Embedding Public Engagement in the Curriculum

Ideas are rarely generated by one person in isolation from others. Therefore, it goes without saying that many people have contributed to this document, whether through critique, discussions, the sharing of ideas, or just moral support. 

In particular, we are grateful to the members of the Student-Community Engagement group who contributed to the NCCPEs strategy and planning on the role of Public Engagement within the curriculum. Likewise, the insights and support from colleagues at the International Association for Research into Service Learning and Community Engagement have been invaluable.   

Finally, it is important to acknowledge the people who have offered comments on the early drafts of this document: Professor Kris Mason-O’Conner, Professor Tom Bourner, Dr Philippa Bayley, and Steffi Barna.

The NCCPE was established in 2008 as part of the Beacons for Public Engagement Initiative, a £9.2m initiative funded by the UK Funding Councils, Research Councils UK, and the Wellcome Trust to develop how universities manage, support, and deliver public engagement for the benefit of staff, students, and the public. 

In 2009, the NCCPE secured additional funding from v, the national young person’s charity, to provide compelling evidence of the impact of the role of students in how universities engage with the public and to explore how universities can enrich this activity through support, recognition and reward. 

This framework for student learning from public engagement draws from learning from both the above projects, and it was created to help enhance the role that public engagement currently plays within the curriculum that is taught at universities.   

Public Engagement is central to helping Universities deliver on their core functions of Research, Knowledge Exchange, Teaching, and Social Responsibility.  It is defined by The National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) as:

‘…the many ways in which higher education institutions and their staff and students can connect and share their work with the public. Done well, it generates mutual benefit, with all parties learning from each other through sharing knowledge, expertise and skills. In the process, it can build trust, understanding and collaboration and increase the sector's relevance to and impact on civil society (NCCPE, 2011).

Ever-growing dynamics encourage Universities to enrich their connection with broader society and enhance the impact of their research and teaching.  Developing an outward-facing, dynamic and two-way exchange with the world beyond the academy is being encouraged by a host of external policy drivers but also by the values of many in the sector, both staff and students, who believe that universities are there to ‘make a difference’ and to transform individuals’ lives. 

It has never been more important for universities to demonstrate their wider role in society, to be outward-facing, and to engage with the public across a range of issues. It involves challenging some entrenched attitudes and ways of working and learning new skills and approaches. However, the rewards are significant, as this summary demonstrates, and the project is helping to redefine what it means to be a university in the 21^st century

Sir Alan Langlands, Chief Executive, HEFCE 

Public Engagement continues to play an important part in the professions.  Students today must continually develop their capacity to communicate effectively with others, support the learning of others, work across cultures and institutions, and operate in complex, inter-connected environments.  With the impact agenda growing in UK universities, we are seeing public engagement play an important part in the professional development standards for researchers and an important role in how research is delivered; see, for example, the Researcher Development Framework and the Concordat for Public Engagement. Students, too, are seeking educational experiences that are socially engaged and prepare them for the challenges that they will encounter:

What I learnt from my experiences of volunteering has equipped me with a huge amount of knowledge in dealing and working with people, organising events and how to deal with certain situations and responsibilities. What I have done since, in my working and personal life, I believe would've been far more challenging for me if I hadn't had those earlier experiences.

Brewis et al. 2010

At a senior level, public engagement is a clear driver in the learning and teaching strategies of many UK Universities. University of Manchester talks of a vision which goes beyond the development of highly employable individuals to preparing graduates to take personal responsibility as citizens for addressing the great social and environmental issues confronting humankind. The University of Gloucestershire’s Learning and Teaching Strategy embeds public engagement as a fundamental principle within in its priorities, with active engagement being a critical component for developing the graduate attributes associated with independent and collaborative learning, learning for life and employment, learning for the future, and research/practice-informed learning and teaching.

At the same time, professional bodies recognise the potential of their discipline to make a difference. For example, the Royal Academy of Engineering, in collaboration with the Engineering Council (UK), talks of a profession in which individuals can enhance society's well-being through the exploitation of knowledge and the management of creative teams. Likewise, the UK standard for professional engineering competence includes metrics for communication, teamwork, and working with the public.   

A recent national development that has enormous implications for realising the benefits of public engagement by students as part of the broad student experience and development of graduate attributes has been the introduction of the Higher Education Achievement Record (HEAR).  ‘The development of the HEAR was recommended by the Measuring and Recording Student Achievement Steering Group (‘Burgess Group’), chaired by Professor Sir Bob Burgess, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester.  In their report, ‘Beyond the honours degree classification,' the group concluded that... both students and employers deserved a more detailed record of achievement.’ (http://www.hefce.ac.uk/learning/diversity/achieve/). The HEAR has been implemented successfully in pilot HEIs and is currently being developed in over 70 institutions. 

Section 6.1 of the HEAR allows information to be included, ‘which provides a richer picture of achievement that is not credit-bearing related directly to the programme of study.’  In practice, this means that students’ achievements through such activities as volunteering can now be ‘verified’ by their institutions and recognised by inclusion in the formal transcript issued as their HEAR at graduation. It remains appropriate, therefore, to consider means by which students’ achievements through public engagement activities can be recorded even if they are not accredited as a competent and assessed part of the formal curriculum.

In recent years, the NCCPE has been proactive in encouraging universities to ensure equality and mutual benefit in their partnership work with the public.  This framework for assessing student learning from Public Engagement forms part of this work, for although it is focussed on supporting student learning, this learning may also have the potential to enrich how the students work with the Public. It is important to prepare students for their preferred futures and help enrich how they contribute to society as professionals and as citizens. 

We have come across many academics who have developed programmes incorporating public engagement.  Academics have often told us that the ‘real-world’ experiential learning opportunities have enriched subject knowledge and given students the opportunity to apply and develop the learning from their course.  However, they have also told us that they perceive a host of other outcomes, many of which might not be assessed as part of the course. These outcomes could include:

• how to extract meaning from experience;
• ways to apply academic knowledge to real-world problems;
• about a specific community, population, or geography;
• about expectations, quality, negotiation, client relationships;
• about self, society and context;
• about collaborative working.

(NCCPE, 2011c)

With this framework, we hope to provide academics with a tool for thinking about how these other outcomes could be incorporated into their assessment of student learning.  Our aim was to draw together skills and attributes required to do public engagement well, and then to focus on what learning might look like in relation to this.  This led us to a set of learning outcomes relevant to public engagement.  From this point, we developed a set of assessment criteria for these learning outcomes, which were targeted at Honours/SEEC level 6. 

This framework supports the development of learning outcomes and assessment criteria for courses or modules, including public engagement.  It can also be used when an academic is considering including engagement within an existing programme.  Some of the learning outcomes in the framework may already be embedded in your courses, and some may be irrelevant to your area.  However, they may provide a stimulus to refresh your criteria and learning outcomes and can be particularly useful when considering adding an engagement element. 

The framework is intended for staff in any subject or multidisciplinary area who either use or are considering using Public Engagement to enrich student learning.  The framework is designed for use at Honours/SEEC level 6, but can be adapted or used flexibly to fit different levels, modules or programme outcomes.   In addition to developing assessment criteria and learning outcomes, the framework may also support the following:

• Curriculum design and assessment methods
• Developing policy and practice around graduate attributes
• Communicating expectations to students and supporting self-assessment
• Staff understanding of the benefits of embedding Public Engagement in learning and teaching
• Auditing and benchmarking existing curricula against public/community engagement aspirations
• Making the case for Public Engagement in learning and teaching
• Enabling graduates to articulate their achievement 

Whilst the Framework is intended for use in formal learning contexts where there has been a substantial level of engagement and achievement of sophisticated outcomes, many students will also become involved in public engagement activities which are not assessed but may form part of HEAR. Such engagement will contribute to the achievement of broad graduate attributes while enabling them to do something which ‘makes a difference’.  The principles which underpin the Learning Framework still apply in the co-curricular context, and students can, therefore, be offered the opportunity to state simply how their achievements map onto that framework in terms of

1. co-creation of knowledge
2. managing engagement
3. awareness of self and others
4. communication
5. reflective practice

The first stage of developing this framework was synthesising the core capacities necessary to engage with the public well.  To do this, we drew on the following:

• Attributes Framework for Public Engagement - This attributes framework for public engagement was developed by Graphic Science and the NCCPE.  It was informed by the work of the Science for All Training sub-group, and the work of the Beacons for Public Engagement in particular the Edinburgh Beltane Beacon and the Manchester Beacon, each of which had developed competency frameworks of their own.  It was designed to act as a guide for staff and students in UK Universities with regard to the personal attributes and skills required for different public engagement (PE) activities. 
• Embedding Community Engagement in the Curriculum: An example of University-Public Engagement – An extensive literature review which formed an significant part of a Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellowship project entitled ‘Learning Empowerment through Public-Student Engagement’ (LEAPSE).  The Literature review explores policy and practice around student learning from community engagement and provides an extensive evidence-base to support this framework.
• Bursting the Bubble: Students, Volunteering and the Community – Engaging with over 5,000 students and graduates across six universities, this study reported on the impacts and outcomes from student-community engagement for students and community groups.
• Student Volunteering: Background, Policy and Context – Reviewing the wider literature on volunteering, and reporting on over 60 semi-structured interviews with Higher Education (HE) staff managing student-community engagement projects.

In addition to the above, this project has been informed by an extensive consultation and range of publications and journal articles exploring student learning from community engagement, assessment and curriculum design. 

Our framework builds on the attributes framework for Public Engagement for university staff and students which identify the key attributes of reflection, empathy and communication (above)

These attributes were developed to inform the provision of training and development for public engagement for use by staff in universities, research institutes and professional networks (such as learned societies and professional membership bodies).   We began by exploring these attributes and their appearance in the assessed curriculum. This led us to narrow the focus of ‘empathy’ into something which could more comfortably sit within a formal curriculum:  ‘awareness of self and others’, and to adapt ‘reflection’ to ‘reflective practice’.  It was felt that something was missing around project management. Therefore, we added ‘managing engagement’, which focuses less on the specific skills (i.e. project planning, teamwork) but on the student’s capacity to work in complex interconnected environments.  Finally, we recognised that across all forms of public engagement was the application, transfer, exchange or co-creation of knowledge between students and the public. Therefore, it was necessary to assess student learning in this compartment. 

The framework is shown below, followed by assessment criteria for each learning outcome.