Discussions about public engagement tend to focus mainly on public engagement with research, with less focus on the notion of ‘engaged teaching’, especially at undergraduate level.

When at the HEA I contributed to a workshop facilitated by my colleague Abbi Flint, which focused on exploring how we can engage students as change agents and co-researchers in scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) projects.  My focus in this workshop was on innovative ways in which we could encourage students to ‘go public’ with the outcomes of these projects – doing more than promoting/disseminating their work to audiences within their programme/institution.

The resources on the NCCPE website are invaluable for thinking through how we might support students in their engagement with a diverse range of audiences. I particularly like the section on narrative and storytelling. Discussions with colleagues about the techniques and tips in this section revealed that not only did they think that these would be useful to students, but that they themselves often hadn’t thought of their research projects in these terms.

Readers interested in the notion of engaged teaching will find the report Engaged teaching in the social sciences from Eric Jensen, Nicola Buckley and Carli Rowell interesting.

A great example of an engaged teaching project is the Interchange project at University of Liverpool. Further details of how this project supports the teaching of research methods can be found in the report Developing applied research skills through collaboration in extra-academic contexts.

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