Building staff capacity through initiatives promoting successful student progression and achievement – Sarah Parkes & Helen Cousins

This was a presentation about the development of a one stop shop approach for students with problems focused around widening participation initially. This project was also about building staff capacity to support students. There had been issues around patchy student progression and completion.

The project wanted to focus on developing changed induction process and so staff were interviewed from one particular module and some focus groups, There was also a review of assessment feedback given to students and focus groups with students about feedback. The analysis was undertaken using both thematic analysis and discourse analysis. The findings were that there was a wide range induction strategies used but themes that should be included are: study skills, engendering a sense of belonging, expectations and new ways of learning, future career/life plans and the information given to students in what format.

The research then led to some workshops for developing induction activities and in these the difference in views between students and staff were clear. For example staff did not think students needed referencing however students said because the clear focus on plagiarism and avoiding this they did need referencing.

Some of the further findings were that whilst first years do need help for transition sometimes this was too much and students were made dependent. Third years also gained a lot of attention because it was their last year and the NSS etc. What was found was that second years in all this now tend to be missed and often have a dip in the second year and do need support too.

There are many frameworks to support students in Universities such as personal tutoring but these are now in need of review and may not be fit for purpose and often they focus on the quality processes and not what is needed.