Learning from Engaging Opportunities

Is the elephant in the room working or volunteering?

Professor Richard Holliman, The Open University.

A recent report, published by an independent consultancy firm, discusses what they describe as the “hidden economic value of public engagement and knowledge exchange in UK universities” (Viewforth Consulting, 2018).

The quoted figures are certainly eye-catching. Based on extrapolating the data from 1093 university staff from three UK universities the authors of the report argue that, “UK university staff delivered 40 million hours of pro-bono public engagement and knowledge exchange in 2015-16”.

Boom!

Putting the calculation of the figures aside for one moment, the report invites a crucial question around the following sentence (my emphasis):

This evidence indicates that university staff, with the approval and encouragement of their host institutions, provide a large and economically significant volume of public service and knowledge exchange to UK society on a voluntary basis.
(Viewforth Consulting, 2018: 2)

On the face of it, this appears to be a contradiction. Can you work in a voluntary capacity with the approval and encouragement of your employer? And what does approval versus encouragement mean in this context? They’re clearly not the same thing.

Further, how much of this activity was funded, directly or indirectly through HEIF (and equivalent schemes in the nations), Pathways to Impact funding, or through QR funding as a result of REF 2014? How much of the support for Widening Participation has contributed to teaching income and/or the TEF?

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The need for engaged research leadership

Professor Richard Holliman, The Open University.

“Evidencing impact is hard. Doing public engagement is hard.”

How many times have I heard versions over these phrases over recent years? “Too many”, came the weary reply.

It’s an obvious thing to say, but anything is likely to be a challenge to do well for the first time if you don’t plan ahead. Given that this seems so obvious, what’s surprised me is how often I’ve heard versions of these negative takes on the impact and public engagement agenda in recent months.

I’ve attended a range of events in association with preparations for REF 2021. I’ve heard these types of statements there.

I’ve been working with funders to explore how grants are planned for, assessed, monitored and reported. I’ve heard statements like these made by an unhealthy proportion of researchers during the course of this work.

And I’ve reviewed a good number of proposals over recent months that seek to generate and evidence impact. Guess what? Yes, you’re right. These arguments surface in discussions with some (not all) of these researchers.

Did I mention that it is eight years (yes, eight years!) since pathways to impact planning was introduced by RCUK? It is four years since REF 2014. It is three years since the completion of the RCUK-funded Public Engagement with Research Catalysts (Duncan and Manners, 2016).

So why are we still having the same arguments about the need to produce high-quality planning for the generation and evidencing of research impact?

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Perspectives on school-university partnership working

Sophie Duncan, NCCPE (https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk)

School students in East Anglia publish a research paper in a peer reviewed academic journal. English teachers in Bristol are inspired and equipped to teach on the Romantics at GCSE. Young people in Milton Keynes support the production of free resources to help them (and others) Manage their Money. Researchers in Manchester gain new skills as they support school students doing extended project qualifications.

These sentences hint at some of things that have been happening as part of School-University Partnerships Initiative (SUPI), an experiment to see whether it was beneficial for schools and universities to partner together to bring cutting edge research into the classroom.

Funded by Research Councils UK, SUPI involved 12 projects, each involving partnerships between schools and universities keen to build effective ways to work together.

One of the SUPI PoP Tool Character Cards.

With such rich learning, we hope the project inspires others to think hard about the opportunities presented by school-university partnerships, and how they can be realised. To support this we have created two resources:

SUPI Lessons: a booklet summarising the key lessons learnt from the programme, illustrated by taster case studies.
SUPI Perspectives on Partnership (PoP): a brilliant resource to help schools and universities consider how they might like to work together. We know that schools and universities want different things from working together – the resource illustrates the experiences of teachers, school students, researchers, and university brokers for different types of partnerships – and is a great tool to talk about what everyone is hoping to achieve.

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Engaged research as a route to epistemic justice

Professor Richard Holliman, The Open University.

I’ve recently had a paper published as part of a collection that explores professionalisation in science communication (Trench, 2017). In the paper, I review the purposes, definitions and criteria designed to embed ‘engaged research’ as a strategic priority with universities, and explores some of the challenges of implementation (Holliman, 2017).

I argue that surveys of academics have shown various understandings of, and attitudes to, the practices of engaged research, but also impediments to realising the aspirations it expresses.

Drawing on my experience as the academic lead for engaged research at the Open University, I go on to explore questions of professionalisation, for example, through training, support mechanisms and measures of recognition for engaged research.

I conclude the paper by arguing that, if done well, engaged research can promote epistemic justice. So what is epistemic justice, and how can engaged research deliver what Medvecky (2017) calls ‘fairness in knowing’.

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How can you plan effectively for engaged research?

Professor Richard Holliman, The Open University.

How can you plan effectively for engaged research? What are some of the common pitfalls, and what counts as best practice?

Colleagues and I from the Open University and Denbigh School in Milton Keynes recently published a chapter in a new edited collection (Kucirkova and Quinlan, 2017) where we offer practical advice on how to respond to this important question in a pragmatic way (Holliman et al. 2017).

The framework has been designed to be applicable to any researcher and discipline, and to be adaptable to all forms of engaged research.
The chapter documents a worked example of the framework, involving an activity mediated via digital tools and technologies and involving scientists, an educational technologist, several teachers, 25 sixth-form students, and an evaluation researcher.

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A Walk in the Himalaya

Eleni Wood, The Open University

In mid-spring this year, I packed my bags for my second field season in north-west Bhutan. Bhutan is a jewel of the Himalaya; the small mountain kingdom is home to fantastic people, herds of yak and even the illusive snow leopard.

The trip’s goal was to study and collect rocks for my PhD research, which would help me investigate the growth and deformation of the mountain range.

It was a trip I definitely didn’t want to forget. It was also the last chance, during my PhD at least, that I would get to capture the magic of the environment on film. So, I squeezed the GoPro Hero 4, chest strap, waterproof casing and a number of batteries into my packing.

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Managing My Money for Young Adults

Martin Upton, Director, True Potential PUFin, The Open University Business School.

Badged open course launched to combat growing debt problem among 16-18 year olds

The Open University Business School’s True Potential Centre for the Public Understanding of Finance (True Potential PUFin) has joined forces with University Challenge star and Arithmophobia Expert, Bobby Seagull, and MoneySavingExpert’s Martin Lewis, to develop a free badged open course on OpenLearn, specifically designed for the financial education needs of 16 to 18 year olds.

Managing My Money for Young Adults, (MMM-Y), which launched on 3 November, is delivered through video content, animations, case studies, activities and quizzes and provides 24 hours of learning broken into eight bite-sized sessions (see below for further details), to offer learners a strong foundation of personal finance knowledge to help them avoid bad debt in the future.

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Citizen inquiry: Synthesizing science and inquiry learning

Christothea Herodotou, Mike Sharples and Eileen Scanlon, The Open University.

Citizen science or crowdsourcing has gained increasing popularity in recent years with web-based platform such as Zooniverse and iSpot scaffolding interactions between scientists and members of the public.

Little emphasis has been given to the educational benefits of citizen science, in particular for volunteers or members of the public who wish to contribute to citizen science activities.

Citizen inquiry: Synthesizing science and inquiry learning, recently published by Routledge, is the first edited collection of its kind to draw the emphasis on inquiry-based learning from participation in citizen science activities.

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Zero to hero – engaging teachers to teach network engineering

Andrew Smith, The Open University.

Since early January 2017, the School of Computing and Communications (represented by Senior Lecturer in Networking, Andrew Smith), the Open Media and Informal Learning (OMIL) Unit and the Open University’s Development Office have all been working with Cisco on a sponsored project to create content about computer networking for teachers (and school children). The content covers the national curriculum ‘computing’ domains of computer hardware and network engineering.

The resources are hosted on OpenLearn Create – the creative commons portal of the OpenLearn MOOCs.

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Engaging Research

An Open Research University: Embedding public engagement within the research culture of the OU

Learning from Engaging Opportunities

Is the elephant in the room working or volunteering?

The need for engaged research leadership

Perspectives on school-university partnership working

Engaged research as a route to epistemic justice

How can you plan effectively for engaged research?

A Walk in the Himalaya

Managing My Money for Young Adults

Citizen inquiry: Synthesizing science and inquiry learning

Zero to hero – engaging teachers to teach network engineering