Free Webinar: Curriculum Co-Creation and its Potential for Transforming Student Wellbeing

 I'm delighted to have been invited to speak at the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) Scotland webinar on 1 September (10am - 11am BST) on my research. I will outline current principles and understandings of curriculum co-creation, drawing from my research. I will provide practical examples of co-creation practices and outcomes, focusing on themes relating to student mental wellbeing and learning and teaching transformation.

This webinar will explore:

• Key principles of curriculum co-creation
• Practical examples of co-creation practices and outcomes
• The connections between curriculum co-creation and student mental wellbeing

Learn more and register for the free webinar on the QAA Scotland Eventbrite page.

Reimagining the Place of Students in Academic Development

It's been such a pleasure to collaborate with an international team of staff and other PhD students on the journal article 'Reimagining the Place of Students in Academic Development' in the International Journal for Academic Development. I have learnt so much from Peter Felten, Sophia Abbot, Jordan Kirkwood, Aaron Long, Lucy Mercer-Mapstone, and Roselynn Verwood as we developed the ideas and 'reimaginings' of student-staff partnerships in academic development. Use the link above for free access to the article, and see the abstract below:

As calls for student-staff partnership proliferate across higher education, academic development must re-examine and reimagine its relationship to students. Students generally occupy roles with limited agency in academic development. We argue that this needs to change. We propose re-articulating the purpose of academic development toward the creation of conditions that liberate everyone involved in teaching and learning in higher education. We offer four vignettes that illustrate what is possible when students have the opportunity to embrace their essential roles. We conclude by reflecting on the human implications of student agency in academic development and higher education more broadly.

3-Minute Thesis

Yesterday I participated in the University of Edinburgh's college-level three-minute thesis competition for the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. This is an initiative to challenge PhD students to condense their vast work into one PowerPoint slide (no transitions, props, etc.) and a three-minute speech. Today's competition really showed the great breadth of PhD research across our College, and it was great to meet other researchers from across the University.

I found this experience to be extremely beneficial, especially whilst in the midst of wading through what seems like almost endless quantities of data that I have collected and trying to analyse it and write up my results. It was helpful to condense my work into such a short piece, explaining what I have researched, my findings, and why they are important. I would recommend this as an exercise to any PhD student!

So what did I write? I'm happy to share my very condensed version of my work below to help others learn about my work, and potentially help those thinking about how to structure such a short summary talk about their work. Many thanks go to Mason Robbins for his insights and support in sharing this structure with me.

INTRODUCTION:

What’s the point of higher education? Transforming students from ducklings to competitive foxes or curious cats? Or helping them defy the odds to fly like mythical creatures?

A high-quality undergraduate curriculum that is engaging and relevant to learners’ interests and the needs of today’s society is vitally important, so why do academics often create curricula in isolation?  Why don’t they involve students in curriculum design?

LITERATURE REVIEW:

Co-creation of the curriculum is one form of student engagement where students and staff work in partnership to design aspects of higher education curricula.

There are different grassroots models of co-creation including staff working with past, current, or future students who are selected or democratically involved as a whole class.

But all models are based on respect, reciprocity, and shared responsibility.

THESIS:

In my research, I look at how students and staff advance their aims of higher education through co-creation of the curriculum.

METHODOLOGY:

I identified rare instances of co-creation and interviewed students and staff across 10 subject areas at five Scottish universities.

These co-creators had developed educational resources, grading criteria, or exam questions together and student consultants supported staff to improve their courses.

I also used arts-based methods (including images such as these) in four focus group discussions with students and staff who were not familiar with co-creation.

FINDINGS:

I have found that co-creation of the curriculum brings together students’ and staff members’ different forms of knowledge, expertise, and skills. Sharing ownership over the curriculum increases empathy and respect while also promoting student and staff engagement, creativity, and enjoyment of learning.

Beyond advancing the personal and professional development of students, co-creation also helps staff improve their teaching practices. By modelling democratic engagement in the classroom, students and staff are gaining skills together to deal with uncertainty and tackle the world's most complex problems.

CONTRIBUTION / CONCLUSION

Co-creation of the curriculum helps challenge consumerist hierarchies and humanise the education experience through inclusive partnerships between students and staff.

It’s not without its challenges and risks but, for those who do engage, there are many benefits that make higher education more meaningful and relevant to their aims.

It helps support duckling students to be creative, curious, and competitive job applicants while also helping them fly beyond what they think is possible.

Educational and International Thematic Connections

With my new role at Edinburgh University, I've been enjoying hosting a study visit of twenty Chinese headteachers. We began the visit on Monday with sessions at Moray House to show them the long history of teacher education there, followed by a Scottish welcome dinner hosted at the City Chambers to celebrate strong partnerships between Scotland and China.

After great sessions yesterday at Moray House on the Scottish policy context and teacher professionalism and standards, theory was really brought into practice today during a fantastic visit to Dunbar Grammar School today. It was also my first visit to a Scottish high school, so I was quite interested in the visit and any thematic connections with my higher education research. The Headteacher gave an overview of his growing school community, the curriculum, and their School improvement plan. He highlighted student choice in the curriculum (which is much greater at this high school compared to elsewhere) and the breadth of subjects including health and wellbeing, computing, business, and home economics. Furthermore, the Headteacher emphasised the importance of not only teachers' and parents' voices but also pupils' voices contributing to the revised curriculum and the school improvement plan. It was great to hear the Headteacher speaking about the importance of student voice and student engagement.

The Chinese Headteachers really enjoyed the tour of the school, bringing it to life as they saw cooking classes, science, art, and PE. They even were able to see a social studies  class where students were being taught to think for themselves and articulate what they would do if they were President Trump with regards to building a wall with Mexico. The Headteacher emphasised of course that students were not being influenced in what to think (and could lose their job for this) and instead were learning how to think critically and substantiate their arguments with research they could do on their mobile phones in class.

We were all impressed to see the fantastic inclusive education support provided by the Pupil Support Workers both inside and outside the school including mindfulnesss sessions, trips to the beach, hiking, gardening, working on a farm, outdoor cooking, and building relations with local elderly residents (for which they won a national award for partnership).

The Chinese Headteachers were also very interested to hear about the support provided to newly qualified teachers by both the school and the local authority. They saw how new teachers needed to meet General Teaching Council Standards for Registration, and keep up their standards through continuing professional learning. They were particularly interested in performance management of staff who did not meet the standards, which is an important issue that can arise across all education contexts internationally. In looking at the similarities and differences between secondary and higher education, I was reflecting on how universities offer the PG Certificate in Academic Practice to new lecturers and opportunities for academic staff to earn Higher Education Academy Fellowship, but they do not tend to have strong performance management processes for staff who do not excel in teaching.

Last but not least, we enjoyed learning about and seeing the various technology used in the high school. This included EdBuzz Google resources, email for submission of homework, collaborative areas where teachers could share resources, the Pupil Record System, students' digital portfolios of their progression records to document their learning, Kahoot online quizzes which  students could complete using smartphones, and ShowMyHomework to document homework for students and their parents. They also were able to learn about student voice including the prefect system, student council, and surveys. They saw student feedback forms (including questions on enjoyment of learning, academic challenge, and the quality of feedback provided by teachers) and learn how they are used as one way to monitor and support teacher performance.

It was a fantastic visit and it was especially interesting to focus on themes of student voice in the Scottish education system, student curricular choice, technology in the classroom, and inclusion. There are such interesting connections between these themes in secondary education which carry on into higher education. It was also fascinating to explore sometimes tricky issues such as smartphone use in the classroom, dealing with student behaviour issues, and processes for teacher performance management which are not often spoken about in higher education.

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.

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.

The Power of Co-Production: Transforming Ourselves and Our Society

Today was a thought-provoking day attending and presenting at the conference 'Co-Production, Research and Youth and Community Work'. Dave Beck’s conference introduction started the day rightly linking co-production to social justice and community development that decrease inequalities and effect positive change in civically engaged democracies. Co-production helps to develop shared ownership as opposed to chasing extrinsic motivations and targets for their own sake. It was good to start the day with these themes which would re-emerge in numerous presentations and workshops. In particular, this fit well with the opening presentation from Young Edinburgh Action’s young people and staff. I was particularly struck by how they said they created ‘safe spaces, and brave spaces’ for young people to participate in co-production and have a positive impact on their community. 

As I have found in my emerging research, community development, trust and respect are key to developing and working effectively within safe spaces; at the same time, co-production challenges traditional power hierarchies and stereotypes about what young people are capable of, so co-production also needs to be ‘brave spaces’ that challenge the status quo and think creatively to tackle challenges in the classroom or community, and beyond in the wider society. Preparations for my workshop helped me articulate my initial analysis of some of my data from staff and students who have participated in co-creation of the curriculum, and I was glad that it led to fruitful discussions of the democratisation of knowledge, sharing power amongst a collective, and developing power within individuals.

Other presentations brought this out for me by discussing how co-production is fundamentally a developmental process of empowerment. Within safe spaces, people can bravely experiment and learn creatively from challenge whilst developing personally and professionally as individuals and whilst developing society’s capacity to confront some of the most difficult challenges of today’s uncertain world, such as inequality. By developing personal agency and empowerment, we can learn to understand ourselves better by demonstrating reflexivity and transparency. By working in partnership with others in co-production projects, it can be an emancipatory, transformative and holistic process that is rooted in individuals’ personal stories and in real life. Although co-production is ‘messy’, challenging, and involves risk, it was helpful to see that others agreed that its transformative power often outweighs these challenges since it has the ability to change ourselves and our society for the better.

'Exploring the Policy-Practice Nexus in Higher Education'

Today was a fascinating, idea-provoking day participating in Lancaster University's conference 'Exploring the Policy-Practice Nexus in Higher Education'. Bob Lingard from the University of Queensland in Australia kicked off the day with remarks about the macro level of higher education policy and globalization. He highlighted education as the major human capital that nations can control, and also the habitus of the global policy maker elite who create the globalized discourses that are then localized in countries around the world. It was worrying to think of the private companies that are seeking not only to influence but to define and frame global education policy. It was helpful that Bob Lingard emphasized that how we define the purpose of higher education and its policy carries implications for how we frame educational practices worldwide.

Next Murray Saunders from Lancaster gave a really interesting presentation about theories of change in higher education and their potential for effecting policy development and implementation from different angles. I found it helpful to apply these concepts to the concepts of student engagement and, in particular, student/staff partnerships in higher education which I'd like to explore more fully later.

I particularly enjoyed the small-group discussion sessions for unpacking the keynote presentations, as well as the afternoon sessions by Jenni Case and Paul Ashwin. Jenni Case shared the context of the University of Cape Town and her work applying Margaret Archer's concept of reflexivity to longitudinal research about engineering students' learning and development ten years after graduation. Paul Ashwin also shared he research with colleagues about how university affects students and, in particular, the pedagogic quality and inequality project and research around the different meanings of student engagement. Paul Ashwin made some great remarks about the development of and the influence of league tables, which also promoted interesting discussions. He also ended with the excellent question 'Would a focus on enhancing quality rather than measuring quality offer an alternative way forward?'

Social Justice and Inclusive Pedagogy

I recently went to a talk by Dr Lani Florian on social justice and inclusive pedagogy. She spoke of how difference has been often positioned as a problem. However, with the increasing diversity of students and vulnerabilities, her research had focused on understanding differences to understand students' different outcomes.

Dr Florian made really interesting points about the assumptions that teachers make about school-aged students, their abilities and their potential. This is something I have been thinking a lot about lately since often teachers of higher education also make assumptions about their students' knowledge and prior learning experiences which can be quite different from the reality for many students.

Based on her research, Dr Florian argued for the need for teaching pedagogies that promote whole-class engagement and inclusivity rather than perpetuating differences in practice for presumed group differences. This doesn't hold other students back but, rather, acknowledges that differences are to be expected between students and accommodates differences inclusively. 

Dr Florian, speaking about school-aged students, argued that we need to reconceptualise differences between learners as opportunities for teaching. I would agree from the perspective of student/staff partnerships of co-creating the higher education curriculum. These dialogues and collaborations recognise students' wide variety of prior learning experiences, preferred learning pedagogies, and future goals to be more inclusive and (so it seems) help students achieve much more from their studies. I hope that my research can build on Dr Florian's work and look at higher education and how this may be possible.