Competition for students is set to become fiercer as their fees form an increasingly important income stream – and with other funding streams dependent on universities’ research expertise, how can institutions maintain the balance? JISC Inform looks at how involving students in the university’s research culture can benefit both sides of the desk.

The draw for students is obvious – a degree from a research-intensive university means they can show they have been taught by leaders in their field and gives them experience of working on live research projects. Exeter is just one example of a university that is making the link for students – and JISC is funding a new project there looking into this very question of how students can benefit from university research activities.

Exeter already has some experience of engaging postgraduate research students in cascading skills to undergraduates, but in the course of the JISC-funded work this will be applied specifically to digital literacy skills. As part of the project, the University is developing a number of research-rich online and face to face activities to give postgraduates the opportunity to develop their own digital literacy, and they will also have access to a newly accredited training programme which will focus on how to cascade these skills to others.

As you might expect, JISC is also involved in helping researchers better reach their student audience through the innovative use of technology. This can increase student awareness of the specific areas of interest of the staff. For example, the Creativity and Research-led Teaching website developed by the University of Leeds promotes creative approaches to problem-solving through short films of leading researchers describing their projects and challenges they’ve faced in their work. Students are then asked to think of creative solutions to these problems either as individuals or in groups. The activity gives them a flavour of a potential research career as well as giving students an opportunity to reflect on their own learning styles.

But sharing the research culture need not only rely on the researcher. David Kernohan, programme manager at JISC, says, “Traditionally, research-led teaching has relied upon the interests and skills of the academic who happens to be doing the teaching. But Open Educational Resources – the publication of educational materials under open licences – as well as open access research and open data give students and staff access to the exciting work of a whole sector. This provides much more research to lead the teaching with.”

One example of how research can be joined up in a way that helps students is the JISC-funded GrassPortal, which involves partners in the UK, the USA and France. This portal provides a single point of access to an extraordinary range of grass data for scientists, researchers and students. It also provides educational case studies and sample datasets in these areas as research-led teaching resources for university and school students. Similarly, researchers and lecturers using the recently launched British Cartoon Archive will discover teaching resources to help them transform this rich collection into a colourful lecture theatre resource.

Kernohan explains that greater access to the wide world of research can also help personalise the learning process. “Maybe a student is interested in cephalopod nervous structures and links to observed behaviour, but her teacher is a specialist in muscle recovery in mammals and the metabolism of lactic acid. Why not let the student use the materials relating to her interests, produced by an academic at the other end of the country, and extend beyond the course curriculum to experience the process and the excitement of research?”

“That excitement comes when students are actively engaged, encouraged and supported to take an interest in research opportunities as part of their studies.

Professor Jack Whitehead, adjunct professor at Liverpool Hope University and Visiting Fellow at the University of Bath, and an expert in the area of action research, points out that there is a 45 year history of the teacher as researcher movement in the UK, “This interest could take account of the movement, where teachers in all phases of education are encouraged to see themselves as knowledge-creators as well as users of the knowledge created by university academics.”

To support this JISC is making research papers more easily available, through open access, so that lecturers and students can use them for learning. It is also funding learning environments that support a research-led focus.

Kernohan concludes, “Opening up their teaching and research activities will allow universities to reposition themselves as guardians and leaders of public knowledge. And involving students in the process of academic discovery, encouraging a spirit of enquiry and sharing the research interests of academics can be very powerful indeed.”