chairperson: martin tolich, university of · pdf filetranscribed by document doctor...

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Chairperson: Martin Tolich, University of Otago Discussant: Rachel Spronken-Smith, University of Otago, Speakers: Kerry Shepherd, University of Otago – ‘Theorising Community Based

Learning’ Eric Pawson, University of Canterbury – ‘Research Focused Community Learning’ Sonja Gallagher & Melody Cooper, A.U.T. University - ‘Ten Years of Cooperative Learning’ Grant Duncan, Massey University – ‘The Promise of Service Learning’ Jessica Johnston, University of Canterbury – ‘Should Community Groups Pay Interns?’ Sara Kindon & Anna Rogers, Victoria University – ‘Who Benefits From Community Learning?’ Trudy Geoghegan, PhD candidate (Chemistry) – ‘Why Students Benefit From Community Outreach’

Martin: Welcome everybody to this first symposium on service learning where we get a chance to talk about what we’re doing, and form some sort of networks…and look at the dual edge of community-based learning. One is how we can contribute to the community, and how our students learn, and road-test their learning. Last year I applied for some funding and I didn’t realise that I was actually…my grant was a strategic goal of this university. And there’s a lot of interest at the University of Otago around community learning, as if it’s something quite innovative. But when I travel around the Country I find a lot of people saying to me, well we’ve got this…don’t tell anybody, but this is what we’re doing next year. Well, the secret’s out…we’re all doing it. We’re all doing community-based learning. And as I also travel round the Country, I find people like Sara Kindon…Eric Pawson…and Keryn McDermott, who have been doing service learning in some form for the last 10 years. So this is a real chance today to get people together to network…to share ideas, but also to sort of pool resources.

Today…what I want out of today is…perhaps we could look at finding a journal that we could have a special addition on community-based learning. I’m sure there’s one of us who could start to edit a book on service-based learning. I know the market is there…and the market is sort of going to grow. It’s not going to be me, but I would certainly support that. Perhaps we can, at the end of the day, decide to have other forms of symposiums. We can actually share our resources…we could share research outcomes. We could perhaps have our top students making presentations across the Country on what they’ve actually done.

So, today we have a full schedule of speakers, and obviously we’re running about five minutes late already. So I will go through the different…the first three speakers. Kerry Shepherd, Eric Pawson and Sonja Gallagher, all have PowerPoint’s, but the other ones are all ten-minute presentations…short, sharp presentations about what they’re actually doing. And at the end we’ll have…at about 10 minute past 11, we’ll actually stop for questions and


we’ll get basically…so, pool questions, and get a chance to network and set some agendas for the future.

I have a piece of paper here, that has two minutes on it, and I will put this up and wave it around. But I would like us to sort of stick to the schedule. Kerry Shepherd is our first speaker, and he’s basically theorising community-based learning for us.

Kerry: Okay, thank you Martin…and in a way I’ve sort of taken this as quite a challenge…because I’ve been asked to theorise something which is very extensive. It doesn’t have a particularly tight set of terms that describe it. And I have to admit there are aspects of this broad area of service learning…community-based learning…community service…and other aspects of this extended area, that perhaps I don’t understand the theories about. It may even be that there aren’t theories there, that would really help us. So this is very much an exploration…not just for the field, but certainly for me.

So I’ve given it a subtitle here. And in a way, this describes my mindset around the sort of questions that are uppermost in my mind. So how might community engagement be supporting learning in areas that more conventional university teaching does not. Now that emphasises my particular interests. And I suspect some of the things I say will over-emphasise some of my interests. And I’m just going to be looking for people’s body language…and people’s sort of eye movements, to see just how much overlap is there between my interests here, and the broader field.

So let’s move on. And I always feel that with something like this, where we’re…certainly we’re trying to address the theories behind the subject…and we need something solid to hang our interests on. We need an example. And I’m the same with my teaching…if we don’t have something solid there for people to agree with…or disagree with…or to explore around the areas…then I think we might have problems. So I’ve chosen, I think, probably a particularly challenging aspect of community engagement. And it’s an example that’s been on my mind in the last week or so, since I met some people from the University of Chile, who were actually trying to do this.

Now, a big deep breath here, because this is a challenge…I’m essentially trying to produce business graduates with social responsibility. Now let’s look at the context there. Let’s think of…particularly, financial meltdowns since 2008…and proportioning blame to…well, who’s responsible for losing billions of pounds or dollars, or whatever currency of the world’s economies? Who’s responsible for the vast unemployment that’s sort of sweeping the world? And maybe…you know, the problems associated with…what’s happening in Europe. And then think, well perhaps it’s the businessmen…the women…the people involved there. And then maybe, well actually they were trained at universities, maybe the universities and the business schools have got something to say about this.


And this group in Chile is essentially at the…sort of the coalface of this dialogue…and trying to address, from their particular county’s perspectives, what can they do to try and engender some sort of social responsibility in their graduates, so that in future we won’t necessarily have these problems. Now, I have to accept that this is at the…you know, the…perhaps the boundary of some of your interests. But we’ll see where we go with this. So let’s go through some of the arguments that this particular group have in mind.

So, huge economic disparity in a developing country…probably much more so than in New Zealand…we’ve got very rich people, and very poor people. The very poor people can’t possibly get to university. And the university we’re talking about is probably the best university in the Country. But we’ve essentially got a wealthy elite, training business graduates, who are going to either go out into their country and profit from the situation they find themselves in…or attempt to change it. And that’s a huge burden for them…a huge burden for the industry…a huge burden for the Institution. Now, where’s the advantage for them. You know, sort of what do they have that’s sort of quite positive. And this third bullet point, I think, is relevant…every one of their graduates gets a job. Not only do they all get jobs, but they all have choices of jobs. They can choose from a whole range of job offers when they graduate. They’re just remarkable from that perspective. And then the key question is, will they accept the well-paid job, that may promote social responsibility…or the less well-paid job that perhaps won’t? And it is a really important…decision-type question for them…and for the Institution. It’s one of the most essential evaluative elements from the Institution’s perspective.

Now, and then the question…what can universities do to tip the balance? And is it their role to tip the balance? Can the university encourage their students perhaps to be more socially responsible when they go out into the workplace? And what about the issues within the university about…well, even if we could do it…should we be doing it? And how would we do it? What would we do? So just imagine the sort of turmoil within this particular university, in a developing country context…and maybe extrapolate that to a New Zealand context to help us sort of understand what’s happening here.

So, tipping the balance is a critical element of this discussion. And here we’re talking about, you know, what’s the role of the university? To what extent does a university actually have social responsibility high up in its list of criteria, or its list of challenges? Is it perhaps safer for the university just to be part of…what I call part of the economic and cultural machinery? We’ve always produced graduates that have particular characteristics. Maybe these graduates will choose to do something…maybe they won’t. What business is it of ours to try and address what our students will choose to do once they’ve graduated? Our role perhaps is to make them the best possible graduates they can possibly be in relation to their particular discipline.

So let’s extend that argument now, away from ethical business, and address the broader roles of higher education. A personal interest of mine is


sustainability and environmental education. Now this is one of the areas where perhaps universities may need to be tipping the balance…may need to be encouraging their students to be more active in some areas than they currently are. Citizenship education is a broad area, that relates to many of our interests, I suspect. Patient-centred medicine…I encounter this over and over again, when I’m talking to colleagues in medicine. It’s one thing to teach doctors to be good doctors, but teaching them to be patient-centred, and to have sensitivity to patient issues is…I think it’s just one example of this development of professional values that higher education is exploring now. Now, I say ‘and more’. I suspect every discipline in higher education will be able to find…not only within the discipline…but in the periphery of the discipline…aspects of student activity that really are not necessarily at the centre of what we’re doing at present…but perhaps need to be boosted in that direction. We need to pay more attention to some of the things around the life and the well-being of our graduates and undergraduates.

Now, the big question here, what’s the role of higher education in these areas? In terms of developing the theories, I think we need really good examples of the arguments. And I couldn’t recommend more highly the arguments that have come up since 2008, with this sort of dialogue between Fish and Butin. Fish is the very senior, well-respected American academic, who essentially tells us to save the world in our own time. And he has a particular focus on service learning. Service learning is incredibly important in the States. It’s very big business, and I can’t imagine that there are many higher education institutions in the States that don’t have a service learning section. And Fish is very concerned about this, and about the emphasis here, and about the messages that we’re giving to our students…or his students. And saving the world in our own time is his message to us. You know, if we really do have these sort of notions of tipping the balance, as academics we ought to be doing it in our own time…not in the university’s time. And of course there are other contrary arguments to this, and Butin is perhaps the…you know, the best contrary argument. So I give the references to this at the end of this presentation. And I’m guessing, Martin, people will have access to this afterwards.

So that sort of provides the context for the areas that I think we need to address. So in a way now, I’ve just got to assume that everybody’s here because they’re interested, not just in…you know, the educational merits and functioning of service learning, or community engagement, but perhaps because they have broader areas of interest around what I call here ‘tipping the balance’. And I’ve said…you know, if universities do want to change the way the world works, how might they go about it?

So, three bullet points here…I want to talk about some educational theories and models…but also comment on their deficiencies…and how localised and specific they may be. I want to spend a little bit of time addressing service learning and community engagement in practice…but primarily through the example I’ve given you. Let’s go back to the University of Chile and let’s work out what they are doing, and what they intend to do. How’s this actually working in practice? And then, my own particular focus is…well, how would we know if we’re having the right effect? How would


we know if all of our efforts are actually working…in a sense of…in relation to what we think they should be doing? So, assessment, evaluation, and the research are really important to me.

So, let’s talk about some educational theories and models…which I think is what Martin really wanted me to do. And I have to suggest actually that the bulk of this is in the last bullet point, where I said ‘more’. And I’ll come to that in a minute. But let’s start with Bandura, and I have actually been given some instructions here, to make this more of a keynote…and not as interactive as perhaps I would normally do, ‘cause I have this urge to ask people to wave their hands at me and tell me whether they’re actually using these theories, and ask what’s wrong with them, and what’s right with them. But I’ll plough on.

Self-efficacy…I think there’s a wonderful common sense element to this…as well as the fairly deep theoretical underpinning that’s being developed here…the notion that if we actually believe that we can do something, then we’re more likely to be able to do it. It’s this notion of reinforcement. Feedback’s absolutely essential here. But allowing our undergraduates to have some sort of experience of the real world, that will help them understand what is their particular self-efficacy. What sort of feedback am I getting? Can I have an impact? Can I actually do things? Can I contribute to change? And I think Bandura…and the broadly psychological research that comes around that…is so positive in that respect. I think it’s a wonderful theoretical framework within which we…if we wish…can investigate our exploits in this area of service learning.

Now, something probably very old-fashioned from an academic development point of view, and I have to emphasise that’s the direction I come from…but nevertheless, Boyer’s notions of scholarship are very relevant here. And this idea of discovering integration and application…the whole idea of learning and scholarly activity being actually towards the developing holistic, or inclusive, view of the human condition, is a powerful set of statements that lead to underpinning theoretical frameworks for us. It’s a good framework that we should still be using, I think.

Now, many of us will have come across these broader ideas of citizen education…and I certainly did in the mid-90s. But I suspect I was late on the scene. And I suspect there’s been quite a few developments that pre-date that a lot. I actually was at the University of Southampton in that period…and so, in terms of sort of trying to find particular resources that perhaps, if you’re interested in citizen education as a theoretical framework, I would direct people to the University of Southampton’s webpages. There’s a very active group in that area, working in this field. And this sort of combination of civic and political elements, combined with notions of social and moral responsibility seem to need to be essential underpinning sort of constructs, within the idea of educating your citizen.

Now, another theoretical area that I think we really need to address is that of cultural competencies…critical incidences…and the psychology. And the area that I’ve encountered this most recently in particular is this notion of


unconscious bias…the idea that, you know, we all have biases…prejudices, if you like…and some of us are conscious of them, and some of us aren’t…and to what extent are our biases sort of made more obvious in our behaviours. There is a psychological, theoretical underpinning to this. And it’s beginning…the theories, I think, are beginning to have application, particularly in areas like medicine…you know where, for a medical practitioner to really understand the issues from the patient’s perspective they’ve really got to get to grips, not just with the…you know, the cultural background of the patient…but their own personal unconscious bias. To what extent are they biased against sick people, or…obese people, or…whatever else the bias might be. And there are some real challenges there, but service learning…community engagement…certainly seem to be one of the mechanisms that reveal these biases. And there is a theoretical framework put there for us to use.

Now, the last one that I really want to emphasise is Mezirow, of course, on transformational learning. And I suspect this is the theoretical construct that most frequently underpins developments in the area of service learning and community engagement. I think there’s a very solid underpinning here that would really help people get to grips with what they’re doing. Personally I find the literature quite a struggle to get through. There’s something about the way that Mezirow writes, and the assumptions that underpin his work, that I find quite difficult. But nevertheless, it’s a valuable theoretical framework.

Now, I did emphasise the ‘more’ would be really important to us all. I actually think that everybody’s discipline has theoretical frameworks that can lend themselves to this sort of understanding. And I don’t know about the theoretical frameworks outside of the student learning context. That is my context. That’s my experience. That’s my sort of background. And I struggle to identify with theoretical frameworks from other contexts. I suspect there are theoretical frameworks that would help us understand notions of trust between universities and the community. And it does seem to me that that trust development is essential to a lot of the engagement that we’re developing. I don’t know the theoretical frameworks that underpin that. I suspect they are there. And you guys might have more experience there than me.

So, let’s move on. So this is the notion of ‘in practice’, and you know I don’t want to pre-empt the practices that no doubt are going to come out in the rest of the morning, but I thought I would use the example that I’m learning about from the colleagues at the University of Chile. Just to emphasise…not only the practices that are underlaid, but the difficulties associated with these practices, and indeed what I call the context-dependence of the practices.

So let’s start with the first one here. The University of Chile School of Business…this broad aim to develop socially-responsible graduates…their graduates are working with real people. The community they’re talking about are people who are struggling with their own family businesses…or family enterprise units. And essentially each of the students is being paired


with a family that needs help. Now, I don’t know the context in Chile well enough. I suspect the context in New Zealand would be very challenging in that area…the thought of our business graduates going into a small family enterprise, and telling them how to run the business. Of course they wouldn’t do it that way, but that emphasises, I think, to me some of the…you know, the context dependence of some of the things that are happening here.

Absolutely right up there in all of the theoretical frameworks that you’ll encounter…certainly from a student learning perspective is this importance of reflection. Some would separate service learning from community service. And these are difficult definitions to develop, but essentially some wouldn’t separate them. Some would say, well getting our students out into the community to do service is a valuable thing for them to do. And that’s part of this context. Others would say, no…community service is different from service learning…or community engagement. And what’s the difference? Well, the difference is the impact that it might have on the students themselves…and how might that difference be exemplified through reflection. If a student actually goes out and just does the service…and doesn’t necessarily reflect on it…then it’s not going to have the same impact on the student as if reflection is in-built into the educational processes. And that everything the university does in relation to this service learning has a reflective component. And that’s an important theoretical element. I think it’s a very important practical element. And it’s something that these colleagues from the University of Chile were absolutely adamant about. It was a really important part of everything they did.

Now, evaluating the programme to include social responsibility elements…and I’ve used the word evaluate, perhaps slightly oddly. But essentially here…you know, I think we’re saying, well there’s no point in having this as a really important part of the programme, unless the students realise it’s a really important part. In some of our sort of contexts we might call this assessment. How are we going to assess it? Do the students realise that actually doing this, and reflecting on it, are important assessed elements?

Now, evaluating the impacts of these interventions on the community…well, you know, what if the community really doesn’t want this? What if they don’t trust the institution? And it’s a big ask, I think, in some contexts here. And so to the last point…working hard to develop and maintain community linkages and trusts. Those were the key elements that the University of Chile have identified as important elements of engagement in practice.

Now, what are the critical elements…two minutes, thank you…I’m on time. I’m on schedule here, Martin, thank you. The critical elements is to my mind…whether we’re dealing from an experiential point of view, or a profoundly theoretical point of view…trust seems to be the important point, right at the top. If we don’t have trust between the community and the university, then however we define community engagement or service


learning, to properly work it does seem to have sort of a…this overall sort of feel of developing a trust.

Developing a campus culture…it’s fine for…I mean, how many of us are here? We’re sort of half a dozen from the University of Otago…you know, sort of half a dozen from…well there’s only one up there…hello, lone person! Is this…another lone person…I mean, you know are we representative of a culture that’s on the campus? Are we representative of a…you know of a broad sort of base…and I can see a few heads shaking now. But, so the emphasis on developing this…I mean, it’s not going to just happen overnight. But it’s not going to happen if we just abandon it to sort of individual enthusiasts either. We do seem to sort of have this need, I think, to sort of get out there and encourage our colleagues to identify with some of the potential advantages of our approaches.

Now that’s also not going to happen without some mentoring. Maybe as enthusiasts we have an obligation to mentor. But maybe it extends beyond that…that there’s an academic development need here that relates to the…you know, the roles and functioning of the university. And I’m talking strategies here. It won’t happen without a strategy.

And then keeping track of student competencies…you know, what if it’s not working? You know, what if we end up by producing a bunch of students who end up going out hating the community? ‘I don’t want anything more to do with them. They’re terrible people. I just want a well-paid job!’ We need to know…you know, we need to keep track of what these attributes of the students are. And I’ve indicated them as competencies…but maybe there’s more there.

Now, this opens up this big area of assessment…evaluation…research. I’m not going to go through this in a lot of detail, other than to say that some things are easier than others. It’s probably fairly easy to develop a set of indicators…to indicate whether we’re on track. It’s probably relatively straightforward to assess these things in a formative sense. But assessment summatively is going to be an ongoing challenge for us. Cohort evaluation…probably a better bet for us at this stage. And I just want to identify there is a literature out there, about institutional civic engagement. Land perhaps started it off a decade ago now…but Boland is an Irish academic…and I think some really sound ideas about institutional civic engagement…and how are we actually going to assess whether institutions really mean this or not.

And that’s it. That’s all I was going to say.

Martin: So now I’m going to ask Professor Eric Pawson to talk. I was lucky enough to attend Eric’s students’ presentations last year, and Eric’s been doing this for ten years, so I think we’re going to draw a lot on his experience. Welcome Eric.

Eric: Ah, thank you very much Martin. Everyone happy? Good. I think ten years is a little bit of an exaggeration. And my experience builds on that of many


other people. In Geography at Canterbury, I work primarily with Simon Kingham in the service learning area. He’s actually not here at the moment because he’s in the U.S. visiting service learning practitioners, to sort of keep us on the sharp edge of things.

But really where our interest developed from, was from a 300-level capstone course that was set up by Rachel Spronken-Smith, who 10-12 years ago taught geography at Canterbury, but now of course is head of H.E.D.C. at Otago. And she set up our Research Methods course…it’s Geography 309…as a problem-based learning course in about 2000 or 2001. And we ran it as a problem-based learning course until 2008…in which the problems for sort of the P.B.L. component were essentially selected by staff, and negotiated between staff and students. At that point we decided we could get a wholly sort of sharper edge on this, and Simon and I started to explore some of the literature on service learning. And in 2008 we added service learning into what is essentially still a problem-based learning framed course.

Now, this is a capstone course, in the sense that our graduates are expected to take it. It’s a course in research methods. It’s not peripheral to our curriculum. In other words, it’s actually central. Geography graduates are not always that enthusiastic when it comes to learning about research methods. And we wanted something which…or some sort of method, which would engage them as effectively as possible. So, I guess Kerry, if we’ve been using a theoretical framework, then it’s the framework of student engagement. And that’s what I want to come back to at the end.

So we’ve been running this sort of capstone course…300 level…for the last five years. Simon and I also use it with a graduate course…Geography 402…which is sustainable urban development. And we’re also thinking about introducing it post-earthquakes, in 2013 at 100 level. We haven’t quite got our minds around how we would use service learning at 100 level, but I suspect that it would be as a component of a course, rather than as the main motivator and organiser of the course, which is how we use it at 300 and 400 level. 300 level, we’re talking not large numbers…45 to 55 students. We’ve discovered over the years that students work best, at least in our context, in groups of four or five. And things start to fall apart when groups are as big as six, and they don’t work when there’s only three. At 400 level, this year we were talking 12 students. And we had them in three groups of four each.

Now, one of the things that we…I’m going to talk about a certain number of practical things here…one of the thing that we always emphasise with these students…that service learning will not work unless you understand it as a process of negotiation. And that is a process of negotiation between three parties. That’s the community partner on the one hand…academic staff on the other hand…and critically, the students themselves. We actually spend a little bit of time discussing the students’ theories of group dynamics. And we try to get them to understand that service learning that is based on a P.B.L. sort of group dynamic is not necessarily all plain sailing. Some of you, no doubt, will use the simple model of group dynamics, which goes I


think forming…storming…norming and performing. And we always suggest to our students that it’s perfectly normal to storm, but they might not necessarily storm as stage two of the process. But if they haven’t stormed somewhere along the way, then their group will probably never norm and perform in quite the sort of way that it might do. One of the reasons, of course, for suggesting that is to overcome anxieties that students have about actually working together in groups, which can be extraordinarily challenging. And I do get a strong sense of that, because I agree very much with Kerry here, that you have to have a reflective component in courses like this. We use a reflective essay at 300 level. And we use quite comprehensive reflective journal at 400 level. I’ve just finished reading those, and they really were sort of quite revealing.

So Geography 309 is a capstone course. It’s a key course for us. We use it to teach research methods in context, because that’s how geography students seem best to learn. We’ve worked with a variety of community partners in Christchurch over the last five years. Most of them are what I would call transition groups. We started off working with Project Lyttelton, which is related to the International Transition Towns Movement. And the conference that Martin referred to, that he came to last year, was held in the community hall in Lyttelton, when the class of 50 are responsible for presenting their results to themselves, to staff and to any community members who are interested in turning up. And we would usually get, during the course of the day, not a huge participation from the community groups…but maybe 10 or 15 people…something like that…who would come in for the talks that they’re sort of particularly interested in.

What I wanted to talk about this morning, though, is not Geography 309…partly because I get asked to talk about that an awful lot…but Geography 402, which is an honours level sustainable urban development course. And I also teach this with Simon Kingham. And the reason that you’ve got quite a fancy map up on the Powerpoint at the moment is because this actually crystallises the problem that we gave our students this year. And it was actually stunningly successful. And it’s a post-earthquake problem. We’ve had to handle post-earthquake issues very, very carefully in Christchurch. Many people in the City, I think, were not ready for this sort of thing last year, so we were treading really quite carefully. There is now rather more interest. Even the University is starting to wake up. And it’s taken those of us here, who’ve struggled with these things…Jessica is smiling…some years to get the University interested. But we’re now, I think, starting to capture a wave of interest…community-wise…with the City Council…and in the University as well. The map is actually is actually out of the Draft Inner City Plan for Christchurch redevelopment. And this was constructed by the City Council on the instruction of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority early last year. It was approved by the Minister about six weeks ago. And currently C.E.R.A., the Earthquake Recovery Authority has a group designing…or redesigning…the centre of Christchurch in 100 days. We are going to get a more compact C.B.D., which is the area which is outlined in blue on the map. The green wiggly bit is the Avon River. The green to the left of the map is the Botanic Gardens


and Hagley Park. And the grey areas around the blue are those areas which will become sort of peripheral, lower-density developments to a smaller, more compact C.B.D. In Geography 402 we were particularly interested in the five areas there, which are numbered as 10. And although they’ve actually moved on the Powerpoint, I put a one…a two…and a three alongside the ones that we chose. Now those 10s are identified by the City Council as neighbourhood hubs. And the people who lived in those areas were very, very surprised to see this map, and to discover that they’d been identified as neighbourhood hubs…and they didn’t know quite what this meant…quite what the Council expected of them…quite how they would integrate into the wider City Plan…quite how they could leverage their own interests into things actually as they develop. And I’m talking about a post-disaster situation here. I’ve no idea whether those of you who live outside of Christchurch know how difficult it has been for people to actually work in this situation, and to get answers from people…and to get some sort of sense of what is going on…and where we all sit in relation to a wide whole. So we negotiated with the people at Chester Street East…that’s number one...with the people at Peterborough Street…that’s number two…and the business community on Victoria Street…which is number three. And they’re all very keen to work with our students…and for our students to do some context-specific…Kerry mentioned the importance of context…this is all very context-specific research, which is what the students have done in the first semester this year. And the critical thing which each of these three groups had to do, apart from getting to know each other, was to get to know their community partners…to find out what the real issues were…and to negotiate some key research questions with them. And my next three slides are actually one for each of these community areas…and they’re the research questions that the students came up with. And in my view, one of the critical things about service learning…as we practice it as a form of research praxis…is how the students develop the research questions.

So this was the first group…Chester Street East. This was an interesting community group, because it was led by an architect from Jasmax…and a person who was extremely keen to engage the Council in a very particular sort of way. It’s quite an interesting part of the inner City, which has not been completely devastated by the earthquakes…but the community here was very surprised to discover from our students that one third of the people in the neighbourhood are new in the last 12 months. That’s because there’s quite a substantial turnover in rental property here. This is a part of the inner City which regards itself as a model for inner city living New Zealand style. And these are the questions that the students negotiated with the community group…to focus their research. What defined the neighbourhood before the earthquake? How does that differ from what exists now? How will the neighbourhood fit with the Draft Plan? What lessons can be learned about creating or maintaining inner city living in Christchurch? And the most important question there, underneath the picture…how actually are we going to create efficient and effective outcomes with the City? And it became evident…this group was fortunately a group of quite mature students. I mean that in both senses of the word. They were quite grown up…and they needed to be, because this was a very difficult group to work


with. And it was a group that were making themselves really quite problematic with the City Council…unlike some of the other groups. But they got some good work done with them.

Can we now go on to the next slide please? This is Peterborough Village. This is a very, very sad area by comparison. It was subject to very extensive liquefaction. That is a set of townhouses there…and if that building looks bent, then it is extraordinarily bent. It will subsequently have been demolished. Most of the structures in this area have been demolished. It is now simply an empty part of the inner City. But it did have quite an active community group there…which was based around the church, and an area of inner City development, which had been constructed around the church over the last 10 or 15 years. All of that has been demolished post-earthquake. So their central question that the students came up with in conjunction here was how viable are the options for post-earthquake recovery in Peterborough Village? Or is it simply going to exist as a field of silt for the next 20 to 25 years…which is quite possible in fact. Three of the issues that this community was really interested in…opportunities for stream restoration…the options for foundation rebuilding…this is quite critical…’cause this is very, very soft land…and what different types of land-share agreements exist?…and what are the residents’ perspectives on these? I should say the first group did a very comprehensive community survey. This second group actually relied on focus group work. And they were, I think, reasonably successful in that sense.

And if I go into my third slide please. This is Victoria Street, which is a business street. It was one of the main axes into Central Christchurch. It’s only reopened in the last couple of days, in fact. And post-earthquake, a group of business folk set up a Victoria Street Business Association. And they were very, very keen to work with the students. They had developed quite good connections with the Council. And the student group here, which was rather younger, I think benefitted from the fact that there were fewer tensions between the Victoria Street business group and the Council, than had been the case in Chester Street East, for instance. So the questions that are central here was what initiatives do stakeholders favour for a rebuild? How can this business street actually develop a distinct identity within the Central City?...This is where we were all extremely concerned in fact that whether the Central City is ever going to regain any sort of business focus in the wider metro area…and what can this street learn from a combination of international best practice and themes, using the Creative Cities concept? The students presented their results in the Casino, because the Casino is actually on Victoria Street, and the C.E.O. of the Casino is a very important person in the Victoria Street rebuild initiative. He gave us a room. It was slightly distracting, because it was sort of full of casino-type things, and there were regular announcements about the poker tables about to open. But we had a room full of people. We had about 60 people there last Tuesday night. We were booked to be in there for half-past 5 to 7 o’clock. I finally got out at half-past 8. So the students’ presentations raised enormous interest. And I think they raised enormous interest because people at the


moment in Christchurch are very, very keen to learn about post-earthquake ideas, and where they might actually sit in the midst of things.

Now that brings me to my last slide. Where does this sit in relation to George Kuh’s ‘high impact’ educational practices? This is the sort of theoretical framework that I use. You will be aware, I imagine, of George Kuh’s ‘high impact’ practices, which are derived from the N.S.S.E., the National Survey of Student Engagement in the U.S., and most of us now use the A.U.S.S.I.E., which is the Australian equivalent. He’s come up with 10 high impact educational practices, and I’ve put some asterisks alongside the five that I think that our form of service learning sort of particularly hits. These are quite writing-intensive courses for students…because they are required to produce output for their community problem…but also for academic staff. They are collaborative assignments and projects. Undergraduate research is extremely important. They’re at 400 level honours research. I’ve actually put an asterisk alongside ‘diversity and global learning’ because reading the student reflective journals earlier this week, I’ve realised once again what a challenge it is for most students to come to grips with the diversity of the other people in their own groups. Service learning is specifically identified as a high-impact practice…and capstone courses. We have evaluated the impact that these courses have through standard processes, but we’ve also evaluated it in other ways…and published…certainly something on Geography 309, which is available on the Ako Aotearoa website. And that form of evaluation…we divided the class…the Geography 309 class…this was two or three years ago…into groups of students who, according to the A.U.S.S.I.E., were either less engaged…more engaged…or highly engaged before the course started. And the interesting outcome from that was, with a service learning experience, all of them became more engaged…but the greater gains were amongst those who were least engaged to begin with.

So, by way of summary, we use service learning as a central means of trying to get across the significance, and importance, of research process. And if we have a theoretical framework, then I guess it’s around student engagement…and about the significance of high-impact educational practice.

Martin: Thank you Eric. We’re going to make a shift now from community-based learning which is basically from Eric’s research focus…and now we’re going to welcome Auckland University of Technology…Sonja is going to be talking more about sort of placement of students. And I think one of your students from World Vision is also going to be talking too. So I welcome Sonja Gallagher to talk now. Thank you.

Sonja: Thank you, Martin. I’m here on behalf of Keryn McDermott. Keryn has prepared this presentation with the help of her administrator, Ali Gale. So I came on board yesterday. I feel very unprepared and unpracticed, but we’ll see how we go. I’d like to introduce next to me Melody Cooper. Melody is one of our very recent graduates. And she graduated with a B.A., with a double major, in conflict resolution and international studies.


Okay, next slide please, Martin. A.U.T. has a long-established culture of cooperative education. It’s currently taught in 11 schools. There are the traditional courses that have practicums, such as in health sciences and teaching…but also in business, sport and recreation and also in all of our B.A. majors. The focus of this presentation is to just describe some of the developments that have gone on in our B.A. (applied). I myself, I coordinate the cooperative education programme across the languages majors. I’m actually programme leader for Japanese. So some of the content of this presentation actually relates to social sciences.

Cooperative education is a 30-point paper, which students do in the final year of their B.A. They find their own placements, and they’re required to do 150 hours. That 150 hours…many choose to do it during the inter-semester break. Others tend to do it part-time sort of one day a week over a longer period of time. But we prepare students with workshops and career planning, writing C.V.s, interview techniques…as well as on business ethics, reflective practice…and also to do with the assessments…reflective writing and…you know, the oral presentations.

The placement is very much based around the key document, which is the Learning Agreement. And we get students, and we look at what is it they want to achieve in terms of aims and outcomes…and these can be personal, professional or academic aims. Obviously they need to come up with some strategies and measurable outcomes as well. The Learning Agreement forms the basis for the final portfolio assessment…where students reflect on the extent to which they met or did not meet the learning outcomes. And they also make links to their B.A. papers as well as sort of looking forward into the future…and career goals. The other main piece of assessment is an oral presentation, and students do a S.W.A.T. analysis, so reflecting on their strengths and weaknesses…as well as opportunities and threats.

So you can see up here…and it’s been mentioned already that cooperative education, or service learning, is between academic supervisors, work-based supervisors, and as well the students. I’ll talk a bit later, but Keryn’s done some work into the experience of work-based supervisors, because I still think…and it’s getting better…but we’ve got a good link between the academic supervisors and the students…we’ve got good links between the students and work-based supervisors…but the third link, which is academic supervisors…or the University with industry…is not as strong as it could be.

Next slide please, Martin. Okay, this is a bit of a timeline of cooperative education…in the B.A. So not at A.U.T. but within our B.A. (applied). Started late 90s with the first major being Japanese…soon after joined by Chinese Social Sciences and Fashion Technology. And since then in Social Sciences we’ve had majors…namely Criminology…and we also have Psychology as well as Conflict Resolution. In the languages majors we’ve developed there as well. We’ve got English...New Media Studies…Translation…Interpreting…and more recently, Creative Writing. So, moving along, 2006/2007 Keryn McDermott did, as I mentioned, a research project, assessing sort of work-based supervisors’ satisfaction with


the programme…with our students, and the contribution they make to the organisation. I’ll talk a bit more about that and her findings in a few minutes. We introduced e-portfolios to students in 2009. Traditionally they’d been submitting paper-based portfolios. We had a varying degree of success across the majors. I’ll talk about that later as well. The e-portfolio platform that we use is Mahara…I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that or not. Now in 2011, this was just last year, we’ve been working more closely with our industry liaison person, who further developed relationships. Student numbers have doubled. I think for Keryn she’s gone from about 45 or 50 up to about 90 or 100 this year. And mine have gone from about 30 a few years ago to about 60 now.

Next slide please. These are some of the examples that Keryn has identified from Social Sciences in terms of placements. As the majors have become more complex, and we’ve also got students doing double majors…then so have the range of placements widened. In fact, some of the graduates of our programmes are in fact now work-based supervisors for current students. So we’re seeing that cycle now. So they’ve already got a good understanding of coop themselves. We’re also developing relationships. We’re looking at setting up memorandums of understanding with organisations who are committing to taking on a certain number of students each year. At the moment we’re ….a good one with Auckland City Council. But there are others in the pipeline as well, and we’re working with other sections of the University. So you see, 2011, there’s World Vision there, so that’s what Melody’s going to talk to you later.

The next slide please. Okay, this is Keryn’s research project, which she published in 2008, which was addressing a weak link…enhancing the support of sponsors of student placements. Two phases…firstly there was a survey…and then she followed up with interviews.

And next slide please. Okay, some of her findings…you can see up on the screen there, reasons for choosing to supervise a student. Fresh ideas, enthusiasm…we get a lot of positive feedback from work-based supervisors on contribution…as well as students being able to do some of the tasks and things that they want to do, but they just haven’t got the resources. Also there’s a strong commitment from industry to have better links with the University as well…and also wider community. Many of our students have got jobs from their placements. And some work organisations see it as an economical recruitment technique…seeing how the students work and interact within the organisational culture…and then, as I said, many do gain part-time, and often full-time, employment.

So, aspects of coop that have been rewarding…seeing students development and growth…sort of networking opportunities…and as I said, they’ve been impressed by the quality of the student contributions. Now, in terms of suggestions for improvement there was…it came out quite strongly…that there needs to be more communication with the University…even though it had been sort of there, but it wasn’t so explicit. They also said it would have been helpful to have some sort of an orientation programme, so they could


clearly understand what the purpose of coop was…and also the processes along the way.

Next slide please. Okay, student feedback over the years…2007, this is for Social Sciences…I’m reporting on Keryn’s behalf…there was very positive feedback in terms of usefulness of a personal, professional, academic development. However, and it’s come across a few years actually, that there was a concern that the work-load was too heavy…and that it was too heavily weighted on the end of the year…put a lot of pressure on students. We’ve also had some comments from mature students who did not see the value of doing coop…particularly if they’d had a lot of work experience in the past. Often they’d do it, and then come out thinking, actually that was really a significant experience. And often will steer them off in different career paths from what they’d been intending.

So, in terms of how we’ve responded. I’m not sure if you’re familiar, but they are up the Ako Aotearoa website. Andy Martin and Helen Hughes…so Andy’s from Palmerston North, and he’s put together some booklets on how to make the most of work integrated learning. There are different volumes. There’s one for students…there’s one for academic supervisors…and also one for students themselves. There’s also one on best practice for cooperative education…so if you haven’t seen those, yeah I strongly suggest you do. They’re very useful, and very simple to understand.

In terms of the portfolios, students do have the option of submitting paper or an e-portfolio. We’ve reduced the number of workshops…and we’ve also offered drop-in sessions, so students can come if they need help. And at the moment, in languages, we’re trying an annotated bibliography to try and get them reading more theory earlier on, rather than during the portfolio writing process. Also, for the Learning Contract…we had initially five aims, and now we’ve brought that down to four.

Next slide please. Okay, just a couple of events that we’ve had to try and bring in work-based supervisors. And all of this is to try and increase the connections. So last year we also had, as part of the prize-giving, we awarded Supervisor of the Year for someone…one of the organisations, who’s showing sort of commitment to the coop programme, sort of well beyond what was expected of them. We also had an open seminar, ‘The Changing Face of Auckland’ that they were invited to as well.

Okay, next please. Okay, I’d like to move on a little bit more about e-portfolios. Now that 10,000 word…it’s sort of 7-10,000 words, which was quite a lot to expect of students for a 30-point paper, particularly at undergraduate level. Students tended to leave it right to the very end. They saw it as this massive task that they’d put off and put off, and then do all-nighters leading up to submission date. We felt that having an e-portfolio would be more in tune with sort of the needs of contemporary workplaces…sort of developing new technologies…as well as encouraging students to start the process earlier. And Keryn and I, we published our findings for our experience of integrating an e-portfolio into coop.


And if you go to the next slide, please. So, we used Mahara…2009 we actually used it. Keryn and I ourselves had absolutely no idea what it looked like…how to use it…so we were expected to introduce it to students. It was a faculty initiative, and each school was asked to identify one paper in which to integrate the Mahara software. We had training opportunities…it was well-attended. There was also video tutorials that students could use. But in terms of the uptake, languages…students, we had 24 out of 27 in 2009 submit e-portfolios. However, and you can’t see this on your screen, but if you could scroll down please, Martin, a wee bit…there was no one from…so that is zero students from Social Sciences submitted a e-portfolio. The following year we went from having zero submission from Social Sciences to 50%. And that was about the same in 2011. The difference in uptake…where most of our students submit e-portfolios…is because our students have had these sorts of technologies integrated into their core papers throughout the years. And in fact they already use Mahara for one of the core papers, called ‘I Reflect’. And ‘I Reflect’ was developed to support students coming into coop.

Okay, now that’s a little bit about our e-portfolios. I’m going to hand over to Melody now, for a few minutes…and then I’ll come back and talk about some of our other networks.

Melody: Hi guys. I just graduated recently, and I’m just going to quickly talk about what I did on my cooperative education placement at World Vision…and some of the professional, personal and academic benefits that I’ve found since.

So, just I think this B.A. is unique because you don’t come out of it always with a specific role that you’re gonna pursue. It’s quite a broad degree, so I think that’s important to have that opportunity to test the market…and see where you think you might wanna go afterwards.

So just to explain what I did…I did my placement in World Vision in an Auckland office in a grants unit. And they are responsible for getting grants from places like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade…to implement their projects on the ground overseas. But I did this because I felt that it’s better with my B.A., because I want to learn how to address social issues…as they were doing. Now, I was the first student that they took on, and I feel that the Learning Agreement that was set up by Keryn and Sonja was a really good agreement to be able to hand someone…like the supervisor that I wanted to work with, I was like hey, this is already in place…these are just the things that we need to figure out if it’s possible. And they thought, ah that’s great. They’ve already taken the initiative to plan it ahead for us. So I recommend that if anyone’s pursuing it.

So quickly, I’ll talk about the tasks that I did. I just did an activity design document for a water sanitation and hygiene project in Timor Leste. And so basically it’s just a template that gives to organisations as a platform to apply for the grants. And you have to make sure that you do an initial in-depth analysis of the issues…make sure that you’re using best practices in project design…and that you’ve planned a means by which the project will


be implemented. So basically is just really a rigorous way to figure out if this grant’s going to be used in the best way. So that required a lot of pulling information from different sources for me to create a 40-page document that would be used to apply for the grant. The next thing I did was work on a project completion report for a food security and material health project in Timor Leste. And this basically is just required at the end of a project to show that funds are being used well.

So these are two big projects that I worked on. I did it for four weeks solid, in my mid-semester break. And they’re both new areas, because I had never done these things before. Report-writing was something quite new to me. So it was a big challenge to take on.

But just to move to the areas of professional, personal and academic development, I guess one of the first things I gained was just confidence in talking and liaising with people in positions of leadership. So people that really know what they’re talking about…and I feel like I’m a student…I don’t really know…like really specific things that are in their field, but I want to learn as much as I can. I gained insight into the job I decided to pursue without having to gain the necessary qualification first…because I found out that you need to have a Masters in Development, if you want to pursue a particular career in that. So I thought that was great, that they allowed me to come in, even though I didn’t have that. I also realised, as part of that job, if I wanted to pursue it I’d have to spend a third of my year overseas, and that made me question whether I want to pursue that career in the first place. I got to meet with about six different staff within my team who do informational interviews. So I asked about their career path…what they studied…and things like that. And it was really encouraging to me. And it’s also been a really useful experience to talk about in interviews. People ask me what is your experience in this, and I’m really able to draw on those experiences of hey, I’m a quick learner…I learnt the company…the lingo pretty fast…I had these projects I had to pump out in a certain amount of time. And people seem really impressed with that, so that’s very helpful.

In terms of personal development, it just built my confidence…in whether that’s something I want to pursue. And also what it did for me is it made me realise that I’m much more of a team player than I realised, and that I don’t necessarily want to do a job that is just purely desk-based. It helped me to realise what kind of job I actually do want to pursue, because I realised the actual nitty-gritty, this is what it’s going to take. Yeah, so those are the questions I’ve had to grapple with since.

Just to quickly finish off, academic development. I realised I needed to pursue post-grad or Masters if I wanted to have that particular role, which is something I wasn’t aware of before-hand. And develop my writing ability…my research skills. It drew on papers that I’d done in university, and I could really see the links, so that was great. And it also, when I do decide to pursue my Masters, has given me that prior specialist knowledge, so I don’t think I would have been as prepared if I hadn’t done that placement. And with the Mahara online e-portfolio, I just used that pretty


much daily to record my experiences…what I was thinking…how my theory integrated into what I was learning. So then that gave me a platform to complete my portfolio at the end of the year.

And yeah…all I can say is that it’s really set me up and I’m really appreciative for our network with World Vision. So I feel more confident to apply for jobs there, and just within the industry as a whole.

Sonja: Thank you very much, that was very refreshing. I just want to finish off our presentation actually with a plug for the N.Z.A.C.E., New Zealand Association of Cooperative Education. A.U.T. is hosting a conference next year, 21st to 23rd April, with the them ‘Strategic Directions’. Also, not sure if you’re aware, but there’s the Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education, which Keryn and I have both published in. They have got the their journal now and have a quick turnaround for publication…generally a three-week turnaround. They’ve got 12 volumes so far, and probably three editions coming out in 2012. Also, we’ve got strong links…well, that’s N.Z.A.C.E., so strong links with A.C.E.N., the Australian Collaborative Education Network. And Keryn and I, a couple of years ago, went to the Perth conference, which was really very eye-opening. And this year there’s one in Geelong in October. So, we work closely with A.C.E.N. and N.Z.A.C.E. at A.U.T.

So that’s it from us. I’d like to thank Melody. She’s off now…she’s got other commitments. Were there any quick questions for Melody, because she won’t be here at the end?

Martin: Now, our next speaker is Grant Duncan from Massey University, Albany, is really talking about an aspiration of what he and his colleagues plan to do with service learning next year. So Grant, could you tell us, in about 10 minutes, what’s going on at Albany?

Grant: Okay, I’ll probably be very brief. It occurs to me…and I was invited into this a little bit late in the piece, but it occurred to me, having heard what I’ve heard, that it may have been better if we’d had someone from our social work programme here, because they’ve been doing this kind of thing in a highly organised way…well, longer than I know actually…but when the campus here at Albany was small, we all had to kind of muck in so to speak, to help the social work programme out with its field-work placements, which the students are required to do, I think if I recall rightly, two 12-week professional field-work placements. So that’s a highly-organised professional requirement. It’s supervised, and I think probably requires…I don’t know who’s doing it at the moment…but my recollection is that it basically requires a half-time person permanently managing and administering that programme. So it would have been more useful perhaps to have had someone from that programme.

I’m really talking about something very formative here, and so I probably won’t even need 10 minutes Martin, and maybe can make up a bit of extra time for you. Basically what we’re planning is not a field-work placement, in the sense of the professional field-work placement in the social work


programme. We were looking for something to do something that would be much more administratively light than that, for social science majors. It would go across the social science majors of sociology, anthropology and politics.

And I guess what we’re thinking at the moment is to see both the University and the workplace as sites in which there is contestation over knowledge…and different ways of understanding, developing and applying knowledge. There’s plenty of contestation over the nature of knowledge within the University, but we feel that also there is in any workplace, regardless of what it does. And so the conflict of knowledge we felt would give us at least some kind of consensual vehicle that would cross both University and the work-site.

In terms of what…and I’ll say this is still under development – but we’re thinking probably, rather than put people out into a professional workplace experience of any great length, what we would do is get students to approach and interview people within say two or three…probably three people…within different work-sites, and bring some of that…if you like…almost ethnographic kind of knowledge back with them, and discuss that in class, and provide some kind of report back to the organisation that has given them that opportunity.

Now the other point that I wanted to make, actually, was that…two things, just based on what I’ve already heard…first of all, we don’t see this as changing the world. But I did pick up earlier on the question of trust, which I think is most important. And so what we’ve done here is…at the formative stage…we’ve approached our ethics committee here. We don’t know quite how formally yet to actually apply to the ethics committee for approval for this, but I’ve spoken to the secretary of the committee, and she understands our dilemma and is quite pleased that we’re approaching the ethics committee at the formative stage, rather than at the last minute, so to speak…because we want this to be quite firmly grounded in some kind of ethics approval, so that students can go out with a pre-designed information sheet, and a clear understanding about matters to do with confidentiality, etcetera. And also…you know, so that we can, I guess, establish that trust early on. So, honestly Martin that’s pretty much all I really had to say at the moment. And maybe just come back later for questions.

Martin: Thank you very much Grant. I’ll just pick up on your idea of social work…you know, that fact that we don’t really have social workers and education people here today…is that their pathways are very, very clear, but as a sociologist...where do my students go? Or geography…where do those students go? So our pathways are not as clear, as they are clearly defined with teacher education and social work education. So our placements are quite different.

So let’s move now to the University of Canterbury, and Jessica Johnston. Jessica, thanks for joining us.


Jessica: That’s really interesting. I totally agree with your idea that the education…we find that engineers also have that ability to have those placement paths. I coordinate…I’m the director of the Bachelors of Arts internship programme. We go across the entire spectrum of 28 subjects that we have…classics, fine arts…music, history, English. And I find placements for those students. It’s a 30-point course. They also have 150 hours that the students are out working in the community.

Now, I think the reason…Martin had me talk about this, when he first came up…and we met in a café, and we talked about this…he was surprised that I ask businesses for money. The reason I do this is because the commerce internships here charge $3,000 for their interns to go out into their business organisations. The organisations pay the University $3,000. The interns get $2,500. And I looked at that model, and I thought the B.A. shouldn’t…I don’t want it to be ghetto-ised…I don’t want it to be the freebie that they don’t really have anything productive to do, or they’re not worth paying…they’re the freebies. So I have a sliding scale for my internships. I have the Press…I have the New Zealand Manufacturing Association…I have the Canterbury Museum…the Navy…the College of Midwifery…they have the money to pay the $3,000. I ask them…I interview them at the very beginning…is this not a problem? They say no…no, we have these large sums of money…it’s in my budget…it’s a discretionary fund…it’s not a problem.

Now I also work with community organisations that have no money. And so I have a sliding scale. The $3,000 goes for the full for-profits that can afford it. The Navy said they can afford $2,000…that’s excellent. Community groups I’m working with are Howard League…the Logie Collection…things like that. They don’t have any money…I don’t charge them. What happens with the money is, it goes to the College of Arts…and then the students’ tuition for the course is paid. So the students don’t get money per se, but they get the tuition, when they pass the course, back to them. And it creates a sense of engagement for the students. I have the community organisations apply to me, so that they’re thinking in terms of grants…though I’ve accepted all of them, because I’m still trying to grown the programme…and it becomes a way of kind of redistributing the funds…so that the students in the class are all equal, and yet those who can, pay. And it helps create a sense of competency and recognition, and visibility for the programme.

Now, I agree with what Kerry said in the very beginning, that the universities do have that responsibility to be the critical conscience of society. So part of my goal is to train these students to go both into the community organisations and for-profits, and use…I call it the Masters’ tools…to create change. I am trying to (Grant) change the world. I believe the world needs to be changed, and especially with a B.A., part of our job is to do that kind of questioning. What I do with the students is help them to do it productively. So they can see the race, gender, class power dynamics packing within their organisation…or on a project…and use that information to productively ask questions that I find the organisations…both for-profit, and the non-profits…clearly appreciate.


An example for one of my students was, she worked with SCAPE, which is a public art commission, basically. And they were doing very elite art, and she asked a question about race and gender, and class…and the organisation went whoa! And they’re changing their orientation. So it does work, and it can be productively used. I just think that’s part of our job as tertiary institutions to ask our students to think differently…to solve problems in a different way.

About the University culture…what we’re trying to work on here, and Eric is part of that, is to create a university centre for cooperative education, so that we can bring in the various different projects that are working, but …a community response of how to do all that…of all these…and then they need to come to us with their research needs, and use the…as somebody said…the education engine that we are to allow productive use of that research back into the community. So it’s so that we’re not competing with each other for all those different organisations out there, but the university becomes a resource for the community to give back to that community. I think that’s all I have to say.

Martin: Okay. Thank you very much Jessica. We’re going to go to Victoria University at Wellington…Sara Kindon. I haven’t met Sara before, but she contacted me and told me about her students’ work with Somali refugees, so you’re going to talk to us about that, Sara.

Sara: Thank you, Martin. Martin asked me to speak to the topic of who benefits? And I have with me, to my left, Anna Rogers who’s a student who’s been working in the course that I teach this year. So she’s going to talk from a student perspective. The context that I’m speaking from is a course that’s run to engage students in Human Geography and Development Studies at Victoria University. It’s been running since 2005, and it works within a framework of participatory action research…which assumes that people are experts in their own lives, and that as researchers we act as facilitators or catalysts, and collaborators to help support…if you like…community-led research, analysis and change.

So, since 2005 I’ve had about 130 students through this 400 level…500 level course. We’ve done about 13 projects, focussing specifically on young people…working with young people particularly from refugee backgrounds. And this has been through a partnership with a non-Governmental organisation in wellington, called Change-Makers Refugee Forum. And with the support of the Office of Ethnic Affairs, Change-Makers were very happy to enter into a test period of whether we could usefully contribute to capacity building among young people, and productive research outcomes. And given that we’ve been going for seven years, I think that’s testament to the fact that what we’re able to do through the course is proving to be beneficial for not only Change-Makers, but a number of other organisations and young people.

So I thought about benefits, and thinking about what is a benefit? What does it mean to benefit? And looking up the word…the associations with kindness…which we don’t often talk about in the university context but


maybe we should do more of…thinking about the promotion of well-being…and we don’t always do that either…for our students, ourselves, or the people that we work with…thinking about benefits as something that improves a situation…or provides aid, or help, or advantage. So, if I think in that kind of context, what I’d like to do is just quickly reflect on some of the benefits that I noticed for a number of different stakeholders – participants…co-researchers…community organisations…students …staff and the university institution.

So, participants who have joined in our projects over the years have often been young people in high schools…young people disengaged from formal educational training…parents…service providers…and in all cases, what we’ve heard is that the key benefit is feeling that somebody’s actually listening, and taking note. So the idea of voice…the idea of having input…having an opportunity to reflect on one’s own life experience. In particular, last year we did a nationwide project, which was looking at the impacts of cuts to refugee study grants. And it involved 13 tertiary institutions…interviews with staff…but also, critically, interviews…focus groups…with students. And the report that was produced out of that is with the Minister of Education at the moment. But more critically, since then Auckland University took up the report findings, and changed their policy to recognise refugee background students as a distinct equity group…which means that they are now actively trying to establish funding pathways…mechanisms to support those students within their institution. At Victoria we haven’t had any such luck convincing our senior management that that needs to happen, yet. But they do like the fact that Victoria has created change in other places!

Co-researchers…every year we try very hard to recruit refugee-background young people, who can work alongside the graduate students in the course, to be research advisors…to be research participants…to be researchers themselves. So, one of the key things that we’re trying to do through the research is build capacity as we go…so that eventually it’s refugee-background young people who are doing the research development. And perhaps the most striking illustration of this was in 2008, where we had a team of students, from the course, work with a team of Somali youth leaders, over two trimesters, to explore what was supporting students in high schools…Somali students in high schools…to achieve their learning outcomes…their educational goals. And, as a result of that, the Somali youth leaders learnt interview skills…focus group skills…they learnt about participatory diagramming and workshopping. And most critically, they then translated the report back into Somali, into an executive summary, and they then organised a community forum, where they presented on the research in Somali…to their parents, their leaders, and other young people.

In terms of community organisations, one of the key benefits is that…unlike what we just heard from Jessica…they get free research. So, in fact, I was reflecting on the fact that through Change-Makers, what I actually do now is budget into my course a koha, that we actually pay the organisation to work with them, rather than they pay us. So this year, that money goes to help support staff in an organisation where it’s very difficult to get funding. We


also provide koha to co-researchers. And I may talk a bit about that, but giving them a movie voucher or a Rebel Sports voucher to acknowledge their participation. And we provide food for an end-of-course presentation.

Community organisations also benefit, because what they see is that the findings that get produced have a certain degree of authenticity, because they engage young people directly in an analysis of their own lives. And we’ve now built up a corpus of research in Wellington, that other organisations draw on through Change-Makers Refugee Forum’s research directory. And I think that is a value, in and of itself…raising the awareness…sharing the stories of people who are often forgotten about, because of New Zealand’s focus on its bicultural identity.

I’ll ask Anna to talk now a little bit about what she perceives are some of the benefits from a student’s perspective, and then I’ll come back and talk about perspectives of benefit from the staff experience, and the institution.

Anna: Hello everyone. First off, obviously it’s a great opportunity to be able to put your learning into action, and so that’s a kind of common link between all of these types of courses is that to be able to actually act upon the theory that you’re learning, just enriches that learning so much. But conversely also, in something like this, I feel like it’s great to be able to think reflectively about your actions. So students have the opportunity to engage in volunteer experiences with a number of organisations, but you’re not always asked to really reflect on what it is you’re doing in that experience, and how it relates back to your learning. So that sort of praxis on both sides, I think, is a wonderful thing. And Eric mentioned earlier about students being more engaged…and I feel like in this type of course that is definitely true. It becomes about the relationships that you build with the people in your course, as well as people outside of the university that you’re working with. And it’s actually linked to someone else’s well-being, you know. It’s hard to say sometimes…you know, how much impact you may or may not make, but the more effort you put in, the more that may positively impact another person’s life. And so that makes you really put forth a lot more extra effort, and it makes the learning experience that much richer. And while the course kind of does an end-point, it sort of seems to build…to an extent…networks and relationships that continue well beyond the course.

Sara: So, from a staff perspective…for me, one of the key benefits has been the alignment of my own research interests, and my teaching, much more closely. So that I could actually teach through the ideas that I’m grappling with myself…both in my other research projects, but also in sort of thinking through the theory and the practice. I really like the closer relationships that I develop with students…because it’s about facilitating…being alongside…being there to support…to listen when things are challenging in the schooling process, or the group formation Eric talked about. And I really like the liaison role…in terms of moving between the university and the classroom…getting out into the community…kind of grounding the theories in what’s really going on. And also being…if you like…a face for the university, because so often the university’s still perceived to be very ivory tower…impenetrable…elitist…and it’s really great when people…you


know, you get to meet people who go, wow this is really exciting that this is happening in the university! Somebody cares…somebody’s interested. And also that there’s a pathway for students…from refugee backgrounds in particular…but disenfranchised young people…their parents, their sisters, their brothers say, ah well when you want to go to university, go and talk to Sara because she’s doing this kind of work. So it’s about that relationship too, which I think’s great.

For me personally as well…and professionally…this has led on to other opportunities. And…you know, this isn’t all about altruism at the end of the day…even that’s often how it’s posited. But as a result of this work…and the relationships…I had a fantastic opportunity to work doing research for the Families Commission, organising participatory focus groups around the Country for migrant and refugee parents to talk about their experiences, trying to access and use early childhood education. And that was amazing. But also I got to be an advisor for the Te Papa Community Gallery, called the ‘Mixing Room’…which explores and showcases the experience of refugee-background young people re-settling in New Zealand. And that was amazing, being able to bring forth the experience, and the credibility if you like, of this participatory way of working…into the context of a national institution like Te Papa. And to have them radically rethink their youth engagement approach…which they did, to their credit…and they’ve since gone on to win international awards, because they’re seen to be at the cutting edge of participatory design.

Martin: I first met Trudy, who’s a PhD candidate in Chemistry, talking about her experiences with outreach. And I was really interested in, that she was more interested in doing service learning than being a demonstrator or a tutor in the Chemistry Department. And I want her to talk about that today. So…Trudy.

Trudy: So, just as a bit of background I’m doing a PhD in Environment and Analytical Chemistry. It’s a bit different from the sort of subjects you guys have been talking about. I’m just over the two year mark in my PhD, and have done outreach for a good chunk of the time that I’ve been down here at Otago. So when I talk about Outreach, the Chemistry Department has an outreach programme, where we go out and we do…often lessons…the fun bits…entertaining bits of chemistry in the community. And I’m going to contrast that a bit with demonstrating. So when we talk about demonstrating, chemistry often there’s a lot of lab work, as you can imagine. And a lot of graduate students and senior under-graduates are used as sort of demonstrators or tutors in those lab classes for other under-graduate students. So that’s kind of the two different contexts…and I’m going to contrast them a bit, and talk about some of the benefits of outreach.

So just some of the aims of outreach…to give the students…the school students…we work predominantly with primary and intermediate schools…although we do cover the primary and secondary school age range. And we’ve done a little bit with the more public community as well. So some of the aims are to give those students the opportunity to do practical and hands-on chemistry…and we like to say that we take out the


boring bits. We also give them the opportunity to use equipment and chemicals they wouldn’t otherwise get to use. And also help develop knowledge and skills in schools and in teachers in that subject area.

So, one of the primary things we do is we give lessons in chemistry. And depending on the school, that can be sort of one-off, or often it’s a series over several weeks…or every couple of weeks over the term or something…however it fits in with the school’s programmes. I’ve worked on developing a curriculum for those kind of sets of lessons, giving lessons…helping students out on a sort of one to one…small group to one…basis.

We have our magic show, which is more where you have an audience…and we do sort of the whizz-bang fun stuff…setting people on fire…blowing things up…and smashing things…parts of chemistry. For those who are from Otago, you might have seen the ‘Chemistry for Christchurch’ show we did last year. And we’ve done videos on-line…and we’ve got a play coming up for the Science Festival. So it’s kind of a range of things we do. And that’s probably one of the key parts that makes it different from that teaching in university, is its diversity…and the opportunity to be creative in what we do. So that’s one thing I wanted to emphasise, is it is very different settings. And they provide students with different experiences and skills.

I personally find outreach a lot more rewarding than demonstrating, so I hope I don’t come across as too biased in my talking. Firstly I find outreach is a more relaxed and adaptable setting. When you’re demonstrating, it’s a very formal environment…it’s particularly structured. And I also find there’s a difference in the two settings, about what the students kind of expect from you…want to get out of you. I sometimes find when I’m teaching in the University, students want to get in and get out as fast as they can…they want the answers…and that’s it…and nothing around the outside. It really grinds you when they say, I don’t want to know how to do it…just give me the answer. And you’re like, ah no! But when you’re working with kids, you’re someone new, and you’re different…and you’re doing something fun and exciting, even if it’s still a lesson in a subject that doesn’t always have the funnest reputation. We go out to make it fun. So you get a little feeling that they’re enjoying themselves, and that they’re really getting something out of it. So that’s quite satisfying in itself. For example, in one of the intermediate schools that we go to, we’re working with a group of year 8 boys, so they’re 12 years old. They’re cool kids in the school. And I think this was one of their first practical lessons. I’m not sure what exactly we were doing with them, but they had a beaker of water…so pretty ordinary…and a dropper of water. And they were sort of negotiating/fighting over who got to do it first…who got to use it. And it’s something so simple, but it was something new for them. But they were really excited, so that kind of has a really good feeling about it.

Another thing I found about outreach programme is that it’s flexible. There’s some room to adapt and change…and to suit your audience. So we might teach the same concept to a five-year-old as we teach to a 12-year-old. We obviously do it really differently, but you’ve got that room…and I


guess that necessity…to adapt to different audiences. And that helps build some really important skills for me as a student. And you can also adapt and change something. If it doesn’t work, or it’s kind of boring…or it’s slow…and things like this…you can fix that. You can change it. Where, within the university teaching context, that doesn’t happen so much. Or if it does, it’s sort of out of your hands…it’s something the academics do. So you’re kind of stuck with what you’re given to work with. But this flexibility means that you have to…and you do…adapt to your audience. And this develops some really useful skills, like being able to explain something that can be quite technical to normal people…as we refer to the rest of the world…someone who doesn’t have technical knowledge…and being able to pitch it at their level. And it means you get the opportunity to adapt to what their interests and needs are. And if a kid starts asking you a question…he’s really interested in something…you can just carry on and tell them more about that. You can also sort of tell the full story of something. Like one of the demonstrations we have…we work with white phosphorus. And that’s a compound where if you heat it up it burns really brightly…but also gives off a horrible gas…and rather than just saying it’s a poisonous gas…you know, just the story of the fact that actually it’s phosphogene…it’s a chemical weapon that was once used in the First World War…it’s now a banned illegal chemical weapon…it’s okay, we’re not at war with anyone, so we can make it in the lab…it’s quite alright. So just tell the stories and the interesting bits behind the facts. Because often with science teaching, you can sometimes get the feeling that you’re just sort of jamming facts into people. But to tell the full story just kind of makes it a lot more interesting.

And even for people who…like students such as myself…I’m not inclined to stand up in front of a group and talk…just that working one-on-one with small groups of students really develops a lot of those skills on how to communicate science to people.

We also have a lot of say in what’s taught, and how it’s taught. And that’s quite satisfying. So, for example, one of the regular sessions we do is with one of our local intermediate schools…and we have a one-and-a-half hour session once a week, as part of their science module. And every four weeks we get a new set of students. So we kind of have five or six lessons that we kind of have…that were working. And then at the start of last year, we sort of sat down and went, okay what should we teach…and what are sort of the logical sequence? And so we were sort of designing that curriculum and things…and that’s not something we would have otherwise been exposed to in our normal university curriculum. So I guess there’s an ownership of the material, and a sense of leadership that we’re developing and things like that…so that you benefit.

There’s also a sense of benefitting the wider community…so raising that general knowledge about chemicals and chemistry, so that people feel more comfortable and informed about it, rather than a little bit afraid of it. We haven’t done so much of this, but have talked a little bit about developing into this area. So one thing is public magic shows…and we did one of those


as a fundraiser after the Christchurch earthquake, which was super successful. And another is a play that we’re working on. So, things like that.

So, in general, as a student we gain a lot of skills from outreach that we don’t otherwise get in our university curriculum. So coming from a sort of more pure sciences background…you might get these skills in some of the social sciences type contexts…but we wouldn’t normally get these.

Summarise…communication skills, the ability to adapt to different audiences, the opportunity to be creative about the way you present ideas, and the ability to sort of talk without a pre-determined script, although I am today! But usually we wouldn’t. And usually we wouldn’t use Powerpoint as well. It’s kind of an interesting format that we use. So I guess some of the key points is that outreach is a really different setting to university teaching. Its flexibility and adaptability gives you a bit more of a say in what happens. Being able to adapt and develop your ideas can be very satisfying. And seeing how much kids really enjoy and get out of it is really rewarding. And that aspect you don’t necessarily find when you’re sort of teaching undergraduates…they’re a bit more business-like. And that you can also be more engaged with them because of that. Even if it’s 800 people in a lecture theatre, you can still feel more engaged. It’s a really strange feeling. And you also get that sense of the benefit of developing your own skills in communication, and understanding of concepts. And the opportunity to be creative in presenting those ideas…and just the overall freedom and flexibility that it opens opportunities to learn and develop different skills.

Martin: Thank you very much, Trudy. What I’d like to do now is, rather than go straight to Rachel, I’d just like to spend a bit of time going around and having people introduce themselves, who weren’t speakers. So let’s start off with Waikato University…and having you introduce yourself…why you’re here…ask any questions at this stage…and then we’ll go to the University of Canterbury.

Jo Barnes: Hi, I’m Jo Barnes I’m in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences here in the Sociology programme. And the University is starting to push the whole idea of work-related… And I spent two weeks at York University this year, talking to them about their programmes. And at the moment I’m just trying to put together some sort of course …to try and start up…or at least we’ve already got a couple of courses that have been designated as placement courses. But nobody’s actually used them yet, because everybody thinks there’s too much work, and it’s too hard…and not quite sure why we’re doing it. So I’m trying to set up a new scheme. So it should be quite interesting to see it from a completely different angle actually…all about how much more in terms of a wider education for our students, and wider thinking…and critical thinking…as against what I’ve been concentrating on for the last three months, which is work-related about experience in the work-place for students. So that’s my story.

Lisa: Kia ora koutou. My name’s Lisa Hayes. And I’m in the Department of the School of Leisure Studies in the Faculty of Education. I’ve been running a practicum paper now for about 18 years at Waikato…with the express


purpose of bringing the realities of management and administration in the organisation to students to understand and know about. And to further develop some of their skills in giving presentations…leading workshops…instructing…in a diverse range of sport and leisure industries that exist…whether it’s from personal training…through to working with some of the other education providers…or even working in marketing, promotion…or, say Waikato Rugby. So the students are going…trying to look at possible career paths that they might want to take…and what are the expectations for them as to what an employer or organisation might expect of them…at the end of their degree. Have a number of different programmes, in terms of…it’s been 20-point papers…sometimes it’s run over the summer semester. And then we’ve recently had a 40-point paper which was run through the whole year. And we’ve now gone back to a system of…now we’re on…teaching the same paper, but teaching it over the A and B semesters.

Martin: Okay. Shall we go to Canterbury University? Other than Jessica and Eric, are there others?

Jasna Turkovic: My name is Jasna. I just came from Croatia two weeks ago to do a PhD here with Eric. I am working on community-based learning and ….to post-disaster recovery in Christchurch. Found this conference really great…realising what community-based learning stage you are all in. And also to realise how different work-based or cooperative-based learning is here, in regard to Croatia’s, because it’s a common practice in Croatia to do that for free! But in addition to cooperative-based learning, which is I think obligatory for all students, and all secondary professional schools, we also have…as a graduate, we have to have a year or two, depending on the profession, of work…which is most usually paid…and we are not qualified until we do that year. I think you don’t have something like that…or it wasn’t mentioned in this conference. So I’m just starting, but this conference…or symposium…is a great opportunity to see what’s done at different universities in New Zealand. So thank you.

Eric: But I might say that the University last year, as part of its sort of post-earthquake recovery effort, put up half a dozen earthquake recovery PhD scholarships. We assumed that they would all go to engineers and geologists, since they’ve got most of the air time in the last 12 to 18 months…but in fact most of them went to Social Sciences…and Jasna is one of them.

Martin: Ah, right. Okay, so we’ll introduce ourselves at the University of Otago…starting at the end there.

Mary: My name’s Mary and I’m currently a Masters student in H.E.D.C., in higher education. And I’m originally from the U.S., and was involved in international education for about 20 years. And in that context, developed some internship programmes out of my office. So I just came really out of curiosity, to see what’s going on in New Zealand. I’m a firm believer in experiential learning, coming from an international education background. And I just think that a lot of what’s been said today resonates with what I’ve


experienced and known in the past. And so it’s really exciting to see the kind of projects going on in New Zealand.

Rose: My name is Rose, and I work in the Division of Sciences at Otago. I’m officially the Marketing and Communications person, but one of my roles is to coordinate a number of the outreach programmes that we run…not the chemistry outreach programme, but we run a series of Marae-based science camps for secondary students…which Davina, who was here beside me earlier…she coordinates those for us now, and does a very fine job. We run a residential and on-line academy for high-potential students from low decile schools around the Country. And we run…you know, a whole bunch of other activities…public outreach activities. We have the Science Festival coming up in a couple of weeks. So I’m involved in coordinating a number of those. That’s why I’m here.

Kathryn: My name’s Kathryn. I’m the Associate Dean in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences here. And I just found out yesterday that I’ve got funding to do a scoping project for internships in the B.A. So this is perfect timing. It would have been more perfect if it was in a month, when I’ve hired the person who’s going to do the project, and they could have come along and listened to everything, but it’s really exciting to hear what’s going on. At the moment we only have internships at honours level. And we’re looking to provide more opportunities for undergraduates to get involved in community and workplace learning. So it’s been interesting hearing about the challenges of balancing the benefits of workplace learning with a service sort of approach. And can we get both work-based learning experiences and a sense of raising the profile of the subject in the community as well…which I think the B.A. needs to do a bit more of…is remind people of the benefits of a humanities education. So that would be my challenge, I think.

Rachel Sproken-Smith: Okay. Kia ora koutou…I’m Rachel Spronken-Smith, and I’m head of the Higher-education Development Centre, here at Otago. But my roots, as Eric said, are in geography. And it’s been really good to hear how that course I set up quite a few years ago now has really blossomed and become much more strong in terms of the service learning, community-based component. So that was really good to hear. Thanks to Martin for putting on a great line-up. I think we’ve come…we’ve sort of seen a bit of the theory from Kerry…and then firmly gone into the practice. And it’s been good to see the different models being talked about. So we’ve had the community-based learning initiatives in the curriculum. So that was basically Canterbury, I think…and Victoria. We’ve had the work-based from A.U.T. And we’ve had the ‘exploring the community’ I’m going to call it, which is that new Massey initiative about sending students out to interview people in workplaces. And then the outreach example from Otago. So that’s been good to hear…and particularly terrific to hear the student voice, so thanks in particular to our student presenters who have come along today.

Now I think everyone’s more or less raised some issues…or suggested some. And I’d like to just pick up on some of those for us to consider and


talk about. So, in no particular order, one of the things that has come up is about how do you develop the trust between the university and the community…and perhaps related to that, how to get better communication between university and the community. And I think Sonja from A.U.T. talked about how there was an issue of academics not necessarily having good links with those partners. But I wondered if we could ask perhaps Eric and Sara about how they’ve managed that, ‘cause they seem to have in place some good systems. So can you share with us? Perhaps Eric first…how you manage it at Canterbury.

Eric: Well this is a source of some consternation to us…and I think that service learning, as we practice it from a staff point of view, there’s an awful lot of preparatory work which has to go in long before the course begins. In some respects it’s harder work at the front end than it is actually during the course when students more or less run things for themselves. So we actually have to put an awful lot of effort into finding suitable community partners…and to try to clarify the realistic expectations on all sides. And I did hint that, with the 402 course this year, that we had some community partners that were easier to work with…and some who were rather more difficult. And I think it is incumbent upon academic staff, not only for find community partners, but also to negotiate with them sufficiently far in advance, so that everybody’s expectations are reasonably realistic. And when we do run into problems it’s because we haven’t actually done that adequately. Now, Jessica and I are part of a small team at Canterbury which has been trying to pressure the Institution over the last couple of years to approach this whole business of how we interact with community partners more professionally, because we are becoming concerned that...as more courses at Canterbury pick up on the sorts of initiatives that have been talked about this morning…we’re all going to start falling over each other. And I think the University is finally beginning to understand that it does actually have some institutional responsibility to assist us in this respect. But it’s been quite a battle to get this point across. So basically the answer to your question is, up to now we’ve had to do it ourselves.

Jessica: And could I just add, that the Commerce internships are going out, and I approached the same organisation, but a different person, and it became really complicated for the people involved. That’s why we need a more cooperative, informed basis to go out into the community. If you’re starting up a new B.A. internship, if you have your Sociologists and your Mass Communication, and your History people all going out there, they’re going to be double-tapping the organisations, and the university is going to look uncoordinated and unprofessional. So there’s a real emphasis on coordinating that process and building that trust, so you’re not setting up people to take a fall for miscommunication.

Rachel: And I’d like to come back to that point in a minute…and in particular hear from A.U.T. about how they manage it. But we’ll just hold that for now, and if we can just stay with that initial question, and maybe go to Sara at Vic., about how you managed that trust between the University and the community, and that communication.


Sara: Yeah, I’m in a…potentially an easier position, but maybe a lonelier position than colleagues at Canterbury, because to my knowledge there isn’t anybody else doing this kind of work at Victoria yet. I think the key thing that I’ve learned is to privilege a partnership with one main organisation. In the early years of the course I was being approached by a number of different organisations…city councils, district health boards…as well as other N.G.O.s…and it was wonderful having so many people wanting the benefit of participatory research being done. But it was a real challenge to actually manage and negotiate all of the different institutional expectations. And actually, fundamentally to educate the sponsoring organisations to the difference that participatory research represents…because many of them think, ah we just want some quick and easy research. They don’t fundamentally understand that participatory research turns traditional research on its head. And so the time invested, trying to get people on the same page, to manage their expectations…and then manage the student teams…you know, there were a few years where it was just…like Eric said, you know, you end up doing a whole lot of work that isn’t actually seen, or recognised, but needs to be done to protect people, and make sure it happens. So I’ve really narrowed down to really invest in the relationship with Change-Makers Refugee Forum…to work at their pace…and to make sure that whatever we do is generated by them…that we’re never imposing…and that also helps build the trust, because then we’re always there…and we’ve got this track record now. So, I’ll leave it at that.

Rachel: Alright. Are there any other people in any of the other centres, who have any sort of insights into how to build this trust, and get that good communication going with partners?

Kerry: Can I add a theoretical point…but not one based on experience, but probably one based on frustration…and that is I think, to a certain extent, trust is always going to be inhibited by lack of clarity. And the lack of clarity I’m talking about is why we’re doing this. You know, what our ambitions are. I was amused by one of my colleagues who wasn’t interested in changing the world, and then others who were. And maybe this is a fundamental dichotomy, but I suspect it’s more complicated than that. If we just look at the range of titles that we use for our activities, and just today you know, we’ve come across ‘work-based learning’ and ‘placements’, ‘cooperative’ whatever, ‘service learning’, ‘community engagement’…it’s almost impossible to come up with something that describes what we all do. And I think part of that is because we’ve all got different views on what we’re trying to do, and what we’re trying to achieve…and whether we’re actually trying to achieve things on behalf of our students…or on behalf of the community, or the planet, or whatever it is. Now, a few years ago I think similar frustrations came together in terms of basic learning at universities. And what came out of that was a whole movement around the idea of the intended learning outcome…and being specific about what we’re trying to do in our education. Now, many of you will have experienced the frustrations around actually describing intended learning outcomes, and there are still colleagues in higher education who are absolutely opposed to being that specific about what it is they’re trying to do for their students in


their teaching and learning programmes. And I suspect we’re going to encounter the same sort of problems about being specific about what we’re trying to do in these things. But without it I suspect we’re just on a hiding to nothing, is one way of looking at it, because we will just keep developing angst and concern…and even aggression…about what the roles of the university are. What are we trying to do here?

Rose: But surely the aims and objectives can be quite clear, but quite different?

Kerry: Oh, yeah…absolutely.

Rose: So the community-engaged learning has one sort of desired outcome, and an outreach programme may have a different…and work placements are different again. So long as you’re clear, with the partners in the process…and clearly articulating the aspirations, I guess of each of those three partners…then that goes a long way to establishing a relationship.

Kerry: I think the term ‘negotiation’ came out on a couple of occasions…and negotiated understanding of what we’re trying to do, I think is really important here.

Jessica: I think that’s really important, but I want to go back to your point, Kerry, about that social responsibility. What is the purpose of education in the 21st century? What are we attempting to do? Is it just training people to be good workers? I think that as a tertiary institution we should be doing more than that.

Rachel: Okay, I’d like to bring us back to that issue about resourcing, and perhaps find out how A.U.T. deal with…obviously you’ve got work placements, in a whole range of places now, so can you let us know how you deal with that?

Sonja: Probably not as well as we should. Keryn deals with all of the Social Sciences. I deal with mine. But in terms of like a coordinated approach, we don’t really have that university way…although coop is such a big part of learning and teaching at A.U.T. I went to a presentation recently on how we can better utilise Career Hub, which I believe five of the universities are using in New Zealand. And one of the functions that could be used is that any organisations that we have relationships with could be entered into Career Hub, and any sort of communication…whether someone from the business has contacted an organisation and invited them to events, I can see what they’ve been doing, and they can see how we’ve been interacting with them as well. So…I mean, that could be one way to better manage. It’s usually about technology available. We’ve only had just a very brief introduction, so I still need to sit down and talk about how we can integrate this into our programme. It can also be used for matching students with organisations as well. And the part where the university will place students…in terms of our students, they self-select their own placements. But, I mean, other things…it’s quite funny that often I only get together with my colleagues, doing cooperative education in other faculties, at conferences. And you don’t have much to do with each other in between. Other things as well…we’ve got a curriculum review coming up, faculty-


wide…in our faculty…and they’ve got five working parties, and one of them is work-integrated learning, and internships, and cooperative education. So I’m hoping, with that curriculum review, we’ll come up with some better systems. And I’d love to see some sort of centralised support…not just in the faculty, but across the University. At some conferences I’ve seen some excellent models from Australian universities, where…and I believe it was Flinders…they’ve got…it’s through their Professional Development department…where all new staff come and do an orientation programme, and are required to have ongoing professional development, in terms of supporting students in cooperative education. Also they have a centralised system for students, in terms of ethics, and organisational culture, and things…which are on-line tutorials, which they must complete before going out on placement. I think, having some systems like that in place…could go a long way in relieving the coordinators…and giving us more time to actually support the organisations, and building those relationships. But at the moment we don’t have time to go out and do site visits. We sort of…you know, there’s some sort of ad hoc communication, but often there is no communication with the organisations. Having said that, we do invite work-based supervisors to our student presentations at the end of the year…tends to be higher uptake with Social Sciences, than for my languages students. But they often…it’s good for the organisations to see the end product, and what their student actually gained, rather than just sort of dealing with them…you know, on day-to-day tasks. And often the organisations that come to these presentations, they say straight away we’d love to have another student. But we’ve still got a lot of work to do, and I’m hoping that in the next year, during the curriculum review, we’ll come up with some better systems.

Rachel: Okay. Thanks for that. Are there any other insights from any of the other universities about coordinating these sorts of programmes? Okay, so this is something to work on. Kerry, you might like to share what you’re doing at Otago, about a special interest group, because Sonja mentioned that she only talks to colleagues about this at conferences…so Kerry here’s set up a special interest group to try and provide some sort of opportunity, haven’t you?

Kerry: I think the emphasis is on try though, because it’s a relatively minority interest! But I do think it’s important that where people share an interest, we give them an opportunity to get together. So I’m part of a higher education development centre. And I think it is very much our role to put people together…to help them discuss some of the issues around…certainly student learning…but the wider range of the roles and functions of the University as well. So yes, we have a fledgling special interest group, and several members of it here. And I think it’s working well. But we’ll have to see. How will we judge its future impact, I’m not sure. One of our ambitions, I guess, is to try and create some sort of credit-bearing status for the undergraduate learning that’s occurring…that perhaps is more generic than just specific to particular departments. So that might be one way for us to judge our success. I think continuity will be another judge. If we manage to


keep it going for more than a year or so…I think that would be a big plus. So, yeah.

Eric: Can I just pick up on that point, because our equivalent of H.E.V.C. was abolished with the arrival of our new vice-chancellor three years ago. So we’ve really had to sort of form ourselves into a network informally. And we get together on an as-needed basis, and we press the administration when we feel like it. And I think that’s been actually really quite successful…because it’s not something which…the energies sort of being generated from without. It’s being generated from within. But I still think that we could do with rather more pickup at the institutional level…by which I mean senior management level. Now our senior management is very keen on the concept of service learning…but whether senior management actually understands what some of these terms mean in practice is another matter. There is a bit of a mis-match there.

Jessica: I think the other thing I’d like to point out is that the University here is also promoting employability, however that’s defined. And service learning is seen in some ways as separate from…so part of what I’m trying to push for is that service learning…community-based learning…problem-solving learning…internships…work-integrated learning…are in many ways connected, because what students get out of it…the networking…the learning process…works on all of those levels, so…when they try to separate it again, I get that division…employability seems to get money…work internships will get money…service learning is something that faculties should do on their own. And to me it needs a much more coordinated, centralised approach.

Kerry: Can I just pick up on that, Jessica? Sometimes I think we’ve just got to accept that drivers are there, that aren’t the ones perhaps we would choose…and we don’t shun them, we take advantage of the fact that they’re there. And I’m sort of thinking a little bit about our Science Division…and perhaps I’m looking at Rose here, because I mean the impression I get is our Science Division really has adopted aspects of what we might call community engaged learning. There are some wonderful projects going on, and we heard from Trudy here about what’s happening in chemistry. Davina was here a little while ago, talking about the Science Wananga. And I think what underpins it are probably a whole range of different ideas about what the benefits might be. Public understanding of science might be central to part of that, I suspect. So wherever the drivers are, we’ve actually got…you know, some people high up very interested in it.

Trudy: I had a thought…talking about the careers employability aspect of it, and I think what you’re doing probably really is the good employable skills. Possibly it’s not recognised, but it really should be, because I was recently at a careers presentation they had down here…and it was sort of pitched at Commerce, but you can see the parallels. And it was someone from…an executive from Price Waterhouse Coopers…and the comment he made is that they get hundreds of applications…all these kids have A’s. The difference between the ones they employ and the ones they don’t, are those with people skills, that they would get…and the experience they would get


from programmes like yours. And that’s the difference that makes them employable.

Jessica: I like working with the for-profits for that, because it gives legitimacy to the entire programme, because of that whole neo-liberal orientation towards profit, numbers, money, accountability. Get them partly involved and it like raises the whole. So it’s using the tools of the university.

Sara: Can I raise a question? I’m enjoying the conversation immensely. It seems to me that where we focussed to date has been benefit to the students…and potentially benefits for our institutions. What I’m particularly concerned about, and interested in, is what do we consider our role is in actually extending benefits to our wider community…particularly those people…or those organisations…that aren’t already generating profit for themselves?

Rose: I think that was one of the main drivers for the Wananga programme when we established that. We had an articulated aspiration, if you like, from one of the University’s Iwi partners up on the East Coast, and they said we want our kids to be good at science…we want our kids to be the ones who decide which roads…or where roads get put…not the ones who are digging the roads. We want our kids to be the ones who decide what kind of energy generation we’ll use…not the ones who are doing the wiring. We need some help to get our kids science-literate. And so we thought, well we can help with that. You know, we have this set of skills…we recognise that there’s a whole lot of stuff that you guys know…that we would benefit from as well…and so it’s a very equal partnership that we’ve established. But it was very much in response to an articulated aspiration, I guess…from the community. So it’s about meeting community aspiration…at least as much as anything else…possibly more.

Trudy: And I would say the same goes for our outreach programme. Like for us it’s…we’re volunteers…I think the same is for the students who go to Wananga…and we don’t actually get university credit for what we do. I think there’s some work trying to be done to get some recognition.

Rose: Yeah, it’s done. It’s done.

Trudy: We have…okay, I’m a PhD student, so it’s a bit different, but we have undergraduates who do outreach, but they don’t get points towards their degree or anything for that. So from that it’s sort of like, the motivator is helping the community for us. But I think one of the initiating things for our programmes…initially we had quite…well we still have quite a strong focus in the intermediate school years…because that’s kind of a mixed bunch for science. Some schools are really strong at science at intermediate, and some aren’t. And the teachers who teach them are primary school trained, so like they don’t necessarily have specialist science teachers in all schools. So it’s trying to…and when the kids get to high school, in that first…third form…where they go at year 9, they can have a really mixed level. And the ones who have a good level tend to like it and succeed…that kind of ‘I like science, I will do science’ tends to come hand in hand. But if they find it a bit hard to start off with, they kind of lose interest. So increasing science


literacy is about making it interesting, but also giving them the skills that little bit earlier on, so they can do it.

Eric: Can I just say something about the situation in Christchurch at the moment, because I did say to them when we had our 402 presentations in the Casino last week…we had 60 people there…I didn’t tell you who the 60 people were, because there were…not only students there…and students who were not from that class…a lot of people from the community groups, including people that we’ve not directly worked with…there were a lot of city council staff there…and there were quite a few local politicians. And it struck me towards the end of the presentations that this was an extremely unusual collection of people in one place. And there are not too many places in Central Christchurch at the moment where you can actually have a meeting. So I did stand up and say something about…I wasn’t sure actually what I was going to say…I’m not quite sure what it is I’m going to say now…but there is a chronic lack of connectivity in post-earthquake Christchurch, between all of the institutions. The universities really do have a responsibility here in my view. I think the City Council gets it in the neck, because everybody from the newspaper onwards thinks that if something’s not working, it’s the City Council’s fault. And nobody quite understands how that relates to the Earthquake Recovery Authority. There are various shadowy State institutions who sort of stand behind that. I think that there is a real responsibility for all of us at the moment, in this situation, to try to make these sorts of connections. And in my view community-based engagement originating from the University is one of the ways forward. And that’s why we formulated Jasna’s PhD project…and are particularly excited about where that might go…what sorts of responsibilities do tertiary institutions have in post-disaster situations? We don’t know the answer to that…and I suspect…I hope we will know a little bit more about it in three, four, or five years’ time. And I think it’s going to take us quite a long time to work this out.

Rachel: Eric, you’ve raised an interesting point there, about the chronic lack of connectivity. Now I would argue that in Christchurch you’ve got a particular situation that’s highlighted that, but I suspect that perhaps in some of our other universities there probably is a chronic lack of connectivity between the university and the community as well. And I’m just wondering how we can raise the profile of how universities could work in partnerships with community groups. I mean, we’ve had the example from Vic., where there’s clearly…Sara is a champion there…and has gone out into that community group. But how more widely can we raise that? We’ve got a wealth of experience here…people wanting to get these sorts of experiences with the community. We don’t want to be seen to be doing things to the community, but how do we get that community/university engagement going in the first place?

Kerry: Can I add something there? Because that is very topical, I guess…and I think sometimes we don’t value things unless we can measure them. And I know that’s a fairly pejorative sort of suggestion in this setting in particular! But I was struck on the news this very morning…I mean, you may have heard of it…you may have even celebrated it…there was some sort of


suggestion that Dunedin has been working out its major contributions to Dunedin. And it was the University I think that was credited with something like contributing 18% of the G.D.P. of the town. Did anybody else hear this? [Some agreement] Which is marvellous…but I sort of wonder is that the best measurement of my contribution? [Laughter] Because all the sort of things that I do…I mean I…perhaps I’m a non-contributor, but I doubt if there’s very many dollars sort of attached to it. I’m a net beneficiary, rather than a contributor. I’m not sure. But it just occurs to me that this is our responsibility. I mean, we can’t shun the notion that measurements aren’t…you know, we just can’t sort of opt out of it. And yet, if we just go along with this notion that we can measure our contribution somehow in terms of G.D.P., it just seems an absurdity in relation to…you know, what education is about. But it is our responsibility. So this is in response to Sara’s question really…I mean, in terms of are we having these broader impacts. But it’s our responsibility. Let’s get it sorted. Let’s identify what impact we’re having…but not just in academic terms…in terms that people can actually follow.

Rose: G.D.P. is easy to measure.

Kerry: Absolutely. It’s a bit like how we assess our students.

Rachel: Precisely.

Kerry: You know, we assess our students on the basis of things that are broadly-speaking easy to measure. What we might be wanting to assess our students on…well, certainly the people in these rooms…might be on some of these other things.

Jessica: And I’d like to reply to the very beginning, Kerry, about the long-term research that’s necessary. I think we should be following our students to see if what we are doing has an impact in the long term. And I’ve set my students up…as we’re going through…telling them I’m going to contact them in three to five years to see whether the course actually had an effect on what they’re doing now…first year, second year, third year…after they graduate. I think that long-term perspective…and organisations too…I think that’s necessary too, to document the validity of what we’re doing.

Jasna I just wanted to say something about how to establish the network, and the connection to the community. In Croatia we have one course on community-based learning…and one professor in the whole university doing that. And she actually…I don’t think she had the time to make the connection in the community. She just said, students you have one month to make a connection with one community…with one organisation …institution…and come to me….good enough for this course…what you plan to do is good enough. And when they did that, I was one of the students, and we went to our libraries…schools…travel agencies…volunteer organisations…whichever institution we had contact with…and see if we can help them in some way or another. So not just…maybe we shouldn’t expect the staff to do all the work. But I mean, we have different students…like 50 students per course…and they have


some …. outside of the University, I suspect. So they might be a great…make a connection.

Rose: Excellent.

Martin: That’s a good idea. I’m setting up an internship programme now…and it is a lot of work. And I’m actually writing the ethics applications for all of the projects that I’m working on. And I’m also getting access to the sites and…but what I learnt…what I heard very clearly from Eric’s talk, was about realistic expectations. And one of the projects we’ll be doing with this, is following the people who use the City Council mobile library that sort of travels around the City. So I need to sit down with the library, and get realistic expectations, and I haven’t really…I hadn’t really thought that through. And I’ll certainly follow it up. But in terms…the other thing that I’ve learnt today is about setting up the learning outcomes of what we can achieve. And one of the outcomes that I…and I’ll be certainly working on that…but one of the outcomes that I want to achieve from my own internship…or sort of service learning programme, is I want parents to stop calling me up. I want parents to stop calling me up and saying well what do you do with a Sociology degree? And they call me up. And so in a sense, my motivation for internships is to…

Kerry: Is to find the answer to that question! [Laughter]

Martin: And my phone number isn’t even in the phone book!

Eric: They don’t call us up…why are you so privileged? [Laughter]

Martin: Because, Eric, you’re producing pathways for students…that they can actually develop research skills…and they can go on to a job interview…what Jessica was saying…go on to a job interview and say, well what research experience have I had…ah, well I did this. I went out and did the Canterbury trees research…or they can actually talk about what sort of research that they’ve actually done. And so I think that’s the pathway that I’m…I’m following your pathway.

Kathryn: Can I just add something as well…of what Trudy was saying about outreach being non-credit-bearing. The Faculty of Business now, they’ve got an alternative to coop, which is the S.I.F.E. project…the Students In Free Enterprise. So, doing projects that are going to enhance quality of life or increase the standard of living for groups in the community. It’s been very successful. They’ve turned that S.I.F.E. into a 60-point credit-bearing paper…and they call it S.I.F.E. 60. Those S.I.F.E. 60 students are working alongside students who are also volunteering. Obviously if you’re credit-bearing you’d be doing a lot more hours than others. But I had a meeting with the coordinator in Business, and he’s keen to widen it. And, so students working really collaboratively across schools and faculties…and doing a project where you might have a student doing event management with a student with a Business theoretical background…with someone from Social Sciences…with someone from Languages, who might be doing translation or interpreting, or…you know, who can speak Chinese. So I can see


possibilities for opening up coop from the traditional model that we’ve had. Also we’ve got a group of students going over to Nantong University in Korea, doing sort of like a summer teaching English conversation for people trying to get I.E.L.T.S. So, widen it up and sort of…you know, encouraging students to go out and do various community projects as well. So that was just something I wanted to add that…you know, at A.U.T. in the Business faculty at least, they’re trying to recognise that. And they’d like to take that wider.

Rose: We’ve been talking about setting up internships for…well, sort of…it’s very speculative still at this point, so…I don’t know…but we send a team of students into perhaps a Maori business entity or something like that, so that you have perhaps Science Communication students and Business students…and a chemist or…you know, whatever the actual enterprise…the technical skills the enterprise needs. So that they have that whole range, as you would say…that whole range of skills. And also the student isn’t isolated…so that the student is not alone, and working alone. But also the host entity has this whole range of skills being made available to them. So I’m quite keen on that approach. We haven’t got very far with it yet, but working on it.

Martin: So, you mentioned a conference next year…Sonja, you mentioned a conference in April. What’s the conference?

Sonja: It’s the New Zealand Association of Cooperative Education…which will be hosted at A.U.T. This year it was at Waikato…and it was very rewarding. It had a zoo theme…they had some zoology students. They’ve had an internship programme at the Waikato zoo. And yeah, no it was very interesting. So, yeah, we’re hosting that next year, and it would be good to see sort of…you know, a wider range of people from disciplines, and particularly from Social Sciences as well.

Martin: Well, I see the time’s marching on. I just wanted to thank all of the speakers today, and the people in the audience, for coming along. I do hope that we do meet again…using this sort of network to talk about the assessment of our programmes…the research that we’re doing…and I do hope that this leads to networking. But what it has shown us today is that across the Country these programmes are well-established, and are currently being established. And I thank you all for taking part. And I’d like to thank Lloyd Pearson out here, who’s the technician here. He’s done a wonderful job to put us all up on the screen. Please…if you’d like a copy of the slides, send me an email. I will send you the copy of the slides. If you’d like a copy of the tape recording that I’ve made of the day, that’s also available. But I would like us to carry on and meet. The Otago University group is meeting on Monday morning to talk about this, so we’ll take these ideas along. But I’m sure we will meet again. So thank you all for joining us today.

Thank you very much.

chairperson: martin tolich, university of · pdf filetranscribed by document doctor...

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