A final visual summary

A simple summary of the main barriers which prevent people from inclusively co-designing change with students.

In the final post about our RAISE conference workshop, we wanted to share a simple summary of the barriers contained in our previous post: https://designwithstudents.substack.com/p/raise-conference-workshop-write-up.

Please feel free to share this with your colleagues to explore the barriers that exist within your institution.

Alt text: a hand drawn sketch containing the barriers listed in our previous post and summarised here as follows.

Barrier 1: Not enough time, money or people

Examples of this barrier include: 

• Staff do not have enough time to design with students in this way. 

• Students do not have enough time or interest to participate in change. 

• Staff lack funding to enable them to work in this way. 

• There is not enough staff capacity (they lack the resources) to invest in co-design. 

Barrier 2: Institutional working practices

Examples of this barrier include: 

• Poor communication within and between teams or departments 

• Administrative processes which prevent co-design, coupled with a lack of senior support for this activity. 

• Power imbalance between staff and students, university and students, reinforced by hierarchical environments. 

Barrier 3: Institutional mindsets

Examples of this barrier include: 

• A cynical attitude amongst staff towards co-design. Will anything actually be done with the outputs? 

• Resistance to change and new ideas. 

Barrier 4: Awareness and understanding

Examples of this barrier: 

• Staff lack awareness of, and understanding about, what co-design is and how to do it. 

Barrier 5: Including students

Examples of this barrier: 

• It can be difficult to connect with and engage students (particularly those who may be excluded or disengaged) 

• Students having the confidence and being supported to participate. 

• Not enabling students to participate in ways which meet their needs (e.g., only offering one way to engage) 

What next?

This marks the end of our series of posts aimed at writing up and sharing what we learnt at RAISE 2023. However, we have plans to continue exploring how universities might take a collaborative and inclusive approach to designing change with students.

As always, we’d love to hear what you think. Please let us know what we have missed, what you’d like to hear more of and what we can explore in future posts.