Mission and Principles

Mission

The Aims of RAISE are:

To come together for beneficial scholarly discussion, sharing ideas and creating collaborative projects.
To involve and work with students in partnership
To promote and disseminate good practice
To influence policy and encourage focus and investment in SE
To create a bank of resources and share this openly
To facilitate communication among our members

This is delivered through organising an annual conference and events, running special interest groups, supporting our own journal and other publications, lobbying policy makers and funders and collaborating with other organisations and networks with allied interests.

Principles

Our Definition of Student Engagement:

Student engagement is about what a student brings to Higher Education in terms of goals, aspirations, values and beliefs and how these are shaped and mediated by their experience whilst a student. SE is constructed and reconstructed through the lenses of the perceptions and identities held by students and the meaning and sense a student makes of their experiences and interactions. As players in and shapers of the educational context, educators need to foster educationally purposeful SE to support and enable students to learn in constructive and powerful ways and realise their potential in education and society. (Bryson et al, 2014)

10 Principles of Engaging Students

Foster student’s willingness and readiness to engage by enhancing their self-belief.
Embrace the point that students have diverse backgrounds, expectations, orientations and aspirations – thus different ‘ways of being a student’, and to welcome, respect and accommodate all of these in an inclusive way.
Enable and facilitate trust relationships (between staff:students and students:students) in order to develop a discourse with each and all students and to show solidarity with them
Create opportunities for learning (in its broadest sense) communities so that students can develop a sense of competence and belonging within these communities.
Teach in ways to make learning participatory, dialogic, collaborative, authentic, active and critical.
Foster autonomy and creativity, and offer choice and opportunities for growth and enriching experiences in a low risk and safe setting.
Recognise the impact on learning of non-institutional influences and accommodate these
Design and implement assessment for learning with the aim to enable students to develop their ability to evaluate critically the quality and impact of their own work.
Work in partnership at all opportunities by seeking to negotiate and reach a mutual consensus with students on managing workload, challenge, curriculum and assessment for their educational enrichment – through a partnership model – without diluting high expectations and educational attainment; by developing mechanisms for all students to democratically participate in all aspects of the university that impact directly or indirectly on them.
Enable students to become active citizens and develop their social and cultural capital.

Constitution

You can view the latest version of the RAISE Constitution (2021) here.