Students as producers
Engaging students in the process of research and of creating resources does far more than simply enhancing the learning experience. It also develops valuable skills for life – while improving research outcomes too.
For years people have claimed that teaching is the poor relation of research. But now, fresh approaches to the concept of students as producers are breaking down the walls between students and academics. This is enabling them to collaborate on research and create fresh, more relevant learning resources together.
At Weston College in Somerset, computing students are working on a programme called Tech Genius, an IT help desk that they have set up in the college library to mentor their fellow students on a range of IT issues. Increasingly, teachers are finding it useful too. It is helping the computing course students not only to hone their IT skills but also to master customer service skills that will stand them in good stead for a life in employment.
Similarly, OpenLIVES, a partnership between the Universities of Leeds, Portsmouth and Southampton, is having a profound impact on both teachers and learners.
The year-long collaboration started with the aim of making a series of recently collected interviews with early 20th Century Spanish émigrés available as open resources and then using them as a focus to help embed open practice within modern language teaching. The project had particular resonance in response to the 2009 HEFCE report review of modern languages in higher education (HE), which identified the need for university departments to work with other bodies to demonstrate how historical scholarship and cultural study relate to the modern languages discipline. The team planned to use this project to answer that call and to create resources that would enhance students’ experience, research skills and employability.
It was initially envisaged that the students would use the original recordings to create open educational resources (OERs), but enthusiasm of all parties meant that opportunities for outcomes were plentiful.
“They saw that the shackles were off and that they had a free pass to do something really fresh and innovative.”
OpenLives project lead, Southampton University
Project lead Kate Borthwick of Southampton University explained: “Open access (OA) was a guiding principle and students and teachers loved that. They saw instantly that OA enabled them to do lots more things, faster and more creatively. They saw that the shackles were off and that they had a free pass to do something really fresh and innovative.
“As a result, meetings were well attended and often over-ran because there were so many ideas being floated around. The process was open for all to see and I’d tell anyone who worries that openness means everyone has the same experience, that our experience shows the exact opposite. Everyone involved took the resources and experiences off in their own directions.
“The teachers were keen to start using the resources as soon as possible and to build open practices into their teaching without delay.”
Creating new OERs, as well as assisting with preparing, digitising and publishing the recordings on HumBox with correct licensing information, ethnographic notes, synopses and images, was a huge task that helped students to learn team-working skills and transcription, translation, editing and design techniques, along with harder to quantify interpersonal skills and ethical awareness. Kate Borthwick highlights the fact that managing permissions to publish and re-use emotionally sensitive stories required great sensitivity and empathy and says that Jisc programme manager Paola Marchionni provided extensive support in this area. Kate said: “Paola made us think carefully about the ethics of what we were doing and made us more rigorous about the protections we put in place.”
Southampton University’s Alicia Pozo-Gutierrez collected the original interviews in 2008 and was keen to get involved in OpenLIVES and open practice generally because it offered her research materials an extended and richer life. She commented: “I’ve been inspired by concepts such as ‘students as producers’…the concept of the global learning community…the idea of democratisation of education. Those are the principles that will guide my future work.”
Each of the collaborating institutions has taken a distinct route in producing its OERs. Southampton University has focused on research skills; Leeds built materials into a new module featuring documentary-making and introducing new teaching methods and assessments, and Portsmouth has focused so far on the production of digital magazines about the interviewees’ lives.
“It has made me realise that students can really be partners in research and they can be much more motivated in their work.”
Portsmouth University
Miguel Arrebola, Portsmouth University, said: “It has made me realise that students can really be partners in research and they can be much more motivated in their work.
Students on the OpenLIVES project found fresh motivation:
“It has given us…an opportunity to do our own primary research and genuinely engage with the issues we are studying. Having more academic and creative control over our own education is extremely stimulating and motivating.”
“I feel far more valued as a student on this module, as our ideas and feedback are almost simultaneously incorporated into the module – for example, which other tutor asks us what we feel we should be assessed on? …The skills I have gained during this module will be of far higher worth to me in my future career than all of the other skills I gain from all of my other modules put together.”
Teachers on the project were impressed too:
“[The project] has been very important for me professionally because I have learnt many different skills; I have developed new career paths; I feel more confident as a practitioner; I think I can offer better education and better learning and teaching to my students.”
A view from the coalface
Mark Stubbs is head of learning and research technologies at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). Earlier this year MMU won the Student Experience Award at the Guardian Higher Education Awards.
He says: “Word of mouth plays a big part in the marketing of any product and education is no different. If students don’t have a positive and enjoyable experience, which they believe meets their needs and offers value for money, a college or university is likely to notice a fall in applicants and reputation. That’s a powerful reason for any educational establishment to put the student experience high on its agenda.”
“It has made them much more confident in what they do…and the quality of what they produce is really, really good.”
The OpenLIVES project has demonstrated powerfully how the use of open and original research resources can boost creativity in teaching, motivate students to engage and create high quality new content and foster a breaking down of the long-established and largely artificial boundaries between teaching and research. The enthusiasm that all participants brought to the project is undiminished and will be carried through to new projects with new audiences in the future. Kate says: “This is a very easy and cost-effective model that any institution could adopt for projects in any academic discipline. Our experience is that, if you can bring the courage, your teachers and students will bring the enthusiasm.”