Surfacing the Student Voice in the Curriculum
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At the University of Lincoln, we see students as being at the centre of teaching and learning by identifying opportunities to work in partnership with them to develop skills and understanding. Empowering students by making them an active collaborator in their own learning enables them to reflect upon and enhance their knowledge in order to influence their individual journey, which in turn feeds into assessment and module feedback that supports development of the wider curriculum.
Involving students within teaching and learning, as well as looking at the wider curriculum development, lead to benefits such as being able to:
- Monitor the student’s current knowledge so that misconceptions can be identified and redirected.
- Ensure that students are active participants in their learning and not simply passive consumers.
- Help dissect knowledge and scaffold learning, whether through peer-to-peer or staff guidance.
- Enable lectures to deepen learning through the identification and provision of additional opportunities to extend knowledge.
- Create quick pulse-checking activities to ensure students are aware of their progress.
- Reflect, critically analyse, and engage with other students to further evolve discussion and understanding.
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When thinking about the student voice and information about each cohort, it is important not to ignore data being collected from various platforms already in use. We use a lot of varying technologies inside of our teaching practices, and now with the increase in development of online content, we have access to a wide range of data to help inform our teaching practices. This approach requires no further effort from the student and can give you beneficial insights into how students are performing and using each tool.
Using data can be advantageous when it comes to planning, adapting, and embedding new content and ideas into curriculum designs. For example, if you realise that students are engaging more with micro-lectures (pre-recorded video) than other tasks, you could potentially adapt your teaching resources to reflect this.
Whilst quantitative data is important, it can still be beneficial to combine this with qualitative data through discussions with your students to ensure you get a rounded picture of how tools are being used.
Some potential benefits of using data to inform teaching are:
- Giving a better understanding of the students and how they are engaging with your course.
- Maximising attainment through data monitoring.
- Making learning more effective through development and discussion of materials based on data collected.
- Identifying key barriers and using this knowledge to develop solutions for students.
- Designing activities to gather feedback to support curriculum development in line with students’ needs.
Resources:
Online Teaching & Learning | Using Data to Inform Teaching | Web
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Dr Kirsty Miller (School of Psychology) worked in conjunction with students through discussion and forums to create a new assessment feedback template. This approach enables student to be involved with the design of feedback forms to ensure consistency across the school. It also set expectations and empowered students to drive their development and learning. Read about the project in more detail in our Showcase blog:
Showcase | Dr. Kirsty Miller – Making Feedback Part of Learning | Web
This approach can be further enhanced, as demonstrated by Gary Saunders (School of Criminology), by using not only the assessment rubric but the subsequent feedback to generate action. Within his module he incorporated the assessment rubric into his teaching and learning activities to provide opportunities for students to analyse the rubric and how this would be used to mark their work. Incorporating the document in this way also enabled students to ask questions and engage with the rubric early on in their course. Building on this enhanced familiarity, he provided actionable points within feedback so students could easily identify and develop elements that needed improvement.
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We have collated some ideas using different tools to help you find and surface the student voice. This can be done through a variety of activities, both asynchronous and synchronous.