This keynote presentation was delivered by Cathy at the HEA Enhancement Event 'Engaged Student Learning through Partnership'. Further details: https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events-conferences/event10872 The blog post that accompanies this presentation can be accessed via: http://bit.ly/1FhDo22

1. 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

2. Overview
• Defining and mapping partnership
• Questioning our motivations
• Challenges to working in partnership
• Re-envisioning challenges as opportunities
• Practical strategies
• Moving forward

3. 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)

4. Mapping partnership (broadly)
Student
engagement
Co-creation
Partnership
Active
student
participation

5. Mapping partnership:
a conceptual model
Healey, Flint &
Harrington 2014
(HEA)

6. Mapping partnership: student roles
Bovill, Cook-Sather, Felten,
Millard & Moore-Cherry (forthcoming)
Co-researcher
Pedagogical
co-designer
Representative
Consultant

7. Mapping partnership:
areas of engagement
Healey, Bovill & Jenkins (forthcoming)

8. 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)

9. 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

10. 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...

11. 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)

12. 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

13. 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)

14. 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

15. • 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

16. • 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

17. Moving forward
• “Students, the university’s unspent resource”
(Gärdebo & Wiggberg, 2012)
• Raising expectations (Bovill 2014)
• Overcoming pedagogical habits (Bovill 2014)
• Changing mindsets
• Maintaining criticality

18. 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