Workshop on Research Informed Teaching at Solent Research and Innovation Conference, May 2016.

1. Daring, daunting or daft?
Doing research from Day 1
Professor Tansy Jessop
@tansyjtweets
#SolentRIconference
18 May 2016

2. What I hope you get out of this session
• Exploring your perceptions of research influencing learning
• Daring, daunting, daft – resistance to RIT
• Theories and models about research informed teaching
• Distilling principles and conditions from RIT case studies
• Charting our next steps…

3. Love it or hate it
• In groups of three
• Please take a pack of statements
and your very own Likert scale
• You have ten minutes to come to
consensus about all the
statements, and glue each onto
flipchart paper.

4. What stood out for you?

5. Students doing research: Daring?
• Challenges traditional pedagogy
• Turns ‘facts first’ on its head
• Democratic, participatory,
radical
• Student endeavour is central
• A risky pedagogy?

6. Traditional pedagogy: ‘Facts first’ approach

7. Students doing research: Daunting?
• Can first year students do
research?
• What do we mean by
research?
• How do we teach students to
do research?
• What happens to ‘normal’
content if students do
research?
• Is it about power?

8. Doing it from day 1: Daft?
• Students are paying £9,000 for higher education
• Why should students do the research and exploration?
• Isn’t it the lecturers’ job to impart knowledge?
• Lecturers are the experts, aren’t they?

9. Research-active staff –
not high up students’ bucket list?
HEPI Student Academic Experience Survey 2015

10. How does first year research marry with students’
intellectual development?

11. William Perry’s Unit evaluatons….
“This course has changed my whole outlook on life. Superbly taught!”
“This course is falsely taught and dishonest. You have cheated me of my
tuition”
This has been the most sloppy, disorganised course I’ve ever taken. Of
course I’ve made some improvement, but this has been due entirely to my
own efforts!”

12. Intellectual Development of Students
Third Year
Commitment Teacher as endorser
Second Year
Relativism Teacher as enigma
First Year
Dualism Teacher as expert

13. So why do RIT at all?
“Research promotes critical and creative thinking, the habits of
mind that nurture innovation; creates a sense of intellectual
excitement and adventure, and provides the satisfaction of real
accomplishment”. (Ellis, 2006)
“Everyone at a university should be a discoverer, a learner.
That shared mission binds together all that happens on a
campus”. (Boyer Commission 1995)

14. Benefits for students
• Self-confidence
• Independence in learning
• Increasing epistemological sophistication
• Entry into discipline research cultures
• Collegial relations with academics
• Improved grades
• Enhanced metacognition
• Increased engagement
• Employability skills
(Levy 2012)

15. Why do it in first year?
The key to developing undergraduate research and inquiry is to
mainstream it and integrate it into the curriculum for all students.
The focus on the final-year ‘research experience’ may not support
students in seeing themselves as stakeholders in the worlds of
university research nor best support them becoming members of a
disciplinary research community.
(Jenkins and Healey 2009).

16. A model for understanding RIT
Students active
Teachers active
It’saboutcontent
It’saboutprocess
Research-tutored
Research-orientedResearch-led
Research-based
(Healey 2005)

17. RIT as practised (my untested hypothesis)
Students are active
Teachers are active
What
How
Generate content
Teach methodsTeach content
Conduct research

18. (Zimbardi and Myatt 2012)

19. Three over-arching ways to do RIT
• structured inquiry—where teachers set a problem or question, and an
outline for addressing it
• guided inquiry—where teachers provide questions to stimulate
inquiry but students explore questions in a self-directed way
• open inquiry—where students formulate the questions themselves as
well as going through the full inquiry/research cycle
(Spronken-Smith 2010, 2011)

20. Seven case studies
Read through the case studies. Use the evidence to distil:
• Key principles of RIT
• Conditions for RIT to work.
• Questions and challenges.
• Opportunities.

21. How do we take this forward at Solent?

22. Some ideas
1. Find out what academics are already doing (inventory –
individual/course level?)
2. Research the student experience of curriculum based research within
courses (SPRIQ, focus groups, work with SU?)
3. Triangulate and disseminate findings to corroborate
4. Distil and share best practice, instil and embed within the curriculum
5. Work in partnership with students, R&I, academics, SLTI etc.
6. Evaluate the impact of RIT as practised
7. Explode, stretch, re-conceptualise the Jenkins and Healey model
8. Collaborate with UCLAN, UCL, Sheffield and other RIT leaders.

23. References
Boyer Commission (1998) Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research
Universities. State University of New York–Stony Brook.
Jenkins, A. and Healey, M. (2009) Developing Undergraduate Research and Inquiry. York. Higher Education
Academy.
Levy, P. and Petrulis, R. (2012) How do first-year university students experience inquiry and research, and what
are the implications for the practice of inquiry-based learning?, Studies in Higher Education, 37:1, 85-101.
Spronken‐Smith R. & R. Walker (2010) Can inquiry‐based learning strengthen the links between teaching and
disciplinary research?, Studies in Higher Education, 35:6, 723-740.
Spronken-Smith, R. et al (2011) Redesigning a curriculum for inquiry: an ecology case study. Instructional
Science 39:721–735.
Visser-Wijnveen G & R van der Rijst, H. van Driel (2016) A questionnaire to capture students’ perceptions of
research integration in their courses. High Educ (2016) 71:473–488.
Zimbardi, K. & P. Myatt (2014) Embedding undergraduate research experiences within the curriculum: a cross-
disciplinary study of the key characteristics guiding implementation, Studies in Higher Education, 39:2, 233-
250.