HEARing Student Voices

Self Portraits and Perpetual Motion: The Student Experience of Informed Choice and Feedback

Jennie Blake, Research AssociatePatricia Clift, Teaching and Learning Manager

University of ManchesterVal Wass

University of Keele

HEARing Student Voices: developing the pedagogy to reflect achievements across the student experience

This project has been funded by the 2009 NTFS Projects Funding strand

HEARing Student Voices

HEAR

HEARing Student Voices

Project Outline

• Stage One:– Student Focus Groups (Discipline Specific)

• Stage Two– Mixed Student Focus Groups– Staff Focus Groups– Individual Interviews

• Stage Three– Student /Staff as co-researchers– Creation of “formative HEAR”

HEARing Student Voices

The Participants

Programme2nd Yr Students

Pure Discipline

Mixed Discipline1

Mixed Discipline2

Interview Discipline Totals

English 4 3 3* 5 15*

Pharmacy 10 2 4 3 19

Geography 8 2 2 3 15

22 7 9 11 49

HEARing Student Voices

BLANK MAP

• Independent choice• Resources

• Communication• Goals

“No one’s ever said, ‘Look, here’s the underlying structure of what we want to give you, this is why we’re doing all of this...’ That’s

never happened.” (efg1)No. This is what we get in our seminars, ‘Is everyone okay with the

essays then?’...Because we have to be, don’t we? What else are we going to say? (efg1)

HEARing Student Voices

Perpetual Motion—how feedback stalls out

Definitions A Process A Purpose

I mean, I know it’s quite preliminary, ‘cause they haven’t done feedback forever at uni, but, um... I think at the

moment we’re getting...what was wrong and less of what you could do (mfg2p)

And it means, I feel like as I’m writing these essays that are going towards my degree this year, I’m writing them with

this blind idea of what’s a good essay.(efg1)

HEARing Student Voices

Self-Portrait

• Isolation• Independence

• Community and Clarity

So if someone who just knew, someone who knows who you are and kind of, I know it’s much too big, there are too many people at university...

(efg1)Yeah, we don’t really get... It would be possible to do the whole..go through

the whole semester, and no one would have a clue whether you were doing well, or anything. You could go through the whole semester and

not... know anything at the end of it.” (mfg1p)