BCU Meet Our Mentors EFYE Norway 2015
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•1,444 views
BCU Meet Our Mentors EFYE Norway 2015
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (19)
Similar to BCU Meet Our Mentors EFYE Norway 2015
Similar to BCU Meet Our Mentors EFYE Norway 2015 (20)
More from Kerry Gough
More from Kerry Gough (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
BCU Meet Our Mentors EFYE Norway 2015
- 3. Kerry Gough & Jamie Morris Centre for Enhancement of Learning and Teaching & School of Media Collaboration
- 4. HEA What Works: Thomas (2012) Available at: https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/
- 6. ` Engagement in the Academic Sphere “Engagement and belonging can be nurtured throughout the institution (academic, social and professional services), but the academic sphere is of primary importance to ensure all student
- 9. Birmingham City University School of Witchcraft & Wizardry
- 11. Buy-In & Excitement from CELT Team
- 16. Panic!
- 17. High Speed, High Stakes Planning
- 21. Welcome to Birmingham School of Media Congratulations on your results and welcome to the Birmingham School of Media 2014 Level Up mentoring programme Level Up is a student-led project designed to help you to settle into life within our School. Find us here: www.bcumedia.com/welcome/ Remember to keep a record of your MySRS login details (sent to the email address you registered with UCAS) as you will need these to complete your module options prior to your arrival in September Join the conversation with our student mentors, and each other, on: Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/luvbcu2014 Twitter: @luvbcumedia2014 Keep updated with our Students’ Union activities here: www.bcusu.com
- 24. Personal Tutors
- 25. Academic Pre-Entry Assessment TASK: In 500 words identify and outline an area of the media you are interested in researching and justify and explain why this is the case. You should also think about how you could go about investigating the area in a scholarly manner. You don’t have to actually undertake the investigation. This task is more about justifying why your area of the media is of current interest and creating a plan for how you may investigate it. The 500 words are about outlining your interest and how you may explore it further. This is what we do all the time in scholarship. Your idea should come from your own media interests with regard to the contemporary media (that means what is going on today).
- 36. Shared Holistic Vision for Institutional Change
- 39. Shared Pride From a Seed of Inspiration
- 40. IT STARTED WITH A PLAN…
- 41. Your Workshop Working in your table teams, consider: 1. How might you deliver an exciting induction activity by changing what you already have in place? 2. How might you develop peer mentoring & tutor support? 3. How might you build in an enhancement of shared social opportunities for students & for staff & students together? 4. How might your use existing service provision to enhance your home academic environment (or to remove the moats and crocodiles, Tinto 2015)?
- 42. Together, We Level Up!
Editor's Notes
- The notes contained throughout this slideshow represent a retrospective account of the presentation we delivered at the European First Year Experience in Norway, June 2015. This presentation represents our work conducted as a part of the Birmingham City University transition mentoring training that we have delivered as a part of our involvement with the Higher Education Academy What Works programme. Our starting-point was inspired by our students and as such, this is where we started with the planning for our delivery in student-designed and delivered transition mentoring.
- We have slightly cheated in having two opening slides, however we have two parallel messages that we wished to share, and we had a great deal of difficulty separating the two. So not only are interested in the student-designed and delivered nature of the project, but also in the interlinked way in which this assists in the development of a stringer sense of community. So building on from the student-led nature of the design and delivery of our student transition mentoring, we were not only completely bought into student informed design decisions and implementation of that transition activity, but we were also simultaneously keen to ensure that this sense of community was built and extended beyond the student-lived experience to become firmly located within the academic environment also. So there are two key reasons that we cheated and stole two introductory slides; one being that we are completely bought into shared student experiences and the HEA What Works notion of building the social into the academic environment, however we have also focused close attention upon the integration of our central service provision directly into the academic environment. This presentation outlines our approach to revolutionise our institutional approach to the completion of each of these two separate but interrelated aspects of student transition and central service provision integration.
- At the European First Year Experience in 2014 conference Stuart, Kerry and Jamie made a promise to redevelop the first year experience
- To achieve this, we built our approach around the guiding principles and findings of the Higher Education Academy What Works Student Engagement and Success report, Building Student Engagement and Belonging in Higher Education at a Time of Change: Final Report from the Student Engagement and Success Programme (Thomas, 2012). Our intervention aimed to address some of these innovations in a responsive and student-led fashion, but with the mechanism for its development centred firmly within the academic environment and the wealth of administrative and academic support at our disposal. Here we sought to recognise how engagement within the academic sphere can assist in nurturing a sense of ‘institutional belonging’ through the use of our ‘academic, social and professional services’, however recognising the claims made by the What Works report that the academic environment is the place where these interventions can perform most effectively, this is where we sought to implement them most firmly. According to Thomas (2012), ‘the academic sphere is of primary importance to ensure all students benefit’ (17). At the HEA What Works conference in York (2012) we took a team of students and began collecting ideas and harvesting all of the positive interventions that we wanted to include as a part of the development of our Level Up initiative. Here special credit is due to the delivery teams from Newman University College, with their humanised pre-entry transition activity, and Nottingham Trent University with their admirable student-led induction activities. Both of these teams’ work was built upon the principles of the first wave of What Works initiative interventions and represented an exciting divergence and creative distinction from our own offering. Here our aim was to ensure that we went for early intervention that extends beyond our students’ arrival (16), that features firmly embedded engagement in the academic environment (17), and has a built-in capacity for students and staff to contribute to that process (17). For all of this to be successfully implemented, we needed to work in close partnership with the support of our ‘institutional management and co-ordination’ teams (17). This included securing the buy-in of our central management teams, as well as our senior academic and administrative staff teams. Our aim was to keep each of these principles in mind as we developed the Level Up transition mentoring programme.
- Our starting principle was to ensure that we had buy-in from all of those parties working within the academic sphere, be that the staff, the students or our administrative teams that underpin and support these activities. Some of those were tougher cookies to crack than others. This represented a bit of a problem in some respects, as without the buy-in of some of the key players, this made it difficult to ensure that our activities were firmly embedded as a part of the taught learning environment. With persistent, and on-going efforts at application, we have now found a way to integrate our activities, even within those areas that were initially difficult to access. Developing relationships was key to our success in this area.
- This focus upon engagement within the academic sphere enables a sense of engagement and belonging that can be nurtured throughout the institution (academic, social and professional services), but the academic sphere is of primary importance to ensure all students benefit. Ultimately by building any interventions that we do as a part of that learning and teaching fabric enables that we are well positioned to have the maximum impact upon the widest variety of students. As the image shows, it is possible to engage students en masse, we need to be selective in terms of how we approach that and to ensure that we have them captivated from the offset.
- With all of these ambitions in mind, we started our adventure with the institutional backing of Birmingham City University’s Centre for Enhancement of Learning and Teaching through their supported intervention into the 2013-2015 HEA What Works programme. In this respect we had institutional buy-in from the offset and support in the form of both funding and protected time to enable us to work through the design interventions that we wished to achieve.
- While clearly we did want to have an impact upon the student experience of their time at Birmingham City University, that was not entirely altruistic in nature. We did have an ulterior motive in mind as a part of that process and this was to ensure that we made a sustainable and measurable change to our student retention for the future. However, our aim was to support both our students’ in their achievement of success whilst simultaneously working towards an institutional improvement for student retention and this cost saving.
- To do this we called on a little help from our friends. Setting up a task force of students on the ground, with involvement of student-engagement focused academic staff members, as well as some administrative and financial support from our Centre for Enhancement of Learning and Teaching. Together we formed what we have affectionately come to know as our own School of Witchcraft and Wizardry – actively looking for opportunities to ensure that our aims were not only realisable, but that we were able to come good on these promises by having the support of those who were able to make sure that our interventions worked at the operational level with the students themselves.
- To do this, first and foremost we achieved buy-in from our head of School, Albus Dumbledore (aka Prof Phil Thickett) Without his participation and agreement, we would never have been able to deliver this programme of activity. He had the capacity to smooth the way for us with our colleagues around the School, and particularly with those who were less included to see the immediate benefit and reward of our activity here. By having Senior Management buy-in, this meant that we were able to ensure that the administrative support occurred in a timely manner and that this was effective in ensuring that all of the required measures to ensure the intervention’s success were put into place and operation prior to our delivery of the intervention. With this level of buy-in, we were confident that our plans for the intervention were not only well-supported, but also that they would receive the critical stimulus necessary for the engagement of some staff members. In having a different approach to the delivery, it meant that we had to shift and amend some of the traditional delivery methods associated with our pre-induction distribution of materials, but also in our Induction Week activities. To change some of the fundamental practices of the School it was essential to include a clear and consistent voice surrounding the rationale for change and for this to be echoed by the Senior management team. Without their support and input this would not have been possible.
- However, and perhaps fundamentally, in order for us to make these changes effectively, it was of key significance that we had the on-going and consistent support of our Centre for Enhancement of Learning and Teaching. For us, this came in the form of the Director of Learning Experience (Prof Stuart Brand – who doesn’t look anything like Captain Jean-Luc Picard!) Having the conversations early with our Center for Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) team was essential for opening up the opportunities to funding, to collaboration possibilities with other Schools and Faculties and for our students to receive training and exposure to new ideas whilst working collaboratively with other faculties. This was a win, win scenario for the development of the project.
- All of the afore-mentioned ideas and initiatives were developed in direct correlation to Birmingham City University’s Strategic Plan to become a leader for student engagement. Our alignment with the plan and our desire to enable wholesale institutional ambition for change that made it possible to smooth the way for this initiative to progress. In the same way that Thomas (2012) maintains the need to ensure an alignment with broader ‘institutional management and co-ordination’, it is essential to achieve this institutional level support to achieve real institutional change. In our case the ambition and mindset for change was already there. With a solid design team in place, this not only made it possible to work beyond our immediate obstacles by making them a part of the design challenge, but this actually made for a pleasurable design intervention. Having set our initial design pledge at the European First Year Experience Conference back in Nottingham in 2014, where we had pledged to ensure that all of the unique design initiatives that we had started would would be wound up into one coherent and holistic centralised scheme, 2015 for us represented the year in which we sought to cement these working relationships through the integration of our already available service provision. With buy-in at the top and an already embedded alignment with our core institutional values, we were able to get on with the work of designing and delivering our plan
- However, we wouldn’t be being honest, in Tinto’s (2015) terms, if we didn’t give an account of our own moats and crocodiles that we had to traverse. Systems are inevitably part of the process and these are existing systems have been developed in a well-meaning and responsive manner to needs identified at some historical point in time. These existing systems would have been a part of the initial design development and solution to an original problem being presented. Our problem was that some of these didn’t work for us in the way that we needed them to, so we decided to change the system. But, situations, scenarios and circumstances change and so too should our processes be responsive to change. Particularly when this is inextricably linked to the development of services for a dramatically changing student experience. Ironically not only do we build the moats and barriers that make it difficult to break out of the retrenched patterns of behaviour that become entrenched, but so to do we put in the crocodiles to police and manage those barriers and behaviours.
- Occasionally as a part of that process, we come across a ferocious mutant that requires hand to hand combat to defeat (in this case crabs from the Bergen Fish Market in Bergen!). But in all seriousness, through careful relationship management and persuasive strategies, it is possible to know your enemies and make them part of the solution as you dismantle the road blocks and find creative ways for your design intervention to work for them. Part of our solution has been about ensuring that those who might be well placed to scupper our plans are included in the intervention. Embracing the scary opportunity for us has been very much about ensuring on-going success as a part of that process.
- With a solid design team in place, this not only made it possible to work beyond our immediate obstacles by making them a part of the design challenge, but this actually made for a pleasurable design intervention. Having set our initial design pledge at the European First Year Experience Conference back in Nottingham in 2014, where we had pledged to ensure that all of the unique design initiatives that we had started would would be wound upon into one coherent and holistic centralised scheme, 2015 for us represented the year in which we sought to cement these working relationships through the integration of our already available service provision. With buy-in at the top and an already embedded alignment with our core institutional values, we were able to get on with the work of designing and delivering our plan.
- At this point we descended into a mild panic. Returning from our ideas harvest at the HEA What Works (2012) conference in York, we had a really short window of opportunity to write the programme and develop these materials into something that was not only realisable but also accurately relatable to, and reflective of, our own student experience. Across the Easter break we lived and breathed through a frenzied daily writing and development process. Hunkered down in a teaching classroom, we spent three weeks writing and developing the content for the first run-through of what was to become the Level Up programme. In 2012, we were brimming with ideas and excited about the possibilities that extended before us. Off the back of the What Works conference we were keen to begin right away and so rather than wait and plan and develop and test, we decided to just jump straight in, to treat it as a pilot and to learn from the experience. Looking back, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
- We spent a frenetic three weeks in development, pitched for funding and recruited our full Level Up mentor team, all of which was conducted at high speed and required priority status from all team members, and with all other plans put in hold (annual leave included). By the end of June 2012, we were ready for our first run through of the Level Up transition mentoring programme. Granted a substantial amount of money to fund our pilot, we were well aware that the stakes were high and that no matter how ethically responsible it might be to put on supported transition mentoring of this kind, unless we were able to prove the value of such activity that this would be a never to be repeated exercise.
- However, we had great confidence in its value, having been written in partnership with students of the course, we were confident that their knowledge and understanding of the student experience of our course was instrumental in ensuring its success. At the early design stage, it became very clear that, although for the academic staff team, the programme was being designed as an intervention into the growing skills gap between what our students arrive with and what we need them to be able to achieve as first year students of an undergraduate degree programme, for our students arriving into Higher Education, their needs were very different. Many of the conversations at the early stage were about how we situate the ambitions of level up – was it about the social integration into life at university, or was it about academic skills acquirement? Perhaps most importantly, and also fortunately for us, the intervention ambition was wholly informed by our own students from the offset, who worked on and wrote the programme in conjunction with us. Their voice resonated loudly about the need to ensure that the social integration of students was as important, if not more important, than their academic integration. The quotation on the slide from one of our first wave of Level Up Mentors involved in the design process from the start, really sums up where we ended up in terms of the ambitions of Level Up as a transition mentoring programme. This quote was taken in 2013 and originated at the time of our review of the 2012 Level Up activity. Through research conducted by our mentors with the student recipients of the Level Up programme, it became very quickly apparent that it was the social relationship development that made the biggest difference emotionally and also that the friends that they made were the people that they turned to when they were struggling with their academic work. This became our guiding principle for the Level Up programme and has continued to be the focus of our efforts.
- We attribute the success of the programme wholly to our student-led approach to the design initiative, without this we would not have had the buy-in from the offset, nor would we be in a position to ensure that our incoming students go on to engage with the content here. Through the student-led nature of the change initiative this has also meant that there has been on-going engagement going forward with future students feeding into this process and going on to become future student changer leaders. The picture encapsulates the nature of shared working patterns with staff and students mucking in together and offers a window into the ethos of our shared design practice.
- So that’s what we tried to do. However, at the same time, we also aimed to keep in mind the home context of our incoming students and in this case we borrowed an idea from our friends in the School of Health at Birmingham City University. To invite our incoming students to join the Level Up online transition adventure not only did we send out a welcome joining pack which included a free copy of the course text book and joining instructions, but we also sent out a postcard with a very visual representation of our new students’ home on one side, but on the other…
- … there was a sneaky underhand tactic (although entirely ethical and well-intended) to ensure that not only did our incoming students know about the joining instructions for their arrival at Birmingham City University in September, but so too did their parents and guardians. This acted as an additional layer of support and reassurance that the students that we were expecting from the September were more likely have completed any necessary administrative tasks prior to their arrival in September. This has the added benefit that we faced less students that we were chasing to complete the enrolment process upon their arrival and as an indirect consequence we lost less students during the nebulous enrolment period. Historically we had suffered a discrepancy between the number of students that we were expecting to see and the number that actually arrived. In conducting this pre-registration activity we were able to close that gap down as we were able to use the registration data to contact those students who had not joined the Level Up programme or who were not participating.
- So having invited the students to join with the adventure we also produced a free-standing website which acted as the shop-front and immediately public face of the Level Up information arm. This worked in tandem with our publicly accessible Online Learning Environment Xoodle and the social learning spaces set up in Facebook and Twitter. Our primary driver here was to meet our students on their own terms and to ensure that they had access to the information that they needed in the most appropriate format that they deemed appropriate. Much of this material was already available, but was locked behind pages that required a student Logon ID and password. As these students were unable to access these materials otherwise, we moved some of this content to a public space in which they could access it. The free-standing website has become a promotional tool in its own right, advertising our available materials for student support and opportunities which enhance the student experience. In this way it serves as a useful guide for prospective students as well as new and existing students of the course. In a similar way it pooled together all of the material that they might need, but into one space, rather than dispersed across our iCity pages.
- Another benefit of creating our own site was that we were able to introduce students to staff members through the provision of short informational videos which provided further information on areas of key importance to them prior to their arrival on the course. This had a dual advantage that students were able to access information about their course much earlier than ever they had before, but also that we were able to build in some of our administrative practices earlier. In the case of the Module Options, students armed with knowledge from the videos produced by the module leaders delivering the content, were able to make much clearer choices about the pathways available to them, and as such were able to make their module option choices early. An unexpected benefit of this was the pressure relieved amongst the administrative team. This meant that timetables could be produced and released early and that the admin team were free to focus their energy on ensuring that our students were linked in to all of the main university services in a way that they had previously not had the capacity to do.
- Our personal tutors are also advertised on the site in a way that introduces new students to their tutor before they arrive. Many of the tutors also appear in other films across the site, so they will have had the opportunity to get a feel for them as human beings. This similarly went on to act as a tool for staff to advertise their specialist skills and adds to the professional presentation of the course.
- However, for us, one of the key issues that remained was to ensure the academic capability of our students. Traditionally of the students we lose, our student withdrawal exit meetings had revealed student reasons for leaving as being a result of not realising the level of academic content and expectation. As a measure to set that expectation in advance of the course starting, we included a short piece of work as a pre-entry task so that we could assess their academic ability prior to their arrival. This also aided us in assessing the ability of students before their arrival so that we could examine the extent to which we needed to provide additional support. Personal tutors would mark these pieces of work in advance of their arrival and would then give feedback on how to develop further, the lead theory team would use the overview findings to build in support and provision into the theoretical taught framework for the course while personal tutors would use this piece of work as the rationale for their first meeting with the students, giving personalised advice and offering ideas for accessing professional support services where appropriate. In addition, for those students that we had cause for concern, we would refer them on to our resident Student Success Adviser who would spend time with these students making sure that they received the support that they needed.
- In addition to the academic induction, our Level Up mentors also managed the social media aspects of our Level Up provision. As a key part of our students’ ability to integrate into the course, our Level Up mentors created and managed the social media aspects of the provision. The social element of the discussion was where many of our new students’ key concerns were raised and through our Mentor’s management of this we were able to deal with these quickly and effectively. The Facebook pages continue to be used long after our students graduate as a means of staying in touch, but our existing students continue to use it as a source of mutual support and ideas sharing. For staff, we are able to respond to our students’ needs. The real skill however lay in knowing when to intervene and when to leave them to their on discussions.
- For all of these elements to work effectively, this would not have been possible without our team of mentors. They were the trusted voice of our new generation, and were employed to be as honest about the course and their experience of it as possible. As our student life navigators, the Level Up Venture Mentors were able to share their hacks for BCU success and enable our new students get the best out of BCU and our team, having already learnt for themselves the best routes for accessing opportunities.
- Upon the students’ arrival, we felt like Avengers, as an army of student engagement warriors. In true Avengers style, we would arrange our meetings via text with ‘LUVMs Assemble, Tutorial Room 2, 1pm’. We had way too much fun!
- In response to the What Works findings and to our students’ requests, we built in a fun exploration of the city into our Twitter Treasure Hunt. Students were sent off campus to find sites of media inspiration for their future media production work.
- There were a series of prizes available across a range of subjects, including best team name, most inspiring tweet, maximus tweeticus and a number of others, which included finding a number of key media locations around the city.
- The primary motive was to provide an exciting exploration of Birmingham with new friends from their course. When our student teams began to refer to their City as ‘Brum’ and adopted it as their new home town, we knew that our mission had been successful.
- All of our activities as a part of the student transition and welcome activities culminated in a Welcome Party with both staff and students at our Students’ Union. We held a prize giving and awards ceremony for the Twitter Treasure Hunt and working in partnership with our Students’ Union we arranged food refreshments and a hot chip buffet. This was arranged immediately before the BCUSU Welcome Week Pub Quiz which then fed directly into the Aloha! Welcome Week student night. In this way we were able to cater for students who did not drink by creating a welcome arrangement that introduced then to the Students’ Union and their premises in a teatime welcoming scenario. By situating this party as a segue into some of the SU evening entertainment, we were able to link up our students’ social integration on the course, with social integration outside of the course. On a student welfare level, it also meant that we knew our students had eaten appropriately prior to the big SU led Welcome Party.
- Our aim through working with our SU was to provide a seamless and supportive link between our academic provision and our social provision as a course. We recognise that friendships and supportive networks are key to our students’ academic success and so we rearranged our Induction schedule to make time for our students to engage in our Students’ Union provision. All of these elements were built into the Level Up programme as part of a holistic whole.
- However none of this would have been possible without the participation of our student leaders as change agents in the Level Up process.
- As one of our new incoming students commented of the Level Up process… Umar is the student in the photograph surrounded by members of the academic and administrative team as they share in a jovial social event at the BCU Extra Mile Awards
- All of these distinct elements combined in the promotion of a shared holistic approach for institutional change, as is reflected not only through our commitment to the 2020 Strategic Plan, but also through the CELT publication on the subject of Student Engagement.
- For us this shared vision for institutional student engagement has become key for embedding a sense of belonging and in the case of Media we have found a solution that works for us. Never before have we had such a happy captive audience as the first welcome week lecture as we spread the news that the rest of their week would be spent exploring our university and their new student lives within the City.
- As a result of our collaborative efforts we won an Extra Mile Award as runner up for Team of the Year.
- Our shared sense of institutional pride came from a seed of inspiration back at the What Works conference, York (2012).
- It started with a plan and when we look back on the plan it is amazing to consider just how much we have achieved, particularly as we have surpassed the activities that we had originally planned.
- Oh so very civilised! Together, we Level Up!