1. Students as researchers; developing confidence and trust.
QAA Scotland
FOCUS ON: Institution-led Review
19th January 2017
Students as researchers;
developing confidence and trust.
Libby Curtis
Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University.

2. ‘YOU SAID……..WE DID’ National Student Survey Campaign (NSS) -
“There is a subtle, but extremely important, difference between an institution that ‘listens’ to students and responds accordingly, and an institution that gives students the opportunity to explore areas that they believe to be significant to recommend solutions and to bring about the required changes.
The concept of ‘listening to the student voice’ – implicitly if not deliberately – supports the perspective of student as ‘consumer’, whereas ‘students as change agents’ explicitly supports a view of the student as ‘active collaborator’ and ‘co-producer’, with the potential for transformation”
Dunne, E and Zandstra, R (2011) Students as change agents – new ways of engaging with learning and teaching in higher education
National Student Survey Campaign (NSS) -
‘YOU SAID……..WE DID’
Dunne and Zandstra’s perspective is an important one when placed in the context of the National Student Survey (NSS). This is operated by an independent market research company, Ipsos MORI, and is commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on behalf of the Higher Education (HE) funding councils for Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland.
survey seeks to measure the quality of the teaching and learning experience by gathering responses from final year students.
The plethora of NSS campaigns across the HE sector using the mantra ‘You said…We did’ would suggest that the student voice is actively promoted, listened to, and acted upon right across the sector. As Dunne suggests, the act of listening to the student voice may implicitly support the perspective of student as ‘consumer’.

3. Partnership is discussed as:
a process of engagement and not a product or outcome
It is a ‘a way of doing things’
Potential tensions:
Value of the creative process giving unexpected outcomes and an institutions need to achieve specific metrics
Healey, Flint and Harrington (2014), Engagement through partnership: students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education.
Building TRUST through partnership approaches
Open dialogue, shared projects, staff and students working together
on common goals, transparency for all involved, shared learning.

4. Continuous critical and reflective dialogue develops attitudes
“underpinning art and design education is an expectation that students will take their own creative development of the subject. They are expected to experiment and explore, producing diverse responses to projects, not right answers”
Shreeve, Sims, and Trowler (2010). A kind of exchange’: learning from art and design teaching.
Signature pedagogies - (Shulman 2005),
• Characterised as ‘pervasive, routine, and habitual’ in their
subject context .
• Art & Design pedagogies were seen within this context by
Shreeve, Sims, and Trowler
Shreeve et al. (2010), identify physical and material dimensions of learning in art and design; these involve the visible, sensual, social, and reflective
processes inherent within practice. This continuous critical and reflective dialogue develops attitudes and skills for approaching work that has
no defined outcome; the ‘uncertainty’ of outcome being a relevant characteristic that tutoring staff facilitate. The consequence of such support for the student gives rise to substantial dialogue and exchange between tutor and student.
Continuous critical and reflective dialogue develops attitudes
and skills for approaching work that has no defined outcome;
the ‘uncertainty’ of outcome being a relevant characteristic
that tutoring staff facilitate.

5. Representation / Consultation
• quality assurance • mechanisms for consultation and reporting
• formality and process • institutional control
School Academic Boards
Course Panels
Staff Student Liaison
• often unconnected or lacks an overview
• reactive not always proactive
• staff ownership
Staff member
Student

6. Personal Professional
STUDENT PARTNERS – altering the dynamic
Throughout the duration of the work students were placed in varying roles.
These were as participant and collaborator, researcher and co-designer,
making decisions alongside staff.
Shared ownership; informs planning ; collaborative outputs
The progression of the study was subject to multiple methods of collecting data that included continual evaluation through observation, interview, reflective journals, and focus groups.
Multiple participants including students, teaching staff and external collaborators contributed to the portfolio of evidence.
The activities under scrutiny also produced a range of outputs that enabled further reflection and provided opportunities to adjust the activities as they progressed.
Staff and Student
Expectations
Personal Professional
Development
Assessment & Feedback
Shared ownership; informs planning ; collaborative outputs
Staff member Student

7. PPD Personal Professional Development
Throughout the duration of the projects, members of staff acted as facilitators and co-producers, as observers, as team members and project leads. The shifting roles that staff adopted echoed the flexibility required when working with students within the studio environment.
The partnership project meetings had no specific structure to follow, but were built organically depending on the interactions and decisions at the end of each session. Indeed for staff it was necessary to reflect each week on how the group had operated in order to keep the flow of activity going. Working notes from the workshops, observations of the interactions, and reflective journals from the participants were used in the evaluation and development of further action. The nature of the work was cyclical and encompassed both ‘reflection-on-action’ and ‘reflection-in-action’ (Schön, 1984).
Throughout the course of the work students were placed in varying roles. These were as participant and collaborator, researcher and co-designer, in making decisions alongside staff.
• STAFF / STUDENT CHARTER – How can we enhance our expectations of
one another ?
• ASSESSMENT & FEEDBACK REVIEW – How can we enhance the assessment
and feedback experience ?
• PPD – How can we improve critical reflection in relation to students
professional skills ?

8. Representation And Consultation
STUDENTS AS EVALUATORS OF THEIR HE EXPERIENCE (THE STUDENT VOICE) Students offer feedback, views and opinions and are listened to on an institutional basis, in order to build an evidence-base as a basis for enhancement and change. Decisions for action tend to be taken at subject and/or institutional level.
STUDENTS AS PARTICIPANTS IN DECISION- MAKING PROCESSES Students engage in institutional decision- making, in order to influence enhancement and change. Decisions for action tend to be taken collaboratively with staff and students.
STUDENTS AS PARTNERS, CO- CREATORS AND EXPERTS Students are collaborative partners in curriculum provision and professional development, in order to enhance staff and student learning. Decisions for action tend to be taken at subject and/or institutional level.
STUDENTS AS AGENTS FOR CHANGE Students are collaborative partners in pedagogic knowledge acquisition and professional development, with the purpose of bringing about change. Decisions for action tend to be promoted by students and engaged with at subject and/or institutional level.
EMPHASIS ON THE STUDENT VOICE
EMPHASIS ON THE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
EMPHASIS ON THE
STUDENT AS DRIVER
UNIVERSITY AS DRIVER
Integrating
students into
educational
change
Representation
And Consultation
A theoretical model for students as change agents (Dunne and Zandstra 2011)

9. Trust:
Developed through project work benefitting the work and learning of both student and staff member.
Developed through informal working and open ended discussion positively embracing new outcomes rather than expected outputs.
Developed through dialogue that values every person’s input.
Developed through recognising publicly every person’s contribution.
Developed through consistent and transparent communication of process.
Developed through student mentoring and experiential learning of working collaboratively prior to critical events such as ILR.
Throughout the duration of the projects, members of staff acted as facilitators and co-producers, as observers, as team members and project leads. The shifting roles that staff adopted echoed the flexibility required when working with students within the studio environment.
The partnership project meetings had no specific structure to follow, but were built organically depending on the interactions and decisions at the end of each session. Indeed for staff it was necessary to reflect each week on how the group had operated in order to keep the flow of activity going. Working notes from the workshops, observations of the interactions, and reflective journals from the participants were used in the evaluation and development of further action. The nature of the work was cyclical and encompassed both ‘reflection-on-action’ and ‘reflection-in-action’ (Schön, 1984).
Throughout the course of the work students were placed in varying roles. These were as participant and collaborator, researcher and co-designer, in making decisions alongside staff.

10. sparqs STUDENT PARTNERS sparqs vision: www.sparqs.ac.uk
Student Partnerships in Quality Scotland
Publicly funded to work with all universities and colleges
sparqs vision:
Students are able to make a positive difference to the educational experience in Scotland’s colleges and universities and benefit from this, helping shape the nature of learning and contributing to the success of Scotland’s tertiary education sector.
STUDENT PARTNERS
Gray’s School of Art’s recent work has chimed heavily with our work as sparqs – we are the national agency for student engagement and we want to see students shaping their learning across Scotland’s universities and colleges, so projects like this really interest us and help us understand how students can best work in partnership with their institution.

11. OUTPUTS I L S R PROCESS STUDENT PARTNERS 3D DESIGN
Institution-Led Subject Review
3D DESIGN
STUDENT PARTNERS
COMMUNICATION DESIGN
OUTPUTS
FASHION & TEXTILES
COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
PAINTING
The students’ research methods were varied; some facilitated and recorded focus groups and interviews, other groups collected ideas, views, and opinions from social media, and surveys in order to present written findings, with some producing graphic representations of issues that were deemed of most importance to the student body.
Not surprising were more visually interactive approaches to developing research material with some groups of students using graffiti boards to collect comments and ideas within group sessions. The social aspect of the research was also recorded through photographic imagery, with the distillation of the research being produced in e-booklet form.
CONTEMPORARY ART PRACTICE
• student reflective analysis facilitated by sparqs
• students responsibility to determine research process
• student responsibility to consult with peers
• reflective output determined by student teams

12. sparqs “Engaging students in Institution-led Review
Reviews are a key interface for student
engagement:
Students as reviewers
Students as reviewees
One key aspect of students shaping their learning experience is through reviews – both through students doing the reviewing (as panel members) but also in helping staff to be reviewed.
The Gray’s ILSR was therefore ideally placed and timed to support a recent project to create a practice guide on how to engage students in preparing for and responding to internal review. This practice is being launched today, and you can pick up copies at our stall outside.
“Engaging students in Institution-led Review
A practice guide for universities and students’ associations”

13. ‘places value on a creative process that may result in
unexpected outcomes’
• The ILSR process itself demands consultation with students regarding their learning experience, and most often this is led, facilitated, and defined by staff.
• In this respect the School did not ‘consult’ with its students, it empowered the students to be research-led and driven by their own agenda allowing them to communicate with the School in their chosen format
• the student expectations following on from the two projects indicate that an appetite for working collaboratively with staff
to both develop enhancement activities and address challenges, will be core to students studies.

14. REFERENCES
• Dunne, E., & Zandstra, R. (2011). Students as change agents – new ways of engaging with learning and teaching
in higher education, University of Exeter/ESCalate/Higher Education Academy Publication, Retrieved 4th June, 2016, from
• Healey, M., Flint, A., & Harrington, K. (2014). Engagement through partnership: students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education, Higher Education Academy, Retrieved 4th June, 2016, from
• Shreeve, L., Sims, E., & Trowler, P. (2010). ‘A kind of exchange’: learning from art and design teaching. Higher Education Research & Development, 29(2),