Research Project Strengthening student representation in short and lower-level courses.

About the Project  The project seeks to make a step change in student engagement through addressing the issue of poor penetration for student representative systems into short courses and those situated at lower levels on the qualifications framework (below level 6). This is an area often cited as a barrier in the ITP and PTE sub-sectors.

Aims  The project aims to identify the barriers currently restricting participation by these identified student groups and to develop strategies, methods and good practices to overcome them. These would then be shared across the sub-sector.

Design / Methodology  The method of the project is to develop strategies and road-test them with the learners involved in the programmes in question.  It will use focus groups to identify and refine the strategies before rolling them out into courses.  It is action research, whereby strategies will be clarified and questions for enquiry identified, data collected and analysed from focus groups, and then tested against feedback from staff and learners as the strategies are tested.

Intended outcomes  The project’s intended outputs will constitute a toolkit of strategies, methods and good practices which will be able to be made available to other tertiary providers who also have students involved in these types of courses.  It is also a road-test of a methodology to target groups with poor representation and to identify and overcome the barriers they pass to being part of a representative system.  It is founded in a belief that improving student representation systems results in better learning outcomes for learners.

Timeframes  Project commenced 30 April 2015  Expected project completion 15 November 2016

Project team Ella Cartwright Nancy Groh Dr Alistair ShawA/P Clarke Raymond

Initial findings in the literature  Blair and Valdez  The importance of building a culture of constructive feedback systems  Yannuzzi and Martin  The importance of addressing multiple identities  Flynn  Valuing and encouraging marginalised student voices  O’Neill and McMahon  Participating research to give students a voice  Kidman  Paying attention to the systems of power and privilege outside the classroom in addressing classroom needs  Naidoo and Whitty  Democratising learning through addressing ideas both of the “passive learner” and tokenism around student voice

So far…  We have identified the following initiatives:  Better information for students regarding the benefits of a student representative system  Training leaners to be experts as learners and to see themselves as part of a system where they have benefited from previous learners’ input and can similarly contribute  Appointing representatives for two-years regardless of the length of their actual programme  Using digital discussion platforms to keep in contact with learners outside of the classroom