Programme July 11th and 12th – Amsterdam UAS
Monday 11 July: ‘Students-as-partners in teaching and research’
9.00
Coffee
9.30
Lecture/presentation ‘Critical perspectives on student engagement’ by prof.dr. Bruce
MacFarlane, Southampton University, UK
Compulsory attendance registers, class contribution grading, group project work and reflective learning
exercises based on expectations of self-disclosure, confession and compliance are increasingly common
features of the university curriculum and championed as promoting ‘learning gain’ by the student
engagement movement. Yet these approaches take little or no account of the rights of students or
individual differences between them. They represent a new hidden university curriculum that is
intolerant of students who may prefer to learn informally, are reticent, shy, or regard the disclosure of
their personal beliefs as an invasion of privacy. In this lecture I will argue that three forms of student
performativity have arisen - bodily, participative and emotional – which fail to respect the rights of
learners to engage and develop as autonomous adults. Student academic freedom, whilst
conventionally associated with political protest, also needs to be understood as
about the extent to which university students are free to make choices in respect
to what, when and how they learn.
Biography: Professor Bruce Macfarlane
Bruce is professor of higher education at the University of Southampton, UK and
distinguished visiting professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He
has previously held chairs at a number of universities in the UK and in Hong Kong.
His publications have developed concepts related to academic practice, ethics and
leadership and his books include Teaching with Integrity (2004), The Academic
Citizen (2007), Researching with Integrity (2009), and Intellectual Leadership in
Higher Education (2012). His new new book, Freedom to Learn, will be published by
Routledge in Autumn 2016. Bruce is joint editor of Policy Reviews in Higher
Education and a Fellow of the Society for Research into Higher Education.
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/education/about/staff/bjm1e14.page
10.30
Lecture/presentation ‘Implementing Students as partners in Teaching and Learning’ by dr.
Arshad Ahmad, Associate Vice-President McMaster University & dr. Beth Marquis,
Associate director (research) at the McMaster Institute for Innovation & Excellence in
Teaching & Learning of McMaster University, Canada
The notion of engaging students as partners in learning and teaching has gained increasing currency in
recent years (Cook-Sather, Bovill & Felten, 2014). Partnership approaches, which typically seek to
engage staff and students as active collaborators on pedagogically-relevant activities, have been
deployed in a range of contexts, including curriculum design, pedagogic consultancy, and the scholarship
of teaching and learning (SoTL) (Healey, Flint & Harrington, 2014). Research suggests the benefits of
such approaches are manifold. Partnerships have been found to contribute to meaningful learning
experiences (Mihans, Long & Felten, 2008), to increase both student and faculty motivation (Bovill,
Cook-Sather & Felten, 2011), and to enhance teaching and learning projects by bringing a broader range
of perspectives into consideration (McKinney, Jarvis, Creasey, & Hermann, 2010). At the same time,
developing and implementing effective and ethical partnerships is a challenging task (Allin, 2014; Felten
et al., 2013), making initiatives and structures to support such work essential (Marquis et al., 2016).
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In this session, we will describe some of the efforts we have made to support and institutionalize a
partnership approach to learning and teaching at the McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence
in Teaching and Learning (Canada). In particular, we will describe our unique ‘student partners program,’
which engages approximately 50 students as active members of teaching and learning project teams
each year, and a new ‘Students as Partners’ Summer Institute, which will bring together participants
from around the world to learn about and develop partnership projects with support from experienced
staff and student facilitators. Drawing from our reflections on these initiatives and the results of
research conducted in concert with their implementation, we’ll share considerations of potential
interest to others hoping to develop students as partners programs and projects in their own contexts.
11.30
Debate with the audience about the direction, function, content of student engagement in
teaching and research in Amsterdam UAS
12.15
Collective Lunch
13.15-16.45 Workshop ‘Students-as-partners and as change agents’ by prof. dr. Mick Healey
The concept of ‘listening to the student voice’ – implicitly if not deliberately – supports the perspective of
student as ‘consumer’, whereas ‘students as change agents’ explicitly supports a view of the student as
‘active collaborator’ and ‘co-producer’, with the potential for transformation.” (Dunne in Foreword to
Dunne and Zandstra 2011, 4).
Ways of engaging students in higher education as partners in learning and teaching is arguably one of the
most important issues facing higher education in the 21st Century. Partnership is essentially a process for
engaging students. It is a way of doing things, rather than an outcome in itself. This workshop will explore
four ways in which students may be engaged as partners through: a) Learning, teaching and assessment;
b) Subject-based research and inquiry; c) Scholarship of teaching and learning; and d) Curriculum design
and pedagogic advice and consultancy. Particular attention will be paid to how we may build on and move
beyond listening to the student voice and involve students as change agents who can have an impact on
the teaching and learning that they and their fellow students experience, through mentoring staff, coresearching teaching and learning, and co-designing the curriculum. It will draw on numerous case studies
from Europe, North America and Australasia.
Biography: Mick Healey is a HE Consultant and Researcher and Emeritus Professor at the University of
Gloucestershire, UK. Until 2010 he was Director of the
Centre for Active Learning, a nationally funded Centre for
Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Gloucestershire. He is
also a Visiting Professor at UCL, UK; The Humboldt
Distinguished Scholar in Research-Based Learning at
McMaster University, Canada; an adjunct Professor at
Macquarie University, Australia; a visting fellowship at the
University of Queensland and an International Teaching
Fellow at University College Cork. He was one of the first
people in the UK to be awarded a National Teaching
Fellowship (NTF) and to be made a Principal Fellow of the HE
Academy. In 2013 he won a Staff and Educational
Development Association (SEDA@20) Legacy Award. In
2015 he received the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Distinguised
Service Award.
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Mick is an experienced presenter. Since 1995 he has given over 500 educational workshops, seminars
and conference presentations in over 20 different countries. He has written and edited more than 180
papers, chapters, books and guides on various aspects of teaching and learning in HE. He is often asked
to act as an advisor to projects, universities and national governments on aspects of teaching and
learning in HE. He was co-editor of the International Journal for Academic Development (2010-13) and
currently is co-editor to the International section of the US-based Council on Undergraduate Research
Quarterly. He is often asked to act as an advisor to projects, universities and governments on aspects of
teaching and learning. He was co-organiser of the first International Summer Institute on Students as
Partners in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education at McMaster University, Canada in May 2016.
Mick is a frequent visitor to the Netherlands and has presented several times at Amsterdam UAS.
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Tuesday 12 July: How to educate knowledgeable professionals by connecting research and teaching
9.00
Coffee
9.30
Lecture/presentation "Inspiring students with research-based education", by dr. Dilly
Fung, Director UCL Centre for Advancing Learning and Teaching (CALT), University College
London
Can we inspire undergraduate students by developing more ‘research-based’ programmes of study? Can
we develop a conceptual framework for both guiding us as we design our programs of study and setting
us free to innovate and cross old subject boundaries? In this session I will show how University College
London (UCL), a multi-disciplinary, research-intensive university in England, is adopting a values-based
framework (Fung 2015) designed to engage undergraduate students much more closely with research. I
argue that not only is the Connected Curriculum framework promoting new thinking about curriculum
design, it is also stimulating new partnerships with students, new opportunities for dialogue about
concepts of ‘good’ education, and new thinking about rewarding and promoting university educators
(Fung and Gordon 2015).
Biography –
10.30
Lecture/presentation “New Academics and Emerging Academic Identities”, by dr.
Rebecca Turner, Educational Developer of PEDrio, Plymouth University UK
Through agendas such as widening participation there has been a growing diversity of providers of HE in
England. Consequently a sustained proportion of HE is delivered outside of the university environment
by organisations such as further education (FE) colleges. Such institutions have a long history of
community-based, vocationally orientated education aimed primarily at 16-19 year olds. The expansion
into HE has resulted in considerable changes in the working practices of FE colleges and those staff
involved with the delivery of HE, including the expectation to engage with HE-related activities such as
research and scholarship. In this paper I will draw on the narratives of vocational educators who have
become research active to examine their experiences of developing as HE
professionals, and how this was supported by activities such as scholarly
writing, networking and collaboration.
Biography: Dr Rebecca Turner is an Educational Developer with the Pedagogic
Research Institute, Plymouth University, UK. Rebecca has broad ranging
research interests addressing areas including the reward and recognition of
teaching and learning, the evaluation of teaching and learning and academic
writing. Much of her research centres upon place within college-based
HE. Currently she is involved with a HEFCE funded project examining the
concept of ‘learning gain’ within HE, using the teaching of research methods
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within this sector to assess whether the develop of student knowledge, skills and experience of this
subject can be used to ‘measure’ their development during their undergraduate studies.
11.30
Debate with the audience on how to further integrate research into the educational
programs and the wider organisation.
12.15
Collective lunch
13.15-16.45 Workshop ‘Refreshing the Curriculum: Approaches to Curriculum Design in order to train
knowledgeable professionals’ by prof. dr. Mick Healey
“I want you to imagine that you have been asked to form a new department of ... Given the rare
opportunity to write without constraint, would your curricula bear much resemblance to most of the
formal courses of study to be found today? With any luck your answer will be something like, good grief
no! If your answer is something else … there is not much hope for the future!” (Gould, 1973, 253)
The aim of this workshop is to reflect on a range of different approaches to curriculum design, assess
their potential usefulness in informing the changes departments and institutions are planning to their
curricula, and facilitate participants to plan their own changes. This workshop should be particularly
useful for: a) teams of staff (and students) who are planning curriculum change; and b) staff who have
responsibilities for the development and support of the curriculum, such as chairs, program leaders and
teaching fellows. After a scene setting and discussion of the applicability of the approaches to
curriculum development, the facilitator will arrange for participants in groups to generate their own
ideas for how best to refresh their curricula, and then take them through a process of prioritization and
discussion. Both the ideas and the process by which they are generated may be useful for you to
implement in stimulating discussion in your School and Faculty about curriculum renewal.
Organized by:
Dr. Didi Griffioen, O2 – content & speakers
Peter Dekker, HvA Academie – logistics & marketing
Prof.dr. Jean Tillie, program leader research in education – supervisor
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