Challenge

The challenge was to increase engagement and active participation in both lectures and problem-based classes. In recent years, attendance in lectures has decreased significantly to the point where only about 20% of the students are attending a few weeks into the semester, and the number of lecture capture views does not correlate with the number of non-lecture attendees. More concerning is the lack of participation in small problem-based classes (25-30 students) where students remain silent. Many of the students have suggested that they do not want answer problems in class for fear of failure and ridicule from fellow students. This explains why engagement strategies involving anonymity, such as clickers, remain popular with students. As educators we understand the benefits of active learning but the question we need to answer is, how do we encourage students to participate? The students as partners (SaP) approach is designed to engage students by involving them in the learning and teaching process such as co-creation of curriculum and/or assessment and negotiations the terms and conditions of the partnership.

Approach

In order to enhance the engagement in Protein Science, a second year biochemistry course, a SaP approach was initiated, which gave students the opportunity to contribute to part of the curricula and the assessment. We felt that giving the students a say in what was taught and allowing them to design assessment would encourage them be more engaged or have a vested interest in the course. The partnership strategy was three-fold:

1. Provide student with a choice of topics for part of the course, negotiated by a democratic process. Students were able to vote for two topics of their choice from a collection of six topics and were required to reflect on the reasons for their choices.
2. Introduce an active learning task which involved students designing multiple choice questions which form part of the assessment. Students designed multiple choice questions and were provided with scaffolding, resources. A rubric and written feedback were provided to each student on their questions, and the questions designed by students were used as a study resource. Finally, the number of student-generated questions on the exam were negotiated.
3. Provide a forum for student reflection and evaluation of their partnership experiences. I was interested to know if the partnership increased engagement and improved learning.

Outcomes

Analysis of the evaluations by students suggested that the SaP approach resulted in higher levels engagement. Of the students who participated in the SaP task, 86.4% rated the partnership experience as being useful (52%) or very useful (34.4%), and 80.5% indicated that they were engaged (32%) or more engaged (48.5%) as a result of being involved in the course design and assessment. Student reflections provided direct insight into student’s perceptions of the partnership, and endless information about student learning, metacognition, motivation and knowledge construction. The majority of the reflections on the choice of topic related to their future courses or degree programs or topics that they thought would be interesting, for example, “I believe these topics could be of use in my future as a researcher”, and “I chose Protein Therapeutics because I find it fascinating how proteins can be used to treat medical conditions”. Another student stated that, “I liked that I got to study a topic I chose for once”. With respect to designing multiple choice questions for assessment, students overwhelmingly commented on the difficulty of this task, such as “It was a lot more difficult than I anticipated”. While many suggested that this supported their learning, for example, “it forced me to have an understanding of the content to create questions in which I could ultimately test myself on, further improving my knowledge”.

A final student comment is a testament to our successful introduction of an SaP approach, “Choosing a topic meant an increase in engagement and interest, and choosing questions for assessment meant I had to filter through what I know, didn’t know and what gaps I had in my knowledge”.

Enabling Technology

A personal learning environment (PebblePad) was used for this initiative but learning rather than technology drove the innovations. Using the digital platform enabled extensive, honest and surprisingly uninhibited student reflections which contained a plethora of data on the partnership.

Pebblepad (Fact sheet). Getting Started with VLE tools and the Course Design Standards.

Pebblepad (Module). Getting Started with VLE tools and the Course Design Standards.

Implement

Here are some simple tips if you were to implement this teaching approach.

• Start small in the first instance and if it goes well then you can expand.
• Attach enough assessment weighting to the task otherwise it will not be valued by students.
• Be up front with the students when trying new, innovative practices.
• Evaluate everything to gain an understanding of the students perspective on the teaching approach. The evaluation data is an excellent to evidence of innovation teaching practices and used for L&T citations and awards, conference and journal papers, and academic career development and performance review.

Support Resources

• Partnership-Based Learning (P1). Getting Started with VLE tools and the Course Design Standards.

  Module

• Improving student engagement and self-regulated learning through technology-enhanced student partnerships

  Paper presented to ICICTE 2019

• Beyond engagement: Learning from Students as Partners in curriculum and assessment

  Conference: Proceedings of the 3rd EuroSoTL Conference At: Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain

Contributed by

• Griffith Sciences
  School of Environment and Science
  Christopher Love
  37353678
  c.love@griffith.edu.au
  Griffith Experts profile
• Learning Futures
  

Preferred Citation

Love, C., & Learning Futures (2020). Students as partners for increased engagement. Retrieved from https://app.secure.griffith.edu.au/exlnt/entry/8088/view