Engaging students as co-creators and participatory researchers

About the project

Students should play an active role in shaping the interventions and policies that affect them. This is reflected in Office for Students (OfS) regulatory guidance: “Students representing the breadth of the student population, particularly those from hard-to-reach groups, are engaged in formulating, supporting and evaluating access and participation across the provider”  (Regulatory advice 6, pg. 47).

To help inform future practice, TASO explored co-creation and participatory evaluation in higher education through desk research and sector consultation.

Project aims:

• Explore existing research and guidance on co-creation and participatory research. 
• Understand how students are currently engaged as co-creators and participatory researchers in the higher education sector, and identify the factors that enable or inhibit their involvement.
• Collate and publish sector case studies as examples of practice 
• Inform how students can be more meaningfully engaged in intervention design and evaluations across the sector, and in TASO’s own evaluations.

Project activities:

• Desk-based research on student co-creation and participatory research methods, including published examples of sector practice. 
• Open call to the sector to submit examples of co-creation and participatory research examples, which we co-developed into case studies.
• Conversations with practitioners and evaluators who are working in this space, who we identified through existing contacts, our research, and the open call.

Background

This project explored two forms of student engagement: 

• Co-creation: The development of policies, practices or interventions in meaningful partnership with the students they aim to benefit.
• Participatory research: An emancipatory approach to research and evaluation that involves those affected by a policy, practice or intervention as active partners throughout the research and evaluation process.

Engaging students in co-creation and participatory research has multiple theorised benefits: 

• Interventions are more relevant to student needs.
• Evaluations and their implications are informed by students’ perspectives.
• Students develop valuable skills.
• Students feel more valued by their institutions and experience increased belonging and engagement.

Related outputs

We are now developing a report, a framework and a set of case studies based on our research, which will aim to help the sector engage students in intervention design and participatory evaluations.

If you have any resources that would be useful to add to this list, please email research@taso.org.uk.