What is the nature of the student experience of contemporary
globalised higher education? How much should we listen to the voices of students
in deciding how university education is designed and run? The answer to both of
these questions certainly depends on who you ask and what sources of information
you draw upon. There is a prevalent discourse within universities and beyond in
the media that warns against listening to what students say. This discourse tells us that students are increasingly strategic and instrumental when it comes to their education and are in higher education simply in order to guarantee employment and a bigger salary once they graduate. It would have us believe that our students are developing a harder edge, are potentially litigious and, particularly in the UK, will begin to behave even more like angry customers now that they are paying huge fees for their education.
A similar set of negative voices suggest that students, whether home or international, are not interested in an 'international' experience, but would prefer to remain in monocultural groups and eschew the benefits that an international and intercultural experience could offer them.
Personally, I have never understood this construction of the student voice mainly because in my 25 years of teaching I have never come across any actual student who has expressed these sorts of views. This is also true of the views expressed in research into student perspectives of higher education that I've been involved in over the last decade.
On the contrary, the students that I have encountered both in my research and teaching have underlined the importance of their university learning as a holistic, social, cultural and intercultural experience.
The voices I've heard have said that it's not just about the qualification and the prospect of a job (although these are of course important factors) but about learning from and about others and transformations in sense of self and others.
In one particular research project that I carried out in 2008, I listened to both UK and international students tell me of the value they attached to working in international learning groups, their commitment to working across disciplines within their subjects and their active engagement with interculturality despite its troublesome nature.
I was told that it was not national cultures that generated conflict but academic cultures where students from design grappled with differences as a result of their backgrounds in industrial design, fashion design and design management.
Students from business, engineering and design expressed surprise at my questions about whether an international experience was important with one student saying: "I'm doing a degree in international business. Of course international experience is important!"
The student voices in this research were taken from particular learning environments where peer learning and informal feedback was valued and scaffolded. Students engaged in long-term collaborative work and had opportunities to practise their learning and interaction in low stakes environments (where marks were not attached).
I am aware of other research carried out in learning environments where students were asked to work together for assessment purposes where outcomes were negative and conflict destroyed opportunities to learn. These student voices taught me that where learning environments are carefully designed, students' views of their education will be congruent with what we as educators understand to be quality aspects of a student learning experience.
So, listening to the student view is not just about listening, but about ensuring that their voices come from the right learning environments. As students increasingly experience positive learning environments (and there are so many examples of these across higher education) they will tell us when and where their learning experiences are simply not good enough. Surely this will be a good thing?
Another research project I worked on in 2010 underlined for me that students are increasingly engaging both within and beyond the classroom in activity that acknowledges their role as a person and learner in an interconnected world. Brian Simon, the influential educationalist, underlined the crucial role of 'citizenship' in education and argued that it should involve critical analysis and aim at transformation.
Despite the potential that this sort of citizenship has to offer to the development of attributes such as 'critical analysis', valued by the formal university curriculum, voluntary or extracurricular activity is not generally viewed as an important part of the student learning experience. Its framing as 'extra' to the curriculum indicates the way in which this sort of engagement is mostly construed.
I am also aware that many people would see the link with such community work beyond the formal curriculum as a dilution of learning about the discipline, as so-called 'soft skills' and these people might note that there is simply not enough space in an already crowded curriculum to acknowledge the learning that goes on outside of the classroom.
Despite the views that disagree that there is value in student activities beyond the core teaching of the university, it is a fact that more and more students have begun to engage in these sorts of activities and soon these learning experiences will be difficult to ignore.
At Northumbria University in the UK, in partnership with our student union, we established a 'global citizenship award' that acknowledged the community and civic work of students from across the institution.
Two hundred awards of varying levels were given to students who had engaged in more than 16,000 hours of voluntary activity, which ranged from external work with charities such as Age Concern and Cancer Research to taking responsibilities within the university for representation of the student voice on learning.
It is also common for students to engage in discipline-related projects, with literature students establishing very successful creative writing groups with refugees and asylum seekers and law students engaging in and establishing civil rights groups.
The student union confirmed that these 16,000 hours of civic engagement represented a tiny fraction of the student community work that was happening and some students noted that they didn't apply for the award because they engaged in the work 'for its own sake'.
Northumbria Student Union was recently awarded the UK title of Student Union of the Year 2011 on the strength of community engagement. This is certainly an accolade that will attract students to come to the university as a signal that they will have a full and rewarding experience above and beyond their formal learning.
As these student activities gather pace it may be that universities will need to recognise them as a means of authenticating and enhancing the student learning experience.
Does this evidence convince us that our current and future graduates will be global citizens rather than angry customers?
In my opinion, the sorts of student voices we get will depend on all of us as educators and students engaging with the new challenges that changes in the nature of higher education will unquestionably bring.
Why shouldn't we take account of what students say about higher education? From the research projects I've engaged in I've found that students really know what they are talking about. Taken with other measured perspectives, they are a crucial part of our understanding of learning in higher education.
|
* Catherine Montgomery is associate director for research in the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Northumbria University, UK, and author of Understanding the International Student Experience, published by Palgrave Macmillan. She has published widely on the student experience, the curriculum and internationalisation. |
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire