Category Archives: student choice

New article: Conceptualising student voice in UK higher education: four theoretical lenses.

student choice

Canning, J. (2017) Conceptualising student voice in UK higher education: four theoretical lenses. Teaching in Higher Education,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2016.1273207

Abstract: The ‘student voice’ is highly profiled in UK higher education, yet highly under-theorised. Over the past 20 years UK universities have gone from a taxpayer-funded, free at the point of use model, to one supported through tuition fees via Government-backed loans. Subsequently, there is a growth of discourse about universities as businesses and students as paying customers/consumers whose opinions and demands must be considered. This article outlines four possible theoretical lenses (or frameworks) through which student voice can be analysed, enabling an exploration of the vested interests and power relations entailed. These lenses draw on (1) research on student voice and power in compulsory education; (2) regulatory capture from Economics; (3) the notion of students voice as part of an incomplete whole and (4) non-representational theory, developed in Human Geography by Nigel Thrift.

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My Open Educational Resources

languages, leadership, learning, LLAS, OER, PhD, PhD viva, quantitative methods, statistics, student choice

I have put many of my teaching resources in the humbox where anyone is welcome to download and reuse them. They are primarily used as handouts in face-to-face contexts, so most would probably need adapting to turn them into materials suitable for purely online context. Most are available under creative commons licenses, but please check first.

My profile on the humbox

Click on "View all resources" to see a full list of my resources.

The PhD research training collection includes resources on the PhD viva, academic writing, employability, academic writing, doing book reviews and ethnography.

The Head of University language departments collection includes scenario planning exercises, for curriculum change, people management and presenting research.

Further resources I have produced for sharing are on other project websites such as SPEAQ (Relating to quality assurance and enhancement) and Getting the Most Out of Feedback which has resources for students and staff on feedback and student evaluation.

There is also my Statistics for Humanities online book.

I have made a list on Diigo of other people's open educational resources on study skills

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On accepting unsolicited advice from a stranger

learning, student choice

The washing machine packed up this weekend. My sister-in-law is staying with us at the moment so my wife and I went on an impromptu date to the electrical store this evening while my SIL babysat. It is the first time we have ever bought our own washing machine. Prices varied between about £200 and £900. Most were A, A+, A++, or A+++ energy rating. Most were white, though some were grey or even black. Some had 1 year guarantees, some 2 and some 5. We were confused.

We were starting to take an interest in a particular model when a women approached. "I would never buy a [major brand] if I were you. I've had them out to mend mine three times now. Eventually I told them just to take it away. They gave me a better model and the same thing happened to that as well".  In the confusing situation of purchasing a washing machine any advice which led to eliminating certain options seemed helpful. No one came up to offer a contrary opinion. It would seem almost rude to have have ignored this unsolicited piece of advice.  We have ended up choosing a another brand.

It is interesting to reflect on how (and even why) we accepted this advice. We had no opinion and she offered one.

In the complicated process which is university choice I wonder whether negative advice from random people can actually be the most influential factor.

 

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Unistats and the information cult.

Key Information Sets (KIS), National Student Survey, student choice, surveys, websites

Having been going on to anybody who would listen (and those who wouldn’t) about the Key Information Sets for the past year or so, I actually managed to forget today was the launch of the new unistats website. Once there was talk of the ‘information age’, but now we have an ‘information cult’. In the information cult, if there is enough information about things we can made good and right choices. Back in the 1980s there was an advert for a bank, which parodied their rivals—each time a customer asked a question the bank employee would reply, “Here is a leaflet about it”. The point about their bank was that they actually answered your questions in person.Image of Key Information Set

With the internet we have a gigantic worldwide “leaflet about it”, whatever “it” is. With the right information we can apparently make choices about which school to send our children to, what hospital to have our operation at, what car insurance to buy and which company is the cheapest for electricity this week. The launch of the new unistats has been receiving a lot of coverage, mostly negative on the Times Higher Website. The KIS contains information on salary, % of assessment which is coursework and scores from the National Student Survey, among other things.

As Roger Brown pointed out some months back, this is actually a moral issue. The idea that this information empowers potential students to make reasoned choices is very troubling. And like anything which is measured, universities (and any other organisations), as Adam Child is quoted as saying in the article, will focus on the what is measured rather than making improvements  which really matter. And where there are numbers there are league tables.

Some have suggested that choosing a university is becoming like buying car insurance a la Compare the Market. This is nonsense. You can change your car insurance company, you can move house, you can change your spouse and you can even your bank (allegedly we are more statistically more likely to change our spouse than our bank).  The time and money expense of university means a wrong choice can be disastrous.  Like a pawn move in chess it is made forever.  In one of his books, Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comics talks about the confusopoly, an economic system sustained on the collective ability of service providers to confuse consumers with complex pricing structures, tariffs and performance measures. Perhaps that is what we are coming to here with universities.

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Severe grading at GCSE and A-level MFL: Consequences for Higher Education

A-level, GCSE, languages, LLAS, school, student choice, teaching, transition to HE, ,

Issue 1: Severe grading

Research into grading at GCSE and A-level has revealed that Modern Languages are graded more severely than most other subjects. A pupil who takes a GCSE or A-level in a language is, on average, likely to get half a grade lower in their language than they will in their other subjects. For example a pupil who gets a mid to low C in English is likely to get a D in their language GCSE.

Issue 2: Preparedness for university-level study.

When the severe grading issue was discussed at the recent LLAS workshop for Heads of Department, it prompted discussion about another entirely separate issue—the extent to which students are prepared for language studies in higher education. Students are getting good grades at GCSE and A-level, but are not as well prepared as university lecturers would like.

Issue 3: the proportions of students getting higher grades in language GCSE.

Over 70% of students got a GCSE grade C or above in French, German and Spanish in 2012 compared to 58% in mathematics. This would suggest that it is easier to get a higher grade in languages than mathematics. This is fairly straightforward explanation here: the students who take languages GCSE are generally speaking of high academic ability than the cohort as a whole (nearly everyone takes mathematics, irrespective of academic ability). The GCSE data alone does not tell us this, but when we examine all of an individual student’s grades we can see that those who take GCSE languages will, on average, do worse than they will in other subjects.

Consequences for higher education

Some in higher education welcome severe grading—it could be argued that those who succeed at school, despite severe grading are those who will do best in higher education. The reverse argument is that those seeking to recruit school pupils to study languages at university are essentially trying to convince students to study their worst subject (assuming that pupils consider there to be a link between grades and how good they are at the subject). Work by Felix Maringe on university course choice found that employability was an important factor in the choice or subject, but only alongside performance. If potential students believe that they are not as good at subject A as they are at subject B they are less likely to choose it.

Conclusions

The argument about severe grading is entirely based on averages, and, as the statistics joke goes it’s normal to be deviant; some students do consider languages to be their best subject and their grades will support this belief.  Others will be getting more than half a grade lower on languages compared to their other subjects. Grading adjustment could benefit universities enormously in terms of recruitment—if students did as well (or better) in languages than in their other subjects more would consider languages to be their best subjects and choose them in higher education.

Questions about the actual curriculum and standards are actually separate questions entirely. Severe grading is about relative performance, ensuring the highest performing students in languages get the same grades as the highest performing students in other subjects.

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Glossary, Websites and Further Reading: Student information and surveys

HEA, Key Information Sets (KIS), LLAS, National Student Survey, research, student choice, surveys, transition to HE,

NSS: National Student Survey. UK survey of final year undergraduate survey undergraduates conducted annually since 2005. Results are published at institutional and disciplinary level within institutions is minimum threshold of 23 students and 50% response rate is met. http://www.thestudentsurvey.com/

PTES: (Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey) and PRES: (Postgraduate Research Experience Survey). Annual surveys of finishing taught and research postgraduate students run by the Higher Education Academy, though not every institution participates every year. Findings are confidential to the individual institutions though overall reports are published.  http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/student-experience-surveys

Key Information Set http://www.keyinformationsets.com/

“Key Information Sets (KIS) are comparable sets of information about full or part time undergraduate courses and are designed to meet the information needs of prospective students. From September 2012 all KIS information will be published on the Unistats web-site and will also be accessed via a small advert, or ‘widget’, on the course web pages of universities and colleges. Prospective students will be able to compare all the KIS data for each course with data for other courses on the Unistats web-site.” Source: HEFCE http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/lt/publicinfo/kis/

Higher Education Academy http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/student-experience-surveys

Further reading

Canning, J. et al. (2011) Understanding the National Student Survey: Investigations in Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. Southampton: Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. Available from: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/197699/

Child, A. (2011) The perception of academic staff in traditional universities towards the National Student Survey: views on its role as a tool for enhancement. MA Dissertation, Department of Education, University of York. Available from: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2424/1/Final_Thesis_Version.pdf

*Maringe, F. (2006). ‘University and Course Choice: Implications for Positioning, Recruitment and Marketing’. International Journal of Educational Management 20, 466–479.

Ramsden, P. et al. (2010) Enhancing and Developing the National Student Survey. London: Institute of Education. Available from: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/pubs/2010/rd1210/rd12_10a.pdf

Renfrew, K, et al. (2010) Understanding the Information Needs of Users of Public Information About Higher Education. Manchester: Oakleigh. Available from: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/pubs/2010/rd1210/rd12_10b.pdf

*Richardson, J .T. E. et al. (2007) The National Student Survey: development, findings and implications. Studies in Higher Education 32, 557-580.

*Richardson, J.T.E. (2005). Instruments for obtaining student feedback: a review of the literature. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 30, 387-415

Surridge, P. (2009) The National Student Survey three years on: What have we learned? York: Higher Education Academy. Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/research/surveys/nss/NSS_three_years_on_surridge_02.06.09.pdf

Williams, J. et al. (2008) Exploring the National Student Survey: Assessment and Feedback Issues. York: Higher Education Academy. Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/nss/NSS_assessment_and_feedback_issues.pdf

*Subscriptions may be required. Other items are open access

I have made a word version of this list available in humbox.

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