{"id":6927,"date":"2016-05-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/why-student-voice-means-more-than-choice\/"},"modified":"2020-02-27T14:45:43","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T19:45:43","slug":"why-student-voice-means-more-than-choice","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/why-student-voice-means-more-than-choice\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Student Voice Means More Than Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-13433\" src=\"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/megaphone-157874_640-300x212-300x212.png\" alt=\"megaphone-157874_640\" width=\"250\" height=\"177\" \/><em>This post originally appeared at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edsurge.com\/news\/2016-04-07-why-student-voice-means-more-than-choice\" target=\"_blank\">EdSurge<\/a> on April 7, 2016.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Back in high school, I always dreamt about the freedom that college life would bring. I would make my own decisions, 24\/7. Sure enough, when I got to college, I was free\u2014free to choose my major, how I spent my time and how I wanted to live my life.<\/p>\n<p>It was as thrilling as I had imagined, yet I felt suppressed. I ran into the same problem from high school: I still didn\u2019t have any say in the choices made about my education. These decisions about my learning happened without me.<\/p>\n<p>Giving students more \u201cchoice\u201d doesn\u2019t guarantee a stronger student \u201cvoice.\u201d This second piece is about having more authentic choice\u2014choice about the things that matter.<\/p>\n<p>Students like me have the illusion of voice and choice. We have \u201cstudent leadership\u201d that is really just a popularity contest. We run \u201cstudent governments\u201d that really just plan parties. We share our \u201cstudent feedback\u201d on sites like RateMyProfessor.com that really just indicate how easy it was to get the grade.<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Student voice is about having more authentic choice\u2014choice about the things that matter.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We\u2019ve gone from high school, where we couldn\u2019t even choose when we went to the bathroom, to college, where we\u2019re expected to decide everything for ourselves, all the time. In some ways, the overabundance of choices exhausts our willpower, sapping our energy away from matters of greater significance.<\/p>\n<p>Choice is everywhere, but we\u2019re still disenfranchised when it comes to what matters most about our education and our lives. Here are a few examples:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The emphasis placed on grades creates an academic bubble: we&#8217;re judged by how we choose to live in that bubble, not by the decisions we make in the real-world.<\/li>\n<li>We don\u2019t have a say in what happens in the classroom: the professor has full control.<\/li>\n<li>We don\u2019t have any input in curricular matters: we\u2019re told the graduation requirements are what they are.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This isn\u2019t always the case, and it doesn\u2019t have to be the norm. I\u2019ve found pockets of hope and inspiration through several student-driven programs I have participated in that offer authentic agency around the things that matter.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Across the street from UVA\u2019s famous Rotunda lies a student-run experiential education organization called\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/hackcville.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">HackCville<\/a>. HackCville runs semester-long programs that include a student-designed curriculum, a personal alumni mentor in a field of your interest, hands-on projects and more. One program to emerge from HackCville is <a href=\"http:\/\/hackcville.com\/rethink\" target=\"_blank\">Rethink<\/a>, an experiential \u201cclass\u201d taught by and for students\u2014check out the syllabus <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/document\/d\/19OyTgIKgMChyE4r6lBvP2P44wRWB_5YD-ykHHEwyp2Q\/edit?usp=sharing\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/cocreateuva.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Co-create UVA<\/a> is an initiative that promotes student-faculty partnerships in teaching and learning. Co-create UVA offers paid consulting for trained students to use their experience as students to advise faculty on how to improve their teaching. For example, Co-create UVA hosted a <a href=\"https:\/\/pages.shanti.virginia.edu\/StudentFacultyPartnership\/new-faculty-orientation-lunch\/\" target=\"_blank\">student-faculty luncheon at UVA\u2019s New Faculty Orientation<\/a>, in which new faculty members directly conversed with UVA students about their experience at UVA to better understand the student perspective.<\/li>\n<li>Student-initiated innovation classes and workshops are popping up across the country through the national network of <a href=\"http:\/\/universityinnovationfellows.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">University Innovation Fellows<\/a>. Student leaders in this program have developed \u201cpop-up classes\u201d to test out new ways of teaching entrepreneurship and innovation. University Innovation Fellows at James Madison University have hosted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breezejmu.org\/news\/jmu-x-labs-offers-pop-up-courses-in-glass-blowing\/article_51ca67e8-bfec-11e5-ba01-43800c977829.html\" target=\"_blank\">pop-up classes on glass blowing, 3D printing, welding and more<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These examples place students at the center of their own learning and at the helm of their own life. That\u2019s what I see as the future of higher education.<\/p>\n<p>See also:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.competencyworks.org\/higher-education-2\/we-did-research-on-the-student-perspective-on-competency-based-education-here-is-what-we-learned\/\" target=\"_blank\">We Did Research on the Student Perspective on Competency-Based Education. Here is What We Learned<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.competencyworks.org\/k-12-higher-education\/student-agency-is-not-something-you-give-or-take\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8216;Student Agency&#8217; is Not Something You Give or Take<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.competencyworks.org\/resources\/learner-agency-the-missing-link\/\" target=\"_blank\">Learner Agency: The Missing Link<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Keaton Wadzinski (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Kwadzki\">@Kwadzki<\/a>) is a third year at the University of Virginia studying Youth and Social Innovation with a minor in Social Entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","mapsvg_location":""},"legacy_category":[414],"issue":[368,399],"location":[],"class_list":["post-6927","cw_post","type-cw_post","status-publish","hentry","legacy_category-higher-education","issue-issues-in-practice","issue-activate-student-agency"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.1 - 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