Student Engagement:

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Student Engagement defining, opining,
refining Kate Little Student Engagement and
Partnership Consultant Proud Manchester Law grad
09 _at_katelittle
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In this session

• What is Student Engagement and why are we talking
  about it?
• Moving from consultation to partnership, and
  rejecting alternative narratives
• What does engaging teaching look like to
  students?

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Student engagement in the UK

• Lots of work on student engagement in learning,
  but also a focus on student voice embedded in
  processes and structures and the idea of students
  as partners.
• Student engagement practices are not new but
  student engagement as a policy priority is
  relatively recent.
• Moving beyond systems and instead describing
  concepts e.g. potential of individuals to
  influence their environment.

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So what is Student Engagement?

• Many articles, conference papers and chapters on
  student engagement do not contain an explicit
  definition of engagement, making the (erroneous)
  assumption that their understanding is a shared,
  universal one.
• (Trowler, 2010, 17)

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Student engagement literature

• Three types of engagement
• In students own learning
• Rooted in identity
• In structures and processes

Trowler, V. (2010) Student Engagement Literature
Review. York The Higher Education Academy
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Student engagement in learning

• Engagement in this sense has been proven to
  improve outcomes
• Performance
• Persistence
• Satisfaction
• Much work in this area has led to improvements in
  teaching and learning practices.

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Seven effective practices

• student-staff contact
• active learning
• prompt feedback
• time on task
• high expectations
• respect for diverse learning styles
• co-operation among students
• Chickering and Gamson (1987)
• No surprises there! But having the evidence base
  behind them has really given colleges in America
  an incentive to drive forward changes in this
  area.

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How does the QAA Code define it?

• The term covers two domains relating to
• Improving the motivation of students to engage in
  learning and to learn independently
• (Learning and Teaching Chapter)
• The participation of students in quality
  enhancement and quality assurance processes,
  resulting in the improvement of their educational
  experience.
• (Student Engagement Chapter)

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The UK Quality Code

• Higher education providers take deliberate steps
  to engage all students, individually and
  collectively, as partners in the assurance and
  enhancement of their educational experience.

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How else is student engagement defined?

• Individual
• Collective
• Governance and decision making

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From student engagement to partnership

• The 2010 NUS/HEA Student Engagement Toolkit
  framed partnership as the goal of student
  engagement.
• Need to build up to partnership

• Consultation
• Involvement
• Participation
• Partnership

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Why partnership?Rejecting alternative narratives
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Rejecting consumerism

• Student engagement is not happening inside a
  policy vacuum.
• A narrative of competition and choice offers
  students an inflated perception of their power,
  when it is in fact limited to commenting only on
  what has been sold to them.
• Customer is always right devalues the role and
  expertise of educators.

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Rejecting consumerism

• Regardless of whether students agree with the
  values and characteristics of the funding model
  in which they sit, they may adopt behaviours we
  associate with consumerism unless we offer a new
  and compelling way of thinking about learning

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Re-thinking apprenticeship

• Idea that a student attends university in order
  to gain mastery in a particular subject and
  spends time with experts in order to do this.
• Advocates might be wary of too much student
  engagement on the basis that students cannot be
  expected to know what they want to learn in
  advance of learning it.

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Re-thinking apprenticeship

• We dont necessarily need to wholly reject this
  approach, but we do need to reimagine it.
• Students are apprentices in the business of
  student engagement.
• Support could come from sources other than
  academic staff, particularly the students union.

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Re-thinking apprenticeship

• Students can never be equal partners because
  they do not have the necessary expertise to
  engage with academic staff on an equal basis
• is what some people say.
• Equality is as much about respecting each
  others views as it is about having similar
  levels of knowledge.

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What is partnership?

• Can we agree that partnership is about students
  and staff working together to improve education?
• For NUS this is about students having a role in
  the academic community with all the rights and
  responsibilities that this status affords.
• And about recognising that students will need to
  be inducted into their community of practice,
  not just expecting them automatically to adopt
  engaged behaviors.
• The goal is preparing students for active,
  engaged citizenship not a life of passive
  consumerism.

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Students unions

• Individual students may engage in various forms
  in their learning, but a whole system of
  partnership must flow through the students union
  for it to be a true partnership.
• Mass surveys of students can never replace
  genuine student representation, because we all
  value
• Genuine dialogue with students
• Representative democracy
• Students shaping the agenda, not reacting to it
• Students unions are key partners in the
  assurance of quality, and the support for course
  representatives

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Things SUs do to engage students in shaping their
education

• Represent students on decision-making bodies
• Recruit, train and support course reps
• Research students experience and interpret
  student feedback data
• Organise students to campaign for education
  change
• Work with their institutions on student
  experience and engagement projects
• Support academic societies

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Politics of student engagement

• Student engagement is political- contested space,
  no right answer, different levels of power,
  people exerting their influence.

What benefits are on offer? What penalties for
non-participation? Who has access? Who is
excluded?
Who describes the boundaries of the terrain?
What motivates activity? Who sets the agenda?
Who does the engaging and who is engaged?
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What do students think?

• Partnership is all about responding to the local
  context, so its important to talk to your own
  students about what it means to them.
• We do have some national data which shows that
  students wish to be more involved in shaping
  their course than they currently are.

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What do students think?
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What do students think?
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CHERI
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Passive vs Active Engagement

• Surveys
• Student representation
• Student led change

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What is engaging teaching?
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From the mouths of students
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Engaging students with learning

• Interesting and engaging teaching style
• Encouraging students
• Passion for subject area
• Challenges students to succeed
• Enthusiastic, about teaching and showing interest
  in students opinions
• Up to date in research
• Motivational
• Reliable, consistent and trustworthy
• Entertaining
• Bradley, S., Kirby, E. Madriaga, M. (2014) What
  students value as inspirational and
  transformative teaching. Innovations in Education
  and Teaching International (published online 31
  Jan 14)

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• It is evident from the analysis of student
  comments that students want to be taught by staff
  who are enthusiastic about their subject,
  empathetic and hold a desire for students to
  develop their full potential.
• Students valued being challenged to achieve
  their full potential, recognising that this was
  done through hard work as demonstrated by their
  academic role models.

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Reimagining an authentic curriculum

• Literature on excellent teaching is talking more
  and more about inclusive, authentic pedagogies
• NUS HE work over the next year is focused on
  teaching and learning, and authenticity will play
  a big part in this
• Authenticity goes hand in hand with the drive for
  student engagement and partnership

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Four aspects of authenticity

• Problems rooted in the real world
• Learning through inquiry and thinking skills
  metacognition (thinking about your thinking)
• Discourse among a community of learners,
  cooperative and peer learning
• Empowered through authentic learning personal
  connection, student centred learning
• Rule, A.C. (2006). Editorial The Components of
  Authentic Learning. Journal of Authentic
  Learning, 31, 1-10

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Why authenticity?

• The higher the level of authentic learning that
  focuses on higher levels of thinking, disciplined
  in-depth inquiry, substantive discourse, and
  connections to the real world, the higher the
  level of all students performance regardless of
  achievement level or demographic characteristics
• Avery, 1999 and Newman Associates, 1996, quoted
  in Rule, A.C. (2006). Editorial The Components
  of Authentic Learning. Journal of Authentic
  Learning, 31, 1-10

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To sum up

• Student engagement is not an activity. It is a
  way of doing things.
• Engaging students in their learning through
  active and authentic learning has been proven to
  have positive outcomes.
• Students want to be more involved than they are
  currently in shaping their course indeed, their
  institution.
• Students value being challenged, supported and
  inspired by their teachers.
• Partnerships between staff and students at all
  levels are vital to building a learning
  community.

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Key Resources

• NUS Manifesto for Partnership
• http//www.nusconnect.org.uk/campaigns/highereduca
  tion/partnership/a-manifesto-for-partnerships/
• What works? Retention research
• http//www.heacademy.ac.uk/what-works-retention
• HEA framework for partnership
• http//www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/studen
  ts_as_partners/Framework-for-student-and-staff-par
  tnerships.pdf
• The Student Engagement Partnership
• www.tsep.org.uk