Dan started the session by challenging all present to consider a project from the presentation that once we all returned to base we would explore taking forward in our institution.

Student engagement is an important area to explore but often when we think about this agenda we forget there is also a need to engage staff and support them in working in different ways.

Dan outlined how much of this work at Lincoln had started with the Student as a producer project which focused on research engaged teaching across undergraduate programmes. The project considered how students could produce knowledge and not be consumers of it.

Student engagement is about working in partnership with students to improve the quality of what we do. Lincoln has a student engagement strategy which can be found at http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/studentengagement. This has been centrally driven by a student engagement centre but in partnership with the Student Union.  There have been four phases which are:

1 institution exemplars and leadership

2 Fostering local engagement

3 students engaged by default

4 champions become leaders

There had been a need to consider who would be most enthusiastic about engaging students as partners and whether it will be meaningful.

1 institution exemplars and leadership

This started from the centre and some things were done that showed a commitment to this. Some of these included:

• Students being on academic staff interviews panels but they were not involved in panels for their own schools. Training was given to the students for these panels. The staff on the panels were anxious at first but now like this and in fact students are now on interview panels for support posts as well.
• The executive board wanted to pair with students and undertake some shadowing activity and meet regularly to discuss this. This pairing was voluntary at first but now has become compulsory for all.

There have been some lessons learnt from this such as having the Vice Chancellor and Deputy Vice Chancellor on side is good there is a need to avoid being prescriptive about involvement. Having a broad central vision and principles is good but departments then need to interpret these for them. Lastly staff need to go out and talk to students more.

2 Fostering local engagement

A scheme of champions was set up which included staff and students and initially there were 34 student engagement champions who were placed in clusters of 6. Nominations were requested from School/department HODs but these were not to be the HODS. Each school was also asked for a student engagement plan.

The library initiated for their area a student advisory group and this group became critical friends for developments. This won a student engagement award and now others want to explore such activities. There has been money placed into a student engagement innovation fund to enable small projects.  Other initiatives have been student staff liaison committees changing so that they are jointly chaired and have the form of a workshop with agendas being set via a wiki so all can contribute.

There have been some lessons learnt from this too which include engaging students in a range of ways and not planning for the same intervention for all areas, having different priorities is good but then refocusing later is useful, the champions structure has been useful but did evolve and it is difficult for the champions to bring others along.

3 Students engaged by default

It is important to engage students early from transition and induction. Personal tutors and peers mentors have been good in engaging students and introducing a senior tutor role. Peer assisted learning has also been developed but more work around this is needed. Lessons learnt from this have been that we need to be planning this although it is by default and activities can become large very quickly.

4 Champions become leaders

Dan showed a Video to illustrate some points so here is the link to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO8MwBZl-Vc

Dan discussed priorities here as being:

• The champions changing into different people
• Champions being engaged in the default network
• Staff development
• It takes two years to change activities such as transition and induction

Dans’ reflections on their work to date are that you have to work through staff too and they must feel involved, you need to be public and easy to follow, language and understanding is important and you need to think about who to engage.