Hearing the silent voices: how to understand and amplify the views of diverse students in large-course teaching School: Informatics, Mathematics, Business School, and Biological SciencesTeam: Dr Fiona McNeill, Dr Nikola Popovic, Dr Heather Yorston, Mr Phil Marston, and Prof Patrick Walsh AbstractStudent voices get lost in large courses. It is highly challenging for teaching staff to understand how students are experiencing their learning and teaching: the feedback they do receive is often from those students who are most able to amplify their own voices. Many voices are not heard; in particular, those of marginalised groups of students are often overlooked. Existing mechanisms for encouraging students to feed back on their learning experiences are helpful, but limited; furthermore, many students do not engage with them. Nevertheless, most students express a desire to be heard. We have spent the past two years in dialogue with students and staff across the university on how they experience and engage with feedback mechanisms, and what potential routes and barriers to improving the feedback process might be. This project will develop practical approaches towards implementing our knowledge and expertise in a large-course environment, where engaging with students is hardest. We intend to workshop themes resulting from our data to create usable tools and techniques: with students, to understand how they would engage with these and how they would meet their needs, and with staff to understand potential barriers to implementation – particularly within the context of the overwhelming workload many teaching staff have to struggle with – and how these may be overcome. We will trial our techniques through pilot schemes in several schools, after which polished materials will be created and promoted which will improve our ability to hear the voices of diverse students in large courses across the university. This article was published on 2024-10-16