bristol – Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching Blog

The University of Bristol has pledged to make the city a better place¹. Our research institutes are leading the charge to action this², but how can we connect our research to our teaching? How can we support our students to consider the relevance and applicability of their studies to the real world on their doorstep?

Here are four innovative ways that you can think about engaging your students with the idea of the “civic university”. Shared resource templates to support these approaches are available from BiLT, such as risk assessments, health and safety guidance, photography and film consent forms, and UoB’s indemnity insurance.

1. Primary data collection

Primary data collection in the city can be tailored to suit a broad range of subjects. In Chemistry, first year students ascend ladders to check air quality monitors. In Archaeology, students visit local cemeteries and record observations of burial sites such as demographics and mortality rates.

Most data collection has simple requirements: notebook, phone camera and a space for sharing the data. This type of fieldwork is well suited to formative groupwork but can also contribute to summative assessment.

The benefits of incorporating primary data collection early in the undergraduate curriculum include:

Improves confidence in handling primary data and conducting research;

Develops teamworking skills;
Provides an opportunity for transferable skills such as film making and good health and safety practice.

Staff can consider using this data within their research so that students’ research is seen to be valued and incorporated into larger projects. This enhances students’ sense of the value of their coursework.

2. Designing for the city

Designing for the city can include civil engineering projects, temporary city installations and exhibitions, and embedded urban technologies, to name a few.

The tools needed for this approach can range from simple pen, paper and observational walks, to advanced design software packages. It can be purely classroom based, or engage with external organisations. The permutations are endless. But at the core is the ethos of creating an asset for a defined public space.

By choosing a specific space or type of space for the asset, students need to keep in mind the limitations of that space. This approach works well in groups, with dedicated groupwork sessions supported by staff.

A suggested facet of this approach is to “throw a spanner in the works” in the middle of the project. For example, telling students that their planned asset must make a 20% reduction in budget, to reflect real world dynamic challenges.

The benefits of the design approach include:

Enhances appreciation for the complexity of applying theoretical learning into real world contexts;
Develops adaptability in challenging circumstances;
Increases creativity and innovation skills.

This approach can also invite direction from external collaborators who suggest assets for students to develop to meet particular needs. This might include local community groups or Bristol City Council. This relevance can support students’ improved sense of the value of their studies.

3. Equitability and Sustainability

Take students on a series of local fieldtrips across Bristol, incorporating observation and primary data collection. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a useful framework for considering how your subject relates to social, environmental and economic challenges faced in different ways in different city districts.

You can take students on walks, on public buses or hire buses, depending on your budget and accessibility requirements. Sites might include the industrial landscape of Avonmouth, the historic harbour and docks, the mix of nature and residential in St Werburgh’s, or the Clifton bubble.

Students can be tasked with seeing how their subject relates to the SDGs in the applied context of the city. This approach can be delivered as an “outdoor lecture” or through directed tasks for students to conduct in the various outdoor settings, perhaps with printed template worksheets.

The benefits of this approach include:

Enhances cohort cohesion, as students undertake a shared experience;
Encourages engagement with themes of sustainability and global challenges;
Greater understanding of the lived experiences of people from different socio-economic backgrounds.

This approach works well as a shared start of term activity that brings the whole cohort together and is then integrated into successive classroom sessions as a point of reference. It can also invite co-delivery with external organisations visited during fieldtrips.

Specific questions posed to students could include:

How should we innovate the city to prepare it for the future? This might consider rising sea levels, emerging technologies, increased populations, housing shortages, changing demographics, transport, etc.
Is Bristol a City for All? This might consider designed abelism, economic zones and divisions, the density and provision of healthcare, etc.

4. Haptic experiences

Space for reflection and the individual experience is intrinsically valuable. One way to invite introspection is to consider haptics (see Paterson 2007). This considers the sensorial world created in different places in the city, the sights, sounds, smells, textures and “Bristol vibe”.

Students can take theoretical concepts of phenomenology³ and sensorality and apply them to lived personal experiences, expressed through personal reflective writing. Sites can be visited multiple times to see how weather, events, and the time of year affect the experience of space, place and meaning. For example, St Nicholas’ market visited on a Monday morning is an entirely different space to a Saturday Christmas fair. Landscapes too are dynamic and ever changing, where a summer stream can transform a winter river.

Haptic investigations can impact new ways of understanding the world and invite fluid readings of space and time. It can also challenge recorded experiences in the literature. For example, antiquarian explorers recorded their observations from the subjectivity of an able-bodied male (Johnson 2012). Students can be tasked with questioning urban spaces from other perspectives, such as from the viewpoint of women, children, or the elderly.

We can also invite intercultural dialogue in understanding the senses, as they are both physically and culturally perceived (Classen 1997: 401-410). The senses are not confined to the five we learn in school (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell), they extend to inclination, temperature, acceleration, hunger, time, etc. How these senses are externally controlled or created can be queried, such as through the design of public spaces.

References:

Paterson, M. 2007. The Senses of Touch: Haptics, affects and technologies. Oxford: Berg
Johnson, M.H. 2012 ‘Phenomenological Approaches in Landscape Archaeology’ Annual Review of Anthropology 41, pp. 269-284
Classen, C. 1997 ‘Foundations for an anthropology of the senses’ International Social Science Journal 49(153), pp. 401-412

Footnotes:

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/february/civic-agreement.html
For example, the Cabot Insitute’s City Futures theme https://www.bristol.ac.uk/cabot/what-we-do/city-futures/
One’s personal experience of a place, including one’s feelings, emotions and senses.

Coming soon- a podcast, ‘The City as a Learning Space’ – only available on the BILT Broadcast Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Soundcloud.

Ash Tierney

Our second blog entry is by Shanaz Pottinger, undergraduate student studying Experimental Psychology, at the University of Bristol.

You are invited to leave comments below.

Do we even need traditional lectures?

Succinctly, yes, we do! Lectures are an intrinsic part of the university experience, a rite of passage for all degree holders and an important arena for community building. In many ways Bristol is a traditional institution that draws a student body who are attracted to elements of the traditional educational experience (at least at the undergraduate level). I am in full agreement that the university must innovate and move with the times, however, far-reaching over modernisation at Bristol will lead to a loss of the university’s intrinsic appeal. Moreover, in my view, if courses were to see serious reductions in contact time there would need to be a reduction in tuition fees charged for this type of degree.

I appreciate that an opposing argument may be that traditional lectures favour a ‘one size fits all’ approach whereas an engagement focussed approach allows students to engage with material in a way that works for them. However, human beings are fundamentally social animals and research suggests that the quality of our social networks has an impact on our sense of wellbeing. Thus, I propose that the social benefits of traditional lectures should not be overlooked. These can be simulated in a digital environment but in my view these interactions are not totally comparable. After all Facebook has not replaced the social benefits of actually meeting up for a coffee has it?

In my view, we should be aiming for a model that champions attendance and engagement. As a student I would love the opportunity to experience a little less death by PowerPoint and a little more blended learning and flipped classrooms- just not entirely from the comfort of my own bedroom.

Tag: bristol

Urban Spaces. Civic University.

The Great Debate: Engagement vs Attendance?