Committee

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The RAISE Committee helps to oversee the acitivities of the organisation. You can find out more about the 2020-21 RAISE Committee here.

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Mission

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The Aims of RAISE are:

1. To come together for beneficial scholarly discussion, sharing ideas and creating collaborative projects.
2. To involve and work with students in partnership
3. To promote and disseminate good practice
4. To influence policy and encourage focus and investment in SE
5. To create a bank of resources and share this openly
6. 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.

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Constitution

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You can view the latest version of the RAISE Constitution here.

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History of RAISE

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The idea of RAISE really emerged in informal discussions at the 2009 European First Year Conference between a group of enthusiastic colleagues when Colin Bryson made the suggestion that we had our very own network on student engagement instead of just meeting randomly at conferences or exchanging emails. It did not have a name at that time (it was Colin’s 16 year old daughter that created that), but it was just an idea. A few months later four of us met to plan a first meeting and in May, 2010 we held a one day symposium in Nottingham with the ambitious agenda of developing a definition and conceptual framework for student engagement, as well a basis for how our network could operate. We created the web-site and held the first conference in 2011; largely thanks to the hard work of a handful of people, Colin, Christine Hardy, Grace Barker and Julie Wintrup. The following year the network became an organisation with formal constitution and officers. We have continued with annual conferences. These have now grown in scale as has RAISE. In 2013 special interest groups (SIGS) were created and this is already leading to a rather larger number of events to add to the conference and seminars RAISE has held. A particular feature of RAISE is the direct involvement of current students. They contribute to, and participate in all the events, in ways and numbers that no other scholarly networks have ever done before. We merged with the Student Learning and Teaching Network (set up by CETL student interns) in 2014 to further cement our credibility as reflecting the voice of students and staff.

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Principles of RAISE

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Our Definition of SE "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

1. Foster student’s willingness and readiness to engage by enhancing their self-belief.

2. 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.

3. 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

4. Create opportunities for learning (in its broadest sense) communities so that students can develop a sense of competence and belonging within these communities.

5. Teach in ways to make learning participatory, dialogic, collaborative, authentic, active and critical.

6. Foster autonomy and creativity, and offer choice and opportunities for growth and enriching experiences in a low risk and safe setting.

7. Recognise the impact on learning of non-institutional influences and accommodate these

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. Enable students to become active citizens and develop their social and cultural capital.

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Honorary members

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Honorary members are elected in recognition of their outstanding contributions to advancing student engagement.

Colin Bryson

Len Hand

Christine Hardy

Julie Wintrup

Mantz Yorke

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