I organise a course with more than 300 undergraduate students. Although it is generally well received by students, I have noticed a drop in lecture attendance, an increase in coursework non-submissions and a decline in exam performance in recent years, suggesting that students are disengaging. When I took steps to make students feel they mattered, attendance more than doubled and non-submissions dropped by 86 per cent.
A sense of belonging has long been linked with student engagement, well-being and performance – some equate it with “fitting in”. This notion can be problematic, however, as by definition it will exclude those students who cannot or who do not want to fit in. Heidi Weston and Peter Felten argue that “a sense of mattering” is a more helpful way to think about student belonging, as it makes space for different lived experiences, empowers students to initiate contributions to their learning, and helps students to advocate for themselves and others. Mattering refers to the belief that, whether right or wrong, a person is important to someone else (adapted from Nancy Schlossberg’s Marginality and Mattering: Key Issues in Building Community).
Inspired by these ideas, I found that for students to feel they mattered in my large course, they needed to believe that their presence, voice and actions were key to their learning, the learning of their peers and the overall success of the course.
Conveying that students’ presence, voice and contributions matter
Guided by three principles – students’ presence, voice and actions – I reviewed the course structure and learning activities and identified ways to apply this key message to my course learning environment and teaching practices. Student-student and student-staff connections improved when I and other staff encouraged students to get to know each other and promoted informal interactions between students and staff. We gave students agency by giving them opportunities to choose the facilitated group discussion content and the weightings of the related assessments via whole-class voting sessions. Students used Wooclap to decide how much of the overall course mark each assessment would be worth.
I also recruited student representatives from several disciplinary programmes to reflect the diversity of the student cohort. And finally, I introduced new group learning activities, such as group exercises during lectures, a new student-led assessment (PeerWise) and a group practical project and assessment to increase collaborative learning opportunities.
- Collection: Cultivate a sense of belonging on campus
- Creating a culture of belonging with inclusive pedagogy
- Partner with your students to build belonging on campus
The result
Although one needs to be cautious when interpreting findings based on one cohort, there were very encouraging observations. Lecture attendance improved (with about 100 students still attending lectures in week 8 compared with fewer than 40 in 2023 for similar class sizes). Students welcomed the chance to vote on discussion topics and assessment weightings, with more than 95 per cent participating (more than 95 per cent of students present took part in the voting).
In-course assessment non-submissions dropped to 3 per cent (compared with 22 per cent in 2023 and 16 per cent in 2022) and exam performance increased to a 60 per cent average mark (compared with 52 per cent in 2023). Some 71 per cent of students who completed mid-course feedback felt part of an effective and supportive community. However, challenges remained. Despite multiple efforts to encourage students to “use their voice”, engagement with mid-course and end-of-course feedback opportunities remained low.
I didn’t directly ask students whether they felt they mattered in the course (with hindsight, maybe I should have), and since there are no metrics to effectively “measure” the students’ sense of mattering, I don’t know exactly how students felt. Yet, feedback on the course was extremely positive and it is clear that the activities introduced to support the “you matter” message resonated with some, as illustrated by this student’s comment: “I also really liked being able to choose the topics and the weightings for the facilitated group discussion, this has also increased my engagement as I have felt in control of my own learning.”
Lessons learned
Mattering provided an invaluable and inspiring framework to rethink and restructure my course to improve student engagement. It led to the creation of a clear course ethos (“you matter”) and the provision of more space and opportunities for students to engage and to feel more empowered in their learning. This example might suggest the need to reframe the current “you belong” messaging towards a more inclusive and achievable “you matter” message.
Finally, large course size often discourages course teams from implementing innovative practices. Yet, evidence of what works can only be gathered by experimenting in these realistic albeit challenging contexts. This experience demonstrated that the size of a course should not prevent trying things out. I encourage educators to experiment. The impact can be transformative. Below are questions to ask yourself and other staff when designing your course with “mattering” in mind:
Establishing that students matter
- What are the students’ and staff’s roles and expectations and how can these be made clear?
- How can the “you matter” message be reinforced throughout the course?
- How can the course team and students help in promoting this message?
Establishing that your students’ presences matter
- How can you create space for students to get to know their peers and the course team before and during the course?
- How can you acknowledge students’ presence and absence?
- How can you support and represent students’ diversity?
Establishing that your students’ voices matter
- How can you encourage and support students to “use their voice”? How can you recognise and value this?
- Can you create opportunities for students to choose what and how they want to learn?
- Can you create opportunities for students to choose how and when they will be assessed?
Establishing that your students’ contributions matter
- Can you create multiple opportunities for students to learn with their peers and to work towards common outputs?
- How can you support students to work effectively and respectfully together?
- How can you recognise and value peer support?
Celine Caquineau is a senior lecturer at the Deanery of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. This resource originally appeared on the University of Edinburgh’s Teaching Matters blog.
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