else. Still, over time, errors in a transcript will be noticed.)
Reluctance to speak up in lectures contributes to this problem also, to varying extents depending upon the material.
There is little time in a lecture to do anything other than copy down the lecturers’ speech or writing, so the lion’s share of
the thinking and reflection upon the material must be performed at a later time – which is also the time when the student
will have questions. Although there is a good argument for compelling students to find their own answers in this fashion,
such a rationale does not accord with the messages given to students by the lecturers themselves, encouraging students’
usage of the lecturers to bring about understanding.
Transcribing or copying data is a task for photocopiers, not tertiary students. Little or no reinforcement is gained from
furiously scribbling down all that the lecturer delivers. Even if information has to be delivered in stages (such as
constructing a diagram one component at a time in order to illustrate each component’s origins), a thorough set of lecture
Page 1 of 5
Flexible Holistic Facilitated Learning Method: A discussion paper prepared by Andrew Boden.
notes will do this and anyway, most students wouldn’t distinguish the ‘staged’ delivery in their own notes (in the example
given, students would draw each component of the diagram on the same diagram, in the same colour (rather than on a
subsequent diagram for each stage, with only the accumulated components to that stage drawn upon it), giving the student
the final resulting diagram only.)
Absorbing knowledge can be assisted by communal processes such as discussion, but requires the bulk of the
understanding to be in place already – and lectures are only superficially a communal process anyway. Lectures are
fundamentally a form of mass communication, but seem largely to be used as multiple simultaneous narrow-line
communications – one person holding a one-sided conversation with one hundred listeners, who very nearly might as well
be each in different rooms for all that they interact.
TUTORIALS
Few questions can be considered, because usually the entirety of the question will be dealt with, rather than just those areas
of those questions in which that student had difficulties.
Dealing with students’ individual problems during a period in which others (ie all the other tutorial students) have been
scheduled to attend is inefficient unless the majority of students have or are likely to experience that same difficulty – in
which case the difficulty should be dealt with in a lecture, as it is unlikely that one tutorial-group will have a markedly
higher incidence of a problem than the entire unit-group would (excluding the effects of a poor tutor, or a tutor mismatched to the lecturer because of faulty co-operation.)
UNITS
There is very little reinforcement of unit material subsequent to the conclusion of the unit – until suddenly the material is
needed within the context of another unit, when perfect understanding and remembrance are often assumed.
FLEXIBLE HOLISTIC FACILITATED LEARNING METHOD
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION
(1)
Material currently presented in lectures should be presented beforehand, in the form of a unit booklet, and also
video tapes of the traditional lectures, to be referred to if the booklet is too ‘sterile’ for the student to become
involved in. Time markings next to paragraphs (in the booklet) index the video tapes for improved seekconvenience. Tapes should preferably be digital (CD-ROM or DVD) for better seek-speed and superior
searchability (for example, they could be ‘book-marked’ with search key-words to enable students to find all
occurrences of a particular concept.) This material should evolve, and eventually become so complete that a
separate textbook is superfluous – that is, it should include exercise-problems, references to appropriate texts and
web-sites (preferably to be copied onto internal servers, given the impermanent nature of most web-pages), and
other learning aids.
(2)
Students should email questions to a tutor, who collaborates with the student to identify and solve their difficulties
(including a meeting if such would be beneficial.) A copy of the student’s emails (names hashed out), together
with the tutor’s identification of the underlying problems and their suggested solutions, is posted on a web-site or
a ‘Forum’ – such as the one for the Engineering Dynamics 100 unit’s computer-based tutorial problems – and be
indexed both by the exercise-question (eg “Assignment 2, Q4 part A”) and by descriptions of the underlying
difficulties (a less precise search-method, but a necessary one and one that should improve over time.)
(3)
Material discussed in recommendations (1) and (2) should be available to all students who have studied or are
studying or are contemplating studying that unit: however – at least initially, so as to furnish reliable estimates of
resource requirements – only ‘current’ (herein referred to as ‘material-focussed’ or ‘MF’ students) and
‘immediate-past’ students (those students who studied the unit when it was last taught, hereafter referred to as
‘reinforcement-focussed’ or ‘RF’ students) should be allowed to ask questions. MF and RF students would also
be the only students able to submit assignments and sit tests. It may well prove possible to lower the pass-mark
required for a unit, provided that the student studies that unit again as an RF student.
(4)
The booklet could be used as distance education material – and should be such as to be suited to this application.

The Forum should be web-based, as should the unit booklet. This allows the Forum, the associated exercisequestions, the unit booklet, links to online databases, web-pages, pre-searched lists of relevant library
materials, and the digital lecture-tapes to be melded into a cohesive and synergistic whole, whereby the
benefits of each component are enhanced by its interaction with its partner-components. Simple computer
programs demonstrating unit concepts (‘concept-illustrative software’) could also be included, similar to those
which were developed for Engineering Dynamics 100.
Page 2 of 5
Flexible Holistic Facilitated Learning Method: A discussion paper prepared by Andrew Boden.

Digital video files should be records of distinct sections of the traditional lectures rather than of a whole
lecture for each file, to reduce file-size and so that each file remains applicable to a section of the partnercomponents. Even so, current limitations on bandwidth and campus network speeds render the inclusion of
network- or web-based digital video impractical at this point in time: however, the digital video records should
still be developed, as should the network resources required. Adelaide University deserves praise for
implementing such a programme in its Faculty of Arts.

The ‘amalgamated’ unit material, if network-based (or at least network-assisted – for components such as the
Forum – and CD-ROM- or DVD-based), could also be made ‘forced-sequential’ – that is, each MF and RF
student could be forced to progress through the material in a stipulated order, reading all the notes, viewing all
the concept-illustrative software, and completing all the assigned questions for the current topic, before s/he
may move on to the next topic. This would make each student’s individual progress immediately apparent to
the network-software administrator (if the core-software is on CD-ROM or DVD instead of on a network or
the internet, then the software could automatically email a progress report to the network-software
administrator each time that the student logged on to the Forum, and could require a code from the
administrator’s software before allowing the student to move on to the next topic.)

A possible characteristic of the Method which could be used in units with fewer students is that no student can
progress to the next topic until all students have completed the current topic. The obvious problems
incumbent to such a policy, however, would need further refinement before implementation.

One obvious benefit of the Method is that students, tutors, and lecturers will be vastly more flexible in their
approach to learning and teaching, and in scheduling tertiary study or tertiary teaching around their other
interests, such as part-time work for students, and research and publishing commitments for staff. Indeed,
tutors may not have any scheduled commitments to the unit.

Another benefit concerns the use of quotas for each unit (presuming such things exist), which would be far
less dependant upon the capacity and availability of lecture theatres. They would instead be limited by IT
resources, if the above recommendations are implemented in such a fashion as to require on-campus, or
campus-supplied, resources.
Dedicated terminals on campus certainly have benefits in such a programme as this, but the cost-advantages of providing
CD-ROM or DVD to students (rather than installing video-capable bandwidth and network connectivity) are substantial. If
the terminals were powerful enough, disks could be used for the unit-booklet, copied web-pages, storage of sophisticated
library search algorithms (assuming the library software is capable of such. Storing the search algorithm instead of a list of
pre-searched material means that the search updates itself whenever activated, finding appropriate new material as well as
all the older material.), concept-illustrative software, exercise-questions (involving semi-randomly generated values), and
the co-ordinating and interfacing software, leaving only the Forum actually on the network. The potential benefits (in
learning and teaching flexibility, in relative hardware-independency – networks rely less on the specific type and
characteristics of each child-machine than do disks –, and in campus-contact-dependency) of making all the material
available over the internet should, however, be recognized, and if not implemented immediately, then the subsequent
adaptation of the initial programme to an internet-based programme should at the least be an important consideration in all
implementation decisions.

(5)
The Forum should be answered by RF students (referred to as ‘tutors’ in recommendation (2) above), whose
assistance should be reviewed by supervisors. The supervisors (who should be ‘immediate-past-immediatepast students’ – that is, students who were among the best RF students the last time that this unit was taught)
annotate Forum entries (which causes an automatic notification, that a change has been made, to be emailed to
all students who have already viewed that Forum entry) where necessary, and ensure that the RF student is
corrected in their understanding or their method of explaining things or their identification of the MF student’s
underlying difficulty. MF students can also annotate the Forum-entry with their own comments about the
helpfulness of the suggestions, or their own difficulties with that exercise-problem or with that identified
underlying difficulty.
The purposes of lectures should become:

dealing with wide-spread difficulties, misconceptions and misunderstandings, as revealed by questions in SI
sessions (see below) and by students’ progress as monitored by the network-software administrator (also see
below);

“motivation, inspiration, context-setting, and organisation” – including such matters as:

Faculty Society announcements and feedback-opportunities; and
Page 3 of 5
Flexible Holistic Facilitated Learning Method: A discussion paper prepared by Andrew Boden.

(6)














Faculty Administration and Unit Co-ordinator announcements and feedback-opportunities.
Lectures should become collections of shorter speeches by a variety of people:
Faculty Society representatives;
Faculty Administration representatives;
motivational speakers;
business-people;
representatives from professional societies such as the ASCPA, the AIM, and the IEAust;
representatives from the huge variety of cultural and sporting and other clubs on campus;
representatives from the even larger variety of organisations off-campus;
recent graduates;
recruitment and placement personnel;
popular or high-profile figures discussing life-lessons;
guest speakers discussing ethical issues relating to the unit’s associated professions or common situations;
guest speakers discussing wider cultural and political concerns, possibly linked to UWA ‘theme’ weeks such
as ‘Blue Stocking’ week;
fellow students willing to discuss something of merit;
…
The traditional lecturer should be only one of a huge variety of people to speak with (not to) the students. This will help
students to regard their learning holistically – that is, as a part of their personal, rather than their academic, development.
And all of these things must occur during the 45 minutes (which may vary, or even deserve permanent lengthening or
shortening) – not merely prior to, or subsequent to, the ‘real lecture’.
(7)
RFs should also act as facilitators in ‘Supplementary Instruction’ sessions (‘Peer Assisted Study Sessions’). If a
student transfers out of the course-path in which a unit was leading them, having obtained in their MF year what
would currently be considered their final mark and credit for that unit, then this sort of mark and credit should be
what they take with them. Otherwise, 80% of the unit mark is awarded whilst the student is an MF in that unit,
and 20% is awarded whilst the student is an RF in that unit. RFs are not just selected high-achievers, they are all
continuing students who have not transferred into a substantially different course. Under the current system this
would certainly lead to pervasive timetabling conflicts. The flexibility granted by the Flexible Holistic Facilitated
Learning Method, however, should be such that scheduling lectures and SI sessions for both MFs and RFs should
be straightforward.
(8)
The RFs are marked not only for their understanding of the course material, but also on their effectiveness or
improvement in:
leadership skills;
facilitating skills;
training skills;
self-evaluative skills; and
supportive skills.





Their effectiveness or improvement is based on standardised assessments by:

the RFs themselves;

their fellow RFs;

the MFs;

the supervisors (immediate-past RFs who guide the RFs’ development); and

the lecturer.
Their mark is also affected by their MFs’ own marks.
Appeals are made in the first instance to the supervisor, then to the lecturer. Both review any assessments of that RF which
are substantially different to all the others (the lecturer does this under advisement from the RF’s supervisor.) Marks are
deducted for giving unfair assessments – by which is meant assessments substantially different to others, for which the
assessor can provide no reasonable explanation. A demonstration of a fair assessment would have to be given to the MFs
in a lecture.
The assessments are standardised in a manner which provides benchmarks to help measure the assessee against.
Supervisors are evaluated by their RFs and the lecturer, and their mark is affected by their RFs’ own marks as compared to
the RFs’ average mark. The ratios of Supervisors to RFs to MFs is perhaps 30:150:200. The benefits of fixed membership
Page 4 of 5
Flexible Holistic Facilitated Learning Method: A discussion paper prepared by Andrew Boden.
of particular SI groups (similar to the current tutorial arrangement) probably outweigh the benefits of fluid membership,
especially considering that fluid membership would require evaluation of RFs after each SI session. A possible alternative
is to evaluate RFs as a whole, and then make exceptions for frequent identifications of a substantially better or worse RF.
This encourages RFs to support each other.
Each unit would require a unit co-ordinator, IT manager, lecturer, a professional adviser for supervisors and RFs,
supervisors, and RFs. The IT manager (similar to Nathan Scott’s task in Engineering Dynamics 100) and the professional
adviser (similar to Sato Juniper’s job in the Engineering Mentor Programme) could be spread over all the units in a
department, and possibly wider still. The Department of Agriculture’s mentor scheme is run entirely by students, however,
and could provide suggestions on how to do implement such an arrangement on the smaller scale of a unit-by-unit
consideration and the larger scale of a university-wide consideration. The lecturer and the unit co-ordinator could well be
the same person, and would require training in the sort of teaching needed for this method (Professor Brian Stone, of the
Dept of Mechanical Engineering, may be regarded as the sort of lecturer already acquainted with this style of teaching.)
(9)
The formats of laboratory sessions, field trips, projects (eg Warman), and other assignments need to be
incorporated into this Method. The optimum SI group-size needs to be determined, and matched to the number of
available RFs (likely to be only slightly fewer than the number of MFs).
CONCLUSION
I acknowledge that certain units – most particularly in the Faculties of Law and Arts – being already based (I presume) on a
high level of discussion in lectures, may not be suited to this Method. I believe the Method to be widely appropriate in the
areas of Engineering and Commerce, which are my intended degrees, and likely to be appropriate to many units in the
Faculties of Science, Medicine, and Economics. I am indebted to the following, for helping to crystallize my concerns and
transform my ideas for improvement into this set of recommendations:

the Engineering Dynamics 100 unit;

“Change in teaching methods improves student performance”, pages 50-51, Engineers Australia, May
1998;

“Video on demand at Adelaide University”, page 62, Engineers Australia, May 1998.
Page 5 of 5