SaP Curriculum negotiation: Can democratic topic selection reduce engagement and inclusiveness?

Abstract

In 2018, we introduced a Student as Partners (SaP) to a second-year biochemistry course, to empower students and enhance engagement. At the time we thought long and hard about the ethos of our partnership with students, considering what components are required to create a genuine partnership and what was the appropriate level of student participation? Our partnership was two-fold: to allow students to vote on a selection of topics for part of the course, and, to design and negotiate part of the assessment. This case study focuses on involving student in the curriculum through democratic voting for two of six topics in the course. The goal was to enhance student engagement by allowing them to choose what they wanted to learn, and we assumed that a democratic vote was the fairest way to decide which of the six topics was taught. Students’ agreed that being able to choose topics increased their engagement and they felt empowered (80.5%, 87%, & 82.5% in 2018, 2019 & 2020, respectively), however, this was not necessarily the case for all students. Student reflections revealed that some were less engaged when their topics were not chosen, for example, “Since my topics were not chosen, I wasn’t as engaged or interested,” while others expressed sheer relief, “I’m glad the winner was not enzyme kinetics”. Other students suggested that an imbalance in the numbers of students enrolled in different degree programs influenced the topic selection, “I know a lot of participants in the class are doing biomedical science which swayed the choice in their favour”. Indeed, approximately half of the students in the course were enrolled in the Bachelor of Biomedical Science and one of the topics, protein therapies, has been the top choice each year. These finding have unearthed an inequality in our approach to topic selection that we didn’t anticipate, resulting in reduced engagement for some students and so, less inclusive. We are now exploring a blended online learning approach where every student can choose and learn their chosen topics.