What does student engagement look like?
The introductory keynote address at this year’s Learning and Teaching Conference on student engagement was given by Colin Bryson, one of Newcastle’s National Teaching Fellows.
Actually, ‘keynote’ probably gives completely the wrong impression. This wasn’t a solemn lecture but, true to the theme, was a highly participative session during which the audience of academic and administrative staff and sabbatical officers worked in groups led by Colin’s students (themselves shaped by Colin’s own practice on student engagement and implementation of the University’s new framework for student representation).
Some outline thoughts from Colin’s presentation and group discussion:-
Fundamentals of student engagement
- emotion – projecting and feeling confidence and interest
- promoting ownership and responsibility
- promoting a sense of belonging and community – thereby convincing students that engagement is a worthwhile investment of their trust and confidence
- it is a multi-faceted and fragile dynamic that has to be supported by a diverse range of opportunities to engage – one size does not fit all
Barriers to engagement
- “performativity” (?!?) – an instrumental approach
- “being other” – feeling like an outsider
- disempowering effects of assessment
Getting it right through balance – enough but not too much
- challenge
- workload
- opportunities for development
- relevance to purpose of degree
- opportunities for autonomy
- community and belonging
Means of fostering engagement
- fostering inclusion through technologies and mentoring
- projecting enthusiasm by recruiting enthusiastic staff to enthuse about teaching, and recruiting enthusiastic students
- investing time – being available and thinking through module design and delivery
- responsiveness/being listened to/feeling safe e.g. You Said, We Did
- perseverence!!!!
Shared ideas about ways of engaging students:
- Involving students in designing content and assessment
- Involving students in designing a bank of revision questions and answers
- face-to-face revision sessions
- use of TurningPoint to get and direct feedback
- providing opportunities for assessment and feedback for learning throughout the year
- creating staff community e.g. staff community in VLE particularly to support inclusion of part-time staff
- variety of opportunities for students to feed back and then closing the feedback loop
- traffic light feedback from students (red: what to stop doing, amber: what to avoid doing, green: what to do more of)
Why bother? Engaged students perform better
There was a lot of buzz to this session as the result of some excellent student input and an audience of enthusiasts. That left the question in my mind about how we ensure these messages are heard by staff outside the room – going back to the point about student engagement requiring staff engagement as a pre-requisite. Food for thought.
