Progress was reported throughout the project. For the complete final report of the project see here.

Update report December 2011

Two undergraduate interns have scoped community-based placement opportunities.  This has included developing networks of contacts, meeting with those contacts, and producing mutually agreed project briefs for individual placements.  This has led to the development of 11 community projects with 8 different Bristol-based partners.  The projects are a mixture of research (3rd year) and design (4th year) projects.  A number of potential opportunities for community-based placements for future years have also been scoped.  To find out more about the work that the undergraduate interns have done see the project blog here.

A total of 4 projects were taken up by the 3rd and 4th year students; however one project is being carried out by two groups of students making a total of 5 groups taking part in the community-based projects.  The students are currently working with their supervisors and the community partners on the projects; the deadline for submission of their work is March 2012.  The next stage is to monitor the progress of the projects and follow-up with the students, supervisors and community partners; a particular focus will be the partners whose projects were not selected.  A Creative Learning Journey has been developed for the project to capture some of the experiences and outcomes. 

The parallel stream of work, being led by the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE), is the development of a learning outcomes framework for community-based projects.  Two separate documents have been drafted and commented upon by the project team and a wider community of academics familiar with community-based learning.  The first document is a brief background paper on community-based learning; the second is the learning outcomes framework.  Both the framework and the project formed part of a session on engaged learning at the NCCPE’s Engage 2011 conference on the 30th November. 

Update report March 2012

Update report 2 stated that 4 projects were taken up by the 3rd and 4th year students.  This number was provided by the current Head of School in the absence of the main lead for this project in the School of Civil Engineering who is on research leave.  However, it has come to light that a further two projects were selected; the miscommunication was simply because the projects are not easily distinguishable (in name) from the other research and design projects.  Details of the additional projects are as follows:

• Flood Risk Management at Temple Gateway – partner: Forum for the Future (3rd year)
• Understanding the nature and sources of contamination in the Floating Harbour – Bristol City Council (3rd year)

This means that 7 groups of students (17 students in total) are taking part in 6 projects with 7 academic supervisors and 4 community partners.  The students are still working on their projects and will submit their final reports at the beginning of the summer term (the week commencing the 23rd April).  Following discussions with the NCCPE about the learning framework the plan is not to try and change the current assessment criteria since the community-based projects are a small proportion of the overall number of projects and we would not want to introduce bias.  Instead the NCPPE will look at the assessment of the projects and analyse whether the learning outcomes from the framework have been captured.  Further evaluation will include a focus group with students about their experiences and getting feedback from the supervisors and community partners.

The second part of the Creative Learning Journey took place on the 13th March, during which Dovetail interviewed several students, supervisors and community partners.  The outputs from this day will be shared once they become available.

The learning framework and the overall project were the subject of two sessions at the Bringing STEM curricula to life through public engagement conference held on the 1st March at Aston University.  The session on the overall project, with a particular focus on the role of the interns, led to interesting discussions about different universities and their model for community engagement.  As an outcome, the University of Bristol (led by the CPE) is looking to work with the University of the West of England on sharing learning about engaging the local Bristol community.

In terms of meeting the objectives the following progress can be noted:

• 11 community-based projects were scoped for both 3rd year research and 4th year design projects; of these 6 projects were selected by students, with a total of 17 students involved
• The projects will be submitted, alongside other research and design projects, at the start of the summer term in April 2012.  Criteria for assessment of such projects already exist so it would be unfair to use different criteria for assessing the community-based projects.  However the NCCPE will be looking at how the projects have been assessed to see how the community-based projects compare to other projects and whether the learning outcomes have been captured.
• The learning framework tool to help assess community-based projects within the academic framework has been developed by the NCCPE.  It is expected that the feedback from the supervisors may help inform any changes to the tool, especially with respect to fitting in with existing assessment criteria.

A forum on engaged learning has been organised by the CPE and the Students’ Union for the 14th May.  The aim is to explore possible models for engaged learning at the University of Bristol and this project will feature as a case study and potential model.  David Owen and one of the engineering students will be speaking about their experiences at the event and all community partners have been invited to attend.  Outside of the University the project has currently been disseminated through events such as the conference in Aston.  Future events include the STEM Workforce Development & Employability in the South West conference in June.