Let’s rescue student engagement

Student Engagement – whether it’s the title of a paper, policy or pro-vice chancellor – has been around as a policy priority in higher education for some time. There are theories about why it is important, what it means, who should take responsibility for it, how it should be funded and monitored and who knows what is best for it; but I have seen a disappointing lack of discussion around what should happen because of it.

The Higher Education Academy reference several ‘dimensions’ of student engagement designed to place students as ‘active partners’ in their learning. They provide events and resources to discuss, develop and share ideas about what student engagement is and the best ways of doing it. However, it doesn’t matter how much of an evidence-base for best practice we have if the results of engagement are negligible or not effectively monitored. Organisations are piling funding and time into informing and developing the dynamic relationships within our community of scholars; yet our evaluative techniques (locally and nationally) looking at what comes out of those relationships remain stuck in a one-way street.

We come at ‘student engagement’ from an almost entirely tool and recruitment-based perspective. Getting the students involved, to meetings, to respond to surveys and to voice their concerns; giving them the tools and opportunities they need to communicate. But, there is absolutely no point in giving someone a megaphone if you still don’t listen to or perceivably react to what they’re saying. All of the language at a national level (from QAA and HEA and HEFCE) is focused on ‘actively involving students’, ‘making sure students have the chance to make their voice heard’. But, none of these organisations give effective guidance on the collection, combining or concluding of evidence gainedfrom the practices. NUS should be leading the way in this, and to an extent they do well to promote and share exciting engagement projects and pinpoint institutional ambassadors to uphold the ideals. But their flagship programme in this area deals almost exclusively with methods of getting information from students and reps, not on how to use it, record it or further research the implications of it.

Typically, student engagement is centred on student feedback, committee input, involvement in curriculum design and academic representation. The general aim is to allow a debatably representative sample of students to express opinions, requests and ideas to inform the development of teaching and learning. Some institutions are better than others at making this happen.

If we had a perfectly functioning representative system with well-trained, highly motivated students sitting on all relevant committees and with student officers consulted at every step, requests and minor issues may be dealt with promptly. But what happens with the information that is gained from it? The minutes of the student-staff committees? The feedback on all of the module forms? The issues raised from academic case-work? The responses to surveys? The complaints? The tweets? The statistics?

From what I have seen there is no best (or even very good) practice in collating the feedback streams available to institutions. There is no reporting, no trend-tracking and certainly no public feedback on issues. Considering how many universities claim to value research excellence, their methods of researching and consulting with students are appalling. In fact, these methods are nearly always delegated to inexperienced staff with no central methodology or support. The typical organisational chart of student representation may theoretically plug in to lots of relevant committees, but from then on it seems to be a dead end with no guidance for the staff or students involved. There are no other areas of academia that would see such unreliable data collection, with so few relevant conclusions.

Digby Jacks, former President of NUS, said that ‘representation should never be seen as an end in itself’; that its purpose is to seek institutional change. We have lulled ourselves into thinking that we are presenting students with the tools to seek institutional change but unfortunately what we have developed is merely a communication process.

In my experience, marketing departments have the most extensive and reliable research on the student experience because they have to understand it in order to sell the institution. Even broader engagement methods only seem to refer to the different methods of interfacing with students; rarely how to generate a holistic view of the student experience over time.

Without addressing these issues, the theoretically powerful tool of student engagement will become another agenda that is defeated by the sector’s proven ability to resist making any real change to the way it does business, whilst simultaneously appearing to make real progress.  But there also remains significant resistance to the agenda in many parts of the academy that need to be challenged. Frank Furedi argues in this week’s Times Higher Education that students should be seen, but not heard. Although Furedi’s assessment is outdated and wrong-headed, his words can only galvanise us to do better. We need to rescue the student engagement agenda from itself and make a new case for the idea that students can also be leaders of our sector.

I suggest that a central forum for addressing student opinion in every institution is vital – one that bridges the ‘us and them’ gap between students’ unions and universities. If, as the Government intend and HEFCE transforms itself in to a ‘student champion’, then it should incentivise a well-structured and consistent partnership approach to student engagement and the reactions to it. And this must happen through policy, strategy and ground-level adjustments. There needs to be specific academic, administrative, representative and advisory points of contact and control at every level and those who take on that responsibility will need to be centrally consulted, managed and empowered.

We need an engagement cycle that doesn’t just pick up on problems but continues to regularly shift our paradigms along with the needs of our community. We have the information in papers, case reports, committee minutes, data files and inside students’ heads, but we don’t do nearly enough to act on it. If we are to continue on this rollercoaster ride towards further marketization in higher education, the idea of consistently engaging with our students at every point cannot be allowed be yet another fashionable but ultimately failed policy initiative. It must become central to everything we do.