Identities Project

Balancing students' identities as learners and consumers

Welcome

These pages contain resources that enable students to develop their identities as learners and to explore the notion that they are consumers of their education. They have been developed from research grounded in the psychology of education and social psychology to support student learning. Students can take a quiz to discover the strength of the learner and consumer identities (see 'Student profiler quiz' page), and educators can deliver a workshop (see 'For educators' page).

These materials have also been published as a formal toolkit by Advance HE - Balancing students' identities as learners and consumers. Please see the toolkit for more detailed guidance

If you have any questions or comments, or have found these resources useful, please contact the author Louise Taylor - details can be found on the 'About' page.

Testimonials

"I found this workshop very useful and engaging! Thank you for running it" (1st year UG social work student)

"It enables me to get my priorities in order. I have a lot of work to do on that one" (2nd year UG psychology student)

"It gives me insight into the way I learn, and knowing this may benefit the way I study and approach my work in the future" (1st year UG psychology student)

For Students

Are you more of a student ‘learner’ or ‘consumer’ of your higher education? The strength of your identity as a ‘learner’ or ‘consumer’ will have a strong influence on your approach to learning and academic performance.
Take the short quiz to discover your student profile. Are you a Thinker, Striver, Customer, or Undecided [see Student Profiler Quiz page]?
Read the blog explaining key findings from the research about the negative impacts of identifying as a consumer of your education [see Resources page]
Reflect on the discussion questions to consider how identities impact attitudes and approaches to university education [see Discussion Questions page]
One student who has took the quiz said: "It helps you understand yourself better, your motivations and perhaps even help explain why you do well or not that well in your course"

For Educators

This resource provides material to run a 60-90 minute workshop with students to encourage them to identify as learners and to challenge their identities as 'consumers'.
The 'For Educators' page provides detailed guidance on how educators could run the workshop, including powerpoint slides.
An evaluation of the workshop with 69 first-year students revealed that students' identites as learners significantly increased as a result of taking the workshop, and they learnt about the negative impact of being a consumer of their education.
In that evaluation, 91% of students said they would recommend the workshop to others.
One student, after taking part, said: "It was interesting to realise that there was a correlation between consumers and poor grades. This has made me re-evaluate whether my poorer grades are because I expect to be taught everything I know, rather than forcing myself to go out there and do more. So thank you for that."