Student Voice Newsletter January 2025

Scholarship and Student Voice

Liz Hardie, the Director of SCiLAB (FBL’s Scholarship Centre for innovation in online Legal and Business Education), has written a lovely article on how student voice has lead to changes in FBL:

In common with many universities, the OU provides a number of opportunities to ensure students can provide feedback and comments on the teaching they receive. The Student Voice website states that this feedback and engagement leads to positive impact and change. How does this happen? And what is the link to scholarship?

The OU Recognition of Excellence in Teaching (RET) Awards ceremony in November 2024 provided a good example of the impact of both the student voice and scholarship in the teaching and student support provided to students. Of the 6 recipients of a Recognition of Excellence in Teaching award, and 2 highly commended applications, a number referred to working with students in their teaching. The Law School team which produced a new law degree worked with student representatives in designing the qualification. Students attended the qualification and module learning design workshops, and student consultations took place during the production on a variety of relevant topics to gain the wider views of all law students. The Open Justice team partner with alumni who support current students working on a range of voluntary legal projects. The Law School Belonging Project started as a direct result of student feedback and is co-created with students, who lead peer mentoring programs and student led coffee events. These are all practical examples of how student feedback and engagement has led to positive impact and change, and these teams and projects have been recognised by the University as examples of good practice.

As well is engaging though a variety of feedback and consultation events, students are increasingly becoming involved in the scholarship carried out within faculties. In the Faculty of Law and Business, a student partnership process was introduced this year where students can be involved as co-researchers in scholarship projects. Student representatives will also join the Scholarship Centre’s advisory board. Taking into account the experience of students when designing and running scholarship projects improves the research, and the findings from these projects directly impact teaching across the University.

For example, the Teaching Award for the law degree production team highlighted the way in which the team embedded findings from scholarship within the design of the qualification and modules, the writing of the modules and the assessment and tutorial strategy. This has led to improved retention on all of the new modules making up the law degree, and a reduction (or elimination) of most of the awarding gaps. There are other examples across the University of how scholarship can be used to improve the teaching offered and the outcomes for students. It is therefore important that students are able to participate in, and engage, with scholarship so that we can continue to work together to improve students’ experiences at the OU.