Transcript Student Engagement

Student Engagement:
defining, opining, refining
Kate Little
Student Engagement and Partnership Consultant
Proud Manchester Law grad ‘09
@katelittle
In this session…
What is Student Engagement and why are we
talking about it?
Moving from consultation to partnership, and
rejecting alternative narratives
What does engaging teaching look like to
students?
Student engagement in the UK
• Lots of work on student engagement in learning, but also
a focus on student voice embedded in processes and
structures and the idea of students as partners.
• Student engagement practices are not new …but student
engagement as a policy priority is relatively recent.
• Moving beyond systems …and instead describing
concepts e.g. potential of individuals to influence
their environment.
So what is Student Engagement?
Many articles, conference papers and chapters on
student engagement do not contain an explicit
definition of engagement, making the (erroneous)
assumption that their understanding is a shared,
universal one.
(Trowler, 2010, 17)
Student engagement literature
Three types of engagement:
• In students’ own learning
• Rooted in identity
• In structures and processes
Trowler, V. (2010) Student
Engagement Literature
Review. York: The Higher
Education Academy
Student engagement in learning
Engagement in this sense has been proven to
improve outcomes:
• Performance
• Persistence
• Satisfaction
Much work in this area has led to improvements in
teaching and learning practices.
Seven effective practices
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student-staff contact
active learning
prompt feedback
time on task
high expectations
respect for diverse learning styles
co-operation among students
Chickering and Gamson (1987)
No surprises there! But having the evidence base behind them has
really given colleges in America an incentive to drive forward
changes in this area.
How does the QAA Code define it?
The term covers two domains relating to:
– Improving the motivation of students to engage in learning
and to learn independently
(Learning and Teaching Chapter)
– The participation of students in quality enhancement and
quality assurance processes, resulting in the improvement
of their educational experience.
(Student Engagement Chapter)
The UK Quality Code
“Higher education providers take
deliberate steps to engage all students,
individually and collectively, as partners
in the assurance and enhancement of
their educational experience.”
How else is student engagement defined?
• Individual
• Collective
• Governance and decision making
From student engagement to partnership
• The 2010 NUS/HEA Student
Engagement Toolkit framed
partnership as the goal of
student engagement.
• Need to build up to partnership:
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Consultation
Involvement
Participation
Partnership
Why partnership?
Rejecting alternative narratives
Rejecting consumerism
• Student engagement is not happening inside a policy vacuum.
• A narrative of ‘competition’ and ‘choice’ offers students an
inflated perception of their power, when it is in fact limited to
commenting only on what has been sold to them.
• ‘Customer is always right’ devalues the role and expertise of
educators.
Rejecting consumerism
“Regardless of whether students agree with the
values and characteristics of the funding model in
which they sit, they may adopt behaviours we
associate with consumerism unless we offer a new
and compelling way of thinking about learning”
Re-thinking apprenticeship
• Idea that a student attends university
in order to gain mastery in a particular
subject and spends time with experts
in order to do this.
• Advocates might be wary of ‘too much’
student engagement on the basis that
students cannot be expected to know
what they want to learn in advance of
learning it.
Re-thinking apprenticeship
• We don’t necessarily need to wholly reject this approach,
but we do need to reimagine it.
• Students are apprentices in the business of student
engagement.
• Support could come from sources other than academic
staff, particularly the students’ union.
Re-thinking apprenticeship
Students can never be ‘equal partners’ because
they do not have the necessary ‘expertise’ to
engage with academic staff on an equal basis
…is what some people say.
‘Equality’ is as much about respecting each other’s
views as it is about having similar levels of
knowledge.
What is partnership?
•
Can we agree that partnership is about students and staff
working together to improve education?
•
For NUS this is about students having a role in the academic
community with all the rights and responsibilities that this
status affords.
•
And about recognising that students will need to be inducted
into their ‘community of practice’, not just expecting them
automatically to adopt engaged behaviors.
•
The goal is preparing students for active, engaged citizenship –
not a life of passive consumerism.
Students’ unions
• Individual students may engage in various forms in their
learning, but a whole system of partnership must flow
through the students’ union for it to be a true
partnership.
• Mass surveys of students can never replace genuine
student representation, because we all value:
• Genuine dialogue with students
• Representative democracy
• Students shaping the agenda, not reacting to it
• Students’ unions are key partners in the assurance of
quality, and the support for course representatives
Things SUs do to engage students in
shaping their education
 Represent students on decision-making bodies
 Recruit, train and support course reps
 Research students’ experience and interpret student
feedback data
 Organise students to campaign for education change
 Work with their institutions on student experience and
engagement projects
 Support academic societies
Politics of student engagement
Student engagement is political- contested space, no ‘right’
answer, different levels of power, people exerting their influence.
Who describes the
boundaries of the terrain?
What benefits are on offer?
What motivates activity?
What penalties for nonparticipation?
Who sets the agenda?
Who has access?
Who does the engaging and
who is engaged?
Who is excluded?
What do students think?
Partnership is all about responding to the local
context, so it’s important to talk to your own
students about what it means to them.
We do have some national data which shows that
students wish to be more involved in shaping their
course than they currently are.
What do students think?
Q26. How involved do you believe you are in shaping the content,
curriculum or design of your course?
Q27. How involved do you want to be in shaping the content,
curriculum or design of your course?
How involved do you believe you are in shaping the content of your course?
How involved do you want to be?
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28
21
13
14
13
14
10
7
2
1 - Not at
all involved
5
2
2
Base: All answering Section 4 (3179)
3
20
17
4Somewhat
invloved
5
6
7 - Very
invloved
What do students think?
CHERI
Passive vs Active Engagement
Surveys
Student representation
Student led change
What is engaging teaching?
From the mouths of students…
Engaging students with learning
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Interesting and engaging teaching style
Encouraging students
Passion for subject area
Challenges students to succeed
Enthusiastic, about teaching and showing interest in
students’ opinions
Up to date in research
Motivational
Reliable, consistent and trustworthy
Entertaining
Bradley, S., Kirby, E. & Madriaga, M. (2014) What students value as inspirational and transformative
teaching. Innovations in Education and Teaching International (published online 31 Jan 14)
“It is evident from the analysis of student
comments that students want to be taught by
staff who are enthusiastic about their subject,
empathetic and hold a desire for students to
develop their full potential.”
“Students valued being challenged to achieve
their full potential, recognising that this was done
through hard work as demonstrated by their
academic role models.”
Reimagining an authentic curriculum
• Literature on excellent teaching is talking more
and more about inclusive, authentic pedagogies
• NUS’ HE work over the next year is focused on
teaching and learning, and authenticity will play
a big part in this
• Authenticity goes hand in hand with the drive
for student engagement and partnership
Four aspects of authenticity
1. Problems rooted in the real world
2. Learning through inquiry and thinking skills –
metacognition (thinking about your thinking)
3. Discourse among a community of learners,
cooperative and peer learning
4. Empowered through authentic learning –
personal connection, student centred learning
Rule, A.C. (2006). Editorial: The Components of Authentic Learning. Journal
of Authentic Learning, 3:1, 1-10
Why authenticity?
“The higher the level of authentic learning that
focuses on higher levels of thinking, disciplined indepth inquiry, substantive discourse, and
connections to the real world, the higher the level
of all students’ performance regardless of
achievement level or demographic characteristics”
Avery, 1999 and Newman & Associates, 1996, quoted in Rule, A.C. (2006).
Editorial: The Components of Authentic Learning. Journal of Authentic
Learning, 3:1, 1-10
To sum up
• Student engagement is not an activity. It is a way of doing
things.
• Engaging students in their learning through active and
authentic learning has been proven to have positive
outcomes.
• Students want to be more involved than they are currently
in shaping their course – indeed, their institution.
• Students value being challenged, supported and inspired by
their teachers.
• Partnerships between staff and students at all levels are
vital to building a learning community.
Key Resources
NUS Manifesto for Partnership:
http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/campaigns/highereducation/
partnership/a-manifesto-for-partnerships/
What works? Retention research:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/what-works-retention
HEA framework for partnership:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/students_a
s_partners/Framework-for-student-and-staffpartnerships.pdf
The Student Engagement Partnership:
www.tsep.org.uk