Missing Voices: Including Students in Course Design

Topic: Student Voice in Course Design

         Overlooking the voice of students is prevalent throughout higher education. Though strides have been made to create and include representative roles for students (i.e., student councils, student government associations, student representatives on boards and committees, and alumni participation), true student partnerships remain relatively absent, especially in critical teaching and learning decisions, despite the evidence of benefit to all involved (Mercer-Mapstone et al., 2017; Matthews & Dollinger, 2022). One of these critical teaching and learning areas where student voice and partnership is often missing is course design. 

Importance for the OLC Community

        Higher education can be a very hierarchical space, giving greater power to faculty and administrators, without giving students active authority over their own learning experience. One way to build an equitable, inclusive, and anti-oppressive course, is to involve the students as they are most directly impacted by design decisions.. By partnering with students in course design, faculty and instructional designers can consider new ways to include a variety of voices in their courses, diversify course activities and assessments, increase engagement, and add innovative elements to course content. However, there is very little research about including students in course design, and as such, this presentation explores the status of student voice in course design. We, a faculty/designer team,  will discuss the existing literature and the initial results from our own research with students who have participated in collaborative course design processes. In addition, we will learn from one another by sharing ideas of how to incorporate student voice into our design practices. 

Plan for Interaction

          Using the literature; critical pedagogy and Design Justice Principles; lessons learned from our research; and session participants' knowledge and experience; we will culminate our conference session with activities and discussions aimed at “finding” the missing student voice in our course designs. Activities will include identifying and addressing potential barriers to student participation using digital tools such as Padlet, or low-tech tools such as sticky notes or a gallery walk. We will foster small group discussion related to interpreting and integrating student feedback into design,and ideas for designing side by side with students, specifically giving participants space to share ideas related to designing with students. Discussions will address the inclusion of students in design processes and highlight what session participants are already doing. 

Key Takeaways

Participations in this session will be able to:

• Outline Design Justice Principles and how they are related to including student voice in course design.

• Hear student voices related to course design experiences.

• Generate ideas for how to inclusion of students in course design processes

• Brainstorm ways to foster a culture of inclusion and student voice in online course design 

Brief Literature Review

         Following is a discussion of theory and current literature supporting the need for collaborative course design teams including students.  Critical pedagogy (Friere, 1998; hooks, 1994; Weiler, 1991) and Design Justice Principles (DJN, 2018) support the necessity of including all people impacted by educational practices (or design), especially those who have been marginalized; prioritizing relationships in learning and teaching; and honoring lived experience in knowledge creation. These 3 priorities were discussed by Friere in the 1970s into the 1990s and by bell hooks in the 1990s into the 21st century. Both Friere and hooks saw education as a force for democracy and liberation. 

       The Design Justice Principles, influenced by critical theory, were created by the Design Justice Network for application to all areas of design, not just higher education course design. The Design Justice Network “rethinks design processes, centers people who are normally marginalized by design, and uses collaborative, creative practices to address the deepest challenges our communities face” (DJN, 2018). These principles parallel critical pedagogy, as they focus on relationships, centering traditionally marginalized groups, individual contributions, and personal experiences. Combining both the pedagogue and designer perspectives of justice, our literature search aimed to find evidence of student partnerships and voice specific to course design processes and products in higher education. However, we found limited research and practice suggestions exploring student participation in design. 

           A small community of researchers have posed the idea of “students as partners” in the course design space among other areas of teaching and learning (i.e., research, student/student partnerships, teaching assistants, etc) (Barradell & Bell, 2020; Bovill et al., 2011; Cook-Sather et al., 2014). These studies aimed to define the concept of students as partners and illustrated faculty’s perspectives on student partnerships and/or benefits to students. Though there is a growing body of literature around student faculty partnerships in course design, evaluation remains focused on designer and faculty participation and their experiences, rather than the student experience in the collaborative design process and/or benefits to faculty and staff rather then just student benefit (Fitzgerald et al, 2020; Mercer-Mapstone, L., et al., 2017). The majority of studies introduced the idea of student faculty relationships and partnerships and/or presented a limited case study, very few were studies of larger scale partnership programs, implementations, and/or outcomes. In a hand search of centers for teaching and learning websites in the United States, we found that many sites include tips on effective course design, but none of them specifically addressed including student voice, or building courses with students. Even on sites that address equity in course design, we could not find a recommendation to include students participating in the design process (Onufer, 2021). This research, both academic and anecdotal, indicates a paucity of information addressing student participation in course design, and the need for additional research in this area.

Our Current Research [MSU IRB -2023-30] 

       Applying collaborative course design principles in student, faculty, and designer course design partnership experiences begins to address these gaps (i.e., lack of student voice in evaluation of process, student partnership models, implemented models) by conducting focus groups and individual interviews with students who participated in one of the following course design processes. Starting in summer 2021, our department invited student voices into course design through the use of student consultants in a summer design institute, a traditional semester-long design process, and in independent study courses where students developed a course together with their instructor. Over the course of the past year, we have had 27 students assist in the design of 21 courses. We invited these students to participate in interviews and focus groups about their course design experience. In an initial review of the data, students reported strong faculty/student relationships; new perspectives on what it takes to teach and design in higher education; a deeper understanding of content; an appreciation for inclusion; future aspirations of wanting to teach; a new appreciation for the need of accessibility in course design; and the difficulty of choosing the “perfect” reading or activity. The data also highlighted different student perspectives based on the type of student participation (i.e., independent study, brief consultant, traditional design, etc.). 

Conclusion

     In sum, this presentation will explore current literature around student voice in course design, and present initial findings of our original research on student voices before engaging the audience in small group conversations and large group brainstorms about ways others involve student voice in course design at their institutions.

References

Barradell, S., & Bell, A. (2020). Is health professional education making the most of the idea of ‘students as partners’? Insights from a qualitative research synthesis. Advances in Health Sciences Education: Theory and Practice, 26(2), 513–580. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-020-09998-3

Bovill, C. (2016). Addressing potential challenges in co-creating learning and teaching: Overcoming resistance, navigating institutional norms and ensuring inclusivity in student-staff partnerships. Higher Education, 71(2), 195–208. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9896-4

Cook-Sather, A., Bovill, C., Felten, P., & Cook, M. (2014). Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: A guide for faculty (First). Jossey-Bass. https://go.exlibris.link/39kdSBRF

Design Justice Network. (November 2020). Design Justice Network Principles. https://designjustice.org/read-the-principles

Fitzgerald, R., Huijser, H., Meth, D., & Neilan, K. (2020). Student-staff partnerships in academic development: The course design studio as a model for sustainable course-wide impact. The International Journal for Academic Development, 25(2), 134–146. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2019.1631170

Freire, Paulo (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.

Freire, Paulo (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

hooks, bell (2003). Teaching community : a pedagogy of hope. New York: Routledge. 

hooks, bell (1994). Teaching to transgress : education as the practice of freedom. New York. 

Matthews, K. and Dollinger, M. (2022). Student voice in higher education: the importance of distinguishing student representation and student partnership. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00851-7 

Mercer-Mapstone, L., Dvorakova, S. L., Matthews, K. E., Abbot, S., Cheng, B., Felten, P., ... & Swaim, K. (2017). A systematic literature review of students as partners in higher education. International Journal for Students as Partners, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.15173/ijsap.v1i1.3119 

Weiler, K. (1991). Freire and a feminist pedagogy of difference. Harvard Educational Review, 61(4), 449-475.