Research Tutored
Research tutored learning involves having the students actively interacting with the current state of research in their topic, at a level suitable for their level of study - effectively using the existing research as an additional tutor. Students can be given topics to read up on, given practical problems or case studies to research and discuss or be given current academic articles relevant to their field. A key element is that of choice - students should be given a list of areas or a selection of articles and choose the one that interests them the most. Engaging with the academic literature in this way encourages them to "read around" a topic - following footnotes and bringing in other sources - in a way that lecture slides can struggle to do. Having students actively looking in to topics that interest them stimulates curiosity and inventiveness in their learning as they are "leading the way" rather than simply reading pre-prepared course materials.
Research Based
In Research Based learning, students work on a project suitable to their discipline and through working on that project come to develop their research skills. By being assigned - or, better, choosing for themselves - an open ended problem in their field students are encouraged to develop the real-word skills needed to acquire knowledge in their subject, Depending on the subject this may be engagement with the existing state of research, experimental skills, practical skills or probably a mixture of the three. The key point is that students can contextualise this immediately, having instant feedback on how acquiring these skills is relevant to their field of study.
Research Led
Research led teaching is ensuring that teaching is informed by the latest research in the field - whether your own or that of others. When presented with new developments in a students field of study as they emerge, students see their field as an exciting, vibrant one and not as a stale corpus of facts. Research led teaching can also incorporate developments in teaching and pedagogy and new techniques for conveying curriculum content to ensure students have that content presented to them as well as possible.
Research Orientated
Research Orientated teaching is where students are explicitly taught not only the curriculum content but the methods and techniques used for research in their field. This covers topics such as academic writing but depending on the subject area might also include statistical analysis, field- or lab-work or interview techniques, for example. Research Orientated teaching ensures that students not only learn the information in their curriculum but also gain an understanding of how that information was gathered and the skills to contribute to the field.
