1.1 Involving students as partners in SoTL

These are various ways to involve students as partners in a SoTL inquiry (Figure 1):

• pilot participants: students act as pilot participants to trial research materials such as questionnaires and interview protocols, then give feedback ahead of the implementation of research materials for the entire cohort of students.
• advocates: a group of students influence their peers to participate in research activities of a SoTL inquiry, such as completing questionnaires and writing reflective journals, etc., to give feedback to the educator.
• research participants: students participate in feedback surveys, workshops, discussion forums, etc. to provide input to a SoTL research process.
• observers: students are observers of teaching practice and provide formal and systematic feedback (Werder and Otis, 2010). Students may need to be trained and closely supervised to offer constructive and diplomatic feedback (McConnell and Wisker, 2016).
• co-creators: students design and develop learning and teaching resources along with the educator ahead of carrying out a SoTL inquiry.
• co-designers: students and educators jointly formulate and design a SoTL inquiry.
• validity checkers: students look at initial summary data and interpretations of a SoTL inquiry and comment on the validity.
• co-inquirers: students and educators act as co-researchers in conducting a SoTL inquiry (Healey and Healey, 2019).
• co-authors: students participate as co-authors in dissemination activities.
• independent SoTL researchers: students may seek answers to SoTL questions they have developed, using the skills gained during previous mentored experiences and partnership projects (Werder and Otis, 2010).

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Figure 1 Continuum of increasing level of student involvement in SoTL

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The figure shows a continuum of increasing level of student involvement in SoTL. They could start as being research participants in SoTL, such as, pilot participants, advocates and observers. Students could be designers, such as co-creators, co-designers and validity checkers. Students could be co-researchers such as co-inquirers and co-authors. Finally, students could be independent SoTL researchers.

Figure 1 Continuum of increasing level of student involvement in SoTL

Although student-educator partnerships aim to improve the learning and teaching experience, Acai et al. (2017) outline the motivators for students and educators to engage in student-educator SoTL partnerships. The key motivators for students were opportunity to be published, gaining research skills and experience and financial support. The top motivators for educators to engage in SoTL partnerships with students were opportunity to be published, having students as additional resources for support in their SoTL practice, the satisfaction of seeing an increase in confidence and research skills in students and being able to use their SoTL work with students as ‘academic currency’ when applying for funding or promotion.

Activity 2 Students as partners in SoTL practice

Timing: Allow approximately 10 minutes

As you are watching the following 4 minutes and 24 seconds video, think about ways of involving students in SoTL and the advantages for both students and educators.

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Transcript: Video 2 Students as partners in scholarship

KAREN FOLEY

So tell us about the student voice and why that's so important, and what areas you're really missing out on that the student voice addresses.

DIANE BUTLER

I think the people that we work with in the faculty and in our student support team, we’re all really expert at delivering teaching. We're not really expert at being students anymore, it’s been a while. So we really need to learn from our students. Where the problems are firsthand, where the issues are, and allow them to help us set the strategic priorities for projects. So we make sure that they’re fully included in the whole process, and that it’s not just us thinking, well, that sounds like a nice idea. Let's research that.

And Cath and I recently asked a small group of students last week, what would there be – what would be their priorities for scholarship projects. And within about five minutes, we had a list, huge long list, all the things – some of the things we were doing already. But there were some really new things, some things that were really innovative and that we hadn't thought of. So getting the student voice, those people who are experts in studying at a distance in our institution, that was really, really fundamental.

KAREN FOLEY

It could be a future prize winner there?

DIANE BUTLER

It could be. It would be nice to have a student prize, wouldn’t it, going forward? Yeah.

CLEM HERMAN

I think that’s the other thing that we're looking. The student voice is hearing the ideas, but there’s also the next stage which we’re really interested in, is getting students as partners in our projects and getting students more actively involved. I mean, you might want to say something about that.

CATH BROWN

Absolutely. I mean, I think this is a really exciting opportunity for students to get involved as co-researchers, and we’ve been looking at ways they can do that from a small scale such as students checking a questionnaire, having student facilitators to focus groups. It could be really good because obviously students will feel all differently about being open with other students. And so we've been working out a kind of a ladder of engagement. And on a personal basis, I'm really excited that I’m involved in the couple of the ones that were starting this year.

KAREN FOLEY

And you work in a lot of various roles, Cath. What are some of the benefits that you get from participating in some of these things? And why do you think other students should get involved?

CATH BROWN

I think it’s – there are many reasons other students should get involved. Firstly, obviously there's the personal development aspect that the chance to actually be involved in something like this is something that they may well find very fulfilling, very satisfying. And indeed, in many cases, that’s something they can put on their CV as something they've done as well as their studies. I think understanding that the teaching and learning is something that is actually researched and thought about so deeply is very helpful for students to understand that it's not just arbitrary that someone’s just decided to do it like that- to understand that there was a process of continuing improvement.

And obviously, as Diane was just saying, to feed in their unique perspective, the point is that the student is, as we said, an expert in being a student so that they can feed that in. I mean, we're really happy that in this time, we've been moving for over the last few years to increasing student involvement, haven’t we? I joined on the student – as a student on the advisory group back in December 2017, something like that. And we’ve recently just formed a student reference panel. And we've got a student facing website, and we’re looking at having a student facing event as well, aren't we?

DIANE BUTLER

That’s right. We want to have a mini version of the conference that's just taking place at the moment, but online in Adobe Connect. So students can listen to some of the projects that I've been reporting at this conference to find out how they can get further involved. And we're really looking, as Cath says, for people who don’t – they don't just want to listen to what we’re doing, they want to come and get involved as well. So they want to support the work that we do.

I think it’s really fundamental that we include people, and I think they can add enormous value to projects. And we’ve just inducted some new projects which are really, we've made a focus that students should be included on the team of people, and we’ve got a number of really interesting projects where we're using students who’ve successfully completed modules to advise on how new assessments are written for the next set, next presentation of the module. So really using students expertise to help other students who come after them on the module that they’ve just completed.

End transcript: Video 2 Students as partners in scholarship

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Video 2 Students as partners in scholarship

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Discussion

In this video, colleagues in eSTEeM [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] , the centre for STEM pedagogy at The Open University (OU) are in conversation with a STEM student about integrating student voice in SoTL in STEM.

They outline some of the ways that students are contributing to SoTL practice:

• learning first-hand from students about their problems and challenges
• students offering their lived expertise and experience; for example, helping to improve the materials on a module that they have just completed
• students contributing towards strategic priorities for SoTL projects in eSTEeM.

The educators discuss student involvement as co-researchers and how it could be small scale; for example, sense checking a questionnaire before it is circulated for data collection; or including student facilitators at focus groups because student participants will feel more open about sharing their perspectives with other students.

In this video, the student, Cath, discusses various advantages for students:

• personal development
• the experience can be mentioned in curriculum-vitae
• a fulfilling and satisfying experience of having contributed to learning and teaching
• developing an understanding that research on teaching and learning is carefully considered in SoTL; this is helpful for students to recognise that it's not just arbitrary that an educator has decided to teach in a particular manner, but that there is a process of continual improvement of teaching and learning.

The speakers also discuss various ways that students are involved in eSTEeM, such as having an opportunity to learn about SoTL initiatives in STEM by participating in the student conference in which SoTL projects in STEM are showcased.