Students as researchers Elisabeth Dunne and Derfel Owen University of Exeter

This session was about projects that had been undertaken by students and the session started with an activity that we had to do focusing on some flip charts which had a continuum on them which was university staff as experts one end and students as experts the other.                                                                                                                     

We then had to decide for the following topics where we should place our university in terms of this for:

• Developing/supporting study skills
• Reviewing quality of teaching
• Technology innovation
• Writing course materials
• Designing assessment
• Designing learning spaces
• Employability
• Developing staff training/development

This provided a lot of interesting discussion around who was the expert and how students could be involved.

The team then discussed the student projects that students had undertaken as researchers doing staff interviews, surveys, focus groups and video clips. The students were all given training for this and ethical approval was undertaken by the staff supporting them. These were undergraduate students.

Examples of the projects included:

• Wanting to change some of the teaching in the business school and the business students provided the evidence that students wanted more technology and the business school used their report to change things so that now every undergraduate and postgraduate student has a clicker for the programme duration and this is used to collect feedback but also do diagnostics
• The Bio-science students felt the guidance given by lecturers for their writing essays was poor and could be improved so they interviewed lecturers and then developed a study skills guide for the students
• Arceology students did not think their careers guidance was good and so they started their own careers fair getting in local and national companies
• Students wanted to change their learning space and a new building was being refurbished so students got different companies to bring a range of furniture for a week and then got over 1000 students to come and give their views. Some lecturers attended too and thought this was great.
• Students wanted to disseminate their research and so started an annual conference which they run

The students have to bid for the finds to support this but they do not get any project supported until they provide the evidence of the problem.