Editorial: Collaboration in higher education: Partnering with students, colleagues and external stakeholders

Welcome to this Special Issue of the Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice (JUTLP). This editorial provides an overview of Collaboration in Higher Education. Humans are social, inter-dependent beings, needing to be and communicate with each other. Being with other people provides an opportunity to grow and develop, creating a sense of self and identity. Together we construct, structure and restructure the stories that build the larger narratives of who we are, what we do and how we live, act and behave as people, professionals and larger communities. It is through our collaborations that we come together, and construct meaning and ourselves. As Higher Education continues to exclude and sideline, as it constrains and removes spaces and places for collaboration between service staff, faculty and students within institutions, between institutions, and with other stakeholders, there is a need to rediscover the power of collaboration. The articles included, build on practical experience, research data, personal and collective reflections, to outline how the contributors have navigated this tension to create spaces of voice and hope. Presented are case studies that are boundary crossing: across disciplinary boundaries; cross-institution collaboration; cross-boundary working; pedagogical co-creation and the re-conceptualising of learning; and students as partners, co-researchers and co-authors. Together they showcase refreshed notions of collegiality and collaboration in Higher Education that support new and more nuanced, and dynamic models of co-creation. We hope the Special Issue helps seed an ecology of collaborative practice for social justice – a more humane academia

Re-genering academic writing. Case Study 2: Cabinet of Curiosity

This is Case Study 2 of 5, as introduced in ‘Re-genering academic writing’ on pp. 181–90, which includes an overview of the context across all five pieces

Drawing as a Way of Knowing: Visual Practices as the Route to Becoming Academic

This case study illustrates what happened when we took a playful approach in a first year undergraduate academic skills module and a graduate Facilitating Student Learning module asking our students to “draw to learn.” We found that they not only enjoyed the challenges we set them, but also that they “blossomed” and approached their academic writing with more confidence and joy. Hence we argue for a more ludic approach to learning and teaching in Higher Education to enable Widening Participation students and their tutors to become the academic writers they want to be. In particular “blind drawing” seems to be a powerful tool for diminishing the fear of failure and for fostering deep understanding as well as self-confidence

Re-genering academic writing. Case Study 1: Collages

The starting point of our re-genering experiment was to bring together two of our core research interests: our belief in the emancipatory power of ludic and multimodal practice and our desire to empower those widening participation students often labelled as ‘deficit’. We, as learning developers and educationists, started by welcoming and valuing students for who they were, rather than remediating them because of what they were not. Our teaching started with their strengths and assets: their commitment and engagement; and what they could do and what challenge they could rise to without the need for the specific cultural and academic capital typically already possessed by the traditional, middle-class student. The present article and mini-case studies (see also ‘Cabinet of Curiosity’ pp. 211–15, ‘Games and Board Games’ pp. 261–66, ‘Digital Storytelling’ pp. 275–78 and ‘Multimodal Exhibition’ pp. 291–303) present some of the ludic work we have undertaken with our students. This article contains Case Study 1

Re-genering academic writing. Case Study 4: Digital Storytelling

This is Case Study 4 of 5, as introduced in ‘Re-genering academic writing’ on pp. 181–90, which includes an overview of the context for all five pieces

The power of freedom : setting up a multimodal exhibition with undergraduate students to foster their learning and help them to achieve

The present paper explores the opportunities created by an emancipatory approach to learning and teaching when combined with embedded peer mentoring. First year undergraduate students - most from non-traditional backgrounds - were set the task to explore learning spaces at their university and to present their findings in creative ways in a Multimodal Exhibition during Enhancement Week. They were supported by second year students on their course who acted as coaches, role models, and critics. Our experience - and feedback by students - showed that serious learning is taking place when students are given "the freedom to learn"

Becoming Writers: Transforming Students' Academic Writing

The present paper builds on Elbow’s (1998) idea of ‘free writing’ and other creative approaches to writing as we explore methods to foster students’ academic writing skills. Rather than focussing on a deficit student in need of ‘fixing’, we introduce and reflect on the usefulness of free- and creative writing exercises as we explore how we can enable students to find ‘a voice’ as we support them on the way to becoming successful academic writers. In this context, we argue for academic/study skills support that takes students ‘serious’, and builds on their existing strengths, knowledge – and writing skills

The Shipwrecked Shore and Other Metaphors: what we can learn from occupation of, and representations in, virtual worlds

In cyberspace, one’s body can be represented by one's own description, reality can be disrupted and the plain made beautiful or ‘… the beautiful plain’, (Turkle 1999:643). Our case study (cf Stake 1995) sought to explore the opportunities offered to students when they come to class in a virtual world and a differently created learning space. We consider Bullinghurst and Dünser’s (2012) work on augmenting reality for learners to combine the ‘real and the virtual’ to enable students to deal with the abstract. This paper explores student representations in Second Life, a 3D immersive world (www.secondlife.com), and as we engage, we see that the virtual not only enhances both curriculum and practice, but also an emergent scope for visual hermeneutics as both a digital literacy and analytical research tool. The focus of the case is a first year FoLSC group of students, based in Computing, and a first year module with embedded study and academic skills. Our conclusions suggest that offering learning opportunities in different spaces, can, indeed, disrupt – but in a powerful and positive way

Student engagement

There are numerous avenues for improving student engagement. This chapter focusses on the responsibility of the teacher set within the context of the contemporary landscape of Higher Education. We place emphasis on the lived experience of being a teacher – the unique perspectives, challenges, limits and potential capacities of the role – and heighten awareness of how engaging with the complexity of the learning relationship can open up possibilities for reducing barriers to students’ meaningful engagement with their learning. The underlying assumption is that student engagement is fundamentally linked to staff engagement: with students, with the process of teaching and with oneself as a teacher; and furthermore, that the way in which we as teachers engage, or do not, with students has a significant influence on how students engage with us and with their learning. This chapter explores: • staff engagement as an agency for student engagement • the educational landscape of engagement: barriers and levers • benefits of engagement for students and teachers • principles and practices to foster engaged teaching and learning • examples of engagement within and alongside the curriculu

Collaboration in higher education: a new ecology of practice

Collaboration in Higher Education focuses on the opportunities and challenges created by engaging in collaboration and partnership in higher education. As higher education institutions become ever more competitive to sustain their place in a global, neoliberal education market, students and staff are confronted with alienating practices. Such practices create an individualistic, audit and surveillance culture that is exacerbated by the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the wholesale 'pivot' to online teaching. In this atomised and competitive climate, this volume synthesises theoretical perspectives and current practice to present case study examples that advocate for a more inclusive, cooperative, collaborative, compassionate and empowering education, one that sees learning and teaching as a practice that enables personal, collective and societal growth. The human element of education is at the core of this book, focusing on what we can do and achieve together: students, academic staff, higher education institutions and relevant stakeholder