Posts Tagged ‘Hard to Reach Students’

Engaging Commuter Students

For many young people in the UK, moving away from home to go to university is something of a rite of passage. The belief that university involves moving away is so ingrained in our culture that only 20 per cent of full-time students in the UK live with their parents during the course, a far smaller proportion than the majority of countries in continental Europe. It’s easy, therefore, for those working in higher education institutions to assume that moving away from home is the default, and indeed the preferred option in order to get the most from university. Consequently, the need to adapt activity to meet the needs of such students may be overlooked.

One of the primary issues is time. For those who do not move away to go into higher education – including a further 16 per cent of (mainly mature) students who live in their own home – attending higher education may involve commuting in from some distance, reducing the time spent on campus and making engagement more difficult.

Students who commute are much more likely to be from poorer backgrounds and to define as BME than the general student population. There are a number of reasons for this: cultural attitudes play a part, as do financial considerations, whether the desire to reduce overall expenditure or to maintain a part-time employment opportunity. Many such students will have caring responsibilities, whether for children or for disabled adults. All of these create barriers to engaging either in learning beyond the classroom or in other activities such as clubs and societies or volunteering. In turn, this may reduce the sense of ‘belonging’ to the institution that is increasingly recognised as being a major factor in retention.

Of course, students do not have to commute to face time pressures, but factoring in living situations may be useful in planning certain activities. For example, if classes generally finish at 5pm, putting on employability workshops at 7.30pm might be too long a wait for a commuter student. Similarly, welcome week activity can often start from the position the student must have just moved out of home – modifying some messages to account for commuter students, rather than putting on completely separate events, would be an easy way to include them in these events.

Some institutions and SUs are working to better include their commuter students. Kingston University, for example, has been working to better involve commuter students in university life. Manchester SU has set up a student society for those living at home to help them buddy up on transport and to run specific events. Sheffield University also has a network of ‘local’ students with events and information.

As these interesting projects show, there is no one single way of addressing these students’ needs. It’s true that some commuter students will desire the ‘normative’ student experience, and will regret not being able to participate as fully as they would like and adjusting to their needs will help. Others will view higher education in more utilitarian terms; for them, attending classes to gain a qualification, often with a specific career in mind, will be the key driver and they will not be as interested in engaging beyond this. Consequently, the approaches will need to be flexible and must acknowledge that such students are not homogenous. Even so, universities and colleges don’t always do everything they can, and this needs to change.

David Malcolm

Assistant Director at the National Union of Students


NB: If you are interested in learning more about these students, NUS has published an extensive research report in 2015, Reaching Home. Building on this, we are currently working to develop further research into good practice for commuter students for publication later this year.

Commuter Student Engagement

This year we will be working with Liz Thomas Associates to explore student engagement in the context of commuter students. This work recognises that ‘commuter students’, who live away from the university or college and travel to attend, may experience challenges to their engagement beyond the classroom.

This research will highlight how these issues are experienced by students and institutions, and identify changes that can be made to improve engagement and student outcomes.

We are using a broad understanding of commuter students, including any undergraduate or postgraduate students who travel to their higher education provider from their parental or family home (which they lived in prior to entering higher education) rather than having re-located to live in student accommodation (or close to the HEP) for the purposes of studying.

In order to capture the full scope of the student experience we are also using a broad understanding of engagement including:

  • Academic: Engagement in their own learning.
  • Enhancement: Engagement in co-curricular and enhancement activities (including representation, curriculum design and leadership roles) which contribute to personal and professional development; and
  • Social: Engagement in formal and informal sport, social and leisure activities with HE peers.

We are looking for institutions interested in joining this project and helping to shape new thinking for the engagement of commuter students. As part of this we will appoint student-peer-researchers at your institution who will be trained and supported to interview students who commute to study.

If you are interested in being part of this research then please as soon as possible and we will provide you with further details.

The immorality of being ‘on the too difficult to do list’

It was a real surprise to us that it appears to be accepted wisdom that some students are considered to be ‘on the too difficult to do list’ in some universities. We wanted to challenge this orthodoxy. This was based on our experience of working with part-time in-work students undertaking an undergraduate leadership programme. Part of the immediate challenge arose from assumptions found in the tense triad between in-work students, their employers who perceive they ‘own their time’ and HEIs who want to ‘transform them’. This three-way tension increases the stress for all and adds to the challenges of providing meaningful learning opportunities.

With the support of HEA funding, we set out to do something about the status quo by launching our project: ‘Going beyond you said we did: exploring effective engagement for part time students’. This co-design project adapted the work of Boyd et al (2010) by recruiting students who were prepared to share their lived experiences in order to shape the curriculum. Initially, we had grand notions of a student engagement toolkit but as the project unfolded it soon became apparent that the students had quite different ideas which, over a fifteen-month period, emerged as an animation and accompanying manifesto.

So Maggie, Julie, Jenn, Lorna, Teresa, Tracy and Julia went beyond the impersonal, in becoming real characters in the animation, telling their own stories. Their stories provide clear messages to both policy makers and students (wouldn’t it be great if they were one and same?) They identified some excluding structures to their engagement which might be considered as ‘wicked issues’ – those things that feel too daunting to solve – but they felt many could be tamed. Here are some of the things they identified and what we then did collectively to address these aspects:

“They do not want to stand out as different” in practice this means informing pre-entry requirements such as providing detailed and unambiguous programme information. As an outcome, we introduced a more prolonged induction process including some very pragmatic experiences like rehearsing library access and loaning procedures.

“They identified the emotional labour of being an in-work student” in practice this means developing strategies for resilience which recognise the highs and lows of learning. As an outcome, we mapped the possible peaks and troughs in the programme, in order to plan for and then pinpoint tangible enhancements.

“They found the pacing of assessment and lack of ownership difficult” in practice this means co-creating assessments. This entitles students to have direct influence over the scheduling of assessment, engagement in peer-review, and in negotiating more personalised assessment for learning. As an outcome, the whole assessment process was revisited to incorporate more realistic hand-in dates and the addition of peer-led assessment workshops.

“They wanted to hear positive but realistic messages from other students which help to manage expectations” in practice this means ensuring that voices are heard in order to challenge the rhetoric that some voices are difficult to hear and in some way ‘wickedly’ different? As an outcome, collectively we have produced an animation and manifesto aiming to raise awareness that many of these issues can be tamed, so acting as conduits for structural change.

“They found their own way to engage” in practice, this means challenging assumptions about valid ways to engage. As an outcome, we recognised that their identified methods of engaging were effective for them, for example using Facebook as their preferred Virtual Learning Environment rather than the university’s official platform.

Our intention is that these outputs do not become quaint artefacts. We challenge you to consider their messages and reject the notion that being ‘on the too difficult to do list’ is a plausible excuse. We suggest that the points raised here are all about inclusivity not marginalisation.


Stella Jones-Devitt and Ann-Marie Steele, Sheffield Hallam University

New Event: leading inclusive HE communities

The Leadership Foundation, in collaboration with The Student Engagement Partnership are hosting an event for institutions and students’ unions on ‘Leading inclusive higher education communities’.

The event is part of the successful student experience network the Leadership Foundation has been running, which attracts staff in leadership roles with a focus on the student experience from Pro- Vice Chancellors, through to Directors and Heads of services. For this event were are strongly encouraging participation from officers and senior staff in students’ unions as well.

Finding ways to support engagement for the full diversity of the student body is a priority for improving retention and academic success in higher education. However, creating an environment that supports widespread participation and engagement may mean moving beyond established categories of student participation and working with students to achieve a deeper understanding of how higher education cultures enable or put up barriers to engagement. Through panel debates and interactive workshops this event will explore the challenges and approaches to leading inclusive higher education communities and consider implications for managing the student experience in a changing higher education landscape.

An important aspect of this theme is how effective partnership working between institutions and students’ unions can shape an inclusive culture in higher education and promote academic engagement. As such, we encourage delegates from institutions and their students’ unions to attend the event together and use this as an opportunity for joint reflection and discussion.

Register here to join us at this event.

Event Fee (VAT incl.)

Staff whose institutions are LFHE members: £200.00

Staff whose institutions are non-members: £250.00

Students and students’ union officers who institutions are LFHE members: £99.00

Students and students’ union officers who institutions are non-members: £129.00

Student Engagement and the REACT project

REACT is a HEFCE Catalyst-funded project designed to investigate the impact of a variety of forms of student engagement on the student experience, including retention and attainment. A special focus is on so-called ‘hard to reach’ students, creating an aim to embed Inclusive Student Engagement Opportunities at the participating institutions.

Outcomes of REACT should be of benefit to students, academics, Student Unions, academic developers and institutions as a whole. The project started at the beginning of July 2015 and runs for a period of two years bringing together a core team from the University of Winchester, the University of Exeter and London Metropolitan University. Each is from a different mission group but all are leaders in the sector for specific initiatives relating to student engagement and all three are beginning to engage with ‘hard-to-reach’ groups.

Resources and support

The purpose of REACT is to identify and share best practice to advance student engagement nationally. In-depth case studies of student engagement will allow greater understanding of what works, how and why, along with the development and sharing of open source resources highlighting strategies, tools and frameworks that will enable institutions to learn from, and with, each other. The REACT process will combine research alongside development activities in the three core institutions, with dissemination of findings being paramount in the promotion of evidence-led practices. In addition, the team will be offering a small amount of consultancy for 10 further universities, so as to promote more effective engagement on a broader national basis.

How can I keep in touch with REACT?

Keep checking REACT’s website for updates and new resources and follow REACT on Twitter @REACT_SE.

How will TSEP and REACT work together?

TSEP is a member of REACT’s Steering Group and colleagues from TSEP and REACT meet regularly to ensure we are maximising opportunities for collaboration, particularly in relation to REACT’s core aim of improving the engagement of ‘hard to reach’ students.

Calling time on ‘hard to reach’

One of the most significant challenges universities and colleges are facing in student engagement is that while some students seem fully engaged in their learning, play an active part in the life of the learning community and are always the first in the queue when new student engagement opportunities come up, for a lot of students, the reverse is the case.

While in the past we might have felt able to say that it really is the choice of the student whether or not to take part in activities, or even put in effort in their learning, for both moral and pragmatic reasons universities and colleges are becoming ever more concerned about what they can do to enable students to engage.

The pragmatics are clear: a higher education model in which fee-paying students are subsidised by the public tends to focus attention on the value that education is providing for students, employers, the economy and society. Increasingly colleges and universities will be expected to provide metrics on student outcomes and be held accountable for the results.

However, it is the moral argument that we consider persuasive; namely, that disposition or capacity to engage is not sufficiently evenly-distributed across diverse groups of students for it to be OK to put the onus on the student.

Limited family experience of higher education or low social capital, structural or cultural experience of exclusion, or the simple fact that not all systems are geared up to meet the needs of the diversity of students, play a role. And while universities and colleges are not ultimately responsible for social inequality they do have the responsibility to take mitigating action where possible in the interests of enabling as many students as possible to progress and achieve in higher education.

A common approach to tackling these issues is to identify cohorts of students who share some common identifying feature and who also indicate patterns of lower engagement, for example, mature students, international students, distance learners, or students from a BME background. As we become more sophisticated in understanding patterns of engagement new categories emerge such as students with caring responsibilities or students who live in the familial home. Such student groups are designated ‘hard to reach’ and efforts are made to study their experiences, expectations and the barriers they face so that new interventions can be put in place to address those issues.

While this work is well-meant and often can address some basic practical barriers individual students are experiencing, interventions structured in this way can only cope with shared experience of designated student cohorts. So we assume that mature students do not engage because they are time-poor or feel excluded from social activities geared around younger students; we assume that international students face cultural barriers and we assume that students with caring responsibilities face barriers relating to access to childcare.

While these assumptions may be broadly accurate in some cases, students’ ability to reflect on the specifics of their experience is constrained by the lens we adopt. The reasons for lower levels of engagement for any individual student may be related to their identification into a particular student cohort; then again, they may not. Multiple barriers may intersect in complex ways. Some students may be more adept at overcoming or navigating the challenges than others.

So while there is value in assessing the specific barriers to engagement caused by identity, mode of study or cultural or socio-economic background we should never use the insights from this analysis to make sweeping statements about the generalised barriers faced by students even if they do happen to be part of a specific cohort who generally report that those are the kinds of barriers people like them tend to face. There is also a high risk of adopting deficit models of entire groups of students – a practice that those who work on student success, particularly issues of differential attainment, frequently warn against.

So what is the alternative? We would suggest rebalancing the focus on the particular barriers to engagement and their removal rather than the specific identity characteristics of students who may statistically be more likely to experience that particular barrier. Barriers might be practical, cultural, related to structures of inequality or may be to do with an individual student’s struggle to develop their identity as a learner.

Any student may feel culturally excluded or marginalised; any student may struggle to find the time or energy to fully engage; any student may feel that it is not clear what the value of particular forms of engagement might be for them and their individual aspirations. What is important is that the way the barrier works to exclude students is understood so that it can be overcome – knowing who is affected doesn’t always help us to solve it.

Engaging a plurality of students to identify, research, and develop interventions to address, specific barriers to engagement is almost certainly better recipe for creating an inclusive learning environment in which all students are enabled to engage than an approach that puts whole groups of students in the ‘hard to reach’ box.

 


debbie

Dr Debbie McVitty – Head of Policy, NUS

A Manifesto for Engaging In-work Students

The Manifesto provides a starting point for developing ideas that engage in-work students, defined in this context as any learner who has to negotiate the parallel process of work and higher education study. These ideas could also form a set of overarching principles to shape co-design approaches between institutions, employers and in-work students.

All of the ideas in the manifesto build on a HEA funded research project that gathered the views of part-time in-work students.

Do you know who we are? We think you should: Developing effective engagement strategies for in-work students

If you are involved in developing your engagement work with part-time in-work students then you might find the Do you know who we are? We think you should of interest. It has been co-designed with students at Sheffield Hallam University on the BA (Hons) Health and Social Care Leadership and Management course and funded by the HEA. The animation depicts the actual students who describe – in their own words and voices – their experiences of studying as part-time in-work students.

This film was written collaboratively – primarily by students with support of staff – and draws upon evidence emerging from a recent HEA-sponsored Teaching Development Grant project: Going beyond ‘you said, we did’ approaches to student engagement: developing effective co-design processes with part-time undergraduate health and social care leadership students. All of the student participants were provided with recording devices to collect the key ideas and messages that they wanted to share. These were analysed and checked by the researchers and students who then turned them into a short animation.

The key ideas and themes from this research have been used to create a manifesto for engaging in-work students.