Kate Little
Student Engagement and Partnership Consultant
Proud Manchester Law grad ‘09
@katelittle

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?

• 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.

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)

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

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.

• 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
.

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)

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

How else is student engagement defined?
• Individual
• Collective
• Governance and decision making

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

• 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.

“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”

• 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.

• We don’t 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.

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 other’s views as it is about having similar levels of knowledge.

• 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.

• 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

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

Student engagement is political- contested space, no ‘right’ answer, different levels of power, people exerting their influence.
Who describes the boundaries of the terrain?
What motivates activity?
Who sets the agenda?
Who does the engaging and who is engaged?
What benefits are on offer?
What penalties for nonparticipation?
Who has access?
Who is excluded?

Partnership is all about responding to the local context, so it’s 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.

Q26. How involved do you believe you are in shaping the content, curriculum or design of your course?
Q27. How involved do you want to be in shaping the content, curriculum or design of your course?
13
2
1 - Not at all involved
How involved do you believe you are in shaping the content of your course?
How involved do you want to be?
31
28
21
13
14
7
14
17
10
5
2
2
3 4 -
Somewhat invloved
5 6
20
7 - Very invloved
Base: All answering Section 4 (3179)

Surveys
Student representation
Student led change

• 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)

“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.”

• 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

1. Problems rooted in the real world
2. Learning through inquiry and thinking skills – metacognition (thinking about your thinking)
3. Discourse among a community of learners, cooperative and peer learning
4. Empowered through authentic learning – personal connection, student centred learning
Rule, A.C. (2006). Editorial: The Components of Authentic Learning. Journal of Authentic Learning, 3:1, 1-10

“The higher the level of authentic learning that focuses on higher levels of thinking, disciplined indepth 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, 3:1, 1-10

• 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.

NUS Manifesto for Partnership: http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/campaigns/highereducation/ 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/students_a s_partners/Framework-for-student-and-staffpartnerships.pdf
The Student Engagement Partnership: www.tsep.org.uk