Student engagement,pedagogical imaginaries and the future of arts and humanities teaching and learning in higher education

Abstract

This article sets out a methodology for integrating a focus on the student voice in deliberations about the future of teaching and learning in the Arts and Humanities. Qualitative data gleaned from JISC’s 20/21 Student Digital Experience Insights Survey and feedback collected from students studying on undergraduate programmes in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom (UK) is used to sketch out pedagogical imaginaries of the future that can be used heuristically by universities as they work their way through the pandemic and out the other side. The imaginaries, it argues, act as tools to kickstart debates, underpin experimentation and inform pedagogical planning and design. To address questions of credibility and plausibility, the imaginaries are rooted in the present, embody empirical trends and are consistent with practices, structures and technologies that have come to prominence during the pandemic.

Introduction

Sars Covid-19 has catapulted digitally enhanced teaching and learning forward in ways unimaginable prior to the global pandemic. For some academics, this has been an unwelcome disruption that has highlighted the poverty of online education and of this mode of teaching’s associated tools and methods. For these academic colleagues, the return to in-person teaching could not come sooner. For others, the disruption caused by Sars Covid-19 has offered an opportunity to re-imagine their teaching practice and develop new skills and competencies in digital teaching and learning pedagogies. From this cohort of academics, there is intense pressure to retain the flexible working practices and digital transformation that the global health crisis has produced.

While these competing positions and narratives will figure prominently in debates about the legacy of the pandemic in Higher Education, also of relevance to the future of teaching and learning in universities are students’ own reflections and perspectives on their experiences since the pandemic struck, and it is on this issue that this paper focuses its attention. Taking stock of the student view is particularly important if the future fails to provide the solace that many of those hoping for a return to ‘business as usual’ crave and the resolution of the pandemic remains slow and uneven. In such a scenario, we may very well find that the ‘new normal’ is one of fits and starts in which governments of all ideological hues continue to open, close and reopen campuses again in response to waves of infection much as they have since March 2020. What then are students saying about their experiences and what are the consequences for teaching and learning if as Grajek (2020) says, ‘the resolution of the pandemic is likely to be slow and uneven, with continued uncertainty about when to reopen campuses, how, and how quickly?’

To explore these questions in the Arts and Humanities context, this paper begins by critically appraising the student engagement literature. This reveals a disjointed field that has only recently gained a semblance of order through the timely contribution of Ashwin and McVitty (2015). In their work, they offer a way of thinking about student engagement that emphasises two dimensions of this important concept, the object of engagement and the degree of student agency in shaping change (see discusssion below). Based on Ashwin and Mcvitty’s (2015) framework, the student engagement initiative discussed here is best described as a consultative exercise (degree of agency) aimed at informing processes of curriculum development and change (object of engagement). While cognisant of the criticism of the consultative approach in much of the literature, this paper justifies its use on the grounds that it is an effective way of gauging the collective views of student bodies at major sector-wide inflection points such as the one caused by the pandemic. In such contexts, consultation surveys act as a useful starting point for evaluating the impact of change strategies on the student experience, and as will be argued here, can be used to construct pedagogical imaginaries of what teaching and learning might look like in the future.

The study, which received ethics approval from the Faculty of Arts Ethics Committee at the University of Nottingham, draws qualitative data from two main sources. Firstly, the open-ended questions in JISC’s 20/21 Student Digital Experience Insight Survey (2021) about what students liked and disliked regarding their online learning experiences during the pandemic and secondly, meeting minutes from staff/student committees that took place in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nottingham during the academic year 2020/21. While not limited to students in the Arts and Humanities, the JISC data provided a set of key themes, patterns and areas to interrogate in greater depth in the University of Nottingham data. The insights the data provided into the strengths and weaknesses of students’ experiences of online learning during the pandemic informed the formulation of three pedagogical imaginaries: a flipped learning model based primarily on the asynchronous delivery of lecture recordings, a blended model in which synchronous timetabled events and interactions are to the fore and a Hy-Flex approach in which students can attend class either in person or remotely. In each case, delivery is flexible i.e. the timetabled elements can be moved seamlessly between in-person and online delivery using video conferencing platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom. These imaginaries provide a heuristic tool that colleagues across the sector can use to kickstart debates about the future direction of teaching and learning in the Arts and Humanities and provide templates for planning and action.

Literature review

Over time, an extensive body of literature has developed exploring student engagement in wide areas ranging from with learning activities and assignments to questions of institutional governance and aspects of curriculum design and delivery (see, for example, Ashwin and McVitty, 2015 and Finn and Zimmer, 2012). As to be expected, much of the literature focuses on students’ engagement with their studies in schools (Appleton et al., 2008), with many highlighting a crisis of engagement characterized by underachievement (Ma et al., 2015) boredom and high dropout rates (Finn and Zimmer, 2012).

When exploring and measuring engagement, the emphasis is on the interplay between behavioural, affective and cognitive factors (Fredricks et al. 2004). These are measured using both quantitative and qualitative methods such as assessment performance, observations of classroom behaviour and involvement in extracurricular activities (see discussion in Jimerson et al., 2003). In their exploration of the causes of engagement in schools, contributors such as Fredericks et al. (2004) go beyond individual learner variables, emphasising instead the role played by contextual factors in the wider socio-cultural environment and the need to take these into consideration when devising interventions.

“The study of engagement as multidimensional and as an interaction between the individual and the environment promises to help us to better understand the complexity of children’s experiences in school and to design more specifically targeted and nuanced interventions.” (Fredricks et al., 2004: 61)

Another important concern in the literature is the importance of developmental considerations such as student age and stage within the school system. As Jimerson et al. (2003: 12) explain, ‘studying school engagement with children in elementary school is likely to differ from work with adolescents.’

In their discussion of student engagement in HE, Ashwin and McVitty (2015) argue that due to the breadth of the research and scholarship in this field, there has been a tendency for the meaning of engagement to become blurred and open to multiple interpretations and applications (Ashwin and McVitty, 2015: 343). This view is shared by Naylor et al. (2021: 1026), who state that in the HE context, ‘student engagement’ and ‘student voice’ have become the ‘proxy’ and ‘catch-all’ concepts used to refer to the myriad ways in which relationships between students and universities are brokered. In their efforts to impose greater order on this important field of enquiry, Ashwin and McVitty (2015), provide a way of thinking about student engagement that emphasises two dimensions: the object of engagement and the degree of engagement. Regarding the object of engagement, three broad areas are identified as the main focus of student engagement activity: ‘for individual understanding’, ‘to form currricula’ and ‘engagement to form communities’. While engagement ‘for individual understanding’ refers to the different ways students engage with their studies in the pursuit of learning outcomes, ‘to form currricula’ focuses on students’ involvement in decisions about the content of the curriculum and how it is taught. ‘Engagement to form communities’ on the other hand, emphasises the ways in which students shape the educational decision-making structures and policies of the institutions and wider societies of which they are a part (Ashwin and McVitty, 2015: 345).

Through their emphasis on the ‘degree of engagement’, Ashwin and Mcvitty (2015: 346) seek to convey the extent of student agency in decisions affecting their studies and the wider student experience. To explore these questions, it is useful to think of a continuum of engagement that stretches from consultation to partnership and ends in leadership. In the case of consultation, neither the object of the engagement nor the terms of engagement i.e. the way in which agency is exercised, is in the hands of students. Consequently, changes emerging out of a process of consultation based, for example, on surveys and/or questionnaires are often minor and do not lead to fundamental alterations to existing policies or practice. In the case of partnership, where students work together with institutions to transform preexisting objects of engagement, the possibilities of change are more apparent and potentially, at least, more far reaching. As Ashwin and Mcvitty (2015: 347) explain:

here students work with a pre-existing object of engagement, but there is the potential for this object to be transformed through the collaborative work of students, academics and their institutions.

Much of the focus of partnership arrangements comes in the context of engagement for formation of curricula, which, according to Healy et al. (2014: 8), is an area of university business that students have traditionally been excluded from. As discussed below, this dimension is currently experiencing growth in many universities leading to the forging of reciprocal partnership arrangements in which students and academics share responsibility for curriculum and assessment design.

In ‘engagement for leadership’, students create new objects and determine their own terms of engagement. As action in this area can represent a challenge to government higher education policies or the decisions of universities, it often occurs outside of formal governance structures. According to Ashwin and Mcvitty (2015: 354), much of the activity in this dimension takes place in the context of ‘engagement to form communities’ with examples including student organised protests against university remuneration policies and what they see as the exaggerated salary levels of senior managers or more widely against government fee regimes that shift responsibility for university funding from the state to individual students. According to Fielding (2010: 70), such engagement should be seen as part of a wider prefigurative project of democratic emancipation and transformation undergirded by progressive communal values, aspirations and visions.

Questions of studenthood

Universities expend considerable energy and resources on finding ways to engage students in the objects of engagement identified by Ashwin and McVitty (2015). These range from teaching evaluations employed at course level to statutory representation on formal university governance bodies. Arguably, the most widely used and most strongly criticised instruments have been those introduced to evaluate the quality of teaching and to survey student satisfaction with their courses and programmes such as Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) surveys and mechanisms such as the National Student Survey (NSS) in the UK and the University Experience Survey (UES) in Australia. For many researchers, such practices are underpinned by a conceptualisation of studenthood that has held sway since the 1980s in which students are seen as consumers of university ‘products’. As Ashwin and Mcvitty state (2015: 350):

consultation on curricula may be taken to include the efforts of institutional managers and policymakers to gauge student satisfaction with teaching approaches, learning resources, and other factors that shape their encounters with the curriculum. This has led some to perceive an alignment between student feedback practices and an emergent consumeristic culture in higher education in which students’ judgements about their academic ‘experience’ are elevated to the degree of the sacred.

The student-as-consumer conceptualisation of studenthood is just one of the many consequences of a neoliberal revolution that has seen marketisation enter many spheres of contemporary society not just education. In the HE case, the most important consequences of this profound ideological change include a major transfer of responsibility for HE-funding from the state to individuals, the collapsing of traditional governance boundaries between universities and students, a shift towards what Newson (2004: 229) describes as ‘budget based rationalisation’, a closer relationship with the private sector, sponsors and other types of external funders, increased inter-university competition, a focus on revenue generation and the casualisation of university teaching and research staff (Bunce et al., 2017; Newson, 2004; Tomlinson, 2014).

In the marketised higher educational landscape, student engagement data is seen as a key resource that can be used to improve the customer experience and adjust educational offers to meet student needs. It can also be used by university senior management to make decisions about the allocation of resources, to hold academic departments to account for the funding they receive, and to provide input into decisions about employee recognition and reward. At the department level, it provides important insights that feed into curriculum review and design and is central to the monitoring of quality standards in teaching and learning. Efforts to capture data from students are not limited to aspects of the curriculum or teaching and learning, and often includes other areas of provision such as sports and catering facilities, accommodation and IT support. In the student as consumer model, as in the case of market research conducted by businesses, questionnaires and surveys constitute the main data collection tools. In the UK, the most important of these is the NSS, which has been used since 2005 to survey all final year undergraduate students in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. NSS results provide information to the market about the relative merits of universities and the courses they offer thereby informing choice. Survey results are also combined with other data such as staff/student ratios, entry requirements and graduate employment statistics to produce national league tables, a mechanism that Carey (2013: 43) disparagingly describes as ‘a classic neo-liberalist technology for encouraging inter-institutional rivalry and compliance.’

As the above quote suggests, the scholarly reaction to the neoliberal agenda and its impact on studenthood has, to say the least, been mixed. While the likes of Newson (2004: 23) claim that students have experienced both pedagogical and political emancipation after being freed from academic oversight and acquiring new consumer rights they did not previously possess, many others have been deeply hostile. The likes of McMillan and Cheney (1996) and Symonds (2020) argue, for example, that instead of empowering students, market-driven interest intermediation mechanisms reduce their agency to that of a feedback resource used to maximise competitiveness within the higher education market. Shah et al. (2017: 116) on the other hand, argue that rather than to inform curriculum design, improve teaching and assessment methods or enhance the overall educational experience, universities use data to promote their strengths and market themselves to potential students. Yet more critical voices accuse some universities of having overtly political considerations in mind such as using student engagement and feedback processes to coopt and control students, to eliminate risk and to depoliticise the student voice (Klemencin, 2018).

In their work on the impact of student-as-consumer subjectivity on academic performance, McMillan and Cheney (1996) detect a tendency on the part of students to eschew ‘learning how to learn’ and ‘deep learning’ in favour of a more instrumentalist and strategic logic that prioritises the attainment of gateway qualifications. The impact of this paradigm on students’ intellectual engagement is an issue Williams (2012) takes up in her provocatively titled book, Consuming Higher Education- Why Learning Can’t be Bought, in which she laments the erosion of higher education to the accumulation of credit and the purpose of a degree to provide access to a well-paid career. This issue is also addressed by Bunce et al. (2017). In their analysis of the relationship between higher consumer orientation and academic achievement, they establish an empirical link between the extent to which students express a consumer orientation and poor academic performance.

Students as partners

The student as consumers model is contested by those that advocate for a more partnership-based approach to student engagement. According, for example, to Peters and Mathias (2018: 53), the ‘students as partnership’ paradigm emerged as ‘a means of resisting the excesses of neoliberalism in HE’ and replacing it on the one hand, with a conceptualisation of universities as a ‘public good’ and on the other, ‘a learning community making a valued contribution to society’. For these scholars, any significant and lasting shift in this direction is predicated on major cultural change within universities characterised by a power shift away from academics and university managers in the direction of students:

The implication is that genuine partnership requires more than consultation, involvement, or active participation of students as consumers; it demands a view of HE as a learning community in which students are equal participants, sharing leadership and authority with academics and HE managers. (Peters and Mathias: 2018: 54)

Drawing on the likes of Freire, Fielding (2010: 63) also advocates for replacement of the dominant ‘student as consumer’ identity by new forms of engagement that are more person-centred and partnership-based. Such an approach, Fielding argues (2010: 66), will have a transformative effect on the ‘mechanics of power and the interstices of power through which young voices are heard, dialogue enacted, and action taken.’ From this standpoint, the student as partnership model constitutes a revolutionary challenge to dominant university power structures and practices:

Truly enacting student partnership involves both a different view of HE and a shifting of power and, as such, constitutes a revolutionary attack on the established order of marketised HE practices. (Fielding, 2010: 54).

According to Bovill et al. (2011), the students as partners mode is underpinned by the belief that students have a unique insight that deserves ‘not only the attention but also the response of educators.’ This conceptualisation of students as partners and peers with something valuable to say is underpinning a series of transformative initiatives, they argue, in institutions across the globe such as the Students as Learners and Teachers (SaLT) project at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania in the USA, a partnering in ‘course design teams’ (CDTs) at Elon University, the co-design by academics and students of a the first-year geography curriculum at University College Dublin and in Environmental Justice at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh (Bovill et al., 2011: 135–137). In each case, the projects require participants to confront important questions about the nature of university teaching and learning and entail a significant ceding of authority from ‘faculty members’ to students. For the participating students, involvement in projects focused on processes of teaching evaluation and course design have a significant impact on their understanding and engagement with learning and metacognition and contributed positively to their motivation and enthusiasm for learning. For the academics, the experience has been re-energising and has had profound consequences for their relationship with students, leading some to reposition themselves as student advocates. Based on their experiences, Bovill et al. (2011: 140) make three concrete suggestions in their efforts to shift the focus away from approaches to student engagement in which, ‘one party uses the other for often covert ends’, towards a more inclusive and democratic approach to pedagogical planning in which students and academics work together collegially to share and learn from each other’s knowledge and expertise. They are: invite students to be partners with academic staff in pedagogical planning; support dialogue across differences of position and perspective; and serve as intermediaries, facilitating new relationships between students and academic staff.

Application of the model outlined by Ashwin and McVitty (2015) leads to a characterisation of the example of student engagement discussed in this paper as primarily a consultative exercise aimed at informing processes of curriculum development and change. While this might strike the reader as surprising given the above critique of the student as consumer model and its reliance on consultation, it stems from the belief in the importance of efforts to survey student opinion on prominent issues such as their experiences of teaching and learning during the Sars/Covid 19 crisis. Such consultation, it is argued, is particularly important at key inflection points that dramatically impact business as usual for all universities and their students. This is consistent with Klemenčič and Chirikov’s (2015) belief that surveys can be used as an effective tool to help evaluate the impact on the student experience of change strategies implemented in contexts of uncertainty. As this article argues, the survey results can also be used as the catalyst for more in-depth research as well as in the construction of pedagogical imaginaries that set out a vision of what teaching and learning might look like in the future.

Research methods

This research uses qualitative methods to explore the meanings students located in the University of Nottingham’s Faculty of Arts (FOA), have attached to their experiences of teaching and learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. The FoA is comprised of three schools: Cultures, Languages and Areas Studies (CLAS); English and the Humanities and is home to over 4500 students across 160 courses and over 300 academics. By adopting a qualitative approach, the study sidesteps one of the main criticisms of the type of quantitative data capture via self-completion questionnaires that often prevails in student consultations i.e. that they provide few to no opportunities for respondents to construct their own responses and interpretations of their experiences. According to Maringe (2011: 150), although questionnaires give an ‘impression of democratic procedure in that every student is polled’, they lack in-depth analysis, discourage students from reflecting meaningfully on their experiences and give too much legitimacy to momentary and passing thoughts.

A General Inductive Approach as set out by Thomas (2006) was used to collect, describe and analyse the qualitative data used to explore students’ subjective experiences of teaching and learning during the pandemic. According to Thomas (2006), this approach is particularly suited to evaluative projects guided by specific objectives such as in this case, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of a strategic response to the Covid crisis. To explore these issues, data was collected from the minutes of departmental and school level staff/student committees, known as Local Community Forums or LCFs, that took place at regular intervals during the 2020/21 academic year. LCFs are the main mechanism students at the University of Nottingham have to provide feedback and shape decisions during the course of the academic year and the minutes of these meetings are one of the few, if only, sources of qualitative data available on students’ experiences of the pandemic in the Faculty of Arts. In total, the minutes of thirty-seven LCF meetings were analysed encompassing the following departments: Classics and Archaeology, Culture Media and Visual Studies (CMVS), American and Canadian Studies, English, Liberal Arts, History, Modern Languages and Cultures (MLC), Music, Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies. The sample also included minutes of school-level (Cultures, Languages and Area Studies and Humanities) LCFs and of the Arts Foundation Year programme that provides entry to Year 1 of undergraduate courses in the Arts. In most cases, three LCF meetings were held at regular intervals throughout the year. The exceptions were Music and Philosophy, where only 2 LCFs took place during the academic year 2020/21.

Consistent with the precepts of the General Inductive Approach, the minutes were subjected to several rigorous readings by the author and major emergent themes were inductively identified. To support interpretation of the data, the analysis was informed by national level data from student responses to open-ended questions in JISC’s 20/21 Student Digital Experience Insights Survey (JISC, 2021) about what was positive and what was negative about their experiences of online teaching and learning during the pandemic. While not limited to students in the Arts and Humanities, these responses provided a set of overall patterns and unifying themes to interrogate in greater depth in the local data from the University of Nottingham’s Faculty of Arts. From here, a set of key themes and issues was identified that captured core messages articulated by students, and illustrative quotations were noted. Before setting these out, it is worth mentioning that the trustworthiness of the results was checked by means of what Thomas (2006: 244) refers to as a ‘stakeholder check’ whereby stakeholders with a specific interest in the evaluation are invited to reflect on the results of the enquiry. In this case, a summary of these was emailed to the chairs of the relevant LCFs, all of whom corroborated the analysis.

Results

The analysis of the data shows significant congruence and some differences in the experiences of teaching and learning of UoN Arts and Humanities students during the pandemic when compared to those reported by JISC (2021) in their 20/21 Student Digital Experience Insights Survey. Regarding positive experiences, the main areas of congruence concern what JISC (2021: 30) refers in its survey report to as ‘the ‘flexibility and convenience’ of the teaching and learning arrangements during the pandemic (JISC, 2021: 30) and ‘the ease of access’ to learning resources free from time and space constraints via institutional VLEs (JISC, 2021: 30). This finding was replicated by FoA students and was clearly reflected by one student representative when stating that ‘students like the flexibility which online lectures bring (not having to travel to buildings) but that the social aspect of in person was missed.’ (MLC, 2021a). Regarding access to resources, one of the aspects of provision most often singled-out for praise by student representatives in the FoA was access to pre-recorded lectures delivered online (Humanities, 2020; Classics and Archaeology, 2020; CLAS, 2021a; CMVS, 2021a; ACS, 2021b; MLC, 2021a; Music 2020). More of a concern was the availability of library resources with several student representatives reporting difficulties accessing books and other learning resources (Classics and Archaeology, 2020; ACS, 2021a; History, 2021; MLC, 2020).

Regarding ‘support for learning’, according to the JISC data, students were appreciative of, ‘the effort that has gone into curriculum redesign, communication and support from academic and professional service staff’ (JISC, 2021: 30). Again, this finding was echoed in the Faculty of Arts data, with several student representatives fulsome in their praise for staff who had gone ‘above and beyond’ in terms of the support they had provided particularly during the early stages of the pandemic (Classics and Archaeology, 2021a, CMVS, 2020, ACS, 2020; History, 2020; MLC, 2020; 2021a, Theology and Religious Studies, 2021). Other areas in which there was a close relation between the positive feedback received at both the national and local levels include opportunities to interact with academic staff (Humanities, 2021a; Arts Foundation, 2021a) and support for both asynchronous and synchronous modes of lecture delivery (CLAS, 2021a; CMVS 2021a; Liberal Arts, 2020, 2021a; Music, 2020, 2021; Philosophy, 2020). While the former was valued for catch-up purposes, live sessions were reported as more interactive and engaging.

One of the more counter-intuitive JISC findings was that students found it easier to ‘communicate, collaborate and discuss their studies with their lecturers/peers and tutors than before’ (JISC, 2021: 29). The evidence from the LCF minutes in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nottingham was, however, more equivocal on this point. Regarding peer-to-peer discussion and collaboration using breakout rooms, while some students seem to have enjoyed the opportunity for discussion that such technologies provide (ACS, 2020; Theology and Religious Studies, 2020), others were more critical claiming they derived very little benefit from such interactions (Arts Foundation 2021a; MLC, 2021a; Theology and Religious Studies, 2021a). Two areas where the picture was more positive in the FoA at the University of Nottingham are contexts in which effective strategies for triggering peer to peer interaction were in place and amongst students further along their undergraduate journey such as final year students (ACS, 2020; Theology and Religious Studies, 2020).

There were, of course, several negative experiences reported by students in the JISC data in areas such as access to appropriate study space, technical issues, feeling isolated, mental health concerns and workload related problems (JISC, 2021: 29–30). Regarding technical issues, the main concern reported in the open text section of the JISC survey was poor connectivity and a lack of bandwidth including in on-campus student accommodation (JISC, 2021: 30). This was echoed to some extent in the Arts LCFs where concerns were voiced about primarily off-campus wifi access. In one notable example, poor wifi performance in one of the main student neighbourhoods in Nottingham was cited as the main reason students were unwilling to put their cameras on in Microsoft Teams meetings (History, 2021). As expected, communication, isolation and mental health were identified as of concern in both the JISC survey results and in the Faculty of Arts LCF minutes (JISC, 2021:30; Humanities, 2020; Classics and Archaeology, 2020; ACS, 2020, History, 2020; MLC, 2021a).

Another area of student concern in which there was close relation between the JISC and the Faculty of Arts data had to do with workload and other time-related issues. According to JISC (2021: 30), ‘students reported receiving too much work, that expectations from their lecturers involved a larger volume of independent work than usual but without the benefit of timely support’. This was also a common refrain in the LCF comments particularly in cases where students were provided with pre-recorded lectures through the institutional VLE. Thus, several student representatives commented that it takes more time to watch, take notes and reflect on pre-recorded lectures than it does to attend live lectures delivered through Microsoft Teams (Classics and Archaeology, 2021a; CMVS, 2020; Arts Foundation Year, 2020; English, 2020; Liberal Arts, 2021a; English 2021a; History, 2020; Philosophy, 2020). The other main issue in this regard concerns the timeliness of recording availability with students complaining at both the national and local levels of insufficient time to watch videos before attending timetabled online classes (JISC, 2021: 30; Humanities, 2020; Classics and Archaeology, 2020; ACS, 2020; Arts Foundation Year, 2021b; English, 2020; Music, 2020; Theology and Religious Studies, 2020). A final issue flagged in the local feedback, but not necessarily in the JISC data, concerns Hy-Flex teaching (Humanities, 2020; CLAS, 2020; MLC, 2020), which received a mixed reception. In one set of minutes, for example, a student representative mentioned that ‘it is difficult to manage, and students online sometime feel like it is harder to engage.’ (CLAS, 2020), while another stated that ‘some students had found Hy-Flex learning to be disruptive due to interference from devices and technical difficulties experienced during the class.’ (MLC, 2020).

Imagined pedagogical futures

One of the main criticisms of student engagement initiatives concerns universities’ failure to deliver change in response to student feedback. Such inability to ‘close the loop’ can be a source of student frustration and is often cited as one of the reasons for their low response rates to surveys and other forms of consultation (see, for example, Shah et al., 2017). Where action is taken, it is often perfunctory, resulting in little more than cosmetic change. One way that universities can start to address this source of student frustration is by constructing future imaginaries that hinge on patterns detected in the student feedback data. By opening up new imaginative horizons, imaginaries can kickstart discussions about pedagogical innovation amongst staff and students and provide templates to inform curriculum development. According to Beckert (2016: 139), imaginaries such as the ones outlined in this paper can also act performatively as self-fulfilling prophecies shaping the decisions that create the outcomes the imaginaries predict. To be plausible they must be rooted in the present, embody empirical trends and not constitute too significant a departure from prevailing practices, structures, and technologies. As Delanty (2021: 288–289) is at pains to point out:

The future is always tied to the present in so far as possibility must emerge out of actuality. The future is that which is possible and what is possible must come from actuality, that which exists.

What then might the imagined future of teaching and learning look like in the Humanities? What follows are three future pedagogical imaginaries based on the qualitative data collected for this study. Rather than as predictive models, the imaginaries should be seen as interpretative heuristics that open a conceptual space for reflection and dialogue. As Mützel (2020: 289) argues, they are particularly valuable in periods of uncertainty when it is unclear which strategy about the future is the best one to follow. Before setting them out, it is important to signal that the imaginaries are not in competition, it is perfectly feasible for them to peacefully co-exist within the same teaching context, and neither should they be seen as filling the whole realm of the pedagogically possible. Also, while of the view that they are relevant to many of the subjects located under the Arts and Humanities umbrella, there may be some performance-based programmes in, for example, the Dramatic Arts and Music for which alternative imaginaries might be more appropriate.

The first pedagogical imaginary posits a flipped design based on recorded lectures broken up into chunked segments of up to 10 minutes (Geri et al., 2017) and delivered asynchronously through an institutional VLE. To focus attention on the main concepts and trigger reflection and understanding of key issues and themes, the videos should be accompanied by tutor prompts to scaffold engagement and other forms of interactivity (Geri et al., 2017). It is also important to ensure that the videos comply with accessibility guidelines for audio-visual materials and that students have enough time to review the recordings prior to the delivery of live lecture engagement sessions and/or seminars that can be delivered either on-campus, via video conferencing or even on a HyFlex basis (see below discussion). In this imaginary, students are also prompted to complete required readings accompanied by questions that scaffold engagement with texts. These questions provide the focus for follow-up discussions in live seminars in which important themes can be explored in more depth. Given the ongoing uncertainty caused by the pandemic, it is important to ensure that set texts are available electronically, preferably through the library’s online collection.

To ensure ease of navigation and accessibility of learning materials, it is crucial that careful attention is paid to the organisation and sequencing of learning material as well as the clarity and precision of accompanying instructional directions. This is particularly important during periods that students, for whatever reason, attend classes remotely and have less access to support from staff or their peers. In such circumstances, attention should be paid to potential ambiguities in online instructions about what students need to do to complete tasks and acquire learning outcomes. Seminars can be organised around the questions staff set online to structure student engagement with texts and timetabled lecture engagement sessions can be used to provide opportunities for clarification and to explore themes included in the lecture videos in greater detail. If these events take place online, careful consideration should be given to the use of breakout rooms to stimulate peer to peer social interaction. Where used, students should receive a set of task requirements and guidance on the rules of appropriate behaviour (netiquette) in such online contexts.

To help students overcome feelings of isolation, consideration should be given to the role that collaborative tasks might play in assessment. If this strategy is pursued, it is important that colleagues think carefully about how best to prepare students for such tasks. Finally, it is important to think carefully about the workload implications of this pedagogical imaginary and make adjustments where necessary. To lighten the load, weeks focusing on preparation for assessment, peer feedback or skills development, when students have much less content to prepare, can be incorporated into the programme. It might also be necessary to reduce the amount of summative assessment that students are expected to complete.

The second imaginary based on blended delivery is the closest to the pedagogical strategy that dominated much teaching in the Arts and Humanities prior to the pandemic. The main difference is that thanks to the advent of video-conferencing technologies such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom, all timetabled teaching events can be shifted from on-campus to remote delivery and back again without causing major disruption. As this is blended learning, timetabled sessions are accompanied by asynchronous components that complement the synchronous events in ways that are mutually reinforcing. As in flipped learning, it is important to provide a narrative that sets clear expectations for students as well as giving careful consideration to the organisation, sequencing and presentation of the online dimension in ways that are consistent and easy to navigate. When lectures and seminars shift to online delivery via platforms such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom, efforts should be made to trigger interaction through the use of the chat functionality, embedded quizzes, and polls and, where appropriate (see above), by taking advantage of the opportunity to create breakout rooms. The possibility to record lectures using lecture capture technology and make them available asynchronously is encouraged in this imaginary. Finally, as in the flipped imaginary, there is scope to reorientate assessment approaches towards collaborative tasks with an emphasis on real-world problems.

The third and final future pedagogical imaginary is described here as Hy-Flex and involves face-to-face and online students being taught synchronously. While as the student feedback demonstrates, this is not currently popular with students, it does provide for considerable flexibility, the importance of which cannot be underestimated in the current context. As a consequence, rather than rejecting this strategy out of hand, it is important to invest time and energy in exploring its affordances and constraints as well as the learning spaces and technologies required to deliver it effectively. We cannot escape the fact that some students, whether because of their location, circumstances or through choice, will not be able to attend on-campus events. In such circumstances, there may be considerable value, at least for some Arts and Humanities faculties, in evolving to become ‘work and study from anywhere’ operations. To do so requires teaching rooms equipped with the latest technologies and staff with the confidence, skills and flexibility to reimagine their teaching for a context in which students are on campus and at remote locations at the same time.

Increasingly universities are pioneering innovation in this direction across their provision (including in the Arts and Humanities). In his study, Woolfit (2022) discusses the solutions developed by four European universities, The University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, KU Leuven in Belgium, Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, and Oulu University of Applied Sciences, Finland, to address the design, technical, pedagogical and financial implications of a teaching mode that delivers synchronous teaching to both in class and remote attendees. At the University of Amsterdam, for example, the response has involved redesigning a theatre to create a space that fosters meaningful interaction and discussion between students in the room, online and with the lecturer. While many universities might baulk at the reported 480.000 Euro spent by the University of Amsterdam in adapting their theatre for Hy-Flex delivery, more economical options are also outlined. For example, Imperial College London limited the spend on setting up what it describes as ‘flex rooms’ to £65 000 per room. In all the cases described, lecturers have access to both remote and, more importantly, in-person technical support. At the University of Amsterdam, this amounts to one full-time and three part-time technicians working 3–4 days a week (Woolfit, 2022).

Conclusions

Whichever direction the Arts and Humanities take, it is clear the pandemic will be seen as a watershed moment in shaping imaginings about its future. Moreover, If the field is to move beyond the current Covid-induced state of flux and uncertainty, then it is crucial that all constituencies with a stake in the future of the Arts and Humanities are involved in conversations about the course it might take. How might this be achieved? Regarding the student voice, this paper outlines the role that qualitative consultation can play in fulfilling two useful functions. Firstly, in gauging the views of students, especially at major sector-wide inflection points such as the one caused by the pandemic. In such circumstances, surveys of the type reviewed in this paper can be used to evaluate the impact of change strategies, sometimes implemented in haste, on the student experience. As this article has demonstrated, students in general and Arts and Humanities students in particular, have a very clear and nuanced understanding of what has ‘worked’ pedagogically for them since early 2020, and of what was less successful. What seems clear from that experience is the desire to retain some of the flexibility provided by both the use of digital technologies such as video-conferencing platforms as well as the asynchronous delivery of content (especially video) and associated learning activities through VLEs such as Moodle and Blackboard.

Secondly, the paper has shown how the qualitative student data through consultation can be used to inform the construction of pedagogical imaginaries collected that function as heuristic devices to conceptualise how teaching and learning might be designed and delivered in the Arts and Humanities in the future. Crucial to the argument being made as Mützel (2021) points out, is that while these imaginaries may not materialise, as articulated, they do help to make sense of and evaluate the present and provide non-deterministic blueprints that give direction to complex processes involving multiple actors:

These expectations may not become true; they may need to be adjusted as time passes. Yet, while being oriented towards the future, such ‘imagined future; have a real influence on decisions and actions of involved actors in the present as they motivate, organise and coordinate action (Mützel, 2021: 288).

Future pedagogical imaginaries are particularly valuable in periods of uncertainty such as universities are facing during the pandemic. They provide orientation by offering accounts that are easily understood and credible (Beckert, 2013; 222). In addition to being grounded in student insights into their own experiences, the imaginaries’ plausibility derives from their rootedness in teaching practices that have gained currency across the sector. Their central attraction is the extent to which by drawing on technologies that have come to the fore since the beginning of 2020, they offer a vision of how disruption to Arts and Humanities students caused by the repeated closing and reopening of university campuses can be mitigated and education standards maintained. Of the three, Hy-Flex teaching offers the most intriguing vision for the future, especially when and if the pandemic does start to wane. By enabling remotely located students to attend timetabled sessions on campus, it raises the possibility that some Arts and Humanities faculties may innovate an offer based on a ‘work and study from anywhere’ model that offers maximum flexibility to potential applicants, thereby enabling faculties to grow and diversify their enrolments at a time when the Arts and Humanities are under considerable pressure from their funders.

While qualitative consultation might have provided sufficient data for the exploration of student experience and the construction of the pedagogical imaginaries, it is likely that any attempt to develop these into a credible and serious programme for curriculum change will require a relationship based on a close partnership with students. Such a partnership should be founded on values of mutual respect and as Mcvitty points out (347), ‘shared responsibility for what is happening in the learning environment.’ Only by doing will universities be able to guard against ongoing disruptions and futureproof so against unforeseen shocks that while difficult to predict, seem certain to come their way.