1. Reflecting on the 10 Principles of Student Engagement: Are we making progress?
Oisín Hassan USI Deputy President and Vice President for Academic Affairs
@USI_Education
Intro to me
I’d like to thank the QQI, HEA and the other named partners for the
I’ve been tasked with setting out the scene for today’s conference. I’ve chosen to do that through lense of the 10 Principles of Student Engagement (they are on your tables). The Principles were developed as a core component of the HEA’s Working Group Report on Enhancing Student Engagement in Decision-Making.

2. Student Centredness? Student Experience Student Life
Student Satisfaction
Student Engagement
Student Partnership
Student Success
So, you’re asking… why am I talking about SE? Isn’t this conference entitled ‘Student Centred Approaches’?

3. Enhancing Student Engagement in Decision-Making (2016)
Working Group of the HEA
10 Principles for Student Engagement
3 Drivers of Student Engagement:
The HEI as a site of democratic citizenship
The HEI as a learning community
The HEI as a critical institution
3 Domains of Student Engagement:
Teaching and Learning
Quality Assurance
Governance and Management
2 recommendations:
Co-Led evaluation of formal/informal SE
Co-author institutional SE Policy
In 2014 the groundwork began to develop a new sense of the student within their own education and institution. Ultimately, in 2016 after the Working Group had concluded, the Report on Enhancing Student Engagement in Decision-Making was published. The Report laid out 10 principles, that were propelled by 3 Drivers for Student Engagement - those were the HEI as a site of democratic citizenship, the HEI as a learning community, and the HEI as a critical institution.

4. Enhancing Student Engagement in Decision-Making (2016)
“Student engagement practices within an institution can be underpinned by two sometimes competing, ideological positions. In the so called market model, engagement is based on a view of the student as consumer. This model gives students the rights of the consumer, but also locates them as outside users of the institution, as they purchase future ’more-educated’ versions of themselves. In contrast, the developmental model perceives the student as a partner in a learning community. Here, students have both the rights and the responsibilities of citizens. Through the development of a learning community students contribute to the success of their institution as ‘co-creators’ of their own learning.”
Consider those 3 Drivers - students as democratic citizens are therefore considered equal, constituent parts of the institution with a role to play in its evolution, students as part of a learning community, where knowledge is not merely imparted and absorbed, but shaped and created by the reactions, views, and contributions of those who come to learn, and students as part of a process of self-evaluation and critique, rather those who criticise without constructive input. That model of students as consumers is actively dismantled by a process capacity building with students, raising them up to active participants in the processes of the institution, in the learning it fosters, and in the decisions it takes.

5. Engaging students in a systematic approach ultimately builds their capacity to act as partners.
It is from an engaged student partnership model that student centred approaches emerge and are fostered within education.
Student Engagement builds Student Partnership capacity, fostering a culture of Student Centredness.
I offer you this explanation.
3 interlinked concepts, but distinct concepts.
How now can we realise the potential we have created?

6. And that’s where you come in... gosoapbox.com
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8. And that’s where you come in... gosoapbox.com
Event code for staff: SCA1
Event code for students: SCA2
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Before I close and hand back to the chair, I want to take one moment to sum up the purpose of today’s conference. I firmly believe that Ireland, after just a few short years of laying the building blocks, is now internationally leading in student engagement, embedding a student partnership in its infancy, a model we need to redouble our efforts to foster. This conference is a watershed moment, to reflect on that growth, and to begin to set out our stall for the coming years.