You can’t always get what you want

Welcome to the 20 ^th Volume of Bioscience Education. News from this particular stable is that an enhanced model of the journal will appear in the Spring to improve its look and feel from the point of contact to the published article. Debatably, this review of the ‘cradle to grave’ process mirrors some of what is happening in UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as we focus on our processes and practices for the first generation of higher fee-paying students. Amongst current debate about increased competition for students (e.g. with private providers, between HEIs and the rolling out of online provision at ever-greater scales) it is difficult to judge exactly what expectations we have to live up to, or indeed not. I often remind myself that the large majority of my students do not share exactly the same views as me about the 21^st Century ‘student experience’. However, there seems to be a core of mutual agreement about what we should provide in return for the fiscal, professional and emotional investments of those who learn with us.

The long-anticipated shift in emphasis towards learner-centred models of disseminating and evaluating knowledge and skills in higher education is very much here. Importantly, with this change has come some tensions and knowledge-gaps. Empowering consumers leads to an emphasis on providing what ‘they want’. Whereas, it is the place of educational designers to ensure they get what ‘they need’ and in this overlap the waters can be particularly murky. The UK’s National Student Survey has made us aware that some elements of our provision are considered more satisfactory than others. I will use here what is perhaps the most pertinent example; the ratings of ‘assessment feedback’, which have consistently received the lowest scores in the NSS since its inception some seven years ago. I was forwarded a study several years ago that highlighted to me a sense of the ‘what we want and what we need’ debate. Boehler et al. (2006) surveyed a modest number of medical students who were provided with two types of feedback on one particular assessment. Students were most satisfied with feedback that was more complimentary to them, even when it lacked the constructive advice that was shown to generate greater educational gains. It would be useful to see this type of study expanded to greater scales, across other disciplines, but there is something in it that might explain lower scores for satisfaction of assessment feedback in our national survey. This notional concept is relevant to a phrase that I have heard used in a more general sense: ‘the cuddle factor’. This term seems to chime with much of the changes we are deploying whilst striving to enhance student satisfaction, and is now used by others in a much wider context than this. Perhaps this is all summed up by a goal of motivating students so they feel comfortable to engage and learn, whilst maintaining necessary academic rigour.

Explorations of how students interact with feedback and examples of the use of formative assessments to provide feedback are at the heart of this Volume. Harriet Jones and her team targeted three institutions, identifying areas that motivate and demotivate students. There is also evidence that students value some feedback irrespective of their emotional responses, which provides additional context to frame the responses to feedback described by Boehler et al. (2006). Francis Brearley and Rod Cullen provide an enlightening view of feedback given in audio format. The article is based on a small sample, but it is a very useful starting point to those that have not tried this type of approach. It also highlights that certain students gain more from such methods, raising questions about how to create feedback systems that respond to all of our learners’ needs. Sheila Hope and Anthony Polwart improved their student satisfaction with pre-exam feedback using an ‘assessment for learning’ (AfL) strategy. Students who completed formative online tests with instant feedback performed better in the module exam and found the tests a useful way to learn. David Watson and Gillian Knight describe how continual student monitoring and provision of formative feedback using differentiated instruction is achievable, even with larger student cohorts and without significant increases in staff workload. They conclude that recognising and supporting individual students’ learning needs, enhances student engagement and motivation, whilst increasing confidence in their own abilities.

Listening to the student voice is at the heart of many of the articles in this volume. In an explicit sense, Jon Scott and his colleagues provide a revealing insight into the experiences of first year bioscience students via the medium of video diaries. The work reveals a dynamic, fragmented and individual experience as the students cope with the transition into HE. It goes on to provide specific examples of how individuals cope with their respective course and institutional requirements. Susanne Prankel and Lorraine Weaver describe a valuable ‘enhanced induction’ process for students entering for a ‘top-up’ year to complete their degrees. The nature of barriers are categorised into institution specific, subject specific and level specific and each uses relevant topical examples. Comparisons between students that engaged with this course with those from previous years suggested the initiative led to greater learner successes. The materials used are potentially adaptable to other institutions, and have been made available for dissemination.

Nicola Cousins and her team implemented a tutorial-based skills course using student feedback from course evaluations, student diaries and focus-group-suggested benefits of increased confidence and development of generic skills. There was a strong appreciation by the students of interactions with tutors and also of learning in small groups. The authors acknowledge that the quality of students' experiences varied, reflecting a diversity of behaviours of their learners. Richard Owusu-Apenten and Wen Li Xu explore the relationship between the entry qualifications of their nutrition students and their academic success. Evidence is presented that agrees with research into other subject disciplines that entry tariff points are associated with end of year awards, going on to suggest that the educational experiences are also important factors, as educators would of course expect. May Yeong Foong brings greater diversity to the Volume, with an international contribution from Singapore. Here, she describes learning environments dominated by dogmatic teaching methods to transmit information to learners. Using selective use of published experimental data to encourage problem-based learning is not new to many. However, in this environment getting students to derive specific concepts on their own, that would otherwise have been stated for them, is worthy of note to our international readership and an example of ‘changing the norm’ to good effect.

Thanks also go to Rod Cullen for providing a response to Anne Tierney’s Letter to the Editor in the last Volume (Tierney 2012). It is clear that Scholarship of Learning and Teaching (SoTL) is a prominent area of debate in the bioscience community, particularly in terms of how we communicate with each other and share our practices. Ultimately, it is (and always has been) a genuine privilege as the editor of Bioscience Education to experience these documented snapshots that give a flavour of the huge effort currently happening worldwide to improve the impact of the large community of people that support, design, deliver and experience our responsive 21^st Century educational courses.