Welcome to our page, here you will find information about ENGAGED, the Learning and Teaching Festival run by us (the Student Engagement Ambassadors).
We think of ENGAGED as one of our biggest wins from our placement period and we've provided descriptions of the events, budgeting, and results below.
We interacted with over 800 students raising awareness for Curriculum Transformation and student engagement, and got written feedback from over 200 students.
What was ENGAGED?
ENGAGED was our four week learning and teaching festival that we organised with support from both the CLT and the SU. There were two talks, and four events that were geared towards collecting feedback from students, about their academic experience. Our events were innovative to try and inspire students to think outside the box, and we got some interesting new ideas around learning and teaching.
Our events and talks can be seen in the programme opposite, scroll down for a more detailed breakdown of the events.
We have three main takeaways from the feedback we gathered from students during the festival. These takeaways have been informed by the written feedback we collected from students, it strengthens the student voice as it correlates with what we know students are already saying:
- Students feel, by a large majority, that assessment is too 'bunched' and that there is an over emphasis on summative measures – this increases their stress and affects their well being.
- Students would value and act upon quicker and more comprehensive assessment feedback.
- Students want to experience greater interaction with their learning community, academic staff and other students. They proposed a range of means through which this can be achieved, including enhanced teaching techniques in lectures and seminars, and also through direct engagement with contemporary research.
Click the buttons to explore the incentives and the events in more detail
Tamara
"It was powerful to see students engage with learning and teaching outside of the classroom and online unit evaluation and engage with us in a new and exciting ways. Students proved to me over the festival that they do care about learning and teaching and they do understand what makes good learning and teaching. However, we have to be willing to ask the right questions, listen to them, and meet them where they are. I really hope the University can run it again next year!"
Luke
"ENGAGED has to be one of our favourite events that we have organised throughout our placements. We have managed to hold two successful talks to look at how students can be powerful in their own learning and teaching. These events have been the starting point for a number of different conversations across campus about how the University should move forward in the future, and we hope these conversations will be carried on to further help Curriculum Transformation."
Alice
"This feedback strengthens the student voice as a significant amount of it reinforces what students have been saying for a long time, which will help to cement the importance of longstanding issues such as the burden of bunched assessment. The four of us, and the students we have talked to, strongly encourage the university, its professional services, and academic staff to embrace this as an example of ways to engage students that go past surveys and unit evaluations."
Matt
"It was so fantastic to see so much student engagement with each of our activities during our festival. It is clear that students have interesting and useful ideas about ways in which we can as an institution improve in terms of our learning and teaching, and should have much more opportunities to do so during their time at university. Overall, ENGAGED was a triumphant success and I hope to see this sort of festival repeated in future years."