Working Towards a More Inclusive Reading List within the Context of Decolonisation

Next week I'm looking forward to delivering a session on inclusive reading lists at the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education’s Quality Insights Conference. This is taking place fully online on 23 and 24 February so please do check out the full programme and book a place to join us! The details of my lightning talk session are below, drawing on similar themes from the recent event I presented at that focused on Decolonising the University within and Beyond the Curriculum.

This lightning talk will present visual slides to share key learning and areas for reflection with respect to auditing a reading list within the context of decolonisation. This evaluation was inspired by good practice across the sector to develop more inclusive curricula and, particularly, to diversify reading lists that will better support learning and reflect our diverse student body. The evaluation of the resources for the initial module on a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education aimed to: A) evaluate how to make the reading list more inclusive of diverse authors and perspectives, and B) model good practice so that students on the module (who are also staff teaching across the university) may conduct similar work in the future. The evaluation analysis focused on ethnicity, gender, and national origin of authors. This brief presentation shares initial findings from the audit of the 2021 resources for the module (inherited from colleagues) as well as enhancements made in advance of the module running in autumn 2022. It shares reflections on the findings and also offers a provocation for others who may seek to conduct similar work in future.

By the end of this session, delegates will have reflected on the power of the resources we use in learning and teaching, and the importance of making the curriculum more inclusive. After seeing one approach to auditing a resource list and efforts to enhance it, delegates will have learnt about key findings and challenges from this evaluation.

 

ECER 2018 - Educational Inclusion

The European Conference of Educational Research (ECER) was hosted this year in the beautiful town of Bolzano, Italy in the Dolomites at the crossroads between Italian, Austrian, and Swiss borders. The Free University of Bozen-Bolzano hosted us, and I was fascinated to learn that their degree programmes are all trilingual. This set the stage for gathering education researchers from all over the world.

At such a big conference with 33 parallel sessions running at the same time, of course each participant navigates their own course through the conference proceedings and events. In this post, I attempt to summarise some of the take-aways throughout my conference journey this week.

Space to Reflect, Learn, and Make New Connections

I enjoyed attending the presentation by Labake Fakunle and Joceline Alla-Mensah sharing Universas21-funded work looking at the benefits and barriers of doctoral students’ engagement at networking events and conferences. Their participants cited financial barriers and time constraints as challenges, but they also saw great value in networking at conferences. This was certainly the case for me in attending ECER and, thanks to the Moray House Graduate School’s financial support and my ability to take a week of annual leave from my work, I was supported to attend ECER. As with the AERA and JURE conferences, I found great benefits to taking the time to learn about a wide variety of educational research, reflect on and share my own work, and connect with individuals researching similar topics. This was particularly the case at the Universitas21 FINE networking event (which I will write about separately soon) and the ECER networking events in the town plaza and at the Mareccio Castle which was a fabulous experience.

Inclusion through Sharing Values

There were some fascinating keynote talks and symposia that highlighted and problematised the conference theme of inclusion. Brahm Norwich emphasised how inclusion is respectful to all participants or partners by valuing the contributions of all, but he also noted that inclusion has become a popularised term in the current society. For example, co-researching has become a popular method to include participants’ voices more actively in research design and direction. Kyriaki Messiou provided some rich examples of including children’s voices actively in school improvement projects and research when they draw ‘power maps’ of where decision-makers are located within the school, take photos of where they do and do not feel safe to improve the learning environment, and write a ‘message in a bottle’ to share their wish list of other improvements. Messiou shared how inclusive research that challenges traditional power dynamics can empower all participants, and I similarly found the experience extremely valuable when co-researching with undergraduate students. 

Both Messiou and, in his keynote, Thomas Popkewitz, highlighted that inclusion represents our values. Although power dynamics are always present, they are made more transparent in some ways by showing how decisions are made and creating spaces for shared ownership (as in benefits of co-creation of the curriculum). At the same time, though, including sometimes may mean excluding others who don’t share our values and we need to be attentive to this exclusion. This made me reflect on how whether co-creation practitioners may exclude traditionalists when challenging the status quo of the traditional university hierarchies, processes, and structures.

Inclusion through Creativity and Play

In some cases, inclusion can mean inviting other individuals into existing spaces to contribute to decision-making. For example, Manuela Raposo-Rivas and Kyriaki Messiou each showed in different research in the UK and Spain how children can be invited into adult spaces to contribute to decision-making and the learning of both new and experienced teachers. Furthermore, Demet Lukuslu showed in the Partispace project how youth were invited into adult-led spaces in youth councils in Turkey. While these forms of inclusion are positive, they are operating within existing structures.

Because of my interest in creativity and play in teaching outside the box, I enjoyed learning about other examples at ECER of creating new, creative spaces for inclusion. For example, Bernadette Mercieca showed how the framework of well-known children’s literature such as Alice in Wonderland, the Wizard of Oz, or Little Red Riding Hood could be used as metaphors in a doctoral thesis to make concepts more accessible or understood in different ways as they resonate with readers. I was fascinated by this idea! In a session on gamification, Lina Higueras-Rodriguez and Esra Demiray each shared interesting presentations about gamification of learning to promote new spaces for engagement. These presentations led to a fascinating discussion about how ‘game’ and ‘play’ are two distinct concepts in English but, in Spanish, one word is used for both. We discussed the distinctions, and what we felt were playful methodologies versus traditional methodologies which that promote engagement. There are interesting connections to be made between play, gamification, and engagement in learning.

Inclusion through Teaching Excellence

I enjoyed hearing a number of papers on teaching excellence. For example, Sofia Chanda-Gool presented on university teachers in England fostering learning environments that promote a wellbeing framework; she found that these inclusive environments increase students’ sense of belonging, as well as their confidence to engage in groupwork and take risks in learning. Similarly, Mercedes Inda-Caro presented on Spanish teachers’ ‘activating teaching’ methods that develop learning environments that foster student engagement. Salvador Reyes-de Cozar also presented on the importance of counselling and student support, and the need for teachers to recognise students who are struggling and to provide support. Each of these three research presentations had similar findings to my own research into student perceptions of excellence in teaching and student support.

Thinking back on Thomas Popkewitz’s fascinating keynote presentation, he suggested that curriculum outcomes reflect individuals’ hopes and what we want students to become in our society. He argued that educational work and research are based on these aims and values, even when purporting to be objective. I reflected on the many different stakeholders in education and their various perceptions of teaching excellence. 

However, throughout the massive conference programme of 3,000 presentations centred around the theme of inclusion, it was striking that seeing students as partners and/or working with them to co-create the curriculum within secondary and higher education was almost non-existent. For me, this speaks to the need for university teachers and researchers to not only listen to students’ feedback and use their data in research, but to become more inclusive by working with students as collaborators. After all, if partnerships with children are successful, secondary and undergraduate students are more than capable! Perhaps the bigger question is whether academics are willing? Hopefully we can have some blue-sky thinking.

Forum for International Networking in Education (FINE)

It was a fantastic experience to attend the Forum for International Networking in Education (FINE) meeting and events around the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference in New York a few weeks ago, representing Moray House School of Education at the University of Edinburgh. I attended the FINE Forum as well as their networking events and some of their events in partnership with the AERA Graduate Student Council such as the Human Library Panel Session: Conversations on Global and Local Educational Topics. It was an extremely valuable experience for networking, hearing interesting talks, and also gaining helpful tips to enhance the PhD experience.

Several themes emerged throughout the FINE discussions, including the following tips which were shared with me which I hope to pass on to you here!

Depth, breadth, and interdisciplinarity

It was highly recommended by more senior academics that early career researchers should have not just breadth but also depth in your work and, specifically, 'programmatic research' that builds coherently and extends on previous work. Furthermore, reading outside of your subject area, engaging in interdisciplinary work, and taking risks by being open to different opportunities and interdisciplinary work was highly emphasised. For instance, Associate Professor Susan Bridges (Assistant Dean for Curriculum Innovation, University of Hong Kong) spoke about the value of making career choices based on what opportunities are most exciting or fun, and she described how sometimes unexpected experiences or roles can have a massive, positive impact on your career and satisfaction of working in academia. Go on – be bold and creative even if it may seem like a non-traditional choice or a risk. (My previous post on teaching outside of the box seems relevant here, as well as the Fearless Girl statue facing the bull at Wall Street which I saw during my visit.)

Although the AERA conference is focused on current American educational research and an overwhelmingly American audience, it was refreshing that the FINE meetings connected colleagues from around the world based at Universitas21 institutions. The FINE sessions emphasised seeing internationalisation as an opportunity and not an imposition, as well as seeing the power of interdisciplinary work across borders. Especially for those of us who are engaging in research on more controversial topics that unpick power dynamics (I'm thinking here about my work on challenging the status quo to embed partnership), the mentors at the FINE meetings encouraged early career researchers to be true to why we joined the academy. In this sense, networking and building relationships with colleagues was seen as a powerful way to humanise us and so that others may be more receptive to the controversial aspects of our work.

Networking and collegiality: draw from the power of groups

The FINE events, jointly run conference sessions with the AERA Graduate Students’ Council, and the breakfast and reception events were great opportunities for networking with other PhD students from around the world as well as more experienced colleagues. I really enjoyed making new connections with others from the University of Auckland, University of British Columbia, University of Connecticut, and Nottingham University as well as reconnecting with a colleague from Hong Kong University who I previously met at the JURE EARLI conference last summer (see a photo of us at AERA below)!

While attending conferences, presenting, and publishing your work, it was highly recommended to contribute to and learn from the collegiality of academia. This includes valuing the feedback from peer reviewers and colleagues to help you improve your work. I have found the peer review process immensely helpful for my own work. This also includes engaging in and drawing on the communities within our departments. While it was helpful hearing about how other PhD students work with their supervisors on research, have active communities where senior academics and also early career researchers mentor PhD students, it made me think that Moray House was missing a trick here and could do much more to promote a sense of community which appears to occur in other education schools. For example, some schools hold 'PhD Days' where all in a cohort would present a poster or a three-minute-thesis-style talk to their colleagues and receive feedback. I think this would be an extremely valuable exercise which would help our community be more inclusive and supportive while letting us get to know others' research and any synergies with our own.

Crafting your teaching identity

During the FINE sessions, Gladis Kersaint (Dean of Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut) emphasised the importance of teaching in a scholar’s career. She noted that the focus tends to be on one’s research identity rather than teaching (which was a theme re-emerging throughout FINE events and my own research which I hope to write about more in the future). However, it is important to gain teaching experience (even if guest lecturing or creatively teaching in other areas) and to reflect on your teaching identity. 

Later in the FINE meetings we learnt more from Alison Milner and Jennifer Tatebe (FINE Leadership Team Members) about how to articulate our teaching philosophy well to potential employers. They emphasised that this is a self-reflective portrait of teaching beliefs that demonstrates your key teaching experience and shows a strong understanding of your students, and can draw on Chism's (1998) five components of the teaching philosophy. It is not only important for recruiters but also for your own professional development. It should illustrate a few key teaching moments that illustrate your teaching philosophy, show synergies with your research, and – especially if being submitted with a job application – draw out synergies with the institution’s values and priorities.

Research for meaningful impact

Everyone focused on the importance of publishing to advance your career in academia and share your work. However, it is also important to have meaningful impact by sharing research beyond academia by informing the public of your research and its implications. This includes sharing your work on Twitter, blogs such as this one, or newspapers. An example was that, for every journal article you publish, you should either write a blog post or opinion editorial piece to share your work more broadly.

Ways to ‘do it all’ – co-creation of research

Both Marc Beauchamp (Associate Dean of Research, University of British Columbia ) and Andy Noyes (Head of School of Education, University of Nottingham) shared insightful reflections about engaging in co-creation of research with students. Marc spoke about ‘teaching like a rockstar’, by which he meant excellent student-centred teaching where faculty and tutors can work in partnership with undergraduate students to mentor them and involve them in their research (this sounds like other great examples that I saw in my research on student perceptions of teaching excellence). 

Andy also emphasised ‘teaching like a troublemaker’ and not just focusing on efficient, ‘what works’ teaching methods since it is important to develop students’ criticality. He also suggested that one way of doing this is to not see a teaching/research dichotomy but to do your research through your teaching by involving students (see my reflections on doing that through co-researching co-creation of the curriculum). 

We also discussed how there has been so little resolution in the teaching/research dichotomy in the last few generations. Perhaps co-creation of the curriculum is a solution by involving students more in our teaching decision-making and in our research? Rowena Arshad (Head of Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh) spoke powerfully about the importance of knowing and trusting our students, and the opportunities that co-creation of the curriculum can present.

Concluding remarks

The FINE forum and events surrounding the AERA conference provided valuable panel discussions, networking opportunities, and food for thought. It was great, too, to be part of the FINE collaborations with the AREA Graduate Students’ Council and to have the opportunity to attend such a wide range of other conference sessions at AERA (more to come on this soon on my blog). I really enjoyed hearing tips from senior academics, and it is good to end on their wise suggestion to own the privilege but also the responsibilities that come from being part of academia, and to enjoy the journey as an early career researcher by exploring and maintaining the feelings of excitement resonating with why we originally started our PhDs.

Our Moray House School of Education team at FINE 2018

Connecting with Other Junior Researchers - JURE

This week I have enjoyed the fantastic opportunity to participate in the JURE conference for Junior Researchers of EARLI (European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction) in Tampere, Finland! It was a great experience to meet, network with, and learn from PhD colleagues in education from all across the world whilst also being the only student at the conference representing the University of Edinburgh.

JURE provided a great programme of academic and social activities to help early career researchers get to know each other and exchange ideas. On Saturday, I enjoyed taking part in the JURE walking tour of Tampere, starting at the City Hall, progressing through the historic market, and passing local Schools. It was really interesting to hear about the Finnish outdoor nurseries where children stay outdoors all day long, as well as the early language-learning at primary schools. The tour then headed up the nearby hill through a beautiful forest to the highest part of the city where you can see views over the two lakes (on either side of the city) and also enjoy the quaint café which is known for the best doughnuts in the city. They were indeed delicious! We finished the day at a local restaurant later in the evening where it was great to meet others who had been arriving throughout the day ahead of the conference.

After many months of preparations for JURE from submitting my abstract last autumn, my article last winter, and my peer review last spring, it was fantastic to present my paper during a higher education strand of sessions. I introduced models of student/staff partnerships and my emerging model of the variables of co-creation of the curriculum, as well as my initial findings of staff and students’ perceptions of the benefits of participating in co-creation of the curriculum projects at Scottish universities. The paper was well received, with interesting questions to delve more into the nature of the co-creation projects, selection of student participants, how ‘success’ was measured, the nature of student/staff dialogue, and any correlations with student achievement. Presenting also led to great conversations with a PhD student from Spain who researches co-creation of grading rubrics in universities and with a student from Canada who wants to start similar research on co-creation of the curriculum.

Throughout the conference, I really enjoyed participating in a variety of sessions. The roundtable discussions were a particularly interesting format, with PhD students presenting only a five-minute overview of their project plans and leading a discussion to receive feedback from others and brainstorm solutions to any issues they were wrestling with. I really liked this more interactive format that promoted collaboration amongst early career researchers. I feel that other conferences and also University departments could benefit from offering such sessions to promote more discussion and shared problem-solving amongst new researchers to help them with planning their research design or wrestling with difficult questions during the analysis.

The other presentations which most interested me focused on student motivation, agency, critical thinking skills, and academic achievement. A particularly interesting presentation was testing various flipped classroom models to promote students’ systematic creativity, inventive thinking, and satisfaction with a Finnish engineering course. The researcher found that the transition to blended learning can be difficult for both students and staff members, since the increased or different workload model can negatively affect attitudes and participation. Another very interesting presentation was on different online learning designs and how they affect different levels of student engagement, satisfaction, and pass rates; unfortunately, there were no conclusive results from the analysis of the fifty-five different learning designs. It seemed that the majority of participants were conducting quantitative, positivist studies into the psychology of education, and I was surprised how few other participants used qualitative methods or other research methodologies. Since the UK model of PhD study focuses on conducting research and writing one, cumulative thesis, I was also surprised that the majority of other participants (mostly PhD students from continental European or Scandinavian countries) were participating in a PhD by publication model.

Learning how much other PhD colleagues were publishing, I was especially motivated to participate in the Writing for International Scholarly Journals workshop at the conference which was led by an editor in chief and a representative from a large publisher. It was extremely beneficial that they provided so many tangible tips for writing strong journal articles that will be accepted into good journals, and they were also extremely accessible by answering many questions about the process. I also participated in an introduction to meta-analysis workshop on how to conduct statistical analysis of a large collection of results from individual studies – I was not familiar with this and it was a good opportunity to push myself to learn about this new area at JURE whilst there was the opportunity.

I was thrilled to participate in the JURE conference, meet other junior researchers from around the world, present my research, and learn more about the Finnish culture and education system which is world-renounced. It was beneficial to learn from the various presentations, workshops, and discussions over the past few days to help me reflect more on my PhD student journey, and it was wonderful to be supported by the Principal’s Go Abroad Fund from the University of Edinburgh to support me in this great opportunity. It was an educational trip but also fun to explore Tampere and Helsinki, as well as the Finnish food!

Teaching Award Research: What does Teaching Excellence Look Like to Students?

This work was later published in a research article in Teaching in Higher Education - learn more.

At Edinburgh University Students’ Association, I am proud to coordinate the longest-running student-led Teaching Awards in the UK. These Teaching Awards are an extremely valuable part of the Students’ Association’s work in partnership with the University of Edinburgh to reinforce our positive partnership. I work with the Students’ Association Marketing team and School Offices to promote the Teaching Awards, normally receiving 2,000 - 3,000 student nominations annually for teachers, tutors, supervisors and support staff. I also organise the prestigious awards ceremony for shortlisted university staff each year. In addition, my team sends each of the University’s twenty Schools a report including a list of all nominees and the anonymised student nomination comments for their School. However, staff did not previously have the time to engage well with these long reports.

Therefore, I initiated a research project analysing the extensive qualitative data collected through the student-led Teaching Awards nominations in order to understand student perceptions of excellence in teaching and student support. After gaining a small grant from the University of Edinburgh Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme (PTAS), I hired a postgraduate student as a research assistant who analysed all of the 2,926 Teaching Awards nominations collected during the 2014-15 academic year. Four key themes were identified:  1) concerted, visible effort; 2) charisma, personality and engaging teaching;   3) breaking down student-teacher barriers and fostering student engagement; 4) consistency, predictability and stability of support.

The Research Assistant, Vice-President Academic Affairs, and I worked together to produce and disseminate the research report 'What Does Good Teaching Look Like to Students?', which was launched on 1 December 2016 and is publicly available on our website. The report discusses the nuances of the four key themes that were identified in the research, and it shares examples of best practice activities digestible way to highlight practices that surfaced in the close reading of the students’ Teaching Awards nominations. By sharing research findings in a digestible way, it is hoped that staff will incorporate more of these engaging teaching methods and partnership work with students into their work. Especially with the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and a stronger reliance on quantitative data to demonstrate teaching excellence, this initiative shows the importance of understanding the nuances within the vast qualitative data from student-led Teaching Awards to identify student perceptions of teaching excellence and consequently enhance the student experience.

Student-led Teaching Awards generally demonstrate the partnership between Edinburgh University Students’ Association and the University of Edinburgh to recognise and reward excellent teaching and student support. In particular, this project demonstrated a strong partnership since the University’s small grant funded the research assistant position and allowed the Students’ Association to progress this work. University staff were keen to learn about the research findings and disseminate the best practices in teaching and student support that we identified through this project.

The project has been extremely well received at the University of Edinburgh and beyond. The report was launched online on 1 December, 2016 and at a launch event attended by 60 University staff. In semesters 1 and 2 of this academic year, we disseminated the research findings in presentations at the Institute for Academic Development’s Course Organiser Network, Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice courses for new academic staff, Moray House Graduate School of Education seminar series, and the University’s Gearing Up conference. This summer, I have shared our work beyond the University at the Quality Assurance Agency Scotland’s Enhancement Themes conference and the Higher Education Academy’s annual conference.

It has been exciting to receive a very positive reception to this project, leading to other interesting projects. Within the University of Edinburgh, we have started having more conversations about the Teaching Awards recommendations provided at the end of the report concerning academic community for students and staff, including students as partners in pedagogical discussions, being aware of staff workload and reasonable expectations for them, support for postgraduate tutors and personal tutors, and implications of potential student biases in nominating women staff and staff from diverse backgrounds. Furthermore, I am now involved in supporting another PTAS project led by the Medical School on best practices of dialogue and presentation of feedback to students, extending our previous project and analysing samples of anonymised feedback given by markers whom students have recognised for their outstanding feedback.

Beyond Edinburgh University Students’ Association, it is also exciting to see how many other student unions which already run student-led Teaching Awards are interested in conducting similar research projects to analyse the themes within teaching and student support highlighted by students in their nomination comments. In particular, colleagues at the University of Stirling Students’ Union and at the Manchester Met Students’ Union look like they will be taking forward similar projects this year. It is great that there is interest in conducting similar qualitative research like ours. We do recognise that this can be very time-intensive and resource-intensive, and we don’t have the capacity to analyse the trends across all of each year’s nomination comments. However, we have been able to use the themes identified from the research in the nomination forms to give students the opportunity to self-code up to three key reasons why they are submitting their nomination for the best teachers at the University. It has been really helpful having this additional, quantitative follow-up data. We hope other unions that might not have the capacity to do a full, qualitative analysis may at least be able to take more of this light-touch approach.

This research project and its dissemination have been a creative, enjoyable way for me to go beyond the provision of the Teaching Awards project to support learning and teaching by analysing and sharing the thematic trends in the nomination comments by understanding student perceptions of how they learn best and how they evaluate effective teaching. This research helped me to better understand and respect individual learners’ stories about the obstacles and struggles that they have personally overcome during their academic study with the support of staff, as well as the themes arising from the data from our diverse student bodies and learning communities across the university.

I have especially enjoyed that the Teaching Awards research project has connected my role at the students’ association with my PhD research into teaching excellence and innovative practices of student engagement, including student/staff partnerships. It has helped me to take an evidence-informed approach by engaging more with higher education theory, literature, and practices around teaching excellence as I have shared the work widely across the University of Edinburgh and at other conferences. I also worked to engage deeply with the teaching excellence literature when writing an academic journal article on this research which I submitted for review in May 2017, and I hope it can be published in due course. Stay tuned!

By conducting these presentations and in particularly by facilitating workshops (for instance my presentation and workshop slides from the HEA conference) that help participants (and myself) explore further the student perceptions of teaching excellence, I have been able to look at the wider implications of this research. Student welfare, struggles with ill mental health, and resilience are some interesting areas that have been raised by this research. However, the resulting issues of sometimes time-consuming student support have knock-on effects for staff members’ welfare and what students should reasonably expect from staff. The workshop that I facilitated at the HEA conference in particular resulted in fascinating discussions about students’ expectations, and how they would reasonably change between Year 1 and Year 4, as well as subsequent postgraduate study at university. It would be interesting to look closer at the data to see if there are any thematic trends in student perceptions of teaching excellence stemming from different demographics such as year of study, subject of study, and home/international students. This project generally has been very exciting and interesting intellectually to engage more with staff by sharing the research, and hopefully it will have a positive implication on quality enhancement by sharing tangible teaching and student practices that students have recognised, and rewarded.

This later work was published in a research article in Teaching in Higher Education.

Reflections on the 2017 Enhancement Themes Conference

This week Quality Assurance Agency Scotland is running its Enhancement Themes conference, which is a great opportunity to meet staff and student union colleagues from across the Scottish sector and also international visitors from farther afield. I have attended the conference the last two years (see my reflections on last year's conference) and this year have only been able to attend the first two days of the conference but wanted to share my reflections on the presentations and discussions thus far.

The conference got off to a great start with a keynote address by Peter Felten from Elon University who I know through his great work on student/staff partnerships in developing the curriculum as well as his related work on transformational learning and student success in university. Peter warned against moves from the private sector to ‘unbundle’ higher education to focus solely on developing students’ competencies and skills in a consumer-focused, marketised manner. He highlighted how underserved students fare worst in unbundled, unstructured education (and succeed with structure and community and clear pathways to goals) so those with high social capital are more likely to succeed in an unbundled higher education environment. Peter then focused on his recent work on The Undergraduate Experience which focuses on six key areas: learning, relationships, expectations, alignment, improvement/enhancement, and leadership. By working in partnership with students to motivate them to put in meaningful time and effort on their studies, show them staff have confidence in their abilities, and allow students to practice in a safe community, students will learn how to navigate the complex world we live in today. Peter’s talk inspired the audience and also offered tangible and practical examples to help educators help students in active learning within vibrant academic communities. He used a great analogy of how a relay race team may have fantastic individual competitors, but they may lose the race because of their failure to pass off the baton between themselves; similarly, in higher education we can have silos of excellent practice but the key to success is the integration and coherence of the student experience. I really enjoyed Peter’s keynote, and one of the best parallel sessions was the discussion with Peter of the themes he had raised and the strategies to overcome challenges that we face in different higher education institutions to embed a culture of student/staff partnerships, whether it be through having lunch with students, hiring students as our research assistants, or normalizing office hours in rocking chairs in common areas.

As in other recent years at the Enhancement Themes Conference, it was a great time to learn about innovative initiatives to help students transition into, through, or out of their degree. It was great to hear about Edinburgh Napier Students’ Association’s dissertation conference of talks and workshops for fourth years before starting their dissertation, as well as a University of Glasgow research conference for fourth-year students to present their dissertation work. This gave me lots of food for thought when thinking about developing a Rep Conference for current or previous student representatives to share their work and past successes as well as talks and workshops to help Reps develop their skills and become more motivated in their role.

I also enjoyed learning about Glasgow School of Art’s interactive game ‘How to Fail Your Research Degree’ to help postgrad students think through all of the pieces of their research degree. It was great to reflect on how I could turn something like our Class Rep training into an interactive game following this model to help Class Reps with experiential learning, problem-solving, and understanding the dependencies between different stakeholders in the student representation system. This may also be a fun way to make training more interesting, practical, and rewarding for Reps to work through scenarios and develop confidence in dealing with them, but it could take quite some time to develop (especially if it were to be online!).

I really enjoyed presenting at the conference as well. I tried out the petcha kutcha format with my colleague to present on Measuring Impact in Student Representation: Incentives, Recognition, and Reward. It was a very quick six minutes flying through twenty slides (with only twenty seconds each), but we were able to summarise and share our work on HEAR recognition, Open Badges, the Edinburgh Award for Representing Students, and the Impact Awards for student leaders. By moving to a multi-faceted reward and recognition structure which focuses on the Reps’ active engagement with the role, we could share our work at the Students’ Association to incentivise students towards recording and sharing their impact in the role, rather than simply rewarding them simply for signing up. I was also able to present on the Teaching Awards research project ‘What Does Good Teaching Look Like to Students?’ (see the full report) which was fantastic to share in this venue. The research highlights the themes of student perceptions of excellent teaching and student support. Since we have shared the work quite a lot across the University of Edinburgh, it was great to share it with colleagues across the sector and to receive the feedback ‘Great work… Student-defined excellence is absolutely leading the conversation in Scotland’ showing how students and Students’ Associations have so much to contribute to discussions around teaching excellence.  

Although it was not a particular focus of the conference, I enjoyed the discussions in sessions and on the twitter wall which emerged around students as partners. Peter Felten suggested that staff can have more conversations about the qualities of the best students they have taught, Megan Brown highlighted how many staff nominate student leaders in the Impact Awards, and Matt Adie and Amy Eberlin highlighted (like I did in my talk) the importance of students recognizing excellent staff. Mushtak Al-Atabi emphasised the importance of seeing others not as ‘the other’ but as a resource and expressing gratitude for others (which is correlated with happiness). He argued that this will help us to work together with emotional intelligence and cognitive intelligence to build bridges and solve some of the massive global challenges we’re facing today. Dragan Gasevic discussed digital skill development and awareness for both students and staff, and how learning analytics data can help both students and staff. It can help students achieve their potential and staff to improve their teaching practices to better reach and engage students, and how it is important to involve different stakeholders in these discussions (including students!). NUS Scotland President Vonnie Sandlan urged university staff to work with their student representatives and student unions to improve the student experience. It was also great to hear Sally Mapstone mention an example of students and staff working together in a liberation of the curriculum project and say: ‘We ask our students to go out of their comfort zones and to challenge themselves, and we must ask ourselves [as staff] to do the same.’ That was really powerful for me to hear, and is key to the positive, open mindset of working with students as partners.

The Enhancement Themes international conference is always big and rapid-fire, with large sessions and then six parallel breakout sessions running at the same time. Today discussions will focus on wrapping up the theme of transitions and announcing the next Enhancement Theme, but I had wished that there had been fewer keynote addresses and more time for discussion-based sessions or workshops to reflect on what we as a sector have learnt from the theme of transitions, take stock of how far we’ve come in the last three years, and also not beat around the bush about what other work there is yet to do in this area. The Twitter discussions also highlighted some bubbling areas of contention or worry, such as how much time enhancement activities and partnership work takes both staff and students albeit to great success in the end. There were other questions around what expectations are for student engagement (engagement for giving feedback bribed by pizza for example, versus reciprocal partnership work throughout a project and a transparent sharing of outcomes). Someone also tweeted how student/staff partnership is not a new concept and we’ve been talking about it in Scotland for many years, yet there still seem to be barriers in fully embedding it in learning and teaching (beyond involvement of Sabbatical Officers). I hope my PhD research will help to understand the benefits and challenges of partnership work in co-creation of the curriculum, but it would have been a great time to discuss some of these deeper issues at this conference to wrap up the theme of transitions. That said, it was a very enjoyable conference to network, celebrate some of the great working taking place across the sector, and provide some food for thought.

sparqs Conference 2017

Yesterday I participated in the Student Partnerships in Quality Scotland (sparqs) conference, which was a great day of meeting students and staff to hear about their work in student engagement, particularly in quality assurance and enhancement processes. I had previously attended the sparqs 2015 conference, and I had loved the focus on co-creation of the curriculum and student/staff partnerships during fascinating talks and innovative workshops. Two of these workshops were particularly memorable for me to this day, one led by University of Lincoln where we used Legos to build collaborative environments for partnership work. The second was led by South Lanarkshire College, New College Lanarkshire, and Glasgow Caledonian University where we used helium balloons and weights to symbolise how to overcome challenges of student delivery of staff development sessions in practice. These were particularly fun workshops, and they helped me learn about great partnership work taking place across the UK.

This year’s sparqs conference had a really interesting international dimension. Shirley-Anne Somerville MSP kicked off the day with an interesting speech on how Scotland leads the way internationally in including students in quality processes, and it was good to hear her speak about how student/staff partnerships in Scottish universities and colleges are key to the wider success of the country. This was followed by Adam Gajek, Executive Committee Member of the European Students’ Union. It was helpful to hear him speak about how student engagement in quality enhancement processes helps democratise education within universities and colleges (which should model democracy for the wider society), and it also helps students to develop the skills and attributes to excel as active citizens in democratic societies. These are also themes that are arising in my research on the effect of co-creation of the curriculum in the Scottish higher education sector, so it was great to see these synergies. Adam also spoke about the threats to democracy in higher and further education as being the commercialisation of education and also students’ lack of participation. In my research on student engagement, it is also increasingly clear that not only students have the responsibility to engage but also university staff and university policies more widely need to take responsibility for facilitating students’ participation and engagement.

In the afternoon of the conference, it was fantastic presenting with two students who have been contributing to my research as Student Consultants. We presented the findings from our student focus groups to show Class Reps’ perceptions of the benefits and challenges of engaging in co-creation of the curriculum, as well as enablers to facilitate partnership practices more widely in universities. We also reflected on our own experience of co-producing research together (see my additional reflections in my previous post). They did a fantastic job with the presentation, and it was a great experience for us all working together on this research so presenting it was a great culmination of our project.

See a copy of our presentation of 'Co-Creation of Research on Co-Creation of the Curriculum'.

Our presentation was followed by two other great presentations from the University of Glasgow about co-creation and student/staff partnerships. The first highlighted a great project in which students co-created chemistry lab films to help future students prepare for labs and better understand how to complete laboratory procedures. These students were adding what they felt was missing from the curriculum and increasing other students’ confidence before going into the labs. It was great to see the positive impact of this project with the next year’s cohort receiving higher average marks (and especially seeing how the lowest mark jumped from 41% to 61%!). Not only did the co-creation experience help other students, but it was wonderful to see how the project helped the student co-creators to develop skills including teamwork, communication, public speaking, creativity, critical thinking, and digital skills. I was very impressed by their presentation, and it was also great to hear about the Press Start student-led journal allowing students across disciplines to be involved in writing, reviewing, editing, and publishing their work about gaming studies. I hope more students interested in gaming are able to get involved in the future so this project continues to grow.

In the last conference session, I really enjoyed going to the session on international perspectives on student engagement and quality assurance. Especially since I had studied abroad as an undergrad at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, it was interesting to learn about their different tertiary and higher education sector and the challenges they faced including the how policies had reduced the number of student representatives and their inclusion on committees, the strong consumer model of education, and how recently membership of student unions had become voluntary and weakened the ability of student unions to make an impact. I hope that student representation can overcome these challenges to improve engagement with quality processes in New Zealand in the future. It was also interesting hearing more about the EU-funded project Enhancing Student Participation in Quality Assurance (ESPAQ) in Armenia, especially since I am really looking forward to visiting Armenia in a few weeks to contribute to this project! I’m looking forward to sharing more about this experience in the coming weeks.

The 2017 sparqs conference was a really interesting and varied one, and it was great to conclude it with the sparqs awards. I was delighted that our Teaching Awards research project on student perceptions of teaching excellence was shortlisted for the award recognising the best Scottish partnership initiative between a University and a Students’ Association. Sadly, we did not win but it was fantastic that Edinburgh University’s Project Myopia was runner-up for the best student-led project to promote equality and diversity! Well done to them – it was fantastic to see these students’ co-creation of the curriculum project being recognised for its impact in liberating and diversifying the curriculum.