Student engagement through working in partnership Students transforming Student engagement through working in partnership Jenna Chapman & Georgina Burchell UG Education & Welfare, Community & Diversity Officer

uea(su) – what do we do? Representation: Full time officers Convenors and course reps Liberation groups, WP students, international students Societies, clubs, peer support groups, buddySU, DSD PG su – activities, Courage wellbeing project Advice & housing 2 mins.  Ftos elected last year and graduated last year and we do this for a year. Around 30 staff to deliver our charitable objectives Throughout we work and engage with students as partners In everything we do, students are able to lead and shape

academic representation at UEA 1 mins Who we are and what we do now Student Participation in Quality Scotland (Sparqs) defines partnership as ‘an equal relationship between two or more bodies working together towards a common purpose, respecting the different skills, knowledge, experience and capability that each party brings to the table’

why should we work with students as partners? Changes in HE Change in student expectations & new generation z Increase engagement with learning Greater sense of belonging and community Transformed staff experience and thinking about practice Development of knowledge and skills to support employability 3 mins Introduction of fees has meant students more and more see themselves as consumers rather than learners and as having a transactional relationship, so it’s important for you to be clear able how students are able to shape their education. They also have consumer rights and expectations are increasing. The new generation has grown up with technology and surveys have shown they’re more likely to turn to youtube rather than books for their learning Working with students will increase engagement with their learning as it will create a greater sense of belonging in the academic community It’s also an exciting opportunity to transform your experience as staff and to question and explore how you think about your practice Finally, working with students as partners provides them with more opportunities to develop knowledge and employability skills

principles of working with students Understand and respect students expertise as students Active and authentic approach to engagement Provide a variety of opportunities Appreciate and value other perspectives Go beyond listening to student voice, to working together to improve the student experience Empower students to take ownership and responsibility for their education 2 mins Understand and respect students expertise as students Active and authentic approach to engagement – the more you put into working with students, the more you’ll get out of it Provide a variety of opportunities – different students will be interested in different things, Appreciate and value other perspectives – exciting opportunity to challenge what you think you might know and to learn new perspectives Go beyond listening to student voice, to working together to improve the student experience Empower students to take ownership and responsibility for their education – there will naturally be a power dynamic, but this gives you the opportunity to empower them to take responsibility in their learning

But… there’s more than one side to a partnership students as partners In course rep training we encourage students to: Find possible solutions when presenting problems Raise areas of positive experiences Understand their expertise in the student experience But… there’s more than one side to a partnership How you can use the spaces and opportunities you have to improve the student experience and student engagement? 1 min UG & PG officer trains reps and convenors We encourage them to see themselves as partners in their education

transactional vs transformational Students present a problem “I need more contact hours” Staff respond – ‘transactional’ response We can’t accommodate more contact time due to SSR and additional costs – this is what was advertised in the course What might be being said I don’t sufficiently understand the material I’m working with I am struggling with understanding how to learn independently I barely see anyone so don’t feel part of the academic community Staff respond - ‘transformational’ response The school works with students to: identify areas in the curricula that require more focus organise additional sessions with LET about developing key skills help facilitate group study outside of contact time 3 mins, then 3 mins discussion What does this look like in practice? In your role, you have the opportunity to empower students to become learners rather than consumers and to increase engagement and the sense of community. So you can work with representatives in a transanctional way, example. But this way closes the conversation, loses the potential to understand maybe wider or deeper issues or problems and most importantly doesn’t offer a potential solution. Students might be presenting a problem that they don’t necessarily understand and beyond this might be saying… So a transformational response might be... It might be that the obvious solution would be to actually have more contact hours. But this allows you to explore other solutions that may be more achievable for this cohort. These are examples where you might work in partnership, and is a transformational response because by exploring this further students have more opportunities to develop skills, and do better. It can transform your the students experience and your understanding of it. And we know if the student experience improves, it’ll help improve your metrics as well, for example, just using this example will help increase student voice, academic support sections, learning community GEORGINA: So we’d like you to take a couple of minutes to discuss between yourselves maybe some examples of where you may have given a transactional response to an issue and instead how you might provide a more transformational response, or an example where you feel you’ve already provided a more transformational response

closing the loop Important to remember to ensure there is a dialogue with the wider student body about how you have worked with reps to help address their problems This could be via allowing reps to do a 2 minute update at the start of a lecture following an SSLC, or a blog and minutes being sent round in a school newsletter

Further information Any questions? Engagement through partnership: students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education by Mick Healey, Abbi Flint and Kathy Harrington; HEA 2014 UEA’s Code of practice for student representation Any questions? Working with students as partners goes beyond just course rep system and structures, it can be through learning and teaching, quality assurance and curriculum and course design. If you have seen it already HEA produced and explores these in further detail. Coming back to specifically UEA, we have a code of practice for student representation which goes into detail about how we work in partnership with schools to deliver our rep programme. We are currently reviewing this so there will be an updated version next year. We’re also reviewing how we work as a student union and want to take a more faculty and school based approach next year, so would love to work with you as much as possible to help improve the student experience in your schools. I’m not going to be here but our education and engagement team

students transforming thank you!