Abstract  

Research informed teaching benefits student learning and it can also positively impact staff research. There are four ways research can be incorporated into teaching.  The following case study provides an example of how all four are demonstrated within one module, HTC299: Neo-Victorianism, providing ideas for how others might choose to do this within their own teaching practice.   

1. Background

Rationale: 

Research-led teaching prompts tutors and lecturers to embed their own research into the curriculum, with dissertations being used as the recognised space for students to implement their skills as independent researchers. However, we found that the integration of both modes (our own research-led teaching and the development of students’ independent research skills) within a module created a dynamic learning space, particularly when embedded in the assessment. 

Our approach to curriculum design is informed by the belief that students receive an enhanced and more effective learning experience as active participants or stakeholders in a research community, rather than as passive recipients of established research ideas which are simply conveyed to them. To this end, we instil a sense of their active engagement in a dynamic and evolving research field from the outset (i.e. in the first lecture and seminar). We see the research-informed lectures as equipping students with the necessary knowledge and frameworks to then engage in the research process for themselves in the follow-up seminar. The movement is therefore from content-based (lectures) to problem and process-based (seminars). In seminars, students are encouraged to approach the set texts (creative material) as researchers, both through applying neo-Victorian theories and concepts in their analysis, and through active discussion of research-related concerns, such as ethics.  

Context:      

We co-convene and co-deliver a Part C module called ‘Neo-Victorianism’ that explores contemporary engagements and reimaginings of Victorian literature, art, and culture. We are both active researchers in the field of Neo-Victorianism and have collaborated on research outputs that have been developed through our teaching of this course.[1] The module is centred on a symbiotic relationship between teaching and research, and our individual and joint research feeds directly into the module.  

2. Methodology

In designing the module, we aimed to include the four elements of the teaching research model identified by Healey (2005) and discussed by Healey and Jenkins in their 2009 HEA report:  

• research-tutored
• research-led 
• research-oriented  
• research-based modalities

The former two modes occur mainly in lectures, which are all research-led, with the latter two more active modes taking place in our small-group seminars. After each run of the module, we evaluate the content and modes of delivery to:  

1) reflect on what worked and didn’t work in the previous year and consider if there are new developments in the research field that need to be introduced to the programme;  

2) explore where our current / forthcoming research (individual and collaborative) can be added into the module’s content in order to involve students in ‘active research’;  

3) identify places where emergent research can be integrated into teaching so that content is completely up-to-date in a fast-moving field;  

4) identify new spaces where teaching and research can be synchronised.  

Example using Healey’s research-oriented and research-based elements: 

Two collaborative outputs on the afterlives of Alice in Wonderland are examples of where our emergent research has been integrated into teaching. We devoted one week on the module to Alice’s afterlives, and decided to include a range of sources (that have been changed and adapted over the last two years) that comprise the research we have been writing about. We, the module co-convenors, began by doing the primary research together – exploring the materials and developing our ideas, planning the secondary sources, and building an outline of what our research would look like. We then stepped back and thought: what do we want the students to know from this?  

We integrated a range of our primary research materials into each teaching week, asking the students to read and view the same material we had initially approached. We explained our research to them as part of the lecture and gave them access to our draft (and ‘in review’) materials. Discussions centred on both their responses to the material and our own, and how the ideas raised by the material connected the research to current/real world issues. We encouraged them to think critically about the materials and to challenge our thinking, involving them as active participants in the research as it developed. 

As part of the teaching materials we supplied to students, encouragement to research the theoretical concepts underpinning the module was reinforced by additional vlogs on Learn. These were optional resources and consisted of short, recorded conversations between the two of us discussing the weekly theoretical concept. Though originally developed during the Covid19 pandemic, as part of our effort to support students in the difficult circumstances, these vlogs were retained as the students fed back that they had found them extremely useful in explaining the key concepts and ideas and encouraging them to focus in on a handful of secondary resources. We subsequently embedded these skills into a new mode of assessment: a weekly reading blog. 

3. Issues

Describe the issues and barriers faced and how you overcame them, or what might help to overcome them?  

From conversations with students (informally in tutorials, and collectively in classes) during previous iterations of the module, we had gained a sense that many of them only choose to engage directly with secondary research and theoretical material at assessment points. We wanted to encourage a sustained and more meaningful engagement from the outset and throughout the module. Following our personal review of the module for 2021-22, as we realised that our collaborative vlogs were enthusing students and enabling skills development, we decided that this could be most effectively achieved through embedding it in the assessment. 

Our revised assessment (CW1) asked the students to research one piece of secondary criticism prompted by the weekly vlogs and isolate one idea or concept, reflecting critically on how it spoke to the module’s wider ideas and concerns and each week’s materials, recording their reflections in a weekly reading log. They completed this for weeks 1-6 of the module and then submitted their logs.  

At the end of the module, we asked students to complete an informal feedback questionnaire designed to obtain a sense of whether they had found the new mode of assessment useful as a way of fostering research skills. Overwhelmingly, the responses we received affirmed this. In response to the question ‘Do you feel that this module improved your research skills? If so, how?’ one student stated ‘Yes – I felt the Learning Log was the biggest component in this as it forced us to engage with secondary sources and think critically about them. Also, the module’s grounding in secondary research - Heilmann and Llewellyn’s work on Neo-Victorianism – really helped me to develop my research skills and we had to apply the secondary materials to the source text in order to extract its full meaning.’ (see questionnaire 4) 

All of the students who returned the survey agreed with the sentiment (expressed by one student) that ‘the Learning Log really encouraged independent research’ (see questionnaire 2). 

4. Benefits

What specific strategies or approaches were particularly successful?  

Overall, the different modes used on our module are working effectively to engage the students more in critical, theoretical and conceptual thinking. The assessed work is of a high standard across the cohort and successive external examiners have commented on the impressive levels of engagement and understanding.  

5. Evidence of Success 

Impact on the student learning experience? What is the student perspective? Do you have any student feedback (formal/informal) to evidence the success? Is there any literature that evidences your approach? 

Interim student feedback on the module for semester 1 (2022-23) was extremely positive, with students noting the ways in which they felt supported to become more active researchers. One student commented ‘I think that all the extra resources, information and links on the learn page have really enhanced my experience and potential’. Another stated their appreciation of ‘The breadth and depth of secondary materials that are being used to discuss the primary texts, it feels like we're having a current conversation with the work and makes me want to read the [critical] essays afterward.’ 

To further enhance the active research element we encourage on the module, we introduced a new coursework assessment this year (semester 1, 2022-23). This component was a Learning Log, with an explicit independent research element. By requiring weekly entries, students are encouraged to engage with the module as a whole and reflect on the development of themes and ideas, and connections between texts and concepts. The independent research element aims to facilitate their active skills in identifying useful scholarship and evaluating and applying it in a critical way. Students are assessed on: their ability to identify the important issues raised by the specific texts / contexts / topics studied in each week; their understanding of these issues; the relevance and quality of their responses to the material; the ability to make connections as the module progresses and evidence of development in critical thinking about the central themes and ideas of the module.  

One of the things we noticed after only a few weeks was the students’ unprompted references to key theorists and critics in their contributions to seminar discussion. The research activity they were undertaking each week directly fed into their (verbal) textual analysis in the classroom, as they felt confident in applying theoretical material to the set text. In the final assessment (a 3000-word essay), this trend was also evident, with students offering a more assured and synthesised use of relevant secondary criticism across the cohort. 

6. How Can Other Academics Reproduce This? 

Rather than only signposting students to library reading lists, other staff can reproduce this technique by altering assessment to intentionally allow students to engage meaningfully with a handful of secondary criticism of their own choosing, with much lighter prompts to encourage learning and thinking about scholarship at the level of ideas, as opposed to using secondary material in response to a formal question. There should be no barriers to other scholars reproducing this in other disciplines. Moving away from essay-based coursework and cultivating a ‘portfolio’ of responses to individual secondary research also allowed us to ‘test’ student learning more effectively.  

7. Reflections

Any other factors which you consider contributed to the success or otherwise of your case study? If you had to do it all again, would you do anything differently? What recommendations are there for improved practice? What should be explored next?  

One thing we did note was that students’ responses to the question about the value of research skills were quite narrow and specific to their assessed coursework. This is interesting and there is clearly work to be done by us in articulating more explicitly the wider value of research skills beyond individual modules and university courses. We therefore intend to discuss the transferability of the skills students are developing more explicitly next year. 

8. References 

Healey, Mick. (2005) Linking Research and Teaching to Benefit Student Learning, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 29:2, 183-201, DOI: 10.1080/03098260500130387 

Healey, Mick & Jenkins, Alan. (2009). Developing Undergraduate Research and Inquiry. York: Higher Education Academy.  
https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/developing-undergraduate-research-and-inquiry  

[1] To date, the following collaborative research developed from teaching this module has been published or presented, with other outputs in progress: ‘In(appropriating) Alice: The Sexualization of Carroll’s Wonderland’, in Alice in Wonderland in Film and Literature, ed. Antonio Sanna (London: Palgrave, 2022); ‘“The Unclosed Coffin”: The Neo-Victorian Afterlives of Elizabeth Siddal’, in The Palgrave Handbook of Neo-Victorianism, eds. Sarah E. Maier and Brenda Ayres (London: Palgrave, 2023); ‘“And thou art like the poisonous tree / that stole my life away”: The Afterlives of Elizabeth Siddal’, Herstory Reimagined: Women’s Lives in Biographical Fiction and Film Conference. King’s College London, 16-17 December 2019. ‘“Have you tried talking to him?”: Encountering the Victorian “Mad Doctor” in BBC’s Quacks’. Victorian Encounters and Environments, VPFA annual conference, 15-17 July 2020 (Online).