A student and staff partnership model to enable dialogue and enhance teaching and learning

1. A student and staff partnership model to enable dialogue and enhance teaching and learning RAISE Annual Conference Nottingham Trent University 12-13 Sep 2013 Kathrine Jensen & Dr Liz Bennett

2. Paper overview • The ‘Student as Teaching and Learning Consultants’ project • What kind of student engagement? • Student/staff collaboration: Outcomes • An innovative model?

3. Positioning of student engagement • Students as consumers • Students as producers (Neary 2010) • Students as change agents (Dunne and Zandstra 2011:4)

4. Project Aims • to promote authentic student engagement in the enhancement of teaching and learning • to create opportunities for student and staff to engage in reflection and dialogue around teaching and learning approaches. • offer academic staff a qualified student perspective (at points of need) that goes beyond the typical end of module evaluation response or NSS survey.

5. Spaces for dialogue

6. What kind of student engagement?

7. Approaches to Student Engagement Data from Ella R. Kahu (2013) Framing student engagement in higher education, Studies in Higher Education, 38:5

8. Figure 1. Conceptual framework of engagement, antecedents and consequences. Ella R. Kahu (2013) Framing student engagement in higher education, Studies in Higher Education, 38:5

9. What does student engagement mean to you?

10. Different levels of SE • Micro: engagement in their own learning and that of other students • Meso: engagement in quality assurance and enhancement processes • Macro: engagement in strategy development (Healey, O’Connor and Broadfoot 2010:21-22)

11. The Partnership ethos • “Working with the student consultants was a real delight; they were professional and polite throughout. They also provided some really useful feedback in a very objective and non-judgmental way; nowhere near as scary as one might first imagine!” • “The opportunity to engage a student perspective is refreshing and challenging. I think this is valuable.” • “It was good to be able to speak in a relaxed and informal way about the delivery of the course.”

12. Developing perspectives “I now know that there is the potential out there for learning to be so much more than it is now. Some lecturers get it but I think more can be done to change the learning experience. But I also realise that students still need to be willing or no changes will make a difference.” (Student consultant)

13. Developing perspectives “It has made me feel like the university cares about how the students feel about learning. I have found that lecturers are also receptive to feedback and are eager to alter the way they teach in order to improve students’ learning.” (Student consultant)

14. Student/Staff Relationships Staff Student Consultant Client Learner Teacher Collaborative space for T&L conversation/reflection

15. Liminality • Ambiguity/transitional state • Sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation, but also the possibility of new perspectives. • Turner posits that, if liminality is regarded as a time and place of withdrawal from normal modes of social action,

16. Concluding thoughts • We’ve produced a model for SE at meso level; • Staff-student partnership, engagement and collaboration key features; • With limitations (scope, scale) • With potential too!

17. More information • Project webpage: http://bit.ly/Zgc2WB • Contact: k.jensen@hud.ac.uk • Twitter: @kshjensen • Blogposts tagged with HEASTLC: http://bit.ly/13l205S