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Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities Dr Catherine Bovill, Senior Lecturer Academic Development Unit, Learning & Teaching Centre Engaged Student Learning through Partnership HEA Enhancement Event 25 th March 2015

Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

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Page 1: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Engaging students as partners in learning and

teaching: challenges and opportunities

Dr Catherine Bovill, Senior Lecturer

Academic Development Unit, Learning & Teaching Centre

Engaged Student Learning through Partnership

HEA Enhancement Event 25th March 2015

Page 2: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Overview

• Defining and mapping partnership

• Questioning our motivations

• Challenges to working in partnership

• Re-envisioning challenges as opportunities

• Practical strategies

• Moving forward

Page 3: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Defining partnership in L&T

“...a collaborative, reciprocal process through

which all participants have the opportunity to

contribute equally, although not necessarily in

the same ways, to curricular or pedagogical

conceptualization, decision making,

implementation, investigation, or analysis.”

(Cook-Sather, Bovill & Felten 2014)

Page 4: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Mapping partnership (broadly)

Student engagement

Co-creation

Partnership

Active student

participation

Page 5: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Mapping partnership:

a conceptual model

Healey, Flint &

Harrington 2014

(HEA)

Page 6: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Mapping partnership: student roles

Bovill, Cook-Sather, Felten,

Millard & Moore-Cherry (forthcoming) Co-researcher

Pedagogical co-designer

Representative

Consultant

Page 7: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Mapping partnership:

areas of engagement

Healey, Bovill & Jenkins (forthcoming)

Page 8: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Examples of partnership

• students co-creating the content of courses (Duah &

Croft 2011; Cook-Sather, Bovill & Felten 2014)

• students co-evaluating a course (Bovill, Aitken, Hutchison,

Morrison, Roseweir, Scott & Sotannde 2010)

• students selecting text books (Mihans, Long & Felten 2008)

• students designing their own essay title (Kruschwitz in

Cook-Sather, Bovill & Felten. 2014)

• students choosing assessment methods and co-

grading (O’Neill 2011; Deeley 2014)

Page 9: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Questioning our motivations

• Our motivations can influence our approach to partnership

and the opportunities we create (Bovill 2013)

• “My course is broken and students are not engaged”

• Evidence of the benefits (Cook-Sather, Bovill & Felten, 2014)

(1) increased engagement and motivation

(2) increased metacognitive understanding of L&T and

(3) enhanced learning and teaching practices

• A more democratic classroom

• The university is going through a structural change

• There is a small amount of funding available

• Marketised HE / democratic education

Page 10: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Common questions

We have a professional

body that constrains

what we can do with

our curriculum…

I only teach these

students for two weeks

and the course is co-

ordinated by someone

else…

We are all overstretched

and this sounds like more

work…

I teach first years and they

don’t have 20 years of

experience like me to know

what needs to be included

in the content of the first

year chemistry

curriculum…

I found the experience of co-

designing my geography course

with my tutor and classmates

exciting but the lecturers in

history seem closed to the idea

of partnership and I don’t know

what to do because I’m finding

the lectures dull...

Page 11: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Common challenges

• Resistance to students becoming partners

• Navigating university structures and norms

• Ensuring diverse perspectives are included

Bovill, Cook-Sather, Felten, Millard and Moore-Cherry (forthcoming)

Page 12: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Challenges will vary depending on...

• Which students are involved

Retrospective, Current , Future (Bovill 2014)

• Which staff are involved

• If not all students, who is chosen to be involved and how?

• Are staff and students rewarded for active student

participation?

• Experience – pedagogical habits and familiarity

• Timing, opportunity and context

Page 13: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Challenges or opportunities?

• Resistance to students becoming partners

– Effective communication, demonstrating SaP is worthwhile

• Navigating university structures and norms

– Start small, new ways of thinking about large classes, building on

existing structures and priorities

• Ensuring diverse perspectives are included

– Intentionally choosing the unrepresented,

including a range of skills, work with whole class

E.g. Hearing loss – deaf gain (Bauman & Murray, 2010)

– Find pockets of good practice and build on them

– Share examples and increase discussion

Bovill, Cook-Sather, Felten, Millard & Moore-Cherry (forthcoming)

Page 14: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Practical strategies (1):

Initiating partnerships

• start small

• be patient

• ensure participation is voluntary

• think carefully about which students to involve

• create shared aims

• cultivate support

• learn from mistakes

Cook-Sather, Bovill & Felten 2014

Page 15: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

• integrate partnerships into other work

• give/get credit for partnership work

• enhance diversity in partnerships

• CPD for staff and students involved

• value the process

• formally end partnerships when time

Practical strategies (2): sustaining

and extending partnerships

Cook-Sather, Bovill & Felten 2014

Page 16: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

• Consider your own attitude to roles and power

– Language, behaviour

• Develop ways to negotiate

– Reifying student voice, discomfort, learn from mistakes

• Be honest about where power imbalance exists

Practical strategies (3):

Power, dialogue and negotiation

Cook-Sather, Bovill & Felten 2014

Page 17: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Moving forward

• “Students, the university’s unspent resource”

(Gärdebo & Wiggberg, 2012)

• Raising expectations (Bovill 2014)

• Overcoming pedagogical habits (Bovill 2014)

• Changing mindsets

• Maintaining criticality

Page 18: Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: challenges and opportunities - Catherine Bovill

Bauman, H-D.L. & Murray, J.J. (2010). Deaf studies in the 21st Century. In M. Maschark and P.E. Spencer (Eds.) Oxford

handbook of deaf studies, language, and education (Vol. 2) (pp. 210-225). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bovill, C. (2014) An investigation of co-created curricula within higher education in the UK, Ireland and the USA. Innovations in

Education and Teaching International 51 (1) 15-25.

Bovill, C. (2013) What are students and staff co-creating? How our definitions of curriculum influence the nature of co-creation.

Paper presentation. RAISE Conference, 12-13 September, Nottingham.

Bovill, C., Aitken, G., Hutchison, J., Morrison, F., Roseweir, K., Scott, A. & Sotannde, S. (2010) Experiences of learning through

collaborative evaluation from a Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Education International Journal for Academic

Development 15 (2) 143-154.

Bovill, C., Cook-Sather, A., Felten, P., Millard, L. & Moore-Cherry, N. (forthcoming) Addressing potential challenges in co-

creating learning and teaching.

Cook-Sather, A., Bovill, C. & Felten, P. (2014) Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: a guide for faculty. San

Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Deeley, S. (2014) Summative co-assessment: a deep learning approach to enhancing employability skills and attributes. Active

Learning in Higher Education 15 (1) 39-51.

Duah, F., and Croft, T. (2011) Students as Partners in Mathematics Design. CETL-MSOR Conference.

https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/bitstream/2134/9904/3/Duah_Croft_2011final.pdf

Gärdebo, J. & Wiggberg, M. (2012) (Eds) Students, the University’s unspent resource: revolutionising higher education through

active student participation. Report No 12 Division for Development of Teaching and Learning. Uppsala University.

Healey, M., Flint, A. & Harrington, K. (2014) Engagement through partnership: students as partners in learning and teaching in

higher education. York: Higher Education Academy

Healey, M., Bovill, C. & Jenkins, A. (forthcoming) Students as partners in learning. In Lea, J. (Ed.) Enhancing learning and

teaching in higher education: Engaging with the dimensions of practice. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Mihans, R., Long, D. & Felten, P. (2008) Student-Faculty Collaboration in Course Design and the Scholarship of Teaching and

Learning. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl, 2, 2.

O’Neill, G. (ed.) (2011) A Practitioner’s Guide to Choice of Assessment Methods within a Module, Dublin: UCD Teaching and

Learning. http://www.ucd.ie/teaching/resources/assessment/howdoyouassessstudentlearning/

References