Curriculum Enhancement Internships 2022-23

Project Leader(s)

Angela Standish, Head of Careers and Employability, and Lisa O’Farrell, Employer Engagement Officer, Student Futures 

Summary

The Green Economy, known also as the Green Sector, is one of the fastest growing areas for student and graduate outcomes. No longer just for engineers, technologists and scientists the sector is quickly realising the need for a highly skilled workforce with strong transferable skills and knowledge across all areas including future leaders, business and project managers and high calibre graduate staff. Through enhancement internships we have created a bank of resources and materials for all students to use whilst also deepening our understanding of what students want and creating three work experience opportunities for our students.

1. To create a set of diverse graduate case studies showing LJMU alumni working in the green economy from a range of degree programmes
2. A range of easily digestible materials/infographics will be created around skills in the green economy and jobs/companies in this sector.
3. To create 5 professional interviews with green industry sectors around current challenges, priorities and what the sector expects to see from new graduates entering the green economy
4. A blog/vlog series on entering Green Sector (both with vocational degree/non-vocational degrees)
5. Support to Student Futures Green Jobs Fair which will be run in partnership with JMSU Earth Day celebrations (April 22, 2023)
6. The creation of a policy/model for Student Futures Events (including promotional materials) on Sustainability

We have refined our Green Careers and Insights Fair for 23/24, widened our network across the university for sustainability conversations and would be looking to internally pay for Employability / Sustainable Champions to work with SMEs on sustainability/carbon literacy across the next year. We are developing a web page series under Green Careers and also a sustainable event policy for any exhibitors to use when attending a Student Future event.

Project Methodology

Students were hired through a competitive process of interviews however one post was held for a student who had no work or internship experience but who could clearly demonstrate passion for sustainability. This student has gained most of the internship and has learnt from the other two interns.

A Teams site was established and the outline plan of 80 hours per internship was shared during a project initiation meeting. Head of Careers and Employability met with them every 2-4 weeks as a group and also individually. Wider Student Futures team were brought in to support on individual topic areas including Careers and Employability Advisors and Consultants.

Students worked as a team throughout and divided up work allocations, they met as a team without staff and worked directly on task. Please see project outcomes for the deliverables.

Project Outcomes

Students presented their internships experience and recommendation for LJMU at The Students at the Heart conference with the linked presentation and this can be viewed on the Student Futures YouTube site.

Students created a range of infographics for use on communicating green careers and insights for other students.

Students created a student survey to capture the student voice and interest in green careers and sustainability. Students wrote up their recommendations to LJMU which included a request for more interdisciplinary courses linked to the environment and evidenced where these were embedded at other universities and asked for the same from LJMU.

Students wrote nine blogs around Careers and Employability in the Green Sector which are published on the Student Futures website (in development June 2023)

After attending a Student Futures event students created a Sustainability Event Guide for all external/internal exhibitors at future events - Student Futures Event Sustainability Statement.

Students prepared and created questions for 8 professional interviews and then conducted these and wrote these up to share with students interested in the topics and career pathways

Students had before and after appointments with careers staff and set skill goals to meet during the internship which exceeded in expectations.

Students nominated the Green Careers Team for a Student Experience Award and the team was recognised for this.

Impact and Transferability

The work of the students has been written up to be uploaded into new pages on the SF website, these will be accessible to everyone and can be linked to canvas easily. The materials resources will form part of an ever-growing library of resources. We will be sharing our Event guide with central comms and energy manager to add to the sustainability policy/goals for LJMU on advising exhibitors on events and sustainability.

On the back of running our first Green Careers and Insights Fair a number of programmes have asked to collaborate for next year and we are looking at some programme specific work. We have connected with a high range of organisations and shared contacts especially with LBS and the work Dr Ann Hindley is progressing.

Interns have undertaken Carbon Literacy Training alongside three of the Student Futures team and we are looking at the way we develop this is into Integrated Internships Framework.

Developing approaches to Education for Sustainable Development

The team have learnt more about the Sustainability for Education United Nations goals and LJMU’s commitment from the Climate Action Plan. It has opened up more conversations around a sustainable curriculum and what should be included and how work-based learning projects can work hand in hand with sustainability curriculum goals.

Next steps and future developments

Once the website pages are completed, we will share across School Directors along with the SATHC presentation and video. We will also be raising to Academic Registry the strong message of interdisciplinary opportunities based on sustainability from the student research and students wanting more sustainable masters to progress to that is more business based over climate change based.

Careers and Employability Consultants will work to embed all H.E. resources and material into programmes and share on canvas and we will continue the offer of Green/Sustainability Champions in LJMU.

We will continue to discuss Carbon Literacy role out to all students with senior leaders to ensure equity of access to this and it does not just become available for a school/programme.

Once the sustainability officer in JMSU is hired we will connect and continue our work in this area, using the student survey feedback as a guide to create an action plan.

Project Leader(s)

Dr Tahsin Opoz, School of Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology 

Summary

In this project, the investigation focused on the integration of sustainability concepts related to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into engineering education. The specific focus was on Mechanical and Marine Engineering students. The objective was to assess how effectively the current curriculum incorporates the SDGs and identify opportunities for curriculum improvement based on student feedback.

Additionally, the project aimed to determine the programmes and courses that students are most interested in pursuing for their future studies or careers, particularly at the Master's level. An online survey was designed using the Jisc Survey tool to gather student feedback. The survey results revealed that the majority of students are not familiar with most of the SDGs. However, approximately 20% of students indicated familiarity with certain SDGs, which are frequently discussed and disseminated in society, such as climate change.

Furthermore, the survey results indicated specific areas of interest among students for Master's level modules and programmes. The top choices were additive manufacturing, sustainable energy production and management, and sustainable design and manufacture, respectively.

The survey encompassed both quantitative and qualitative data, which were analysed and reported to inform future programme design and curriculum enhancements. It is important to note that this project focused on Mechanical and Marine Engineering students, and a more comprehensive study covering all engineering disciplines is planned for future work.

This study highlights the potential benefits of integrating sustainability topics into engineering curricula. It also provides valuable guidance for the development of future programmes and modules, which can equip students with the necessary skills, insights, and attitudes for the sustainable development of the future, taking into account their career interests.

Project Methodology

To achieve the project goal, the project had two main objectives: (1) enhancing the sustainability aspects of the engineering curriculum, and (2) understanding students' interest in future studies related to sustainability subjects in design and manufacturing.

The following methodology was employed during the project: (1) reviewing existing research, (2) developing survey questions, (3) conducting a pre-test survey with a small group, (4) determining the survey administration and method, and (5) analysing the survey results.

Student interns contributed to this project at every stage. They assisted in reviewing existing research to assess the current progress and challenges pertaining to sustainability education in the engineering curriculum. Their input was invaluable in selecting and creating appropriate survey questions and methods, considering their first-hand experience with the existing engineering curriculum at various levels. Additionally, they conducted a pilot study to pre-test the survey with a small group, which aided in further refining the survey questions before distributing them to all mechanical and marine engineering students.

Project Outcomes

One of the key outputs of this project is a report that presents both qualitative and quantitative analyses derived from the student survey. The focus of the survey was to gauge student perceptions and inclusiveness in order to develop an inclusive engineering curriculum that effectively incorporates sustainability in engineering education. Understanding students' interests and enthusiasm towards subjects for future study and career, and implementing this understanding in the development of new programs such as the MSc program and new modules, is a crucial outcome of this project.

Working closely with students in this project offers several advantages. By engaging with current students, the project was able to develop the most relevant and appropriate survey questions, benefiting from instant feedback during the survey development stages. Even before conducting the pre-testing of the survey, involving students in the process allowed for the incorporation of their perspectives and insights, enhancing the quality of the survey.

Impact and Transferability

The significant impact of this project will become evident during the design of new programs, modules, and MSc programs, as well as during the revalidation of the engineering curriculum. While the project primarily focuses on engineering subjects, it is important to note that sustainability is not limited to engineering disciplines alone. The project's outcomes can serve as a valuable indicator and guidance for other fields, ranging from life science to social science, to assess the extent to which sustainability is incorporated into their curricula and to evaluate students' understanding of the United Nations' SDGs.

By considering the project's output, other disciplines can gain insights into how they can address sustainability in their respective curricula. This project serves as a model for promoting sustainable education across a broad range of subjects, encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration and the adoption of sustainable practices beyond the engineering field.

Developing approaches to Education for Sustainable Development

This project was specifically designed to address the development of sustainability in engineering education, and as such, its outputs and outcomes directly contribute to the sustainable development of education. The project aimed to evaluate the awareness of current engineering students regarding the United Nations' SDGs and assess how the existing curriculum helps in improving their understanding of sustainability goals. The findings and outcomes of the project can be applied to future program development and the revalidation of engineering programs.

To validate the survey results, it is crucial to encourage participation from a wider group of participants. The survey questions can be tailored to be more inclusive and applicable to a broader range of students. It should be noted that a limitation of the current project is its focus on a specific level of mechanical engineering students, which may have resulted in low participation rates. In future projects, incentives can be provided to encourage participation, ensuring a more diverse and representative sample.

By addressing these considerations and encouraging wider participation, future projects can overcome the limitations of the current study and further contribute to sustainable education in engineering and beyond.

Next steps and future developments

The future project aims to be comprehensive and encompass various disciplines beyond engineering to analyse sustainability education in higher education. However, it is important to acknowledge that such an undertaking may require a longer time span of up to two years in order to gather a substantial number of responses and reach a sufficient number of participants.

The output of the project, including its findings and outcomes, will be disseminated through conferences. Conferences such as the "Students at the Heart" conference and international conferences would serve as suitable platforms for sharing the project's results. By presenting at these conferences, the project can effectively reach a wider audience, including educators, researchers, and policymakers, and contribute to the ongoing discourse on sustainability education in higher education.

By extending the scope of the project and disseminating its findings through reputable conferences, the future project can have a greater impact on promoting and advancing sustainability education across diverse disciplines in the higher education landscape.

Project Leader(s)

Dr Robyn Lotto, School of Nursing and Advanced Practice, Faculty of Health 

Summary

Background: The ability of nurses and allied health professionals to design, conduct, interpret, disseminate and implement the results of clinical research is fundamental to patient care (Westwood et al, 2018). The culture of nursing and allied health professionals places a large emphasis on direct patient care (van Oostveen et al, 2017), but this is often to the detriment of more academic pursuits. Yet, combining clinical and academic work through engagement with research can lead to benefits in terms of the quality, safety and efficacy of patient care (Aiken et al, 2012; Trusson et al, 2019). Early engagement in research activities as a student can normalize and demystify research and provide wider opportunities for role modelling (Felstead and Springett, 2016).

Aims:

• To explore the perceptions of undergraduate student nurses around nursing research placements
• To co-produce an “ideal” research placement that meets the needs of the students, while ensuring it offers sufficient opportunities to meet their learning outcomes.

Outcomes

Scoping review: Little evidence is available in relation to research placements.

Risks identified:

• Effective communication between the university and clinical researchers required
• Need to ensure relevance of placement is clear to the student
• Sizeability

Benefits:

• Shaping professional identity
• Highly evaluated but not for all

Empirical study:

• Perceived as a positive experience by students
• Concerns over mapping to PARE requirements
• Suggestions that there needs to be some form of screening prior to participation
• Ideas generated for practical application and draft template

Project Methodology

1. A scoping review
2. Using the results of the scoping review the students will engage with students and staff through a series of focus groups that are progressive in nature to co-produce a research placement template

The intern team was divided into two. The first team undertook a systematized scoping review of literature relating to research placements. As few articles were identified, this review was expanded to include “non-traditional” placements. This included placements such as SIM.

The second group divided to data collect:
Focus groups – three in total, with 16 students involved

Interviews – four in total – designed to capture additional perspectives (focus groups were heavily weighted towards mental health and child nurses, therefore interviews were undertaken with adult nurses to add to the data)

In addition, a series of 5 interviews were undertaken with students across the UK who had undertaken a bespoke research placement.

Finally, interviews with relevant staff were undertaken to better understand the framework in which the placements should sit.

Recruitment proved difficult, and much of the interns time was spent identifying and attempting to recruit students. Most of the data was collated by the students, although RL as team leader undertook a number of interviews due to availability.

Project Outcomes

Data analysis is ongoing.

Initial findings

• Non-traditional placements can be a source of stress to student nurses
• This largely stems from concerns around skills training – students focus heavily on getting things “signed off”
• Placement must be structured so that PARE learning outcomes are easily matched – and students can see how they can be achieved.
• Differences in responses noted between adult nurses and child/mental health nurses.
• Also reflect differences in engagement between MH and child (engaged) and adult (less engaged) students – some of the rationale between this explored.
• Facilitators and barriers discussed
• For those with experience, placements were well evaluated
• Tend to be selected students – consideration needs to be given on how this is done
• Issues around volume of students – working as a collaborative (across multiple universities) works well.

Developing approaches to Education for Sustainable Development

The interns involved have had the opportunity to engage in an active research project. They have taken away skills relating to scoping of literature, as well as recruitment and data collection.

The project itself will inform future developments in placement allocation for student nurses.

Next steps and future development

Findings from the project will be used to design and run a sustainable research placement for student nurses.

Learning from this study will provide the basis for decision-making. Considerations to the barriers and facilitators identified by staff and students will be included in the planning.

Project Leader(s)

Dr Ross MacLeod, School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science

Summary

This project developed a new strand of sustainability learning to complement existing approaches to environmental teaching across seven degree programmes run by the School of Biological and Environmental Sciences (BES). The project applied a Bio-Blitz learning approach for use at LJMU. Three Curriculum Enhancement Interns worked on developing and testing rapid biodiversity and environmental monitoring survey protocols (Bio-Blitzs), which will allow future degree students to gain practical experience assessing and tracking environmental sustainability in real world environments, represented by different greenspaces around Liverpool. The curriculum development interns mapped and collected baseline biodiversity/environmental monitoring data from 6 target greenspaces (2 more than planned) around Liverpool. Thus, providing the background data and knowledge needed to allow these greenspaces to be used as outdoor classrooms for teaching practicals, which will provide students with opportunities to gain more in-depth knowledge and practical hands-on experience of how to monitor environmental sustainability.

The intern led biodiversity and environmental condition surveys included the greenspaces at, LJMU’s Byrom Street campus, around the Student Life Building, the LJMU owned FL Calder site in south Liverpool, the IM Marsh Campus, Harthill and Calderstones Park and Princes Park and provided local data on current environmental sustainability for each site. The data will now be introduced in to current classroom module teaching and used by future final year student research projects as a baseline for tracking impacts of future changes in sustainability, as climate change, other human environmental impacts and sustainability management initiatives are implemented. The student and staff team, in collaboration with the Friends of Princes Park, also used these approaches to run the first of a planned annual series of Liverpool greenspace Bio-Blitz surveys to allow students, from across our school and the university, opportunities to participate in and build experience of environmental sustainability monitoring. The Bio-Blitz approaches developed here are now being adapted for a cross faculty collaboration with LJMU’s School of Education for teacher training and with further development they hope to produce materials to be taken into local primary schools.

Project Methodology

After initial training with staff the team. The interns participated in a series of public Bio-Blitz events in collaboration with the Friends of Princes Park, which carried out trial Bio-Blitz style biodiversity surveys of birds, bats and terrestrial mammals in Princes Park in May 2023. The three Curriculum Enhancement student interns worked together to plan, organise and deliver all the project work, supported by regular meetings with project staff to provide advice. The intern project work involved developing, testing and writing a set of standardised monitoring survey protocols using language designed to make them easily accessible to students beyond the biological and environmental sciences degrees. While at the same time collecting rigorous biodiversity and environmental monitoring data and spatial (GPS) distribution data for each of the greenspaces. Student interns were ideally placed to do this work because their own experience of their degrees and student life gave them the perfect basis for working out how to best engage other students in the Bio-Blitz learning approaches and because they were members of the student societies who will help organise and participate in the future annual Bio-Blitz events.

Project Outcomes

The project delivered the following outcomes:

1. A set of standardised biodiversity and environmental monitoring survey protocols suitable for delivering student learning in greenspaces around Liverpool. Including for hedgehogs and other small terrestrial mammals using tracking tunnels, for birds using the free, publicly available Merlin Bird Sound ID app, for bats using bat detectors for night surveys and for identification of common wildlife meadow plants and insects.
2. Baseline biodiversity and environmental monitoring data for six Liverpool urban greenspaces (LJMU Byrom Street campus, Student Life Building greenspaces, the LJMU owned FL Calder site in south Liverpool, the IM Marsh Campus, Princes Park and Harthill and Calderstones Park). This passed the initial target of collecting biodiversity data for 4 greenspace sites and has provided the baseline data to allow use of each site as outdoor classrooms for sustainability learning for modules across the 7 BES degree programmes. In addition, the data will enable more in-depth follow-on student research projects at undergraduate and masters level in future years.
3. GPS location data for creating maps of habitat and associated biodiversity for each of the six urban greenspaces. These will be used for developing sustainability mapping skills during the Animal and Ecology Field Skills modules taken by BES degree students in Level 5 and also increase opportunities for research project students to map and research changes in sustainability and environmental conditions over the longer term.
4. Delivery of student and staff lead Bio-Blitz public outreach survey events in collaboration with the Friends of Princes Park, on 3rd to 5th May 2023. The events provided environmental sustainability learning and public engagement opportunities and experience for the students and helped establish a new long-term partnership with the Friends of Princes Park.

Having students work on all these outputs was essential to the project success. By first training the student interns in the biodiversity surveys methods during the project. Then having them carry out the biodiversity and GPS data collection for outputs 2 and 3. Then giving them the chance to write up the methods in student friendly language. The project was able to produce scientifically robust biodiversity monitoring protocols for urban greenspaces that are ideal for our teaching needs across our 7 degrees in the School of Biological and Environmental Sciences and are also accessible to other university degrees and to a wider public. It has been the involvement and leadership of the student interns that has made everything the project has delivered possible.

Impact and Transferability

Together, the four main outcomes above are allowing degree teaching staff to enhance student opportunities to learn and build experience with valuable environmental sustainability skills across the seven School of Biological and Environmental Sciences degrees. This will enhance key transferable employability skill for many of our graduates, widening chances for future employment in many professional level jobs, such as environmental consultants and in conservation management roles and for going on to higher degrees. The biodiversity and environmental monitoring survey protocols, baseline data and GPS mapping will be shared by the project staff with teaching staff across BES through the individual Programme Teaching teams, which we are members of. The collated information will also be held in easily sharable format within the school to provide long term access by any other interested users across the university. There have already been requests for sharing of the biodiversity and environmental information with the Estates department to help plan campus environmental improvements and with the university’s new Green Corridor and Outdoor Classroom initiative.

In addition, we have recently used adapted versions of theses protocols and approaches to deliver (in September 2023) a trial cross faculty collaboration with LJMU’s School of Education for teacher training. We now hope to help them develop this further and help create materials that can be taken into local primary schools to enhance pupil and teacher engagement with sustainability and environmental issues.

Developing approaches to Education for Sustainable Development

Perhaps the biggest contribution this project has made to our understanding of approaches for sustainable development has been the realisation just how widely applicable Bio-Blitz approaches might be for engaging students with sustainability across the university. We knew from the start the Bio-Blitz approach would appeal to students from the Biological and Sciences degrees, but there has been much wider interest. Including from the School of Education and their student teachers, staff on the Food Studies degrees, from students across a wide variety of degrees who attended a Hedgehog Friendly Campus event (run by project team coordinator Julia Nowack in October 2023, which included the tracking tunnel approaches used in the Bio-Blitzs) and from Estates. We therefore hope to be able to develop the ideas and applicability further by working with other teams from across the university.

Next steps and future developments

• To support a School of Education led bid for a future Curriculum Enhancement Internship project to further develop and increase accessibility of biodiversity monitoring approaches for enhancing engagement with sustainability and the natural environment more widely.
• To work with LJMU’s new Green Corridor and Outdoor Classroom initiative and Estates to help develop sustainable university greenspaces for use as outdoor classrooms and welfare enhancement spaces. Especially by contributing to the sustainability planning of the redevelopment of the IM Marsh Campus.
• Support student led organisations (including the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Animal Behaviour Society, the Zoology Society and the university Hedgehog Friendly Campus group) to deliver an annual Bio-Blitz environmental engagement event each spring, based on the biodiversity and environmental survey protocols and approaches developed by the Curriculum Enhancement interns.

Project Leader(s)

Dr Sarah E. Dalrymple, Dr Timothy P Lane, Dr Jon Dick, School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science

Ólafur Ö. Pétursson, Director of Skálanes Field Station, Iceland 

Summary

Sustainable development is an interdisciplinary endeavour that requires information from a range of sources and the understanding of inter-related issues. Teaching such complex issues is best done through interactive learning and application to real world case studies.  To this end, we aimed to develop online teaching materials with the input of student interns to help shape the content into engaging and challenging resources and base these materials on the nature reserve and research station at Skálanes, Eastern Iceland.

This site is the location for a level 6 residential field trip for BSc Wildlife Conservation, BSc Geography and BSc Climate Change students (6315NATSCI Cold Environments: Process and Change). We recruited five students from these programmes to be our interns; they employed a mixture of online resources, GIS software and botanical identification publications and reports to work on specific outputs contributing to our envisaged portfolio of online teaching materials.

Outputs include GIS spatial layers mapping habitat and topographical features in QGIS, an open source package currently taught in various undergraduate and postgraduate courses; scripts in the coding language R that take online meteorological data and present analyses of key weather trends for Austurland region in visual plots; a fully revised botanical inventory that draws together records from published sources, previous attempts to build a plant species list for Skálanes and field-based data generated by LJMU students on the 6315NATSCI residential.

Some of completed materials have already been applied to teaching on the 6315NATSCI residential which recently returned from Skálanes.   We also intend to publish these online along with analytical coding scripts and we are currently pursuing collaborations with Earlham College and Southern Connecticut State University to combine vegetation mapping with drone-derived high-resolution mapping.

Project Methodology

The project was initiated with a group meeting involving LJMU staff and interns. We discussed the project aims and it was made clear that the staff did not have pre-determined methods or approaches and a constructive discussion ensued. After students and staff alike had suggested ideas for online platforms and packages to be explored, the student interns volunteered to take responsibility for particular outputs. After this point, individual interns worked with staff members to discuss their ideas and shape the teaching materials.

Project Outcomes

The teaching materials consist of the following:

• Geographical Information System (GIS) materials conveying vegetation distribution at Skálanes – completed.
• Online database of vegetation integrating photographs, diagrams and digitized herbarium records – partially complete.
• Weather station data (temperature minimum and maximum, wind speed, precipitation) for time period 2017-2022 – completed.
• Climate change projections including past, present and future spatial datasets on snow cover, precipitation and temperature – not yet undertaken although underpinning code and datasets have been sourced.
• Database of Icelandic collaborators able to give online guest lectures or be interviewed by LJMU students.

Some of completed materials have already been applied to teaching on the 6315NATSCI residential which recently returned from Skálanes. We also intend to publish these online along with analytical coding scripts and we are currently pursuing collaborations with Earlham College and Southern Connecticut State University to combine vegetation mapping with drone-derived high-resolution mapping. Some outputs are yet to be completed but they will be collated over the coming months. We have an ongoing collaboration with Ólafur Pétursson, Director at Skálanes, and will be combining our data and other materials into an online repository that will be used by our students, students at other institutions that also visit Skálanes, and even visitors and tour guides that use the site.

We benefited from student input in two main ways: i) exploring novel platforms and approaches that were different to those previously used by staff; ii) shaping teaching materials to be accessible to students that were learning new techniques and with a diverse range of learning support needs. Our discussions also enabled the staff to crystallise what aspects of data collation and presentation were going to be most relevant to different audiences i.e. students at different levels of study and in different disciplines, versus collaborators and visitors to Skálanes that will also utilise our materials.

Impact and Transferability

In addition to impacts reported above, we have strengthened links with the local Nature Research Centre which undertakes research commissioned by the Icelandic Government. They are interested in our vegetation database and spatial mapping as being complementary to their surveys of invasive species in the region and recognise the investment of the University as a tangible commitment to working in the area over the long-term.  As a result of this, our students on the 6315NATSCI residential benefited from meeting Guðrún Óskarsdóttir, an ecologist from the East Iceland Nature Research Centre who came to speak to them about invasive species. We will be working further with Guðrún and her colleagues to develop further materials on vegetation and climate change with a view to ensuring accessibility to a range of learners including audiences that are wider than the LJMU student body.

Developing approaches to Education for Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is by necessity, a complicated subject to teach, and pedagogic approaches need to be flexible and interactive in order to avoid simplifying and polarising issues. Whilst we understood this going into the project, we have come to realise that the experience of the interns is something that might in itself be good to replicate in our teaching. In other words, instead of simply using the teaching resources to aid learning, the process of thinking about how to generate and present data for different audiences is something that would be valuable to replicate in the classroom. Students would then better understand how data can be made accessible to a range of user groups in society, and comprehend the influence and responsibility they have for communicating important issues and enabling a diversity of actors to engage and participate in sustainable development.

This project is also a good case study in how education projects need not be standalone and can contribute to external impact in unanticipated ways. This is especially the case when the project addresses issues of concern in the real world, and applies research methods to problem-solving to generate meaningful outputs.

Next steps and future developments

In addition to our plans for working with partners in Iceland, we would hope to promote this work at SATH conferences in the future and adapt the teaching materials to be useful in other disciplines. Although we intended to run a teaching workshop with the input of the interns, this could not happen due to the students’ availability. Instead we hope to pursue links informally with colleagues that have an interest in education for sustainable development.

Project Leader(s)

Dr Judith Enriquez, School of Education, Faculty of Arts, Professional and Social Studies

Summary

In a fairly recent survey conducted in the University of Plymouth (Cotton, et. al., 2015), findings suggest that relative proportions of student respondents who were aware of carbon and energy initiatives were within Architecture, Marine Science and Engineering disciplines. Though high levels of awareness were found in Education, there is no strong link to their curriculum. Therefore, this project intends to investigate the level of awareness of Education students on matters related to climate change, energy consumption and carbon emission and in what ways the curriculum can enhance their awareness further and influence attitudes and behaviours towards carbon and energy literacy. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to investigate Education students’ energy literacy at LJMU. Developing carbon literacy of students is a key part of the Climate Action Strategy of LJMU, in this case thru curriculum enhancement, education and research. This awareness-oriented project engaged 3 students, 2 Level 4’s and 1 Level 5, in developing a survey instrument with closed and open questions on carbon knowledge, attitudes and behaviours or energy practices; developing a carbon-related resource that focused on Earth’s elements (for example water, air, fire and soil) and an engagement with Grow Sudley CIC, a community-based business that provides services and activities to the local community in a walled garden at Sudley Estate, Liverpool. Their work involves forest school, social and therapeutic horticulture, nature therapy and community herbalism that address climate change issues through nature relatedness.

Two interns have indicated their intention to volunteer with Grow Sudley and with enough volunteer hours they may obtain a Level 1 certification on Forest School provision. We plan to write up a paper based on our Student at the Heart conference presentation and with funding, present at a national conference in 2024 (for example SRHE or TEAN).

Reference:

Cotton, D., Miller, W., Winter, J., Bailey, I. and Sterling, S. (2015). Developing students’ energy literacy in higher education, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 16(4), pp. 456-473.

Project Methodology

Four interns were initially appointed for this project. One of them withdrew on the second week. The interns were invited to focus the scope of their engagement with each task with a particular Earth element: water; soil (forest/trees); fire; and air.

Each task and phase of the project has been clearly divided into three parts with a clear outcome for each phase. These were designed and facilitated as follows:

1. A survey has been developed based on existing surveys and had been modified to contextualise its question topics and items within Education Studies. The interns achieved this by reading and viewing resources that were provided by the project lead. We had discussions about the different issues and topics that were raised and which also attracted the student interns interests in relation to issues of education and gender inequalities.
2. The Carbon literacy resources were produced in an appreciative manner, inviting positive action and not denial and anxiety. The resources were developed into carbon awareness or ecology-based workshops or lessons. The student interns also have produced journals with their reflections as resources on how to think and act with climate and carbon-emission issues on the planet.
3. With more understanding and knowledge about carbon emissions and the wider climate change crises, we visited the Grow Sudley CIC with the invitation of its founder Lucy Dossor. We had a very positive and fruitful conversation about sustainability and education. We plan to encourage more students to volunteer with them and allow students’ knowledge about the planet and the crises it faces become an intentional action and practice of eco-justice.

Project Outcomes

The outputs of the project include:

1. Survey instrument
2. Artworks by Aine – they raise the question about eco-justice
3. Workshop or lesson plans that interns can facilitate with children, which was their chosen audience when asked in the project
4. Carbon literacy resources that can raise awareness with Education students based on issues of justice and inequalities

The outcomes of the project include:

1. Student awareness and carbon literacy through the project
2. Volunteer work with Grow Sudley
3. Conference presentation at the Student at the Heart Conference
4. Students motivated to co-author an article with project lead and to focus their future word in their Education Studies on the topics raised in the project
5. Most important of all, in a small way this project has shifted the notion that carbon emissions topics or climate change content are generally more visible and relevant to those in Architecture, Engineering or Biological Sciences. This project has already made a change on this in our School and we hope we can continue to drive action through effective pedagogy that can capture these topics in a 'not-so-science' way to shift mindsets that will lead to behavioural change.

Impact and Transferability

The outputs of the project listed above can be used or engaged with in other Social Science subjects. The resources and workshop plans the interns designed can be delivered with children in schools. They could definitely use the resources in their volunteer work at Grow Sudley and other spaces where carbon-related topics can be integrated for awareness and collective action.

Developing approaches to Education for Sustainable Development

Lessons learned:

• The interns understood the carbon and climate change issues through fashion products and industry. In fact, we recommend using fashion to raise awareness.
• Using art and nature-walks are very powerful tools to tackle planetary issues without judgment or prejudice.

Next steps and future developments

We would like to conduct the survey and report initial findings in a conference. We also agreed to write a Carbon awareness education (CARE) paper based on our Students at the Heart Conference presentation and possibly present this in a national conference (if we can obtain funding to do so).

As the project lead, I am hoping that the interns who will be in their second year this academic year would pursue a research project on what we have developed in this project. The intern, who will be in her final year, I am hoping her interest to focus her dissertation on the topics we have explored in the project will materialise this year.

Project Leader(s)

Sian Dunne and Thomas Dowd, School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment, Faculty of Engineering and Technology.

Summary

An investigative study surrounding the role of the personal tutor (PT) for degree apprenticeship (DA) students based upon the various stakeholders’ perspectives, including the apprentices, the employer, and the academic tutor of the requirements of the role and how these may differ when incorporating that of the academic liaison tutor (ALT) which has a specific role under the degree apprenticeship standard compliance.

The project focused upon identifying if apprentices on the DA, based in the School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment, required increased support and then to investigate methods of supplying it, all whilst respecting the structure of the DA. The project was set up to develop a model of support or a model that is incorporated in supporting students.

Within the DA, three-way communication between the employer, university and student are considered essential to ensuring all parties are satisfied in the objectives of the curriculum/standard and support is provided. Questionnaires were developed and distributed to ALTs, employers, and students, obtaining qualitative and quantitative data, to allow for comparability within answers, but also richness and depth to be explored with follow-up questions.

This project will help in designing an annual reflective process, of which all parties will provide their inputs and views on the apprenticeship. This will then detail the actions needed to support all parties. Additionally, this project can assist in demonstrating that ALT’s require similar support materials to PT’s, such as the Canvas Module NCTLA39 and that DA students may need further one-to-one discussion with the PT/ALT outside of the tripartite meetings.

Project Methodology

A mixed method questionnaire through closed and open-ended questions was developed through discussion and literature review by the student interns. This was then distributed to students, employers and academic staff on RICS accredited degree apprenticeship programmes within the School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment. In particular, the Chartered Surveyor Standard was used as a case study for this research. Students studying BSc Construction Management and BSc Quantity Surveying targeted for data collection. The descriptive statistics of each group and individual questions have been analysed and compared for use within the discussion. Pie charts were utilised to illustrate qualitative results.

Project Outcomes

The project proposal identified the following project outcomes:

• To understand the DA student perception of the current personal tutoring model.
• To analyse any differences between the perception of DA students and that of traditional full-time students on the function of the personal tutor.
• To understand the DA student perception of the academic liaison tutor (ALT).
• To understand the academic staff perspective on the current personal tutoring model.
• To understand the academic staff perspective on the role of the ALT.
• To understand the employer’s perspective on the role of the ALT.
• To determine the gaps or overlaps between the roles.
• To propose a model of ‘academic advising’ which is suitable for the DA student cohort.

Key findings from the research questionnaires suggested that apprentices valued the tripartite meetings but would welcome more opportunities to meet with the ALT. This would support them in becoming more familiar with each other but also in developing a sense of identity and belonging with the institution. Findings also indicated that more could be done to develop a shared understanding between the employer, apprentice and tutor of the purpose of the meetings and how each could contribute. Based on the findings, the student interns made the following recommendations:

1. To properly assess the perceptions of the DA stakeholders (student/ALT/employer) around the DA process, it is suggested that an adapted Lewin (1948) action-reflection cycle should be implemented, to be conducted annually to assess which areas of the DA need to be improved to sustain and benefit student wellbeing (See Figure 1).
2. Create a support page on the PT Canvas Module to benefit specifically degree apprentices.
3. Give an annual questionnaire to employers to improve upon the tripartite connection and mentorship.
4. Make time for the DA student outside of the tripartite meetings.

Findings are also being shared with relevant DA networks within LJMU to identify if there are common issues and good practice that can be adopted.

Figure 1: A proposed annual cycle of reflection upon the ALT system.

Developing approaches to Education for Wellbeing

The sense of support being provided to a group has a significant impact on whether they feel they belong or feel connected to that environment i.e., workplace or university. Result from the questionnaire highlighted that the current support process is not necessarily giving the DA students a sense of cohort identity and sense of belonging required for general wellbeing.

Perhaps further considerations towards DA cohort identity and use of the review and reflection cycle could improve this.

Next steps and future developments

Future work on this project may be required as follows:

1. An assessment of whether the proposed reflective cycle/annual monitoring can be properly integrated into the wider institutional degree apprenticeship process and developed in a generic way across the institution to provide 360-degree feedback from each party (Student/Employer/Academic).
2. Designing a suitable annual questionnaire that could be distributed to each tripartite member which allows reflection on the apprenticeship review process and will generate meaningful data to validate the support and monitoring processes put into place for the DA. This may also assist in providing data for future ESFA or OFSTED inspections.
3. Provide a policy and targeted resources/structure for academic staff conducting the role of the ALT, which encapsulates the institutions responsibilities for compliance with the apprenticeship standard/ESFA/Ofsted together with ensuring the wellbeing of the student.

Project Leader(s)

Dr. Olivia Saunders, School of Humanities and Social Science, Faculty of Arts, Professional and Social Studies.

Summary

The project aimed to gain a deeper understanding of how neurodivergent students experience transitions, both into and during university. This includes transitioning from school, college, or work into Level 4; how students transition between semesters; and how they transition between levels, when there is a substantial ‘step up’ required in academic and social terms. A particular focus was on first-year transitions, given the importance of the first semester (including induction week) in creating an immediate sense of cohort identity and student belonging. The aim of this project was to produce a set of resources and to design a range of activities – for both staff and students – that would support neurodivergent students transition into, and through, university. Given the variety of individual neurodivergent experiences, such resources would, in turn, ultimately benefit all students on the course.

Interns undertook extensive research, including surveying current students and staff, drawing on academic literature, and analysing current offerings by universities across the UK. Outputs produced by the interns included two guidebooks: one for new students that will be given out during induction week (to support their transition into university) and one for staff (with information and guidance about how best to support students throughout university, with particular attention to a range of neurological and mental health conditions). The interns’ research also enabled the Project Leader to design a two-day residential pre-induction transition event. This event was successfully held for the first time in early September 2023. It enabled students with disabilities to spend two days on campus, before the start of term, to orientate themselves in a quieter environment, meet staff and students, and to gain an insight into university life. These resources will, it is hoped, become a permanent feature of the course’s support provision.

Project Methodology

The student interns were given a clear set of tasks by the Project Leader, all of which were completed:

• To design a survey for all students on the history programme, to understand students’ perspectives on how they have been supported to transition to university, as well as to transition between successive levels of their degree programme. This survey focused, in particular, on Level 4 induction week, the first few weeks of the semester, as well as transitions between semesters and between levels.
• To compile a literature review on supporting neurodivergent students whilst at university. This was broadened to include students with mental health conditions.
• To undertake research on other universities’ provision of support for neurodivergent students.
• To develop a range of resources for staff and students to support knowledge and understanding of neurodiversity.

Project Outcomes

• A guidebook designed by the interns for new students, to support the transition into university life. This guidebook will be given out to all new Level 4 students in induction week. Designed specifically with neurodivergent students in mind, it will benefit the entire student cohort.
• A guidebook designed by the interns for staff, to provide information and guidance about a range of neurological and mental health conditions.
• An annotated bibliography on the academic literature on supporting students with disabilities at university.
• A pre-induction transition event (August/September) for incoming Level 3 and Level 4 students with disabilities.

All students working on the project were either neurodivergent or had a mental health condition. They brought their own lived experienced to the project, which helped inform decision-making and steer the project’s direction. They were all passionate about the project, and its value to current and future students.

Impact and Transferability

The outputs of the project have already been deployed to good effect.

• Conversations/interviews between academic staff members and the interns were described by staff members as incredibly informative and staff were grateful that knowledge and experience was shared in such a way.
• The guide for staff is in the process of being finalised and will be distributed for the next academic year.
• The guide for students was given out to all Level 4 students during induction week.
• The pre-induction transition event took place in early September 2023 and was attended by students from across HSS programmes (plus members of their families and friends). Student feedback gathered informally was resoundingly positive (formal evaluation was delayed but will still go ahead), and the event also received positive feedback from the professional service staff and academic staff who were involved. It is hoped that this event will be rolled out more widely with institutional support in the 2024/25 academic year.

Developing approaches to Education for Wellbeing

The project raised awareness and contributed towards increased knowledge and understanding of the academic team (beyond the project lead) about the importance of supporting students with disabilities, particularly students who are neurodivergent. The guidebook that is being finalised will be particularly useful for staff moving forward.

Everyone working directly on the project, and those staff members benefiting from its outputs, has learned a great deal and feel more equipped about how to design, develop, and deliver teaching that understand the wide-ranging needs of students with disabilities, particularly those who are neurodivergent.

The project also had a positive impact on the interns themselves, feeling more confident to articulate their needs and feeling proud of the outputs of the project that will ultimately benefit cohorts of students to come.

Next steps and future developments

The pre-induction transition event is going to be formally evaluated through SAW. With wider institutional support (financial and in terms of staffing), it is hoped that the event will be expanded more widely in the 2024/25 academic year.

The project lead, Olivia Saunders, hopes to deliver a paper at the Students at the Heart Conference in 2024.

Project Leader(s)

Dr Úna Barr - School of Justice Studies, Faculty of Arts, Professional and Social Studies
Dr Lindsey Gaston - Liverpool Business School, Faculty of Business and Law

Summary

According to LJMU’s Access and Participation Plan 2020-21 to 2024-25, internally generated data show there are attainment gaps between Northern Ireland domiciled students and the equivalent other UK LJMU population. There was a statistically significant difference in 2016-17 in attainment between the full-time, first degree Northern Ireland domiciled students and other UK domiciled students. The main aim of the project is to have a positive impact on the experiences of LJMU Northern Ireland domiciled students - both current and future students. This population is a large minority within LJMU.

We have begun to carry out photovoice research with a number of Northern Irish domiciled students. We have recruited six students to the project so far and with snowballing, we aim to increase this population, as well as following students as they progress throughout their career at LJMU. Initial findings suggest the positive impact of hybrid working and social and cultural life in Liverpool. Less positive experiences were described by students in terms of cultural misunderstandings and micro aggressions with peers in the classroom, informal conversations also drew attention to the financial implications of travelling home and receiving less of a bursary than English peers. In addition, information sessions for the project created positive environments for (Northern) Irish students to socialise with each other and discuss experiences. As we are in the initial stages of data collection, conclusions are yet to be drawn from the research.

Project Methodology

Following a pilot study, ethical approval was granted to carry out ‘photovoice’ participatory research methodology, which has and will offer a deeper understanding of the (Northern) Irish/Irish student experience at Liverpool John Moores University. (Northern) Irish students were recruited using targeted mailing led by Heads of Schools and via Canvas messaging. Information sessions initially targeted level 3 and 4 LJMU (Northern) Irish students from across the university but following low recruitment and interest from other cohorts, this was expanded to include any (Northern) Irish student at any stage of their career at LJMU.

Student participants will take photos for one month on their smartphone cameras. Participants were asked to attend one (1) information session. In this session, the participant was informed about the research project, informed of their rights as a participant and asked sign participation consent form and a photo release form. Information sessions were either one to one with the Co-PIs or in scheduled catered sessions with Co-PI and student interns. Student interns designed posters and advertised the sessions across social media and through emailing gatekeepers. In information sessions, participants were provided instructions about taking photos and submitting photos. Prompts to students were to document their sense of belonging (both academically and socially) as a (Northern) Irish student at LJMU. Students were instructed to consider what positive and negative factors have influenced your experience as (Northern) Irish student at LJMU? And how does your identity impact on your sense of belonging? There was no minimum or maximum amount of photos, but students will be asked to be prepared to talk about the photos they have taken during the one to one interview. Photos will be sent to the PI via PowerPoint and images will be password protected and saved into the PI’s OneDrive. During the information session, participants will be asked to take photos which represent their thoughts and feelings.

One to one interviews have begun to inform the second part of the research process. As interviews take place approximately one month after the induction photovoice briefing, these are only beginning to happen at the time of writing. Interviews will also allow participants to critically discuss the photographs and answer questions on how their induction experience impacts on the development of identity, their experiences of transition and sense of belonging. For data analysis, the study will employ a biographic-narrative interpretation (Wengraf, 2007) of the data, placing emphasis on investigating student narrative. We would then aim to conduct twice yearly follow-up interviews and photovoice investigations through Level 5, 6 and if possible, into postgraduate study.

Project Outcomes

As the project is still ongoing, it is difficult at the moment to pinpoint outcomes and outputs from the project although we are aiming will add to the induction and retention literature (journal articles and chapters) with a focus solely on the experiences of (Northern) Irish students studying in England who have not been represented elsewhere. Journals to be targeted for publication include the Journal of Further and Higher Education and Higher Education Pedagogies.

Having student interns work on the project has been of great benefit to the project team. Interns were proficient in producing attractive posters for the information sessions, using social media to advertise, contacting heads of schools and have broadly helped with student recruitment, a much harder task than we initially considered. We will continue to build on the participant recruitment efforts started by the student interns.

Impact and Transferability

The results of this research will illuminate the experiences of a large minority of students in LJMU, (Northern) Irish students. Recommendations which will come from the research will improve the experiences, transition period and sense of belonging felt by this cohort of students. It aims to increase retention and improve the student experience. Furthermore, outputs will be disseminated across Britain to improve the experiences of (Northern) Irish students studying at English universities and further afield more widely. The work will have particular benefit to LJMU as LJMU has one of the highest (Northern) Irish student populations in England.

It is also hoped that this project will impact other marginalised student groups. It is not yet known what resources could be made available to staff and students, but these might include a welcome event for (Northern) Irish students, cultural and political awareness training for staff and students and a review of hybrid learning and teaching.

Developing approaches to Education for Wellbeing

According to the LJMU website ‘Sustainable development is development which meets the needs of today while protecting people and planet, and which works toward a more inclusive and resilient place for future generations.’ By doing research with (Northern) Irish students, and examining the qualitative experience of being a student from (Northern) Ireland, we aim to produce a set of recommendations to improve the particular experience of this cohort. For example, this might include recommendations for cultural awareness training for staff and students, better communication and planning for hybrid learning, induction events, strategies to tackle homesickness or particular planning given to curriculum enhancement week planning. These sets of recommendations alongside the community building which is built into the project will enable a more inclusive and resilient place for future generations.

Next steps and future developments

Our commitment to advancing knowledge and contributing to the academic discourse remains steadfast, and we see several avenues for further exploration and dissemination.

We plan to submit our findings to reputable academic journals in relevant fields. By disseminating our research in peer-reviewed publications, we aim to contribute to the scholarly conversation and provide insights that can inform future research and practice.

Considering the unique circumstances of the pandemic, we are keen on conducting a comparative analysis between the outcomes of our current project and its pre-pandemic counterpart, if applicable. This comparative study will enhance our understanding of the impact of the pandemic on and help identify trends or shifts in the outcomes.

Building on our initial interviews and the consent obtained from participating students, we are exploring the possibility of a longitudinal study. This extended timeline will enable us to track developments and draw more comprehensive conclusions.

We are considering the submission of an abstract for presentation at the Students at the Heart Conference in 2024. This platform will allow us to share our findings with a broader audience, engage with fellow researchers, and receive valuable feedback that can further enrich our research.

In addition to the Students at the Heart Conference, we are exploring opportunities to present our research at other relevant conferences. These conferences provide a diverse audience and foster collaboration, allowing us to exchange ideas and stay abreast of the latest developments in our field.

Project Leader(s)

Dr Bee Hughes, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Professional and Social Studies 

Summary

Increasing attention has been paid by policymaking bodies and researchers to the experiences of LGBTQIA+ students in tertiary education. While inclusion of LGBTQIA+ students has improved overall, there remain several issues that impact this group, especially around their need ‘to feel represented – to feel their views are listened to’ (Neves and Hewitt, 2021, p33). Where this is lacking, retention becomes a concern, as they face barriers in addition to those associated with navigating the liminal space that students occupy (Field and Morgan-Klein, 2010; Meyer and Land, 2005; Land, Rattray and Vivian, 2014). LGBTQIA+ students also attend university against a background of wider cultural backlash and moral panic, often focused on – but not limited to – trans and non-binary people (see e.g. Taylor, Brim and Mahn, 2023; IPSO, 2020; Gwenffrewi, 2022).

The Queer Communities project aimed to build on the wider work undertaken at LJMU, through EDI initiatives such as Understanding Pronouns and JMSU LGBTQA+ Community and LGBTQ+ Society by developing student-led and school specific spaces for developing LGBTQIA+ community and enhancing visibility. It therefore fits well with the theme of Education for Wellbeing as it will make an intervention into the learning environment to support a specific group of students’ wellbeing and success, through the creating of community and resources that directly support their resilience and self-esteem while studying.

Project outcomes

• An open meeting for LGBTQIA+ students to feed back on their experiences in HSS;
• Email survey of staff and production of a catalogue of LGBTQIA+ curriculum content within the School;
• Posters aiming to increase visibility of LGBTQIA+ curriculum in HSS / John Foster Building, and postcards for distribution at induction and recruitment activities;
• Canvas Commons module with resources and information (under construction);
• Report for School Management Team, written by the interns.

Project Methodology

This project aimed to start from the experiences of students, giving them a sense of ownership and recognising they are experts in their own experiences. While incredibly valuable, research-based interventions have tended to focus on identifying, voicing, framing the problems of HE spaces for LGBT+ students/staff. Here, our purpose was to focus on our School and institutional context and consider how we can improve the sense of community and belonging for queer students in HSS, rather than document and dissect their difficulties. Importantly, our project was not about turning the students into research subjects, and avoiding exposing them to (re)traumatisation (see e.g. the discussion of ethical issues in Bonner-Thompson et al (2021)).

The intern recruitment process was conducted by an open call to all students in HSS, with the intention of appointing 2-4 students to work on the project. Three eligible students applied (meeting the criteria of being enrolled in programmes in the School) and all were appointed following an interview with 2 members of staff. The interns were from Level 4 Sociology (Martha), Level 6 History (Billie) and Level 7 International Relations and Politics (Steph, who is also a Media, Culture and Comms alumni), providing an interesting profile of students across HSS programmes and levels of study.

The small group enabled us to develop a sense of community within the project and hopefully a feeling of ownership and collaboration. We met regularly (c. bi-weekly) to discuss progress, ideas and make plans, with tasks allocated through this collaborative process. This is a method of collaboration the project lead has used on multiple research projects, to foster co-creation rather than replicating the vertical power structure of teacher-student. Where communications with the wider student or staff body were required, the project lead facilitated this, but the interns were responsible for writing these communications. The students were also responsible for:

• Research into the School, institutional and sectoral contexts. This includes reviewing support and resources available and exploring examples of good practice for LGBTQIA+ inclusion within tertiary education and in other sectors.
• Working with Project Lead to write to staff and students with requests for information on the queer curriculum and to develop a listening forum and guided discussion questions.
• Co-writing a report for School Leadership Team and resources including postcards and posters.
• Proposing future event ideas to increase LGBTQIA+ visibility in the School.

Finally, it was important that this project could be supported with a paid internship. Too often people from marginalised communities / with marginalised identities are expected to do what falls broadly under the umbrella of “EDI work” on top of their other work, with little to no remuneration. The granting of TLA internship funding meant that the students could be provided with financial and pastoral support and an opportunity for professional development while tackling this important issue and developing a legacy of increased LGBTQIA+ visibility for staff and students in HSS.

Project Outcomes

Hard Copy Materials

• Posters for each programme area to be displayed in rotation in the John Foster Building outlining LGBTQIA+ research and teaching within the School.
• Postcards for distribution at Induction and Recruitment events to promote each subject area’s Queer Curriculum and increase LGBTQIA+ visibility for current and prospective students. Posters and postcards to make visible our queer curriculum points.

The Director of School, Dr Alex Miles, has agreed these materials can be funded by HSS.

Live Events

• Open forum organised to get feedback from staff and students on their perceptions of LGBTQIA+ visibility in HSS – both generally and in curricula.
• Meeting with Director of School to discuss findings and the future of the project.
• Presentation at People, Politics, Communication subject area staff away day, May 2023. PPC is constituted of 3 programmes: International Relations and Politics, Sociology, and Media, Culture, Communication.
• Conference presentation at UCU’s LGBT+ Research Conference, University of Manchester May 2023 and LJMU’s Students at the Heart Conference June 2023.

Digital Materials

• Project Lead is using the findings (and previous work) to produce a module for Canvas Commons to collect and promote LGBTQIA+ resources such as pastoral care information, knowledge building activities such as a Queer Vocabulary Quiz and curriculum examples. Any member of LJMU staff will be able to import this from Commons to their own Canvas sites.
• Report for SMT, staff teams, and interested students which will also be published on the Canvas module.
• Recording of conference presentation at UCU LGBT+ Research Conference to be made available online and written version of paper published via UCU Equality Unit (forthcoming).

Student Contribution

Having students work with me on this project has been invaluable. As noted above, they are the experts in their own experience. While I share some of their experiences as an LGBTQIA+ person, my professional position means I have a fundamentally different perspective on what it is like to be a queer student in Liverpool in 2023.

This is a city which has a clear public acceptance of LGBTQIA+ people, from institutional buy-in to LGBT+ “culture”, for example: LCR Pride, museum exhibitions such as Museum of Liverpool’s ‘April Ashley: Portrait of a Lady’, the ‘Pride Quarter’, arts funding for events like Homotopia Festival, the universities engaging with LGBTQIA+ calendar events, hosting Eurovision, and so on. The city has a legacy of queer icons such as Paul O’Grady/Lily Savage, April Ashley, Brian Epstein, The Vivienne and queer community spaces and organisations such as Comics Youth CIC, Lovelocks Coffee Shop, LGBT+ Socialists, Reclaim Pride, Trans Pride. However, the city has also seen increased levels of hate crime year-on-year since at least 2018, with violent attacks on LGBTQIA+ people being reported in the local and national news. We also saw the vandalism of public artworks in 2021 including Rosa Kusabbi’s Hate Has No Place in Liverpool, and the smashing of the window at FACT where Ben Youdan’s work Queer with No Fear was on display. We have also seen increased national and international news coverage of LGBTQIA+ related stories – largely relating to trans people - (see e.g. IPSO, 2020). This coverage is usually negative, including attacks on LGBT+ charity Stonewall in national newspapers like The Guardian (Gwenffrewi, 2022).

Undertaking the project alongside students meant we needed to reflect carefully on this context, and better appreciate the additional stress, distress and precariousness our queer students may experience. The project lead’s motivation for this project also stemmed from an experience with a potential university student, who approached them after they spoke at a Pride event in 2022 – the student asked: ‘I’m going to X university in September… is it safe for me there?’. Reflecting on this context also underscored the importance of queer visibility and queer role models within the university for LGBTQIA+ students and applicants for creating a safe and inclusive environment from their first encounter with HE, that we cannot take for granted exists in wider society.

In the institutional context, we must understand that the wider local environment impacts on us within the University – we are part of the city, and the good and the bad impact on our staff and students. Therefore, it is important we acknowledge that for current and future students, there may be some trepidation about attending university – even in a city as historically accepting as Liverpool. This adds to a wider sense of precarity that LGBTQIA+ people can experience, particularly as ‘queers have been failed in institutional life, including via unemployment, impermanence, and misrecognition, and their experiences of precarity and plural and intersectional, extending in and out of the university (Taylor, Brim and Mahn, 2023, p.1). Both being LGBTQIA+ and being a student can be seen as occupying liminal identities – sometimes accepted, other times under threat, and often on the margins or seen as in between more normative (e.g. straight, cis) or apparently stableiategories (e.g. child/working adult). Many have pointed out that education and learning itself as liminal space and experience (Meyer and Land, 2005; Field and Morgan-Klein, 2010; Land, Rattray and Vivian, 2014).

The students’ input was invaluable to this project, as it enabled us to see the work the university does through their eyes, and they could point to several issues that were not clear to me, as a member of staff who has been involved in the EDI initiatives of the university. The students identified a range of good and poor practice at three different levels, which fed into our outputs and future activities.

School specific issues:

• (Lack of) all gender toilets in John Foster Building (where HSS is based) and toilet signage still gendered.
• Characterised staff overall as generally sensitive to LGBTQIA+ issues, but amenities generally bad.
• Perceived limited queer visibility among staff – “only you” [me] who they could identify within the School.
• Perceived lack of LGBTQIA+ content in their courses (varied).
• Lack of visibility is social spaces or extra-curricular events.

  These issues were characterised as the interns as limiting their sense of belonging as LGBTQIA+ students within HSS.

University-wide issues:

• They found general resources, but limited student-specific resources on the university website.
• Hate crime reporting facility (JMSU) is useful, but not joined up clearly and intuitively with wider support.
• Support available focused on mental (ill)health, rather than community building, visibility and belonging.
• Limited perceived relevance of student societies.
• Limited (but welcomed) social media posts from JMSU and LJMU on LGBTQIA+ topics.

These issues could be characterised as representing a somewhat top-down approach to LGBTQIA+ inclusion and support. There exist some very useful resources, e.g. EDI Canvas site and pronouns explainer videos, however these were not seen as accessible and available to students. The focus on support for adverse events was welcomed, but the students would welcome more institutional focus on ‘queer joy’. Discussion with the students highlighted that it is especially important these resources feel embedded rather than top-down to avoid diversity and inclusion being perceived ‘as a way not only of marketing the university but of making the university into a marketplace’ (Ahmed, 2012, p. 53).

Sector-wide issues:

• More practical consideration of creating safe spaces for LGBTQIA+ students needed.
• There was little information available to support LGBTQIA+ students who need support leaving unsupportive homes.
• Reports and charter marks from organisations such as Stonewall welcome, but unclear how these things impact the material conditions for students within universities.

These issues highlighted by the students underscored the need for research to translate into action that is tangible to the student experience. These observations also surfaced the important link between a wider context of moral panic and homo/transphobia in the media and society and the transitional or liminal status of students. For some queer students we know they are leaving an unsafe, unsupportive, or even hostile home and able to live their lives without hiding part of their identity for the first time. LJMU has a dedicated suite of care leavers support, and perhaps a similar set of resources could be developed to support queer students.

Impact and Transferability

The main impact the project has had so far is that the profile of LGBTQIA+ ideas, curricula, and people has been raised in HSS. It has provided a space for staff and students to reflect on their interpersonal, professional, and academic knowledge of queer issues and ideas and how they are incorporated into their curricula.

The printed materials will primarily begin to have an impact around John Foster Building in September 2023 as they will be in place for Induction Week. This will ensure that LGBTQIA+ themes will be centred in the physical space of HSS for new and returning students in 2023/24. Following further discussion with Director of School, and consultation with Estates and Facilities Management (EFM), this will hopefully be enhanced with alternative bathroom signage and corridor decoration in future. The opportunity to be involved in discussions with EFM provides space to develop the university’s approach to LGBTQIA+ inclusion through its estate. This is particularly important in relation to historic buildings such as John Foster, which lacks all-gender bathroom spaces which are standard in new builds such as the Student Life Building.

These additions to the physical environment of HSS and the queer curriculum postcards will also highlight our LGBTQIA+ inclusive environment for visitors to JFB/HSS, including staff and students from other Schools/Faculties using the building, visiting academics and practitioners, and applicants and their companions. Though the poster and postcards were limited to HSS in this project, this is a model that could be taken up by other Schools and Faculties to raise the profile of LGBTQIA+ curricula and people across the University.

The live events have been key in developing the impact of the project within and outside LJMU. Presentations within HSS and PPC Subject area have opened discussions with colleagues and produced further responses to the Queer Curriculum call-out. Meeting with the Director of School was instrumental in developing space to continue the project in coming academic years. In addition to funding printed material, we will incorporate LGBTQIA+ focused activities into the forthcoming Student Voice Week activities within HSS, ensuring the visibility of queer people and ideas will continue in the School – a key issue highlighted by the interns.

Presentation at the Students at the Heart Conference enabled the project outcomes to be shared with colleagues across LJMU. The Q&A saw contributions from across different Faculties, and connections were made with staff from the Teaching and Learning Academy, Human Resources, Student Advice and Wellbeing, and Accommodation Advice. We aim to meet and discuss how to share resources and inform each other’s expertise across service areas moving forward.

Presentation and publication through the UCU LGBT+ Research Conference provided an opportunity to share the project with colleagues from across the Higher and Further Education Sectors in the UK, generating connections with researchers using a range of methods and approaches to support LGBTQIA+ students. The publication of the video and text versions of the project will provide a legacy outside LJMU, through an organisation with a strong track record of advocacy and policy development around LGBTQIA+ issues. This will hopefully enable aspects of the project to be taken up and adapted in other institutions.

The project’s Digital Materials are being developed at present, and will be adapted following discussions with TLA and EDI teams to ensure we are not duplicating work, and different resources are cross-referenced – e.g. the Personal Tutoring Guide. A module on Queer Communities and Inclusion (title TBC) is being built in my Programme’s Canvas Community site. The aim is to export this to Canvas Commons so any member of staff at LJMU can add it to their own Community or module sites. This will include:

• Welcome page/user guide.
• LJMU resources page, e.g. Personal Tutoring Guide, EDI Resources, pronouns videos.
• Liverpool (possibly LCR) resources and spaces page.
• HSS Queer Curriculum information (with suggestion that others can produce similar information for their School/Faculty).
• Queer Vocabulary Quiz.
• Report written by Queer Communities project interns.
• Recording of the Queer Communities project conference presentation.

The digital materials in production will ensure the project has use for staff and students across LJMU in the future.

Developing approaches to Education for Wellbeing

This project offered the following key findings to my understanding of LGBTQIA+ issues and Education for Wellbeing:

• Staff and student experiences and perceptions of institutional EDI work can differ greatly.
• Institutional EDI work tends to be more visible to staff than students, and we must bridge the gap between JMSU and LJMU resources and initiatives to ensure the whole university community is aware of and can access them.
• Students in HSS have limited access to information outside their own programmes, which can lead to siloed and insular perception of the School as a whole. They were particularly unaware of LGBTQIA+ content within their programme curricula at their current level of study, or across all levels of study, leading to a perceived lack of queer content and limited sense of belonging and community.
• From surveying staff in HSS, we found at least 25 modules that deal with LGBTQIA+ themes, issues and people in some way. These include individual lectures, workshops, readings, explorations of theoretical perspectives, social issues, and debates, or inclusion within wider discussions. To ensure these are visible within the curriculum in a way that supports our queer students, we need to do a better job of explicitly signposting when we are examining queer content in the classroom.
• HSS has 1 specific module – Queer Britain (History), though I’ve learned this module will not run from 2023-24 due to staffing. This is a shame, and staff expertise should be maintained in this area.
• Teaching across HSS includes LGBTQIA+ case studies across health, media, gaming, soaps, film, exhibitions, archives, festivals, demographic data, sports, gender studies, politics, Middle Eastern and American history, and literature. The rich variety of examples will be promoted through the postcard and poster projects, enhancing the visibility of LGBTQIA+ related teaching, and demonstrating HSS is a queer-inclusive space.
• It is important to facilitate informal spaces for LGBTQIA+ students alongside the formal teaching context, where students can feel listened to and take ownership of their activities. We will pilot this through Student Voice activities.
• Unfortunately, there have been limited responses to the project that are overall positive but suggest that they do not need to personally worry about engaging with LGBTQIA+ issues if they can signpost to the project outputs. This is a disappointing response that suggests EDI is not something that everyone feels they should be responsible for, and I propose to address this through staff development within the School.
• However, the project has highlighted that students are keen to see Equality and Diversity centred in our curricula and throughout our learning communities, and that we should be active and confident in developing and promoting good practice in this area.

Next steps and future developments

The next steps are to finalise the printed and digital materials listed above and distribute them as suggested. We will also:

• Meet with Director of School and EFM to discuss bathroom signage and corridor re-decorations in John Foster Building.
• Develop queer social/seminar forum for Student Voice weeks.
• Meet with TLA, Accommodation and SAW colleagues to ensure cross-referencing of resources and continue discussions.
• Complete paper for publication via UCU LGBT+ Research / Equality Unit.

Works cited

Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: racism and diversity in institutional life. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press.

Atkin, S., Barrett, C., Pavitt, C. and Thomas, S. (2006). Pride and Prejudice in Education.

Bonner‐Thompson, C., Mearns, G.W. and Hopkins, P. (2021). Transgender negotiations of precarity: Contested spaces of higher education. The Geographical Journal, 187(3), pp.227–239.

Field, J. and Morgan-Klein, N. (2010). Studenthood and identification: higher education as a liminal transitional space. In: SCUTREA: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference. 40th Annual SCUTREA Conference.

Gwenffrewi, G. (2022). The stoning of Stonewall during the new trans panic How the UK’s most popular progressive newspaper, the Guardian, aligned with the right-wing legacy media’s attempts to delegitimise the LGBT+ charity Stonewall for its advocacy of trans rights. In: LGBT+ Liberation: LGBT+ lives and issues in the context of normativities UCU Conference 2021. UK: UCU - University and Colleges Union.

Julian, V. and IPSO (2020). New research on reporting of trans issues shows 400% increase in coverage and varying perceptions on broader editorial standards. www.ipso.co.uk.

Land, R., Rattray, J. and Vivian, P. (2014). Learning in the liminal space: a semiotic approach to threshold concepts. Higher Education, 67, 199–21.

Neves, J. and Hewitt, R. (2021). Student Academic Experience Survey 2021. UK: Advance HE and Higher Education Policy Institute.

Taylor, Y., Brim, M. and Mahn, C. (2023). Queer Precarities in and out of Higher Education. Bloomsbury Publishing.

UCAS (2021). Next Steps: What is the Experience Of LGBT+ Students in Education?

Project Leader(s)

Pete Thomas, Liverpool School of Art and Design, Faculty of Arts, Professional and Social Studies 

Summary

Increasing attention has been paid by policymaking bodies and researchers to the experiences of LGBTQIA+ students in tertiary education. While inclusion of LGBTQIA+ students has improved overall, there remain several issues that impact this group, especially around their need ‘to feel represented – to feel their views are listened to’ (Neves and Hewitt, 2021, p33). Where this is lacking, retention becomes a concern, as they face barriers in addition to those associated with navigating the liminal space that students occupy (Field and Morgan-Klein, 2010; Meyer and Land, 2005; Land, Rattray and Vivian, 2014). LGBTQIA+ students also attend university against a background of wider cultural backlash and moral panic, often focused on – but not limited to – trans and non-binary people (see e.g. Taylor, Brim and Mahn, 2023; IPSO, 2020; Gwenffrewi, 2022).

The Queer Communities project aimed to build on the wider work undertaken at LJMU, through EDI initiatives such as Understanding Pronouns and JMSU LGBTQA+ Community and LGBTQ+ Society by developing student-led and school specific spaces for developing LGBTQIA+ community and enhancing visibility. It therefore fits well with the theme of Education for Wellbeing as it will make an intervention into the learning environment to support a specific group of students’ wellbeing and success, through the creating of community and resources that directly support their resilience and self-esteem while studying.

Project outcomes include:

• An open meeting for LGBTQIA+ students to feed back on their experiences in APSS
• A print workshop for LGBTQIA+ students from within LSAD
• A cinema night for LGBTQIA+ students from within LSAD
• LJMU Queer Arts Instagram account
• Student led creative Posters advertising events and increasing visibility within LSAD
• Queer Communities Suggestion box and online surveys
• Set of suggestions collected over the duration of the project

Next Steps

The project showed some successes, and it would be good to revisit it in both a wider APSS context and more specifically within LSAD. To work successfully it needs more staff time and engagement. The project would be more effective if connected to existing LJMU initiatives in this area such as LGBTIQ+ Staff Network. There is currently an overreliance on addressing these issues via the JMSU LGBTQ+ Society which don’t have the capacity to make impact within buildings, across programmes and within curricula.

Project Methodology

This project aimed to start from the experiences of students, giving them a sense of ownership and recognising they are experts in their own experiences. While incredibly valuable, research-based interventions have tended to focus on identifying, voicing, framing the problems of HE spaces for LGBT+ students/staff. Here, our purpose was to focus on our School and institutional context and consider how we can improve the sense of community and belonging for queer students in LSAD, rather than document and dissect their difficulties. Importantly, our project was not about turning the students into research subjects.

The intern recruitment process was conducted by a call to students studying on Graphic Design and Illustration (GDI) only with the intention of:

• forming a strong opportunity for an internship that reflected their (GDI) studies
• building on existing curricula around identity within the programme
• creating dialogue across levels within the programme
• creating a sustainable model by recruiting across levels

Four students applied and were interviewed by two members of staff. They all demonstrated a complimentary set of skills and approaches and expressed great interest in the project, so the four were offered placements. Two at L4, and one each at L5 and L6.

The small group enabled us to develop a sense of community within the project and hopefully a feeling of ownership and collaboration. The team met regularly with approx. bi-weekly meetings with the Project Lead and additional meetings between interns. Meetings enabled the team to discuss progress, ideas and make plans, with tasks allocated through this collaborative process. The interns directed the course of the project, the events that were organised and the communications that promoted them. They co-ordinated the collection of information via surveys, informal conversation, and suggestion box.

It was important that this project could be supported with a paid internship. Too often people from marginalised communities/with marginalised identities are expected to do what falls broadly under the umbrella of “EDI work” on top of their other work, with little to no remuneration. The granting of TLA internship funding meant that the students could be provided with financial and pastoral support and an opportunity for professional development while tackling this important issue and developing a legacy of increased LGBTQIA+ visibility for staff and students in HSS.

Whilst the project can be considered a success it was negatively impacted by some issues and there are lessons to be learned about how it should be organised if it were to be repeated or sustained.

The project was originally intended to run in parallel with a Queer Communities project in HSS. Whilst this did happen it was hard to co-ordinate between the 2 groups and some opportunities / learnings have likely been missed because of this. This was in part due to UCU strike action which also impacted the project in other ways, increasing the time pressure on interns (whose learning had been interrupted) and staff. With the project taking place in Sem 2 and in the context of strikes, end of year projects (particularly for L6) some events were less busy than they might have been if organised at the start of Sem 1.

Project Outcomes

• An open meeting for LGBTQIA+ students to feed back on their experiences in APSS
• A print workshop for LGBTQIA+ students from within LSAD
• A cinema night for LGBTQIA+ students from within LSAD
• LJMU Queer Arts Instagram account
• Student led creative Posters advertising events and increasing visibility within LSAD
• Queer Communities Suggestion box and online surveys
• Set of suggestions collected over the duration of the project to be shared
• Student skills, competencies and confidence improved
• Better visibility of LGBTQIA+ staff

Student contribution

Student contribution was absolutely at the heart of this project and benefited the project enormously, most notably in establishing the agenda for what they wanted to achieve on the project and how they wanted to approach it. They were particularly interested in developing and testing different live events as a way of creating visibility and developing culture as such these elements were prioritised. The students established their preferred methods for communication and promotion and how to navigate issues around whether to open meetings to allies or just the LGBTQIA+ community. This project was initiated in response to my having recognised first-hand the struggles that these students face, particularly are trans students. I spoke to several students prior to writing the application and they were very positive about it. Without their involvement the project couldn’t have happened.

Impact and Transferability

The main impact the project has had so far is that the profile of LGBTQIA+ ideas, curricula, and people has been raised in LSAD and across APSS. It has provided a space for staff and students to reflect on their interpersonal, professional, and academic knowledge of queer issues and ideas and how they are incorporated into their curricula.

Within LSAD Queer staff have come together for the first time and identified new opportunities to work collaboratively. Likewise, the students on the internship want to continue as the LJMU Queer Arts group and continue providing events. The broader project in HSS has several additional recommendations that should be considered in the context of LSAD.

The success of the LSAD/HSS projects suggests that a version of this project could be rolled out across all schools/faculties, and I would be interested in developing this next stage.

Developing approaches to Education for Wellbeing

How has undertaking the project contributed to the project team’s understanding and approach towards education for wellbeing?

The project has highlighted that significant issues exist within LJMU and across HE sector in supporting LGBTQIA+ students. This creates a number of issues most notably around mental health and in turn retention. Within an EDI context LGBTQIA+ student issues are poorly understood, and few metrics exist to accurately measure performance in these areas over time. While LGBTQIA+ staff are better catered for, the institution lacks a pervasive and maintained commitment to supporting and educating LGBTQIA+ students.

Working with a group of students from across the 3 levels of the programme was great in creating a sense of connection between the years and we are keen to explore this further.

What lessons have been learned that could be helpful to others working in this area?

A key learning is that such initiatives would be better started in Sem 1.

As project lead I purposefully encouraged the students to lead the project. This was good in the sense that it was very much their project and reflected their priorities rather than mine. However, organisation within the project was not as good as it might have been, and the project struggled to achieve as much as I would have liked it to. So the learnings could be that the project lead should take greater control of the project, or if the project is student led, expectations should be reduced.

Next steps and future developments

Share the suggestions collected over the duration of the project with DoS in LSAD, LGBTIQ+ Staff Network and relevant parties in APSS.

Cross-reference findings with HSS project and write up insights and opportunities for schools/faculty. Discuss opportunity to roll-out across all schools/faculties.

Identify ways to respond to the findings, identify funding to continue the work and implement new approaches.

Project Leader(s)

Dr Nicky Hirst and Ange Garden, School of Education, Faculty of Arts, Professional and Social Studies

Summary

The project built on the success of the LJMU Wellbeing Journal which was disseminated to over 20,000 new LJMU students this academic year, 2022-2023. The project included the recruitment of new interns from the faculty of APSS. This was to seek a broader perspective about the use of the journal from student perspectives.

The outcomes of this project have been varied with student driven data. The interns have worked with the programme leaders, students and the professional wellbeing team to establish who has been using the journal during 2022-23. Programme leaders who were unaware of the journal have asked for hard copies for 23-24. The ‘Book My Mind’ bibliotherapy initiative created by Student Advice and Wellbeing’s Counselling and Mental Health Team in partnership with the university’s Library Services has been established in the journal, but interns have secured more visibility with a weblink in the journal for 23-24. They also worked with Heather J Ray to ensure new links to the monthly meditations (QR codes).

The project team plan to apply for a further curriculum enhancement bid during 23-24 to gather evaluative data related to the use of the journal as a wellbeing tool.

Project Methodology

The interns conducted online surveys with programme leaders and students to establish how the journal was being used in different Schools within APSS. They presented the findings at the SATH conference 2023.

Project Outcomes

The interns were invaluable as they worked with peers to access data about the journal. They worked well as a team with different perspectives, for example, C knew about the journal and had used it during 2022-23. M and T had not received a journal from their programme leaders but the conversations about the internship and the journal has resulted in wider awareness for 23-24. The edits for 23-24 are established from feedback from the interns, for example, the higher visibility of the bibliotherapy and the new links to more active meditations to offer a broader offer.

Impact and Transferability

There was immediate impact in terms of programme leader awareness and potential dissemination for 23-24. Members of the project team are in the process writing a paper for wider dissemination in a HE journal.

Developing approaches to Education for Wellbeing

The journal is part of a wider toolkit in the School of Education and we are now liaising with colleagues in Sport to establish how the wellbeing journal could be used within personal academic tutor meetings. This also aligns with the proposal for a new post in the school for a wellbeing coach. We will closely monitor these changes and feedback to the wider faculty.

Next steps and future developments

The project team would like to develop this project further and establish how the journal is being used during 2023/24 in more deformalized spaces. This will align with the idea of coaching for wellbeing which will hopefully alleviate the pressure on colleagues in SAW. This will also support staff wellbeing at a time when centralised processes are causing significant stress (Staff survey 2023).

Project Leader(s)

Dr Jan Ludvigsen, Dr Christina Hazzard, Dr Matthew Hill, School of Humanities and Social Science, Faculty of Arts, Professional and Social Science 

Summary

The project sought to examine how education wellbeing can be promoted through the development of cohort identity and ‘online’ and ‘offline’ student communities. The project was undertaken within the context of the International Relations and Politics subject (IRP). This is a relatively recent but growing undergraduate programme situated in LJMU’s vibrant School of Humanities and Social Science.

As such, this project utilised three student interns from IRP to explore the subject’s identity further, as the project aimed to (re)consider and capture students’ voices and perceptions on what cohort identity means for students on the different levels, and how it may translate into wider student community and then impact their educational wellbeing.

The project thus centred around three objectives:

• Explore what cohort identity means from students’ points of view;
• Reflect on how learning environments (digital and physical) impact students’ ideas of a subject wide community’
• Examine the links between cohort identity and educational wellbeing.

Project Methodology

The students utilised focus groups and a survey of IRP students. The student interns administered both the focus group and survey and came up with questions and analysed the feedback. To design the focus group and survey, the student interns also utilised a wide range of other secondary data, such as existing literature on student wellbeing and experience. The project leaders helped with more administrative things, such as booking rooms and providing guidance on the questions to be asked.

Project Outcomes

1. A student-led report that will work as an evidence-based foundation for (i) the department’s social events in 2023/24 and (ii) for a reflective short article on the use of student interns co-authored by student interns and staff;
2. Extended knowledge on how students perceive cohort identity;
3. Student interns have acquired transferable skills from conducting research in a real-life scenario and actively provided evidence that can inform the future decision-making within the department.

Impact and Transferability

The project has several directly transferable outcomes and we’re already putting some of these into practice. In several of the focus groups conducted by the interns, students mentioned that programme hoodies would help them feel they belonged in IRP and help visually foster a stronger sense of cohort identity. As a result, we ordered hoodies for all levels. Feedback has been positive.

Another valuable point of feedback from the focus groups, was that students would like more opportunity to socialise across year groups. As a result of this, IRP will schedule cross-year events into future academic years. They also wanted peer mentoring, and as a result we will be looking into developing a student mentoring scheme, so level 5 and level 6 students can share their experience to level 3 and 4 students.

In the focus groups, interns asked about IRP community Canvas page and suggestions included adding an FAQ section and a ‘useful links’ section, which we will do.

Developing approaches to Education for Wellbeing

The project team is aware that a sense of belonging is key to students attending classes and progressing through their studies. If they feel part of a community, they are more likely to support each other and notice and resolve absences. This contributes to their overall wellbeing during their time at university. The project has been an invaluable opportunity to get feedback from the cohort about how they feel as IRP undergraduate students and what we can do to foster a strong sense of community and collegiality among them. We have learned that as well as online resources such as a Canvas community site is valuable, but that students are also keen to take part in regular socials and events and that simple things like hoodies, can make them feel part of a community.

Next steps and future developments

We seek to present the findings from the project on an ‘in-house’ student conference at LJMU and write a reflective article on good practice in the use of student internships. We will present the findings of the student interns at the next induction week, and hopefully build on their work for future curriculum enhancement internships.

Project Leader(s)

Dr Michael Richter, School of Psychology, Faculty of Health 

Summary

Students’ wellbeing strongly depends on their academic achievements: Students who receive good marks experience higher levels of wellbeing than students with lower marks. Moreover, successfully completing academic tasks promotes students’ academic self-esteem, which makes them more resilient to adverse events and thereby protects their wellbeing. A straightforward approach to promoting student wellbeing is thus to provide students with frequent opportunities to perceive themselves as being successful on academic tasks. Unfortunately, opportunities to acquire visible indicators of academic success are relatively spares on most programmes given that students’ academic performance is only explicitly recognised in the context of the official module-related assessments. Students could use other indicators like regularly attending timetables sessions or being able to answer questions during lectures and seminars, but these opportunities lack visibility and explicit external recognition and are thus less effective.

The aim of our curriculum enhancement student internship was to increase the number of effective indicators of students’ academic success by developing a digital badge system for the BSc Psychology programme that provides explicit recognition of a wide range of student academic achievements. During the project, the following ten areas/topics where explicit recognition of academic achievements would be valuable and practically possible were identified: computer literacy, engagement, punctuality, software skills, teamwork, work experience, internships, volunteering, peer mentoring, and self-motivation. Digital badges for “experience in the field”, “data analysis”, “online communication”, and “Microsoft Office skills” were then developed and fully specified. The next steps will be to implement these badges in an IT environment, to evaluate their effectiveness in promoting student self-esteem and wellbeing, and to develop further, complementary badges.

Project Methodology

The project included the following tasks and milestones:

1. Identification of areas where badges are useful and where it is possible to assess the completion of tasks that indicate successful mastery of the skill/topic. This was done using a screening of the relevant psychology benchmark documents of the BPS and QAA as well as a survey conducted among current BSc Psychology students.
2. Selection of badges for the full development. This was done based on theoretical and practical considerations as well as on a project team survey to assess the relevance and feasibility of badges for more than forty potential badge topics.
3. Development of the badge specifications. This was done using various image creation software pages and under consideration of the limitations that our virtual learning environment sets for achievement/task completion and validation.
4. Student interns significantly contributed to all three tasks and led the surveys and development of the badges.

Project Outcomes

1. Identification of the most important areas where digital badges are valuable and feasible: computer literacy, engagement, punctuality, software skills, teamwork, work experience, internships, volunteering, peer mentoring, and self-motivation
2. Full specification of digital badges on “experience in the field”, “data analysis”, “online communication”, and “Microsoft Office skills”.

Our student interns were an invaluable help in identifying the areas where students would like to receive explicit recognition for their academic achievements and for designing badges that are attractive to a student population. Moreover, they provided important input into the specification of the tasks that need to be completed to earn the badges.

Impact and Transferability

The future impact depends on the Teaching and Learning Academy / IT team to create the IT environment that allows us to issue the badges. Once that the system is in place, we can test the effectiveness of the badges. Other programmes may than adopt our approach and will benefit from the existing structure and procedures that we have developed in the content of the project.

Developing approaches to Education for Wellbeing

One of the two main obstacles that we encountered during the project were that many skills/topics for which it would be great to have badges and where such badges would greatly promote students’ self-esteem and well-being are impossible to measure in a valid manner. The second main obstacle is a structural obstacle: Without the IT infrastructure that is required to issue digital badges, the best badge development is fruitless.

Next steps and future developments

As indicated in the preceding sections, the crucial next steps are the development of the IT infrastructure for digital badges as well as the evaluation of the impact of the badges on students’ self-esteem and wellbeing.

\Project Leader(s)

Tina Forrester, Legal and Governance Services

Dr Sarah Haynes, Liverpool Screen School, Faculty of Arts and Professional Social Studies 

Summary

This was a collaborative student focused project aimed at significantly influencing the culture of privacy and digital security wellbeing and awareness throughout Liverpool John Moores University.

The project’s intended outcomes were as follows:

1. Improve the digital wellbeing of our students by raising awareness of the value of their personal data and the negative impacts it could have on their lives if they don’t take steps to protect it.
2. Help students develop the insight, skills and attitudes necessary to practice good digital citizenship during their time at university and beyond, equipping them with digital well-being skills and cyber awareness that can sustain them and make them resilient to future challenges.
3. Create a sustainable culture on campus of safely and responsibly using digital technologies to reduce the potential for data breaches through cybercrime.

The Project centred around a campaign of short videos, produced by and directed towards our students, delivering key messages on digital security wellbeing. Students from the Business, Law and Screen schools worked on different aspects of the campaign, which was overseen by the university’s Data Protection Officer. The videos centred on scenarios deemed relevant to all students, such as phishing emails, use of public computers, and weak passwords, so that information would be pertinent and accessible to everyone on campus. The project involved the creation of a bespoke LJMU campaign mascot to be featured in the videos and any subsequent marketing tools such as posters and screensavers. The aim is that the distinctive mascot and marketing campaign will keep the subject of digital security alive on campus for years to come. Using the mascot as a baseline, the university can now easily create further resources to distribute to students each year, embedding digital wellness well within the culture of the university.

Project Methodology

The Data Protection Officer is the client for this project.

In the first semester, three Law students, as part of an internship, worked with the Data Protection Officer and the Information Security Manager to decide on several different, commonplace scenarios for students to illustrate the potential dangers of poor online security. These included leaving a university computer logged on and unattended in a public building, clicking links on phishing emails, and students using weak passwords or the same password for multiple accounts. The Law students also carried out research on student attitudes towards privacy and online security to inform our strategy and approach going forward. They remained in frequent contact with the Data Protection Officer via weekly meetings to ensure the Project was moving in the right direction and to finalise the chosen scenarios for use in the next phase of the Project.

In the second semester, students in the Business School, as part of the curriculum through the Business Clinic, further built on this research and looked at trends in cyber-attacks on universities so that the project could focus its messages on the most common problems surrounding digital wellness within LJMU. They distributed questionnaires to students to gather information on their attitudes towards privacy and online security, as well as information on which marketing techniques the students might consider most impactful. They remained in frequent contact with the Data Protection Officer via regular meetings to ensure the Project was moving in the right direction. The students were also supported on a regular basis by the Business School as part of their curriculum.

Alongside undertaking research into effective marketing techniques, as part of the Project brief, the Data Protection Officer asked the Business students to come up with ideas for a privacy and security mascot. They developed several ideas and the chosen mascot is a seagull who would be the comic ‘villain’ of the campaign. This was chosen both due to the bird’s reputation for thievery and for the connection to Liverpool’s maritime heritage. The Business students suggested utilising guerrilla marketing tactics to drive publicity and, by extension, campaign awareness by evoking surprise and intrigue among students. They further determined that it was important that the campaign be highly visible in the most popular university buildings, such as the Student Life Building, to ensure its effects will be as far-reaching as possible across the whole of the student body, rather than available only to a specific demographic of student.

To ensure collaboration throughout the Project, the Law students were invited to meetings with the Business students so that they could see how their scenario ideas were being taken forward.

The work in the earlier two semesters then informed the final section of the Project in the third semester, which was to create a video content-based solution to deliver key messages on digital privacy to students. The scenarios provided by our Law students were scripted, acted, filmed and edited by students in the Screen School, with the style and content informed by the research from the Business School on how best to deliver the messages. The videos, as well as the subsequent marketing campaign in the form of posters, leaflets and screensavers, all contained the unique LJMU privacy and security mascot.

The mascot appeared in the video content in the form of a student actor dressed in a bird costume, while the posters and screensavers for the campaign were branded with a seagull-inspired logo designed by Film Studies students from the Screen School. The idea was to create an instantly recognisable mascot to embed the campaign and, as a result, its crucial messages on digital privacy firmly in students’ minds.

The LSS student production team were invited to the meetings with the Business students to listen to their campaign ideas before embarking on their element of the project. They were also supported by the Data Protection Officer, Sarah Haynes and Paula Baines from the School via regular meetings.

The videos will be shown on screens around university buildings and released on university social media channels, including TikTok and Instagram. They will also form part of the University’s Study for Success induction module at the beginning of the next academic year and welcome materials for new students.

Project Outcomes

Cybercrime affects everyone. The significance of online security should not be understated – it’s important to our students not only when they are here with us at LJMU but also in their private and working lives.

Almost every online transaction and interaction they have involves sharing personal data. This project will enhance their digital wellbeing by raising awareness of the value of their personal data and the negative impacts it could have on their lives if they don’t take steps to protect it.

The project aims to significantly advance students’ understanding of privacy and digital security, as teaching students how to stay safe online individually helps protect the university from potential data breaches which could affect the entire student body. This means that not only does the Project make LJMU’s students resilient to the challenges of digital security, it also protects the University from data breaches which could be brought about by human error.

Because the campaign has been created for students, by students with input and guidance from university staff, it reflects a shared vision for LJMU on the importance of digital wellness and privacy. It was hugely beneficial to have students work with us on this Project because the students, as the target demographic of the digital security wellness campaign, had a greater insight into how best to communicate and engage with their fellow students and what key messages and marketing strategies would be most impactful. It was also beneficial because the campaign utilised LJMU’s social media platforms; as a major key to success on social media platforms is authenticity, it was important that the Project itself had an authentic student voice. Our students researched their own cohorts’ attitudes to cyber security and exchanged results to arrive at solutions appropriate for the diverse community of LJMU students.

One of the most beneficial outcomes of this project is that it has created long-term marketing tools which will keep the subject of digital awareness alive on the LJMU campus for years to come – benefitting our future students. Using the established privacy and security mascot as a baseline, the university can now easily create further posters, videos, leaflets, and potentially other resources to distribute to students each year, embedding digital wellness well within the culture of the university.

The project team and some of the students also delivered a presentation on the project at the Students at the Heart Conference which was very well received. It resulted in further engagement of other colleagues around the university and ideas to include in the wider roll-out of the campaign.

Impact and Transferability

The benefits of this project for our students will extend beyond their time with us at LJMU, not just in the short term but for many years to come. The campaign will raise their awareness of potential cyberthreats so that they can take steps to protect themselves online, which is valuable information they can carry forwards into their personal and professional lives. It will increase awareness of how their actions could impact on the university as a business and on any business they may work for through understanding why privacy and digital security is important

We do not want digital wellness to be something which is mentioned to students briefly upon enrolment and then never re-addressed, or tackled only via dull and uninspiring online content. Instead, as part of our continuous development of the University’s privacy and security culture, we are striving to be innovative and creative to support the wider student experience for years to come, creating a campaign which retains a permanent presence on campus.

Good digital citizenship is crucial for any organisation, and by protecting our students as individuals this Project also helps to protect the university itself. The research carried out by our Business students concluded that most cyber-attacks begin from simple human error, meaning that if students are not educated on cybersecurity it can compromise the safety and security of the entire university. The research further concluded that some of the biggest weak spots within the student body where digital security is concerned are unsecure/weak passwords, a casual approach to the use of public computers and networks, and a lack of confidence in identifying phishing scams. By focusing the campaign on these areas, it is hoped that students will absorb this information and, as a result, minimize the risk of a cyberattack affecting the rest of the student body and the university. In addition to this, provocative and comical marketing techniques, such as the implementation of a villainous privacy and security mascot, have deliberately been used to spark conversation, intrigue, and social media discussions. The idea is that as students begin discussing privacy and security as a result of these marketing tactics, inevitably it will increase staff awareness on the topic too, benefitting everybody in the wider university community.

Developing approaches to Education for Wellbeing

A lot of stress is generated for students and others through issues with privacy online and data security. By providing this education for digital wellness, in the form of video content, the project will promote good digital citizenship to the wider LJMU community and beyond. Helping students stay safe in their personal lives and employment when they graduate, as well as during their time studying at LJMU.

Our students are at the heart of the LJMU community, and we are keen to encourage them to become responsible digital citizens. As the University develops a new and innovative digital culture to support student learning and the wider student experience, this project will help all students to enjoy this culture safely, equipping them with cyber awareness to increase their digital knowledge and wellbeing, and positioning the importance of privacy as a strong social value.

The benefits of this project for our students will extend beyond their time with us at LJMU, not just in the short term but for many years to come. Our ambition is not only to support them in their academic careers but also to equip them with the tools they need to flourish in their future careers and in their personal lives, all within an increasingly digital world.

Our overall aim is to firmly embed the importance of privacy and digital security in the minds of our staff and students so that it becomes an intrinsic part of our University’s culture, as we recognise the fundamental importance of digital wellbeing in driving positive social outcomes.

Next steps and future developments

The videos, which will be shown on screens around university buildings and released on university social media channels, including TikTok and Instagram, will also form part of the University’s Study for Success induction module and welcome materials at the beginning of the next academic year.

Going forward, there are plans for the privacy and security mascot to be present at university open days and to make appearances during our annual Freshers’ Fair.

There is lots of potential to expand this even further and to engage other students in campaign ideas. We would particularly like to work with Drama students to create a flash mob including the seagull - all of this is designed to be deliberately provocative, comical, and large-scale to truly capture the attention of students and drive home the campaign’s important messages on digital privacy.

The hope is that by continuing to utilise this bespoke, mascot in the long run, the campaign’s important messages on digital privacy will be kept alive on campus for many years to come, ensuring it becomes an intrinsic part of the student culture at LJMU.

Project Leader(s)

Dr Diahann Gallard, School of Education, Faculty of Arts, Professional and Social Studies 

Summary

The Doctor of Education (EdD), a professional doctorate in education programme, at LJMU recognises the unique challenges faced by its students who often spend significant time away from the university campus while remaining dedicated to their studies. In an effort to foster a sense of community, connectedness, and overall well-being among these students, we embarked on an innovative project.

Drawing inspiration from successful care package initiatives across the university, we sought to create a tailored approach for EdD students. Our objective was to design a care package that not only met practical needs but also served as a constant reminder of their inclusion in the program and the wider community.

Crucial to the success of this endeavour was the involvement of our students in the design and execution of the project. We entrusted a student intern from the EdD program to lead this initiative, emphasising the importance of student empowerment and recognition. Through this project, we aimed to enrich the EdD curriculum by establishing a unique and creative model that fosters a sense of belonging, remembrance, and unity.

Our approach centred on actively listening to our EdD students to gain insight into their needs and preferences. The ultimate goal was to transform these insights into a tangible, meaningful product. To achieve this, the student intern collaborated with not only other students but a local artist and ceramicist and from this a ‘multifunctional vessel’ was created.  The vessel’s design incorporates a subtle reminder of time management, encouraging students to balance their commitments with a gentle but effective prompt for students to stay connected to their program in a positive and supportive manner.

This project not only resulted in a practical and aesthetically pleasing product to give to EdD students but also reinforced the sense of community and well-being for the students. Through collaboration, creativity, and a commitment to students' needs, we introduced a unique and meaningful gift to show they are remembered and valued members of our academic community.

Project Methodology

We initiated a 'for students-by-students' project to develop a care package for EdD students, recognizing the need to better understand their preferences and requirements. Sarah Finnigan, an intern, was employed to gather ideas from EdD students and utilise her background in design and technology education to shape the project.

Sarah chose to partner with Wayne Freeman, a British black ceramist artist with West African heritage, who is based at Granby workshop in Liverpool and specialises in working with earthenware and terracotta clays. His work carries deep connections to community and tribes.

Wayne uses earthenware and terracotta clays with transparent or swatches of coloured glaze. The clay's marble effect represents connotations of the 'Core of the Earth', tying in with Wayne's community-oriented work.

Underpinning the design was the choice of colours for the vessel was influenced by colour psychology, aiming to evoke positive emotions.

The vessel was crafted from recycled clay, with the added benefit that it can be recycled at the end of its life, aligning with environmental sustainability principles. The vessel was designed to serve a variety of functions, making it versatile and practical for different uses by EdD students.

Prototype samples were made and shared with some of the students through focus groups, and the initial responses were positive. Students especially appreciated the narrative behind the design and creation process. The written narrative created by Sarah and Wayne detailed the rationale and creative process which is included to provide context and enhance the recipients' understanding and appreciation of the vessel when the items are distributed to the wider EdD student cohort.

Project Outcomes

Overall, this project demonstrates a thoughtful approach to creating a meaningful care package for EdD students, incorporating elements of artistry, sustainability, and emotional well-being. Each student will now receive a multifunctional vessel designed and made through the collaboration between the intern and artist. Those vessels already distributed were well-received by students and feedback gathers notes its contribution to building a sense of community within the EdD student community.

Impact and Transferability

We have undertaken an innovative project to address the unique challenges faced by its students who often spend significant time away from the university campus and are susceptible to feeling disconnected. The primary objective of this project was to create a care package specifically tailored to the needs and preferences of EdD students. The care package is meant as a reminder of their inclusion in the program and the broader community.

Involvement of Students: A key factor in the project's success was the active involvement of EdD students in the design and execution of the initiative. A student intern from the EdD program, Sarah Finnigan, was entrusted with leading the project, which has emphasised the importance of student empowerment and recognition which we hope will inspire other students to undertake similar projects.

Collaboration with a Local Artist: To bring a unique and meaningful element to the care package, the student intern collaborated with a local community artist and created an opportunity for future collaborations between the artist/Granby workshops with LJMU.

Product Design of a Multifunctional Vessel: The student intern and artist created a 'multifunctional vessel' for the project, which incorporated elements of colour psychology to evoke positive emotions within the users. The vessel was made from recycled clay, ensuring a positive impact on the environment in line with sustainability objectives of the university. 

Positive Feedback from Students: When prototype samples of the multifunctional vessel were shared with EdD students in focus groups, the initial responses were positive.

Community Building: The project not only resulted in a practical and aesthetically pleasing product but also reinforced the sense of community and well-being among EdD students. The created vessel can now serve as a constant reminder of their obligations to their programme and studies in a positive supportive way.

Innovative and Meaningful Gifts: This project represents one innovative approach to creating care packages by actively involving students and collaborating with local artists. It goes beyond practical needs to provide meaningful gifts that symbolize a sense of belonging and unity.

The project showcases a creative and student-centric approach to addressing the needs of its students, particularly doctoral students who may be physically distant from the university campus. It provides a model for other departments who wish to develop a similar approach combining art, design, psychology, and sustainability to create a unique and impactful care package that contributes to the well-being and connectedness of their students.

Developing approaches to Education for Wellbeing

The project contributes to education for well-being in several ways:

Sense of Belonging: By actively involving EdD students in the design and execution of the project, it fosters a sense of belonging and community. Feeling connected to a supportive academic community is essential for the well-being of students, especially those who may spend significant time away from the campus.

Emotional Well-Being: The care package includes a multifunctional vessel designed with elements of colour psychology to evoke positive emotions. A thoughtful design can have a positive impact on the emotional well-being of the students and positive emotions are known to enhance overall well-being and resilience.

Inclusivity: The project emphasises the inclusion of EdD students, recognizing their unique challenges and needs. Inclusivity is a fundamental aspect of well-being, as it ensures that students feel valued, heard, and supported in their academic journey.

Student Empowerment: By entrusting a student intern to lead the project, the initiative promoted student empowerment. The student intern was given the opportunity to take on a leadership role and make meaningful contributions to their academic community, which can enhance their sense of self-efficacy and well-being.

Sustainability: The use of recycled clay for the vessel and its potential for recycling at the end of its life reflects a commitment to environmental sustainability. Promoting sustainable practices aligns with the concept of well-being as a healthy environment is a crucial factor in overall well-being.

Meaningful Reminders: The care package serves as a constant reminder of the students' inclusion in the EdD program and the wider academic community. Such reminders can provide a sense of purpose and connection, by avoiding overwhelming or creating adverse reactions sometime arising from communication prompts, which can positively impact students' mental and emotional well-being.

Community Building: Through collaboration with a local artist and student focus groups, the project reinforces a sense of community among EdD students and with the local community. A strong sense of community is known to contribute to well-being by providing support networks and a sense of belonging.

Innovation and Creativity: The project's innovative approach to creating care packages goes beyond meeting only practical needs. It introduced creativity and innovation into the educational experience, which can enhance students' engagement and satisfaction, ultimately contributing to their well-being.

The project contributes to education for well-being by prioritizing students' emotional and psychological needs, promoting a sense of belonging and community, and incorporating elements of sustainability and creativity into the educational experience. These aspects collectively support the holistic well-being of EdD students, helping them thrive academically and personally.

Next steps and future developments

We will continue to distribute the made vessels to other EdD students and also display examples of them around the university for others to see.

We have a provisional departmental commitment to continue to produce vessels for other students in the future, and work with local artists to produced programme artefacts again.

As a project team, we will be creating a news item to share our collaboration with the artist and his studio, submitting an abstract to disseminate about the project at the next Students at the Heart Conference, and writing a paper for publication about the process and product.

Project Leader(s)

Prof Rachel McLean and Sarah Maclennan, Liverpool Screen School, Faculty of Arts, Professional and Social Studies 

Summary

LJMU’s most recent student experience survey reported that 40% of L4 students cited ‘feeling lonely’. The Higher Education Policy Institute surveyed more than 10,000 students for its annual study. 59% of students said they ‘were lonely most of the time, all of the time, or at least once a week.’ HEIs recognise the benefits of creating a strong sense of community to promote wellbeing in students. This ultimately leads to higher student engagement, retention, satisfaction, and attainment. However, creating a strong cohort identity and community continues to be a challenge – as evidenced by the NSS results. There is little research that explores what makes a strong community from the student perspective. Do staff and students share an understanding of what community is and means to students or is there a misalignment of perspectives?

Curriculum-related activities organised by staff with the aim of building community often have poor levels of engagement, and yet activities that grow organically, separate from core studies result in a thriving social group. For example, a Liverpool Screen School five a side football club has grown beyond expectations and attracts students from across the school and indeed across LJMU. A key focus is what the students recognise as their community and whether having strong connections to a community helps allay feelings of loneliness or isolation. Is the programme cohort their community? Is it the School? Or is community something that is formed away from the curriculum through a common interest such as a sport or arts group? If so, how can we learn from this and embed elements of strong community into the curriculum and cohort activities? The project compares the staff and student perspectives on how a strong community is created and what it brings to the student experience.

Student interns interviewed their peers and found that the fresher’s experience, extra curricula activities, spaces and accommodation all play a key part in establishing community. The interns made a film and presented at SATH 2023 to share the findings and recommendations.

Project Methodology

This project explored the elements involved in creating a strong community, the effects on student wellbeing and sense of belonging, and how that can be curated from a student perspective. A key focus was on what the students recognised as their community and whether having strong connections to a community helped allay feelings of loneliness or isolation.

3 staff worked in partnership with 9 students on this project. Interns met regularly with staff and independently. They developed research questions to gain better understanding of both the staff and student perspective and conducted in-person interviews to gain qualitative data. Interns sourced participants for the study across curriculums and Schools.

• 20 hours Literature review (student community / learning community).
• 40 hours interviewing staff and students.
• 60 hours analysis of the interviews and writing up the analysis.
• 80 hours film making: pre- and post-production and filming.

Project Outcomes

Themes were established from the Literature Review which included:

Peer relationships/social life/place/mental health/stigma/staff and student relationship/staff and student learning communities/committees and societies/drinking cultures/ accommodation/social media/online spaces.

The student interns were able to interview participants and the following themes emerged:

• Challenges as a fresher (loneliness, finding your “friends for life”)
• Importance of Accommodation in community building. On / off campus
• Social Events. SU Societies, BUT also programme related social activities (staff / Student partnership). Those who joined societies felt they belonged more (“Rugby is the reason I haven’t dropped out”). Finding people with common interests outside of the course more long lasting support networks.
• Spaces – student life building regarded as a community hub (people around, noise, café)

Impact and Transferability

The following conclusions and recommendations have been suggested for broader use across LJMU:

• More access to info on SU societies – a desk or hut with leaflets, sign-ups, adverts. Feeling of not knowing where to find info after freshers week.
• Participants noted the best communities involved staff (including LSU) and students in partnership where activities were facilitated or organised.
• Cross university activities e.g. Multi-sports day, 48-hour film challenge, 5 a side football club. Element of competition builds team spirit and so community.
• Create more spaces like SLB – welcoming, busy, open.

Developing approaches to Education for Wellbeing

Through running this project we’ve gained a stronger sense that community is defined in a number of ways: place, common interest, shared goals, ownership together. These are all elements that can be explored in our learning environments and in the design of our curricula or learning activities. Place is important in creating a sense of belonging. Does the student feel comfortable? Is it accessible? Does the layout of the room encourage human interactions? How might a late arriving student feel? (Is everyone looking at them as they come in?) What are our shared goals? Do we discuss them enough or do we assume they are ‘understood’/are implicit? Do we flag a joint responsibility in the pursuit of learning and understanding? The student as an active learner? And do we create activities that promote this? Lots more questions, we know, and, ultimately, we need to go to the students for the answers not merely rely on what we, the academics, believe. And we also need to accept that those student responses and needs might actually change year on year.

Next steps and future developments

The project and outcomes were disseminated at the SATH conference. We will share the findings with the LSS SMT so that they can incorporate recommendations into their planning as appropriate. A strong theme emerged around extra curricula activities and social events. Participants spoke of those activities as playing a major part in them staying at LJMU, and having a positive experience. As a school we will look to continue to support activities such as 24-Hour Film Challenge and Five a Side Football that bring students together outside of classes. We will explore the potential for a journal paper based on this research. It is a small scale project which may not lend itself to a highly rated journal, but we will explore other channels. We will review the films for material that we could show to new students to encourage them to join clubs and societies and to engage with extra curricula activities for their wellbeing.

Project Leader(s)

Dr James Downing and Rebecca Fern, School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Science, Faculty of Science

Summary

Background: Mentoring appears to grow within mentees a reflective approach to setting personal and professional goals, meeting realistic milestones towards academic and professional achievement. It supports personal wellbeing within the transition from school to university, also during the incremental intensity of academic rigor of successive years of study. It identifies obstacles and options for ways forward. It thereby promotes coping and resilience, for example when student views on time management and study skills are shared. It encourages feelings of competence within mentors in their own academic achievements and leadership potential.

Outcomes: Four student interns led research aimed at curriculum development of student mentoring that has run on the MPharm programme since 2018. Interns first used NVivo software to analyse the qualitative database of reports on mentoring meetings (findings available from the Project Leader). They identified three themes composed of 12 sub-themes, which might identify supportive effects on students’ wellbeing in terms of success, their development of resilience and academic self-esteem. Second, interns also proposed ways to implement student mentoring on a sister programme (details available from the Project Leader); Third, interns identified resources for improving mentoring training in EDI and stress management; and finally, they conducted a comparative review of mentoring in use within LJMU and other institutions (details available from the Project Leader).

Future plans: With the information gained from this student-led research we aim to:

1. Develop our existing MPharm mentoring programme, incorporating additional mentoring training from LJMU Outreach and Sports Science.
2. Roll-out mentoring on another programme, this time using teams encompassing the range of year levels on the programme, rather than pairings.
3. We intend to disseminate our findings (for example at SATH) and strengthen the local network of expertise within LJMU, centred in (Emma Ball) SSS, (Amir Asghari) CSM and (James Downing / Becca Fern) PBS, that this study has identified.

Project Methodology

The project ran over 8 weeks (15/5-7/7/23). We met weekly, also attending the “Students at the heart” (SATH) conference together. Four interns led cooperative research strands into:

1. An NVivo analysis of our data base of reported outcomes from MPharm student mentoring meetings, which revealed themes suggesting supportive effects on students’ wellbeing, success, their development of resilience and academic self-esteem.
2. A discourse on how a mentoring system might be structured for implementation on a different programme in PBS LJMU, Pharmaceutical and Cosmetic Sciences (PCS).
3. What resources might be incorporated to improve and develop mentor training in EDI and stress management issues.
4. A review of mentoring schemes in different schools at LJMU and other institutions.

Project Outcomes

Outputs were generated in the form of reports on two aims (1 and 4). These and other outcomes are summarised here:

1. Analysis of themes identified by NVivo from mentoring meetings reports on the MPharm programme (2022-23) led by RM was produced, which indicate the potential of peer-mentoring to promote student wellbeing in terms of 13 sub-themes under three headings of Academic-wellbeing, Success and Resilience.

2. Alternative approaches to the delivery of student mentoring schemes were reviewed. Overall, it was proposed that the following plans be considered by the PMT for implementation on the Pharmaceutical and Cosmetic Sciences (PCS) programme:

a) An “opt-in” scheme (different from the current approach in MPharm but similar in essence to that used in Sports Science).

b) This would require students to sign up to become a member of a mentoring team, based around the Personal Tutor groupings, proposed to reinforce a sense of membership to the programme; one consisting of members form all levels of the programme, Levels L3 (foundation), L4, L5 and L6). Mentoring teams are thought preferable to mentor pairings because they can impart experience from all levels of the programme and are more likely resilient to drop-out of members, as in the case of failure to progress, enabling a contiguous network of support.

c) Training would require attendance at workshop sessions to practice the GROW and SMART goal-oriented personal development techniques (originating from John Whitmore). In addition to this training which is already in use on the MPharm programme, our research into curriculum development has proposed additional exercise in recognising EDI and stress issues and the signposting of support. This training will be informed from colleagues from LJMU Outreach team and Sport and Exercise Science.

d) Students shall be required to report outcomes of 3 time-tabled meetings on campus, via Canvas quiz. Timetabling of rooms and resourcing with refreshments (ideas taken from Sports Science (EB)) was thought likely to facilitate association and meeting and remove the need for additional organisational skills to make meetings happen.

3. Identified available help to support our plans for improving training of Mentors in EDI and stress management. We were offered assistance with bespoke training from our Outreach team at LJMU. And we shall benefit from access to training modules from the school of Sport and Exercise Science (courtesy of EB).

4. A brief review was made of mentoring schemes at different LJMU schools and other institutions, provides an informative background resource to mentoring.

The benefit of having students work on this project:

Apart from the setting of aims and weekly steering meetings, the contributions of our team of interns were student-led. We recruited a committed and enthusiastic group of interns from different LJMU programmes (L6, L7 UG and MSc) some having previous experience of mentoring and of research reporting. But the internship has brought a deeper understanding was gained of the potential benefits of mentoring to improve student support on other programmes and into professional careers. The qualitative research tool of NVivo was new to us all, but ably learned and utilised. Interns each led a strand of the work and contributed to others. Interns presented at weekly meetings, setting and agreeing goals. We attended Students at the Heart Conference together and discussed the student experience of mentoring, evaluated evidence of its reported benefit to student wellbeing in terms of success, resilience and academic self-esteem. Interns also offered well researched ideas on how to operationalise schemes on new programmes. They gave us the student-led view on curriculum developments we had hoped for.

Impact and Transferability

Impact on our practice: Our NVivo qualitative analysis helped categorise themes among student reports of potential benefit to Wellbeing arising from the mentoring programme. These are useful when pitching to the current year’s intake how to best use this supporting activity, which continues as part of our MPharm curriculum.

One of the anticipated impacts of the CEInternship research would be increased student engagement on any programme hoping to learn from our experiences. Gaining support for academic achievement was a major theme addressed within mentoring meetings. Prior success (progression) on the programme equips Mentors with confidence to relate strategies/tips they found useful. Mentors are also encouraged to signpost or refer mentees to LJMU staff and resources.

We were impressed by the "team-mentoring" format in use by colleagues in Sport and Exercise Sciences and proposed a version of this approach be implemented on a sister programme. Teams may have advantages - giving mentees access to more than one mentor, experienced from different academic levels. Teams maybe more resilient should a student drop out. And maybe easier to apply to a programme by merging existing personal tutor groups across levels.

Benefit to our Interns' development: Giving responsibility to student interns to lead the evaluation and development of our mentoring scheme on the MPharm curriculum and ideas for implementing on another programme also developed our interns.

NVivo qualitative research, and conference attendance was of direct benefit in developing evidence of their interns’ skill set, including research competencies. Applying for, interviewing and being recruited for competitive CEInternships will be an effective addition to their CVs.

Developing approaches to Education for Wellbeing

Improved understanding towards developing education for wellbeing: Interns had prior experience as mentee and mentor on MPharm, however, the CEI improved their depth of understanding of running such a scheme and its potential for Wellbeing. Although interns recognised its potential for supporting freshers (mentees) at "transition" form school to university, they now appreciate a more holistic impact on student life (both mentee and mentor) and to consider how they might act within a professional mentee-mentoring system.

The internship has given experience in analysis skills to evaluate outcomes indicating wellbeing through the use of NVivo (thematic analysis of qualitative content, for example interviews or questionnaires/surveys/reports) to organise questionnaire data into themes as outcomes. Being able to view the database of student outcomes has also given insight into common themes that are discussed, and the benefits of mentoring, for example suggestions for part time jobs and approaches to stress. Interns also became aware of different frameworks that can be used for mentoring, including: 1-2-1 mentoring and team-mentoring.

Recommendations for others: In previous years, we informed students of the analysis of student impressions of mentoring; suggesting how research of mentoring reports could inform and identify benefit and suggest change in the delivery of the curriculum. This will continue but to enable publication of analysis there needs to be improvements to the way consent is obtained from students to research the reports from Canvas Mentoring Quizzes. Future research could also include surveys/interviews outside the department/school/university, to evaluate how common/applicable are the findings of our small study. Others undertaking work in this area could, as we have, greatly benefit by reaching out to individuals with mentoring experience (Emma Ball, SES; Amir Asghari, CSM).

Next steps and future developments

The intern-led research has generated evidence for publication and will form the basis of dissemination, including at SATH conference. Proposals for incorporating an alternative version, involving an “opt-in” student mentoring-team based scheme, on a sister programme will be put to the PMT.