Participatory action research for education development SHEER Final Report.doc

Participatory action research for education developmentSHEER Final ReportByDr Scott FernieSchool of the Built EnvironmentHeriot-Watt Universitys.ferniehw.ac.uk Dr Karen SmithEducational Development UnitHeriot-Watt Universityk.l.smithhw.ac.uk Table of Contents1EXECUTIVE SUMMARY32ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS43INTRODUCTION54BACKGROUND55LECTURE MODES AND ENGAGEMENT76CONTEXT87RESEARCH PROBLEM117.1Methodology127.2Data collection methods138FINDINGS158.1The expected158.1.1Comparison of means168.1.2Further analysis and discussion178.1.3Recommendations238.2The unexpected248.2.1Analysis248.2.2Discussion298.2.3Recommendations309REFLECTIONS ON EXPERIENCE AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENT3110CONCLUSIONS3411REFERENCES3511.1Appendix 1 template for qualitative analysis3911.2Appendix 2 marks for years 2007-2008, 2006-2007, 2005-20064011.3Appendix 3 five ways431 Executive SummaryThis report documents an action research partnership between Scott Fernie, a new lecturer in the School of the Built Environment at Heriot-Watt University and Karen Smith, the learning and teaching coordinator in Heriot-Watts Education Development Unit. The report assesses the impact that such close-to-practice, individualised project work has on the practice of educational development, academic practice, and student learning experiences. The action research project looked specifically at the engagement of a highly diverse cohort of masters students on a management module. Dealing with diversity (different educational, cultural and employment backgrounds) within the classroom led Scott to consider more active approaches to delivery with the aim of stimulating and challenging his students to learn, encouraging debate and discussion, developing scholarship skills and making the module more enjoyable for lecturer and students alike. The SHEER project funds offered Scott the chance to formally evaluate his interventions which included: group discussions, games, structured reading, critical reviews, presentations, essay surgeries, peer review, the formative use of turnitin software and short focused lectures. The formative evaluation set out to investigate how the shift to activity-based formats impacted on the quality of student engagement. Action research, with its emphasis on reflection and action, seemed an appropriate methodology to develop an understanding of the problem domain. Action research is cyclical in nature and calls on prolonged engagement in the research process; here, however, we report on only one action research cycle. The following qualitative data collection methods were used in the research: observations of the sessions, focus groups with students, blank paper evaluations and interviews. These qualitative data were supplemented by three years worth of essay marks for this course. The use of both quantitative and qualitative data makes the findings more robust. The findings offered both intended outcomes by way of the formative evaluation, and unexpected outcomes depicting the journey to becoming a masters level student. The data, in terms of a formative evaluation, suggested that Scotts interventions had indeed impacted positively on student engagement in this module. The quantitative data highlighted that there was a significant difference between marks in term one and term two over the two years that Scott had been teaching; with a marginally stronger effect for this academic year. These data were supported by the qualitative data which highlighted that students benefited greatly from the focus on essay writing, essay surgeries, and discussions around plagiarism. The students liked to emphasis on research skills and appreciated the opportunities to debate and discuss. The students wanted, however, to gain more recognition for this work, through assessed presentations, for example. The data also revealed the bumpy ride that masters students experience as they come to terms with masters level study and active learning more generally. The teaching approach used by Scott challenged many students and left them feeling initially uncomfortable. These students had to come to terms very quickly with this academic and for some cultural shock in order to perform well in their assessments. The data also brought to the fore problems with making assumptions about home and international students academic skills and the need to do more research into the transition from undergraduate to postgraduate study. The SHEER project also gave Scott and Karen the chance to consider the benefits of action research partnerships between educational developers and lecturers in supporting new academic staff. Both benefited greatly from the relationship, the issue-driven discussions and the sharing of expertise. Scott has renewed his interest in educational policy and practice, while Karen has been looking at ways to capture the ethos of this project and to develop more enquiry-led, discipline specific elements in the Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice that she leads. Overall, the project has had a positive impact on the work of both Karen and Scott and on Scotts students. Karen and Scott intend to develop their work in this area and will be looking to disseminate the work in collaboration with the Higher Education Academys subject centre for education in the built environment (CEBE). 2 AcknowledgementsThe work was funded by and supported throughout by the Higher Education Academy Scotland. Karen and Scott would also like to thank the students who took part in the lectures, the focus groups, interviews and feedback mechanisms. They would also like to thank Nicola Freeman for providing fantastic transcriptions of the qualitative data and Chidochangu Mpamhanga for his superb guidance on the analysis of the quantitative data. 3 IntroductionIn autumn 2007, the Higher Education Academy allocated funds for the development of evidence-based practice, through action research, to support new academic staff. In Scotland, this manifested itself through the Scottish Higher Education Enhancement Research Project (phase 2). Scott Fernie, from the School of the Built Environment at Heriot-Watt, bid for funds to support a piece of action research into his teaching. He was supported by Karen Smith from the Educational Development Unit. Scott has been moving away from traditional lecturing, to more activity-based workshop-style teaching. The funds were used to evaluate more formally the changes and then to disseminate the findings from the project, in conjunction with the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Education in the Built Environment. One of the fundamental aims of SHEER is to promote research relationships between developer and lecturer. The challenge here is to engage the developer in active education research and to encourage the lecturers research gaze away from discipline related problems towards education within that discipline. Discussion and findings regarding this relationship are described within the latter parts of this report. Indeed, this aspect of the research forms the basis of exploring how varied forms of applied research, within such a relationship, can be instrumental in providing insights into education theory, teaching and learning. Such insights will prove invaluable to education developers/researchers in further developing and exploring ways to support academic staff through highly contextualised educational research studies. Engaged academics and their associated academic practice also benefit significantly from such research insights. While the outcomes of any research can have positive effects on student learning.4 BackgroundParticipation in UK higher education has rocketed. At the beginning of the 1960s, the Age Participation Index (API) in UK higher education was 6 per cent of 18-19 year olds (Rees and Stroud 2001 , p.73). By 2001-2002, in Scotland, the API had risen to 51.5 per cent for higher education students under 21 (Scottish Funding Council for Further and Higher Education). While in the 1960s, higher education had little influence over the lives of most people; today, this expanded system has seen higher educations impact on the population increase, and increase over a much wider cross-section of society (Rees and Stroud 2001, p.72). This growth has also been achieved by looking outside of the UK; with over 350, 000 international students studying here in 2006-7 (HESA 2008) one of the most visible signs of internationalization is student mobility (van Damme 2001). The university, in which this research was carried out, Heriot-Watt, prides itself on being international; one-third of its on-campus population comes from outside the UK. At postgraduate level, the percentage of students from outside the EU is greater than those from either within the UK or the EU. Notably, this brings increased revenue to UK Universities as overseas students pay significantly more fees that UK or EU students (Middlehurst and Woodfield 2007). The international student experience has become the focus of an increasing body of research literature. This research tends to focus on the problems that international students face when they begin to study in a new culture. These problems can be caused by an unfamiliarity with academic conventions within the new country, for example not being used to self-directed and critical approaches (see Samuelowicz 1987). Students may experience feelings of academic and cultural shock (Hellstén 2002) and a period of academic adjustment (Morrison, Merrick et al. 2005). Brown and Holloway (2008) describe this adjustment as a journey which initially is highly stressful. This stress reduces across time as the international students become more accustomed to life in a new country. A recent literature review commissioned by the Higher Education Academy by Caruana and Spurling (2007 p113-114) critiques work of this kind which focuses on academic adjustment. They note that such work rarely defines what academic adjustment would look like; has a tendency to separate problems out from the whole student experience, propounding a deficit model; and does not acknowledge the similarities between home and international students. While adjustment for international students at both undergraduate and postgraduate students is a subject for research, research on the student experience of masters education more generally is scarce, and what research exists tends to relate to postgraduate students on research degrees (Stuart, Lido et al. 2008). Given that the number of taught masters students has grown in recent years in the UK, experiencing a 42% increase between 1995 and 2003 (Stuart, Lido et al. 2008, p.12), it seems a significant gap in the literature that this group is so under-researched. While transition into higher education and the first year experience has a forty-year research history with many publications (see Harvey, Drew et al. 2006 for an overview), it tends to deal exclusively with the experiences of first year undergraduate students. The research reported here gives some insight into the transition experiences of masters students who, arguably, experience adjustment difficulties moving between undergraduate and postgraduate studies. 5 Lecture modes and engagementIn order to deal with an increasingly diverse student body and the changing focus of higher education, there have been moves to develop a more pluralistic approach to teaching methods deployed by academic lecturers to encourage student learning. Such approaches help to cater for the different styles of learning, thus ensuing more engaged students and more effective learning (Felder and Silverman 1988).Lecturers, then, are expected to be highly sensitive to levels of student engagement in the methods, processes and delivery of learning: moving from a teacher-centred model, to one which puts the student at the centre. Notwithstanding these challenging issues, there is also the emerging need for lecturers to be similarly sensitive to calls for students leaving the academic system to be dominantly equipped with employability-related skills and life-long learning skills (Adler and Milne 1997). Arguably, weaving in these demands for employability and life-long learning skills with the traditional view of academics on what an academic education provides presents a significant challenge to dominant forms of teaching methods in universities the lecture method. While still a dominant teaching approach, the lecture has come under criticism. It is seen as an essentially passive approach to learning, based on the transmission of knowledge (Exley and Dennick 2004). Yet, it is only as efficient as other methods of teaching in transmitting that knowledge, and is less effective than other methods for promoting thought and changing students attitudes (Horgan 2003, p.77). Active engagement and imaginative inquiry are much more likely to occur if teaching methods that necessitate student activity, student problem-solving and question-asking, and co-operative learning are employed (Ramsden cited in Horgan 2003, p.77). Similarly, the use of prior reading, writing, debate, discussion followed by the completion of a long extended essay as a form of assessment has been found to relate to deeper understanding, conceptional change and the development of critical thinking (Tynjälä 1998).In a paper which reviews research into active learning, Prince (2004, p.229) notes that his study found support for all forms of active learning examined and that credible evidence suggests that faculty consider a non-traditional model for promoting academic achievement and positive student attitudes. He suggests introducing activities into sessions to increase recall; structuring courses to promote collaboration and cooperation, and use problem-based learning to positively influence student attitudes and study habits. Just because activity-based approaches can have positive effects on student learning does not mean that students automatically accept them. As Felder and Brent (2005) highlight, introducing student-centred learning can be a bumpy ride, and students might initially be resistant. They describe student trajectory from shock, through withdrawal before ultimately integrating and succeeding (though not all students make it to the final stage). The research presented here accepted these arguments and set out to explore the issues of student engagement and teaching approaches with a view to challenging the dominant orthodoxy of the lecture method and improving the learning experiences and performance of both students and academic lecturers within the School of the Built Environment at Heriot-Watt University.6 ContextScott is a relatively new lecturer in the School o