Latest QAA podcast on the rewards of collaborative observation

In our lively new podcast, teaching staff and students from Loughborough University and Birmingham City University (BCU) come together to discuss the opportunities for enhancing the student learning experiences offered by a new collaborative observation project they’ve been engaged in.

The podcast is chaired by QAA's Dr Kerr Castle, who observes that this initiative has been grounded in a sense of humanity and practicality which seems especially appealing in the current HE environment.

The project lead is Professor Matt O’Leary, Director of the Education Research Centre at BCU. Participants in the project - and in the podcast - also include Holly Pickford and Alistair Bardwell (lecturers in Health Sciences at BCU), Simran Gohil and Nikki Godridge (students in Health Sciences at BCU), and Dr Laura Jenkins and Dr Yanning Yang (university teachers in Psychology and Computer Science at Loughborough).

Professor O'Leary explains that ‘the essence of this project is that we have a collaboration between staff and students working as equals - as partners - through the vehicle of a cycle of collaborative observation.’

The project has promoted opportunities for participants to reflect on their experiences of learning together and how these reflections have affected their overall understanding of their subject areas.

‘If we're going to understand that messy relationship between teaching and learning and get a better insight into how one influences the other, how they connect with each other, then we need to provide space in which the key players in that relationship can come together,’ Professor O'Leary says.

He goes on to describe this approach as offering an antidote to an over-reliance upon metric-based methods of monitoring and evaluating the experience of students and staff in higher education.

Teaching staff involved in the project speak highly of the benefits they've discovered through these dialogues in enhancing their understanding of their students' perceptions of their learning processes. They stress how they've come to appreciate the ‘relatability, honesty and openness’ between students and teachers advanced by this initiative, while BCU's Simran Gohil praises the way in which its processes have emphasized how those relationships can - and should - work like ‘a two-way street’.

How to tune in 

QAA Membership podcasts can be found on Buzzsprout and other popular streaming platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts. On these platforms, you can explore our full catalogue of podcasts, covering topics including student transitions, experiences of pass/fail assessment, and neuroinclusivity.