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

Teaching Outside the Box

Last week I participated in a workshop led by the Institute for Academic Development on ‘teaching outside the box’. I really enjoyed the first half of the session when we worked collaboratively in groups to define ‘creativity’ and then to define ‘teaching’ separately, followed by the development and critique of our own definitions of ‘creative teaching’.

First, it was striking that for our group and for the others, the words we associate with creativity (such as ‘play’, ‘originality’, ‘engaging’, ‘exciting’, ‘dynamic’, and ‘fun’) tend to be much more positive than the words associated with teaching (‘lecture’, ‘content’, ‘learning community’, ‘collaboration’, ‘boring’, ‘contained’, and ‘should be fun’). This was a bit depressing, especially when thinking about recapturing the excitement of lectures to be, as Cathy Bovill suggests, as exciting as an adventure in Legoland® or reflecting on how creative teaching such as co-creation the curriculum benefits both students and staff by developing increased engagement with and enjoyment of learning.

It was challenging to create a concise yet all-encompassing definition of ‘creative teaching’. Our group came up with: a flexible and fun process that actively engages students and teachers in a challenging, collaborative learning experience. We wanted to emphasise that creative teaching can and should be messy and challenging, but it can also be extremely rewarding, meaningful, and beneficial for both students as staff when they overcome challenges together (for example, see my previous post about my research article). I enjoyed seeing the other groups’ definitions of creative teaching, for example the one that emphasised the tools, concepts, actions, and aspects of reflection that are embedded in creative teaching. By using stickers, it was also helpful to see which concepts resonated most with the group.

This exercise and subsequent collaborative review and critique of various definitions of creativity were extremely interesting and also beneficial for my forthcoming article on creativity in co-creation of the curriculum, which draws on some of my recent research and a presentation on creativity in learner engagement. It was helpful to have the space to step back from day-to-day activities and reflect on these concepts through having meaningful conversations with colleagues.

The second half of the workshop consisted of unstructured exploration of five different types of creative teaching methods, but unfortunately the lack of structure or case studies of how these activities were used in the classroom made the activities fall a bit flat. For me, this emphasised how creativity and fun can be important aspects of teaching excellence, but they can’t be implemented superficially just for the sake of it and need to be incorporated alongside clear learning expectations to add to and enhance engagement with academic subject content. See my previous work on teaching excellence and my article addressing challenges of co-creation for more on this, and stay tuned for my research article on creativity.

Learner Engagement, Co-Creation, and Creativity Across Educational Contexts

Last week, I was delighted to facilitate the event ‘Learner Engagement… In Conversation with Peter Felten and Meredith Piatt’ which I coordinated with Juliet Hancock and Cathy Bovill. This event was the first time in my new job as Partnerships and Professional Learning Coordinator at Moray House School of Education where I was truly able to combine my work in the professional learning office with my PhD focusing on student engagement and co-creation of the curriculum. 

It was a fantastic synergy of ideas and colleagues coming together across education sectors and there’s so much to learn from those in the primary and secondary education sectors and how they are dealing with some of the same challenges and issues that we are in higher education. Furthermore, this event was especially meaningful since Cathy Bovill, Peter Felten, and Alison Cook-Sather’s book Engaging Students as Partners in Learning in Teaching is partly what inspired me to pursue my PhD, and I was excited to have both Cathy and Peter at the event as well as many other inspiring individuals who have contributed to my PhD research.

Excitement, Belonging, Community, and Resilience in Learner Engagement

During the first part of the event, I led a discussion in front of the audience with Peter Felten and his inspiring final-year undergraduate student Meredith Piatt on learner engagement. I really enjoyed this experience since it pulled together my experience in facilitation and interviewing as well as my knowledge of the subject, and I had the opportunity to delve into some fantastic topics of conversation with them both.

In particular, I was struck by what Meredith said about learner engagement as being a feeling of excitement for her while she makes connections between her learning and everyday life, and what Peter said about how learner engagement is about staff connecting to what students find meaningful in their studies. They also highlighted how it was important for staff to have high expectations of students, which often create the spaces for students to take responsibility to take up opportunities and meet or exceed these high expectations. This is a theme that has also emerged in my PhD research which I am looking forward to exploring more in the future.

Peter highlighted how staff are teaching not just ‘heads’ but also ‘hearts’ and ‘bodies’, and this led to a really interesting discussion about the different emotions we feel in learning and teaching. Whilst many times we want these emotions to be positive and we want students to enjoy the fun of learning, it was also important that Peter pointed out that learning is not always fun. Learning is also about the challenging experiences that we have, which can sometimes be the most formative when we develop resilience through overcoming obstacles. However, there is a strong role that relationships and belonging play in student engagement to create spaces where these deep learning opportunities can occur in a constructive manner.

Learner Engagement at Scale

Following the discussion with Peter and Meredith, I enjoyed attending Mark Huxham’s discussion group on student engagement at scale. This was particularly interesting since working with large numbers of students is often seen as a barrier to both student engagement and co-creation of the curriculum. We had a very constructive discussion, ultimately focusing on how we need to find ways of ‘belonging at scale’ to help humanise learning and teaching in both large lectures and online distance learning. Others suggested examples of small-group break-out discussions within lectures or meetings outside of class with students then sitting with their group to create a sense of belonging. In the context of online distance learning, we discussed the importance of online discussions or other activities such as sharing photos of workspaces to build a sense of belonging amongst students whilst helping staff to learn about their students, and also how staff could record video introductions to sessions or develop audio feedback to ‘humanise’ online learning and, particularly, the experience of receiving constructive feedback.

Creative Engagement

In the last discussion group session, I led the group discussing creativity in student engagement. Each member of the group introduced him/herself by describing what creativity means to them. Examples included drawing connections across subject areas or contexts, lateral thinking, problem-solving, collective working and achievement that brings together individuals’ perspectives, thinking outside of the box, imagination, fun, and challenging the status quo. (I enjoyed hearing this last aspect of creativity since I saw a great connection with my previous blog post and research article on co-creation of the curriculum challenging the status quo!)

Participants’ statements are strikingly similar to definitions of creativity in the literature that suggest that creative pedagogy can encompass and further promote curiosity, imagination, play, exploration, ownership, innovation, and connection-making for both learners and teachers (Craft, Cremin, Hay, & Clack, 2014; Grainger, Barnes, & Scoffham, 2004; Jeffrey & Woods, 2009).

I then presented some of my initial findings in my research that benefits of co-creation of the curriculum include various aspects of creativity including:

•         creativity through learning from diverse individuals in the learning community
•          ownership and intrinsic motivation leading to creativity
•         trying new things despite risk of ‘failure’
•         values and empathy that promote creativity
•         fun and play in learning

In particular, we discussed how teaching and learning is a social practice, and often creativity can be seen through dialogue when we bring together diverse students and teachers in the classroom. We explored how it can be great to give students freedom and ownership, although this can pose risks. As one participant stated, ‘It’s okay to be stuck, but it’s important to know why you’re stuck and use that as a building block to become unstuck’.

This led us into a great discussion on how many participants felt that it is important to see learning as a process, rather than a product. We also returned to the idea from the initial session with Peter and Meredith that challenge is important, and by incorporating creativity into learning and teaching we help students to take ownership and challenge themselves, whilst they also develop important transferable skills and reflect on their work.

We concluded the discussion group by discussing some of the challenges to creativity, including the risks for both students and staff to experiment with new ideas and ways of teaching and learning. However, we left hoping that there are good education managers, policies, and processes in place that can allow us both as staff and learners to experiment and incorporate more creative practices into our learning and teaching.

Here, I will conclude by leaving you with some of the questions I posed to the discussion group, as well as some of our unanswered questions that may be helpful to reflect on:

•          What does creativity mean to you in your educational context, and how does it make you feel when you are creative?
•          In what ways do you give students ownership over their own learning, and do you have any examples of when you have been pleasantly surprised by students’ work?
•          Do creative practices help learners try new things and even fail within safe learning environments?
•          Do learners need to reach a certain level of understanding before they can play with ideas and concepts more creatively?
•          Within the context of high workloads and demands on both teachers and learners, do you feel there is there enough room for you to be creative in your context? How can we further facilitate creativity in our work?

Watch this space - I'm currently working on a research article exploring more of these themes of creativity in co-creation of the curriculum for a special issue on creativity in the Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal which should come out later this year.

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.