Richard Keegan in the Department of Sport, Coaching and Exercise Science reflects on a 6-week trial aimed at producing scientist-practitioners in sport coaching. He describes how a change in teaching practice to incorporate the principles of Student as Producer has significantly enhanced the engagement of students on one particular module, and can provide a more stimulating and enjoyable experience for staff and students alike.
Blog
Book contract
Mike Neary has signed a contract with Zero books to publish a monograph on the topic of Student as Producer and how it extends beyond the University of Lincoln.
Student as Producer – How Do Revolutionary Teachers Teach?
ABSTRACT
This book seeks to recover the idea of the university as a progressive political project. It does this through an engagement with the radical history of higher education, a review of the work of revolutionary teachers, e.g. Hegel, Vygotsky, Friere, Ranciere, Illich, hooks, and a dialogue with the movement of opposition against funding cuts to universities in the UK and around the world. The book provides an account of the way a group of academics and students are attempting to construct a radical form of higher education out of the ruins of the current arrangement. The book provides a compelling account of how revolutionary ideas, e.g., melancholia, magic, comedy and poesis, can be used to reinvent the university as the highest form of social knowing, grounded in a project to confront the many global emergencies that define the contemporary world. These ideas are used to frame a range of radical practices and principles on which to base revolutionary forms of teaching. These practices include interruption and astonishment, dissolving the difference between manual and intellectual labour, experimenting with history and encouraging the positive power of negative thinking ( dialectics), i.e., not teaching, so that we all might learn.
Extra Mural – Something Special
Student as Producer is impacting outside as well as inside the University of Lincoln: on line and in the classroom.
On line
Student as Producer is viral, if not yet contagious. Student as Producer is posted on the Finnish Wikiversity site. On this site, Student as Producer is posted alongside some of the leading protagonists in critical and progressive education, including Paulo Freire, Jaques Ranciere and Ivan Illich.
Student as Producer can be found on the sites of some of the webs most prominent bloggers on higher education, including Glenn Rikowski’s All that is Solid web site and Stephen Downes’ blog.
Student as Producer has a presence on the websites of leading universities that are partners in the project. Warwick has established a Student as Producer fund as part of their newly created Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.
Student as Producer is discussed on De Montfort University’s Learning Exchanges blog as ‘Reflections on the Socio-Historical Moment of Technology in Education’. In this blogpost the principles that underlie Student as Producer are set alongside ideas generated by some of world leading critical theorists including Slavoj Zizek and John Holloway.
You can find Student as Producer on the University of Nottingham’s webpages. I recently gave a talk on the subject of Student as Producer to the University of Nottingham’s School of Education. A video recording of the talk can be found on the Learning Science Research Institute’s webpages.
Multiple references to Student as Producer can be found on Twitter – where it now has its own hashtag #studentasproducer
In the Classroom
In classrooms and lecture theatres Student as Producer has been discussed at workshops and presentations. Most recently I gave a talk to a group of students at a conference organised by the Really Open University in Leeds. The title of the conference was ‘Re-imagining the University’.
I have accepted a number of invitations to make keynote addresses on Student as Producer at various conferences, including the Standing Conference for the Head of Media Services ( SCOMS) at the University of Newcastle in May, as well as to a conference about improving quality in Teaching and Learning at De Montfort University in June 2011.
All of this, together with other work that the University is doing, creates an awareness that something special is happening at Lincoln.
Evaluation
Professor Mick Healey is the world’s leading authority on research-engaged teaching, with a series of seminal publications on the research-teaching nexus ( Healey and Jenkins 2007, 2009). Mick has agreed to be the external evaluator for Student as Producer.
Mick came to Lincoln last week to run a session on setting up an evaluation framework for the project. The workshop was attended by Dan Derricott, Vice President for Academic Affairs at the SU, Professor Scott Davidson, Deputy Vice – Chancellor for Teaching Quality and the Student Experience, Karin Crawford, Principal Teacher Fellow in Heath Life and Social Sciences, Andy Hagyard, Co-ordinator for Student as Producer, Ian Snowley, the University Librarian and myself.
Mick suggested that we use a a ‘theory of change’ (ToC) approach (Hart et al., 2009), which may be used to explain how and why a project realizes the results it achieves. The ToC approach attempts to develop an understanding of the relationships between outcomes and the activities and contextual factors which may influence the outcomes. One of the attractions of the ToC approach is that it may be used to extend our understanding of a project, rather than audit it. Hence the key question in our case might be, for example: “What have we learned about making research-engaged teaching and learning an institutional prioirty?”. It is essentially a narrative approach, which tells the story of the project.
By completing the components of the framework (see below) at the beginning of the project it can provide a road map which can be elaborated on and altered during the life of the project. The process of developing the framework also encourages a conversation between the team members and hence promotes a greater shared understanding of what the project is trying to achieve and how will you know if it has done so.
Components of Theory of Change
1. Current situation
2. Enabling Factors / Resources
3. Processes / Activities
4. Desired Outcomes
5. Longer-term impact
6. Unexpected outcomes
Professor Phil Levy (Sheffield), a member of the Student as Producer Steering Committee, used the ToC approach to evaluate one of the Centres for Excellence Projects (CILASS, 2010) and then also applied it to Angela Brew’s ALTC Teaching Fellowship project (Levy, 2010).
Together with Mick, colleagues from Lincoln spent the morning working through aspects of the proposed framework to test its suitability. By the end of the workshop all agreed it would work for Student as Producer and that is should be developed further at the forthcoming Project Management Group.
References
CILASS (2010) CILASS Evaluation http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ibl/cilass/evaluation.html See the text and two video clips
Hart, D., Diercks-O’Brien, A.G. and Powell, A. (2009) Exploring stakeholder engagement in impact evaluation planning in educational development work, Evaluation, 15: 285-306
Healey, M. and Jenkins, A. (2009) Developing Undergraduate Research and Enquiry – http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/resources/publications/DevelopingUndergraduate_Final.pdf
Healey, M.. Jenkins, A. and Zetter, R. ( 2007) Linking Teaching and Research in Disciplines and Departments http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/LinkingTeachingAndResearch_April07.pdf
Levy, P (2010) Evaluation in Brew, A Fellowship Final Report http://www.altc.edu.au/resource-enhancing-undergraduate-engagement-research-enquiry-macquarie-2010
Gathering Momentum
Interest and awareness in Student as Producer is growing across the University following the highly successful launch event. Mike Neary and Andy Hagyard have been touring the campuses talking to colleagues in both academic departments and professional support. So far we’ve been invited to meetings with ICT, Enterprise, Marketing, Programme Leaders in Art & Design, as well as Teaching & Learning Committees in HLSS and Business and Law: many more meetings are planned for the coming weeks. We’re also busily recruiting students to act as Student as Producer ambassadors.
The key message is that this is an institution-wide initiative that will impact on every aspect of university life, not just the taught curriculum. While there are plenty of questions to be answered, there is also a growing sense of excitement surrounding the opportunities that Student as Producer can provide.