Engaging Students in Challenging Times Event

Keynote by Mantz Yorke

Rob Cuthbert said recently: 'For many of our universities the "student experience" has become the organising concept, the fount of a thousand strategic priorities and key performance indicators. But the student experience tends to be conceived as if the interpretivist paradigm had never existed, becoming no more than a quantitative summation of student surveys and managerialist evaluations. The ‘student experience' has become a stick to beat academics with, instead of the carrot that motivates them. It has also become a tool for reductionism, as students are driven ever closer to being the consumers and customers which neither they nor their teachers wish them to be. The student experience is conceived as some kind of unified average instead of being celebrated for its individually constructed uniqueness' (SRHE Editorial, March 2011).

Working with the Higher Education Research Group, we are pleased to present a seminar series of four sessions, with contributions from colleagues and students at Newcastle, UCL, Birmingham City, Exeter, Nottingham Trent and here at Southampton and including the Student Learning and Teaching Network.

For further details contact: Dr Brenda Johnston, Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer
B.H.M.Johnston@soton.ac.uk

Faculty Contact: Julie Wintrup