Student Engagement in the Digital University

Sociomaterial Assemblages

Lesley Gourlay, Martin Oliver

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317298267
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Didattica
• Thema: Didattica inclusiva

Student Engagement in the Digital University challenges mainstream conceptions and assumptions about students' engagement with digital resources in Higher Education. While engagement in online learning environments is often reduced to sets of transferable skills or typological categories, the authors propose that these experiences must be understood as embodied, socially situated, and taking place in complex networks of human and nonhuman actors. Using empirical data from a JISC-funded project on digital literacies, this book performs a sociomaterial analysis of student–technology interactions, complicating the optimistic and utopian narratives surrounding technology and education today and positing far-reaching implications for research, policy and practice.

1
INTRODUCTION

As the influence of digital technologies becomes more pervasive throughout society and education, what it means to be a student and to engage in Higher Education is changing, often in ways which appear to overturn or transform the nature of learning and the university itself. These changes are indeed far-reaching, as the way that we communicate and access information becomes increasingly permeated with digital technologies. We use mobile networked devices to interact with technologies and online platforms while on the move, which has radically altered how we lead our lives, including in educational settings. Social media use has blurred the boundaries between private and public and has opened up new opportunities to explore and create multiple ways of being online. Meanwhile, the sheer volume of online information has expanded the range of texts and resources available to students, enhancing their educational opportunities, but also presenting them – and the university – with fresh challenges.

However, there has been a tendency in popular culture and in educational circles to regard the influence of the digital as a revolutionary change unlike any other, one which will entirely sweep away previous practices and fundamentally alter all aspects of scholarship and the quest for knowledge. This is sometimes related to assumed absolute generational differences, with notions like the ‘digital native’ (Prensky 2001) becoming popularised in the mainstream media. We have also seen the rise of the notion that all pre-digital practices are inherently retrograde and should be replaced by (supposedly superior) digital technologies. These ideas, we argue, stem from a tendency to enrol digital technologies as a signifier of other ideas and values related to education – such as notions of freedom, speed and efficiency – which seductively give the impression that the digital can allow us to transcend the limits of the body and our social and material settings, or do away completely with notions of expertise or the need for teachers and so-called traditional modes of scholarship.

This book examines how the digital is discussed and used in Higher Education and looks in particular at how these discourses and ideologies position students, lecturers, scholarship, knowledge and ultimately the university itself. We argue for a need to focus on what students actually do day-to-day in their independent study time, drawing on a research project which investigated the practices and perspectives of a small number of postgraduate students over the period of a year. In doing so, we argue for a ‘resituating’ of how we theorise student engagement in the digital university, moving away from categories, abstractions, fantasies and ideologies, and towards a sociomaterial understanding of this as embodied practice.

This chapter will identify the main themes of the book, setting these within the broader context of developments in contemporary Higher Education, and will give an overview of the book’s structure. In considering this complex topic, we will begin by critically examining two key concepts often used in Higher Education to talk about students, and we will also examine concepts and terms often used in relation to digital technologies.

‘The Student Experience’

Contemporary policies in Higher Education across the world have followed a similar pattern, with an increasing focus on ‘the student experience’. This concept has become central to discussions of educational quality, and has contributed to comparisons that form the basis of league tables, nationally and internationally (Barefoot et al. 2016). This move arguably forms part of a long-term change in the relationship between Higher Education and society, a relationship in which universities are increasingly expected to operate as if they were in a market and less as a form of public good. In the UK, students began to be identified as customers from the time of the government-commissioned Dearing report onwards (Dearing 1997). The rhetoric of UK national policy more recently has been to place ‘students at the heart of the system’ (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) 2011), positioning them as informed consumers within a competitive Higher Education marketplace. Linked to this are the league tables, drawing on data from national surveys of student satisfaction, such as the National Survey of Student Engagement in the US, the National Student Survey in the UK and the Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (Richardson 2005).

Alongside this development, debates about the purposes of Higher Education are taking place; discussions about the relationship between Higher Education and industry in particular have been going on for over a century, and have arisen wherever there are universities (Taylor 1999). In recent years, however, this discussion has focused particularly on ensuring the supply of appropriately trained graduates. In the UK, Higher Education has increasingly been repositioned as a private investment made by an individual, one expected to pay off in terms of subsequent earnings, and the system as a whole has been positioned as a driver for industrial innovation and the economy. In the US, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities identified the growth of online learning as one of its top ten priorities for 2013 – the top position being held by the need for public colleges and universities to achieve state goals through ‘overall degree production’ (AASCU State Relations and Policy Analysis Team 2013). In Europe, the European Commission’s ‘Opening up Education’ agenda focuses on the role of Higher Education in ‘boosting EU competitiveness and growth through better skilled workforce and more employment’ (European Commission 2013:2), for example through students developing ‘digital competencies […] essential for employment’ (ibid. 6). Universities in the UK are required to provide evidence about the employment patterns of past graduates, as if this past performance enables potential students to invest their fees more wisely (Barefoot et al. 2016).

The concept of the student experience has come to particular prominence in the UK in a context where tuition fees were introduced and were permitted to increase to £9,000 in 2012 following the Browne Review (Browne 2010). Additionally, as Bunce et al. (2016) point out, the model of student-as-consumer in the UK has been underscored by the inclusion of students under the Consumer Rights Act (2015). In this climate, student satisfaction has understandably become a priority in a situation where students are required to take on substantial loans, and a consumer identity has been shown to be associated with higher student expectations (Kandiko and Mawer 2013, Tomlinson 2017). As Ramsden has argued:

They are more liable than earlier generations to evaluate the experience of higher education as part of the broader context of their social and business networks. They are more likely to complain if the support services they encounter are inadequate or do not compare to their equivalents outside higher education.

(Ramsden 2008:3)

However, the criticism can be made that policies and discourses positioning the individual student-as-consumer suggest a straightforward transaction via the purchase of a definable and clearly delineated product. This seems an inappropriate metaphor to be applied to an educational process which is extended, highly complex and involves a great deal of effort on the part of the student, and the effect of constructing the student-as-consumer can lead to the student being cast as a passive recipient (e.g. Molesworth et al. 2009). Presented as a singular concept, it can also lead to a homogenising effect. Sabri (2011) critiques the UK government policy document Higher Ambitions: The Future of Universities in a Knowledge Economy (BIS 2009), in particular the chapter entitled ‘The Student Experience in Higher Education’, which states:

… as they are the most important clients of higher education, students’ own assessments of the service they receive at university should be central to our judgement of the success of our higher education system. Their choices and expectations should play an important part in shaping the courses universities provide and in encouraging universities to adapt and improve their service.

(BIS 2009:70)

As Sabri argues in relation to this quote, this has led to a reductionism_

The ‘student experience’ has come to be used as a singular reified entity. ‘Student’ becomes an adjective describing a homogenised ‘experience’ undifferentiated by ethnicity, socio-economic background, age or personal history. Its use precludes questions about where and when this ‘experience’ stops and starts, how it comes about, and how it changes. … a reified ‘student experience’ is wielded as a criterion for judgement about what is and is not worthwhile in higher education. Contained in this quote are several demands for the exclusion of and silencing of other accounts of higher education: students are ‘the most important clients’ of HE, and their assessment of it as ‘a service’ should be central to our judgement.

(Sabri 2011:2)

Arguably, the discourse of the student experience and the related notion of student satisfaction attribute a disproportionately large degree of agency to the university, or the academics, who are constructed in this model as the active players and providers of educational experience to the student who is cast as an implicitly passive and largely non-agentive consumer. The notion of satisfaction serves to reinforce the idea of Higher Education as a singular commodity which can be judged. It also reinforces the idea that Higher Education is a clear, complete and a priori entity which can be identified, delineated and evaluated by the student – standing somehow outside of it – as opposed to a set of activities and practices which emerge only through the active involvement of the student in interaction with others, texts and artefacts. This point will be explored throughout this book.

Student Engagement as Performativity

Interestingly, a prominent parallel discourse has also emerged in Higher Education circles focused on student engagement. This concept underpins national student surveys in the UK, USA and Australasia (e.g. Kuh 2009, Kandiko 2008, Coates 2010), where evidence of the desired type of student engagement is seen as one of the bases of a successful Higher Education offer. The concept has been highly beneficial in relation to the enhancement of inclusion, retention and diversity in Higher Education – in particular in the US system (e.g. Barkley 2010, Dunne and Owen 2013, Quaye and Harper 2015). However, as argued elsewhere (Gourlay 2015), when the concept has been applied specifically to notions of what constitute desirable forms of ‘teaching and learning’, as opposed to broader engagement in university life, it underscores particular ideologies about how students (and lecturers) ‘should’ behave.

In her review of the area, Trowler (2010) refers to Coates’ (2007) definition of student engagement, where specific instantiations of what she sees as good engagement are identified:

active and collaborative learning;
participation in challenging academic activities;
formative communication with academic staff;
involvement in enriching educational experiences; and
feeling legitimated and supported by university learning communities.

(Coates 2007:122)

As discussed in Gourlay (2017), there is an ongoing emphasis in this definition on observable, interactive activity, in particular engagement with others. Trowler (2010) contrasts this type of engagement, which she characterises as ‘progressive’, with traditional approaches, which are in her view overly associated with content, and are portrayed as retrograde and not productive in terms of supporting the type of student engagement described by Coates (2010).

In an earlier work, Coates (2007) also looks at student engagement in terms of a typology of student ‘engagement styles’ as opposed to focusing on activity types. The four-part categorisation proposes ‘intense’, ‘collaborative’, ‘independent’ and ‘passive’ as distinct. The first two are described in favourable terms, with the ‘independent’ style described broadly positively as follows, with a reluctance to collaborate presented as a hindrance (our emphasis):

An independent style of engagement is characterised by a more academically and less socially orientated approach to study … Students reporting an independent style of study see themselves as participants in a supportive learning community. They see staff as being approachable, as responsive to student needs, and as encouraging and legitimating student reflection, and feedback. These students tend to be less likely, however, to work collaboratively with other students within or beyond class, or to be involved in enriching events and activities around campus.

(Coates 2007:133–134)

The fourth engagement style of ‘passive’ is presented as problematic by Coates:

It is likely that students whose response styles indicate passive styles of engagement rarely participate in the only or general activities and conditions linked to productive learning.

(Coates 2007:134)

Coates’ categories seem, at first reading, to express a common-sense view, that more active students will be more successful learners. However, it is worth noting the degree to which this categorisation reveals a strong emphasis on – and desire for – interactivity, interlocution and observable activity, and as a result, renders silence, thought, reticence and unobserved private study less valid – or even proscribed – as forms of student engagement. As MacFarlane (2017) has proposed, this has led to a performative culture which uncritically promotes ‘active learning’ and is overly focused on self-disclosure, driven by what he calls the ‘student engagement movement’. He provides a robust critique of this tendency and argues for an urgent reclamation of the notion of ‘student-centred’ learning, positing that students should be regarded primarily as scholars who can choose how they wish to engage. As he puts it:

Students should have the right to learn in ways that meet their needs and dispositions as persons. Here, I believe that the distinction often drawn between ‘passive’ as opposed to ‘active’ learning has become an over-simplified dualism that has led to the vilification of student who prefer to study in an undemonstrative manner, often on their own and in silence. Even reading, an activity traditionally core to advanced learning, has been labelled pejoratively as ‘passive’. Student engagement policies and practices promote ‘active’ learning as an essential means of evidencing learning. Yet, relying on observation is a crude means of understanding the complexity of how students learn and engage. It further distorts patterns of student behaviour that are altered to satisfy such requirements. Performative expectations such as attending classes, showing an ‘enthusiasm’ for learning or demonstrating emotions such as ‘empathy’ through as self-reflective exercise are all non-academic achievements. They are merely behavioural demands that students are expected to conform with.

(MacFarlane 2017:xiv)

This quote touches on one of the key issues and arguments we will make throughout this book – that a particular form of observable behaviour has come to stand in policy discourses for the only type of legitimate student engagement, and (more worryingly) has also come to stand as a proxy for learning itself. Anything outside of this narrow band of acceptable behaviour is discussed pejoratively as passivity on the part of the students and, if related directly to teaching, with ‘teacher-centredness’ and su...