1. Enhancing undergraduate learning through the development of research-teaching linkages: Managing the process across different levels within a programme
Dr Vicky Gunn

2. Opening conversation:
What does ‘enhancing research-teaching linkages’ mean to you?

3. A bit of context from the Enhancement Themes

4. Reflections from the QAA Quality Enhancement Projects
General perception – students need to be an audience for the first year or two. Depends on staff conception of ‘research’ and discipline.
Student research practice feeds into staff and postgraduate research.
Explicit links need to be made between the academics and the students.
Importance of involving postgraduates.
Constraints of assessment processes.
Not much discussion of the relevance of technology in inculcating research-mindedness
Experiences can be lost across the levels of study.

5. Basic typology of links (from Healey, 2005)
There are four main ways of engaging undergraduates with research and inquiry:
research-led: learning about current research in the discipline
research-oriented: developing research skills and techniques
research-based: undertaking research and inquiry
research-tutored: engaging in research discussions.

6. Assumption:
Making the processes of research an explicit experience within a curriculum improves a whole range of skills, not just the ones required to continue as a researcher in the discipline area.
What does this mean in terms of the experiences to which we should expose our students?

7. Designing the syllabus (content) around researchers’ current focus;
Example practices:
Designing the syllabus (content) around researchers’ current focus;
Inviting students to attend research seminars provided by staff throughout the undergraduate programme;
Refiguring level 1 and 2 materials to include seminars given by staff on their research that tie directly into sections of the course.

8. Enquiry-based approaches at course level:
Example practices:
Enquiry-based approaches at course level:
Redesigning the curriculum to mimic the research process (often implemented through simulations of the research process in levels 1 & 2);
Redesigning the curriculum to include students as RAs (often in levels 3 & 4);

9. Enquiry and application
Placements as part of practical application of abstract subject
Simulation of real world issues in classroom

10. Problem with the case studies we have:
The problem with most case-studies concerning research-teaching linkages is: they only provide a snap shot of one or two elements within a whole programme.

11. Ways of reviewing whole programmes with research-teaching linkages in mind?

12. Healey 2005:
Use to map the overall curriculum?
Possible to use as a map of the overall experience?

13. Research-Teaching Linkages (the jargon slide)
Re-configuring disciplinary specific types of outputs as disciplinary assessment approaches
Re-viewing curriculum to enhance enquiry-based processes that lead to discipline-common ‘ways of thinking’
Re-situating the learning:
Socio-cultural contexts in which learning takes place
Undergraduate and postgraduate learning environments

14. Mapping through researcher development frameworks
The knowledge of the standards, requirements and professionalism to do research
The knowledge and skills to work with others and ensure the wider impact of research
The personal qualities and approach to be an effective researcher
The knowledge, intellectual abilities and techniques to do research
Domain A: Knowledge and intellectual abilities
Domain B: Personal effectiveness            
Domain C: Research governance and organisation
Domain D: Engagement, influence and impact
Vitae RDF

15. Common elements throughout the course Elements unique to a given year
Considerations:
Structure of undergraduate programmes in terms of when to emphasize what
Common elements throughout the course
Elements unique to a given year
Ways of encouraging coherence, progression from one year to another, meaning-making between different modules in the face of flexibility of provision?

16. All the other enhancement themes we have to engage with?
But what about….
All the other enhancement themes we have to engage with?

17. Integrating the themes: basic assumption
Meaningful links between the themes?
(Starting point)
Research-Teaching Linkages
(Back to)
Assessment
(Forward to)
Employability
Tinker with one, inadvertently engage with the others
Knitting the threads together:
FEEDBACK & PDP processes

18. Bringing principles of R&T, assessment & feedback together
Focus on reflective praxis;
Encourage self-reliance and resilience;
Help students make meaning of and in a range of situations (ie broader than the immediate classroom);
Expose students to unfamiliar settings and assist them through the related anxiety.
Bringing principles of R&T, assessment & feedback together

19. Assumption
Making the processes of research an explicit experience within a curriculum improves a whole range of skills, not just the ones required to continue as a researcher in the discipline area.
What does this mean in terms of the experiences to which we should expose our students?

20. Basic assumptions for curricular review?
Making sense of Higher Education ‘learning for work’
Discipline specific
How to:
do the subject
understand the subject
interact in the classroom
WRL & Employability
adapt what is learned & understood outside the academy
be & act in different places
present self
Careers
find out about jobs;
present self;
reflect on aligning strengths with careers
Extra curricular activities?
Researcher-Mindedness Enhancements?
Opportunities for developing Graduate Attributes for 21st Century

21. Recognizing the practicalities
Valuing reciprocity – where in all of this is the student voice?
Progression
Standards
Raising awareness of learning contexts
Managing student anxiety
Managing staff anxiety
Time-tabling