Developing a cross-college research conference

Within a context of collaborative working between the Colleges, cross-college HE CPD activities have taken place over the last few years, to include (more recently) an annual HE Conference. As part of the AoC Scholarship Project, this conference has been developed into a ‘Research Conference’ (June 2017) to enable teachers and students from colleges involved in the Project ( College, Mid-Cheshire College, and Collegiate) to disseminate their research to an audience of teachers, students and managers from the colleges involved. Almost 80 delegates attended.

The research outputs disseminated at the Cheshire Conference were generated from:

- student research (or consultancy) undertaken as part of the curriculum;

- research undertaken by staff who were sponsored by the AoC Scholarship Project (please refer to the separate Case Study on this initiative);

- research undertaken by staff as part of their Masters or Doctorate programme.

Dr Steven Allison (Teacher - Macclesfield College)

The rationale for the development of a research conference

Whilst a need for college HE lecturers to ‘get out more’ has been highlighted (King et al, 2014); this has proved difficult to facilitate for a variety of reasons specific to college HE. This is especially the case where there are fewer numbers of HE students and teachers, as in the local context. The opportunity for all HE staff from four colleges to attend a local research conference at the end of the academic year goes some way to mitigating this.

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For those teachers who have undertaken research (either directly sponsored by the AoC Scholarship Project or as part of a higher level qualification), this new research conference provided a useful initial platform from which to disseminate their research ‘beyond their own organisation’, albeit locally.

In terms of the researchers sponsored by the AoC Project, part of their research brief was that these studies should be designed to have an impact on the HE learning experience. By focussing the sponsored research in this way and disseminating to local colleagues who are keen to network and engage in scholarly dialogue, it was hoped the research conference (sitting alongside other initiatives developed as part of the AoC Scholarship Project) would inspire the development of practice communities both cross- college and within the individual colleges.

The research outputs focussed on themes around developing students as researchers, personal learning networks, HE observation schemes to promote professional development and developing student engagement via ‘flipped learning’. The feedback from conference delegates was that the work prompted ‘shared’ reflections on practice and raised awareness of current developments and research in HE pedagogy. Crucially, students were able to participate in and shape conversations with teachers about teaching and learning.

Raheel Rashid (HND Sports & Exercise Sciences Student- Warrington Collegiate)

A further imperative for developing the research conference was to enable students to be able to disseminate their research to an audience beyond their own classroom and to celebrate their status as ‘producers’ of knowledge rather than just ‘consumers’ (Neary and Winn, 2009). As part of the Scholarship Project, teachers have been considering the importance of developing students’ appreciation of research and have been embedding the idea that scholarly activity is “axial to their experience”(Lea, 2015); clearly disseminating original research represents the ‘final step’ in the research process. It is intended that the inclusion of student research in the Cheshire Conference supports students to understand that it doesn’t matter how good a piece of research is if no one gets a chance to hear about it; further that with the production of original scholarly work comes a ‘duty’ that “students should experience their learning as being in the service of scholarship” (von Humboldt 1810, as cited in Lea, 2015 pg. 37).

In summary, the Scholarship Project has enabled the time and space to develop an existing collaborative exercise into an opportunity to:

-experience research dissemination as part of the research process and understand its importance in developing a profession;

-disseminate research in a safe, supportive environment;

-engage students and teachers in dialogue about learning and teaching.

Evaluating the activity

The experience so far would suggest that facilitating a research conference across a number of local colleges is a useful way of supporting student and teacher researchers in smaller settings to initially disseminate their research and enhance their individual scholarly profile.

A post-conference survey revealed that 100% of respondents felt that the conference developed their knowledge and understanding of scholarly activity and scholarship; additionally 100% of respondents agreed the annual conference was developing in a positive manner. 95% of teachers agreed that they would promote the offer to students to present their research at next year’s conference and 78% of teachers said they would like to present the following year.

The conference was organised and facilitated by the AoC Project Scholarship Development Manager with support from this year’s host college (Warrington Collegiate). In terms of sustainability the approach would require a suitable co- ordinator to continue to work across the colleges involved. It is intended that the continuation of the cross-college annual conference as a research conference would form part of a wider Scholarship Strategy.

References

Humboldt, W. von [1810] (1970) On the spirit and organisational framework of intellectual institutions in Berlin, Minerva 8: 242-267.

King, M., Widdowson, J., Davis, J. and Flint, C. (2014) Exploring Scholarship and Scholarly Activity in College-based Higher Education, Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 2(1): 2-8.

Lea, J. (2015) The Scholarship Project Literature Review https://www.aoc.co.uk/teaching-and-learning/the-scholarship-project/outputs-the- project/literature-review

Neary, M. and Winn, J. (2009) Student as Producer: reinventing the student experience in higher education, in Bell, L., Stevenson, H. and Neary, M. (2009) The Future of Higher Education. London: Continuum.

For further information please contact:

Kaye Thomas Scholarship Development Manager Macclesfield College [email protected]