Understanding Student Needs

Establishing the importance of learning needs

I teach undergraduate law students in third year and final year. I am also involved in postgraduate teaching and supervision. The student population within the Faculty of Law is very diverse, with students of different races, age groups, vastly different socio-economic backgrounds and ethnicity. Our students are not only local, but come across, Africa as well as other parts of the world. It is my view that having an understanding of where our students come from, albeit upbringing or nationality, impact how they experience their time as UWC students. Most importantly, their needs ultimately affects their ability to enjoy being a student as well as becoming well-balanced professionals ready for the South African and international legal profession.

Assessing and determining the learning needs of students can be a daunting task. It is the realisation, as mentioned before that students at the UWC come from different walks of life and there exists a diversity of students with varying degrees of needs. Most universities are more or less in same situation. Essential knowledge for law students must be taught and repeated; and emphasised several times to produce efficient and effective legal practitioners in the field. Naturally, students will grow from low confidence levels into specialists or experts in the field. My role as lecturer becomes critical in transferring skills and knowledge onto the student through facilitation in achieving learning outcomes and being aware of what students require to achieve these outcomes.

Goal 1: Student experience

To facilitate a meaningful and stimulating university experience for students, from initial registration to graduation, by building co-curricular opportunities, responsive support services and institutional cultures that allow for growth and development and that lay the foundation for lifelong learning; and efficient and effective enrolment management geared towards enhancing the University’s overall mission and long-term ambitions.

Aligning student needs with Goal 1 (IOP: 2021-2025)

Pre Covid -19, when face to face lectures were the norm, I would ask a variety of questions during the first introductory lecture in order to understand, learn, appreciate and pave the way forward in the Law of Contract. These questions, would range from, why are you studying law, where do you come from, what has been your experience so far, how has your academic progress been, what would you like to see change and how should we change it. In addition, I also ask students if there are any issues/concerns that may affect their progress and then to make special preparation for them. I like to keep the questions non-invasive so that students have an opportunity to express their experiences whether good or bad. This information is extremely useful as I can then align my teaching with those comments in mind. This ties in with my teaching philosophy of Constructive alignment.

Considering the Covid -19 pandemic: this has really forced me to introduce and apply new methods to get to know and understand my students. This is not the most effective method as I prefer face to face interaction, however, with technology I managed to some extent obtain the required information to assist me.

The first was to appoint class representatives during our first online lecture. This I have done also in the past. It allows students to interact with their peers and to share information with myself on how to improve the module, no personal information is asked or required, the information is all about the student and the module. By doing this, students interact with the class representatives and hope to achieve an inclusive, coherent, collaborative, stimulating, caring, safe, and compassionate learning environment.

With online teaching we started with the introduction of a student needs survey (see below). This came directly from attending the various online learning and teaching workshops, and experiences from colleagues that presented different learning and teaching methods and their own experiences. This has been extremely helpful in attaining the goal of my usual introductory lecture in getting to know students. The student needs survey was most rewarding in getting feedback, although I expected a far higher response. Out of 530 registered students for CNT 301, only 126 students responded. However, it was rewarding, that students took time to complete the survey.

Understanding students needs within a socially just pedagogical approach

All students have different learning abilities and therefore have different student needs. It would be remiss to assume that all students have had access to the same type of education or are of the same ability. Having enough space to live, let alone learn, remains difficult in the poorer corners of Cape Town (Anciano, 2020). A needs assessment is a systematic approach to studying the state of knowledge, ability, interest, or attitude of a defined audience or group involving a particular subject (McCawley, 2009).

The socio-economic reality of students provides challenges in creating an equal learning environment for all. These social challenges that students endure are also called pedagogic obstacles (Bozalek & Leibowitz, 2017). Socially just pedagogies are also addressed in the UWC Principles and Guidelines for the Transformation and Renewal of the Curriculum (UWC Curriculum Transformation and Renewal 2021). This policy document holds that 'Curriculum should demonstrate that it meets the needs of the students relative to the real world.' (UWC Curriculum Transformation and Renewal 2021: 18).

Moje further holds that 'the call for socially just pedagogy is a call to ensure that all youth have equitable opportunities to learn.' (Moje 2007: 3). Cooper posits that 'there is clearly an urgent need for a national survey of all students at South African universities, to obtain data (for example on type of high school attended before university and parental household income and occupation), that might enable the construction of a much better picture of the current social class backgrounds of students across the new university system. Only with such data can we ascertain the extent to which ‘social justice’ is being achieved within this system.' (Cooper 2015: 259).

Identifying the gap

I am not oblivious to the fact that I don't know half of the learning needs of my students. It is quite the daunting task to tease out the very essence of students' learning needs and one shouldn't confuse pure learning needs with social or financial needs. However, these are very closely linked (Van Der Berg, 2008 and Cooper, 2015). Some aspect of student learning needs that I still need to learn more about is whether students find certain methods of learning easier than others? In other words is flexible and hybrid learning approaches a real advantage or is it merely a nice-to-have?

Survey to assess student learning needs

Pie Charts.pdf

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