Liam presented a session around the theme of student engagement partnership. He focused on the challenges of such initiatives being students’ skills base, staff time to get engaged and recording activities. In institutions challenges were often around autonomy, academic resistance, compliance and gathering momentum.
Delivering partnership activity was however in everyone’s interest and was today and expectation. QAA include reference to this in a range of places and have indicators for this. The principles around partnership include demonstrating value, sharing understanding, clarity around terms and building capacity. There is no one successful model as diversity is important.
This session focused on an HEA change academy project on assessment and feedback. The project has initially focused on students issues about the lack of clarity around assessment, feedback being variable and inconsistent practice.
The project aimed to have an assessment resource for all which included assessment types, learning outcomes that could be met with assessments and assessment criteria. Templates that could be used were being developed as well. However the project did have problems with both staff and student engagement due to workload and meetings outside of term time. There was however widespread support for this.
Some activities that they used to overcome barriers and enhance engagement included exploring the school versus discipline domain, engaging staff in collecting the profile data, using school exemplars chosen by them, providing a pilot in each school, undertaking roadshows on the pilots, expanding how to engage in the project, creating an open resource for all, providing regular updates and showing links with the university requirements.
This was our session where we talked about why we want to engage students in projects and we focused on a workshop we had run with students exploring with them their views around a few questions. We first provided some background with activities that already exist such as involving students with sessions on the MA Academic Practice Programme such as the SSPT module, the involvement of students on approval and review panels and the student voice award.
We then discussed some of the student feedback. In terms of student suggestions for educational development for staff we shared some of their ideas which included academics being encouraged to undertake sabbaticals to engage with their professional background and teaching development not just research, more peer reviews which enabled students to see that academics wanted to develop, more staff undertaking the teaching programme and development for undertaking the personal tutor roles and communication. Students suggestions to get them more engaged included incentives but not just paying but mentoring by academics, having an annual induction to their programme and education activities and a survey that asked about their expectations at the beginning of the year as well as the evaluations.
We concluded with discussion of things we wish to engage in during the next year such as continued development of the student voice award scheme, a student advisory group and a one year appointment of a post for student education engagement in LEaD.
This session focused on setting up a partners in learning scheme. There were concerns about the 9K fees and consumerism so the scheme was set up to explore some projects and students who were recruited were paid an hourly rate for getting engaged in projects. The focus was on dialogue and collaboration. John also mentioned the need to focus on staff engagement two as these initiatives are two way.
The SALTS project was set up which is student ambassadors for learning and teaching scheme and included both undergraduate and postgraduate students. The projects were student-led partnerships with an academic mentor assigned to support and sponsor the project.
In February 2013 there was a wide range of projects undertaken which included supporting students arrival at university, transition and induction, student led feedback and students as part of academic review panels. The students were creative, enthusiastic and committed but were not experienced project managers and needed support. There was a balancing act of tools and support for success.
Students found talking to staff difficult so one project in the faculty of education explored communication and why staff and students could not learn together. This project started with an online community which had a site for local news on education matters, current issues and they set up a society for staff and students to discuss issues but they found there was no environment that was good for this and so were able to influence some changes in a space to support this. Three things were learnt from the projects which were that compromise, persistence and organisation was needed.
Three students then talked about their projects. The first having got to the third year of their undergraduate programme felt that there was a lack of career guidance in Arts for those with no obvious career path and so created a web page around possible careers with employability options and added alumni studies to this. The second worked on a peer mentoring project which was successful on a small scale but there are concerns about how to roll this out and sustainability issues. The project also included exploring personal tutoring and issues around this being variable and so teamed with the peer mentoring personal tutors were asked to arrange meetings with all their students once a term in a café and students from across all years of the undergraduate programmes came together with their tutor. This enabled students to link to those in years ahead and develop peer mentoring as well as all discussing issues with their personal tutor. The last project explored what the inclusive curriculum is and undertook a survey to start this but the response was poor. Many students did not know what this was.
There was a discussion with questions at the end and issues of whether to pay students did come up several times with mixed views in the audience. Those in favour felt that if we were asking students to undertake projects they should be paid for their time the same as we would pay teaching assistants who are often PhD students.
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.
Engaging Students: Engaging Staff on 15th May 2014 -16th May 2014 at the Copthorne Hotel, Newcastle.
outside the hotel
The theme enabled participants to explore staff and students engaging in projects and research related to this theme. Those looking at emerging agendas were encourage to discuss these and as usual there were plenty of networking chances.
Here is the link to the conference site
http://www.seda.ac.uk/index.php?p=14_2&e=447&x=1
This session focused on using Lego within the postgraduate certificate programme on the learning and teaching module. Students on this used to keep a portfolio and discuss their journey but many found this reflection difficult and making their journey clear. The team decided that using Lego might be better but recognised that they also needed to use this in the module so people were used to this. Activities in the module therefore do give students a chance to use this medium for other activities and one of those we did in the session. We had to represent our self as a learner using Lego which produced some interesting discussion around colour, direction and control over learning.
On the programme the assessment still enables students to use the portfolio for their reflections but the summative assessment focuses around the use of a Lego model that students’ produce and a dialogue. On the assessment day students are all given a time to attend and they arrive before and build their model to represent their journey prior to meeting the panel. The panel then discuss the model with the student and this leads to other questions about their development. The panel can then discuss each performance and provide feedback that day to students.
There is a model around this type of learning which is focused around four C’s and includes:
- Connect – reflecting on experiences and learning
- Construct – constructing a model linked to this
- Contemplate – verbalising
- Continue – Reflection
Chrissi had undertaken a study with two cohorts about this assessment and most of the students have been positive about this approach and state “3D allows you to do more” and “you can build something that allows you to go off in other directions”.
The session also included a Skype call with one of the participants who was very keen on this approach and being able to develop a model.
The session started with Norman providing a history of his work with QAA, HEA, Surrey University and some of the projects he had undertaken.
Creativity is both messy and emergent. Development is intentional movement towards something different that has potential to be better than what currently exists or to add value to what exists.
There is a developmental spectrum:
- Doing the right things
- Doing things right
- Doing things better
- Stopping doing things
Creativity is about bringing ideas into practice such as the production of a novel or useful ideas but it must be appropriate to the goal in hand. The process of creativity is imagine, develop, make and produce.
There has been some recent research with educational developers who believe that creativity is using imagination, having idea which are new to you, changing understanding, having ideas that are new to the context, seeing situations from different perspectives and the ability to combine new ideas in interesting and meaningful ways. They also said most people can develop creativity if they are given the opportunity and circumstances.
Amabile T (1983) developed a three construct which is creative thinking, motivation and context and then when these are all in place creativity emerges.
Kaufman & Berghetto (2009)developed a four C model
- Mini C – changes in our understanding
- Little C – everyday creative thoughts and actions in every aspect of our lives
- Medium C – creative acts of experts
- Big C – eminent creativity
Some of the qualities, skills, capabilities, knowledge, attitudes and values enabling creativity include optimism, passion, curiosity, tenacity, trust, reflection, courage, sense of humour, visioning, design, ideas, collaboration and improvisation.
Factors that inhibit creativity include fear, lack of confidence, stress, lack of autonomy, apathy, lack of engagement, managers who don’t get it, KPI’s and meetings without meaning.
You need to think it’s my idea and if I don’t try it I will never know.
For more information about Norman’s work and to see this presentation and papers follow this link http://www.normanjackson.co.uk/seda.html
The presenter had been doing this for more than a year to engage staff in development when they felt they had no time.
It works by setting a one or two week plan of activities everyday but they are only 10 – 30 minutes in length and some are group ones. It works because it is short, flexible, just in time learning that uses communities of practice.
To put it into practice you need to choose a topic to teach and then think about 2 – 3 tasks that you can get staff to undertake. There are issues around keeping people engaged in all the days and it can be labour intensive for the lecturer because you have to engage everyday and different times as well hence the focus on one or two weeks.
To increase engagement you can prime participants with an e-mail 5 days before they start and one on the day this starts but very early in the day. You need to remind them they signed up and that you have spent time but that they have agreed to participant in some group stuff as well.
This session was focused on the use of dialogue sheets for conversation. The team spoke about using dialogue sheets to facilitate all speaking when working together as one group on a topic and, a way of all voices being heard. These sheets in the first instance have been used in the middle of a table to prompt discussion and to record the conversation. The sheets can be designed in a number of ways but need to have prompts on them. These can include quotes from students, staff, research and literature or pictures. These sheets can be developed in publisher or powerpoint.
The team also discussed how through the use of these in various ways they had developed alternative approaches to their use with single sheets of A4 with prompts on that students could re-order and then write on a blank sheet in the middle with the prompts around them.
The idea is to have groups of 6 – 8 people around each and to use a main question with 5 – 6 prompts for this. The prompts should be numbered unless you are permitting students to re-order these when single sheets. The person sat near 1 starts by reading this to the others and then writing down the conversations. This then moves to 2, 3 etc with the person nearest the number undertaking the lead for that point.
This activity is a good way to get high level engagement and participation, it is stimulating, thought-provoking and interesting, all have a voice, it makes a change from powerpoint, it’s fun, good for reluctant/shy people, helps explore research in depth, and no one feels judged.
