Institutional strategies to engage students in research and inquiry
“Universities need to move towards creating inclusive scholarly knowledge-building communities. … The notion of inclusive scholarly knowledge-building communities invites us to consider new ideas about who the scholars are in universities and how they might work in partnership.” - Brew (2007, 4)
This workshop is designed for senior faculty and management who have responsibilities or simply an interest in embedding undergraduate research and inquiry across the institution. My interest in developing students as researchers originated through explorations over the last few years into ways to enhance the linkage between teaching and discipline-based research. The conclusion to arise from that work is that one of the most effective ways to do this is to engage our students in research and inquiry; in other words, to see them as producers not just consumers of knowledge. The interactive session will explore the variety of ways in which undergraduate research and inquiry based learning are undertaken using numerous mini-case studies from different institutions in the UK, North America, Australasia and rest of Europe. By the end of the workshop you should have identified and prioritised a range of strategies for embedding undergraduate research and inquiry across your institution.
Comments
““Many thanks for the rewarding workshops that have really got us thinking about integrating teaching and research. We have lots of new ideas and our perspective on the subject has changed: many of us now see integration of teaching and research as a much broader issue, including most of the themes from our teaching policy.”
— Róbert H. Haraldsson, Chair Iceland University Teaching and Learning Committee
“Mick is an instinctive integrator with a great capacity for innovation through making unexpected links between ideas and activities. And he has a gift for seeing simple ways to explain things. The so-called ‘Healey Model’ which articulates the research and teaching nexus, based on Griffiths’ work, is a good example of his contribution in this respect. It is very frequently used as a lucid and accessible point of reference for academic staff development in our institution and more widely.”