Transition & Induction Experiences of WP Students > Project Outputs > Seminar 2 - Students' Transition and Induction Experiences Part (2)

Project Outputs > Seminar 2 - Students' Transition and Induction Experiences Part (2)

Seminar Background

This seminar, held at Bournemouth University on 22nd May 2012, was targeted at those with an interest in improving and enhancing the student experience with particular focus on the first year experience. It followed on from a previous seminar focusing on transition and held at the University of Exeter in June 2011.

An agenda for the day can be downloaded below:

Seminar Agenda

Seminar Speakers & Associated Presentations

The following spoke at the seminar:

Ed Foster (Nottingham Trent University) discussed the findings of the HERE! project - HERE! to stay: using research evidence to drive retention policy.
Chris Brill (Equality Challenge Unit) looked at linking initiatives around equality and diversity to strategic drivers which exist in the higher education sector.
Sally Alsford (University of Greenwich) discussed the initiatives at the University of Greenwich to improve induction week experiences in her presentation Projects, practice and policy: what is new students’ “entitlement”?
Helen Watts (University of the West of England) discussed her innovative work in looking at the Challenges in being a PAL Leader from a sociolinguistic perspective.
Chris Keenan (Bournemouth University) concluded with a session on the experiences of setting up PAL schemes through the STEM Practice Transfer Adopters scheme.

Below you can access presentations reports from the day:

Ed Foster presentation

Chris Brill presentation

Sally Alsford presentation notes

Helen Watts presentation notes

Challenges in being a PAL Leader: A Sociolinguistic Analysis

Following the seminar, a briefing paper was produced which summarised findings from project work thus far. The briefing paper can be downloaded below:

Briefing paper

Panel Discussion

The seminar concluded with a fruitful panel discussion; questions raised included:

Q. What is the ideal group size for PAL sessions?

A. You need to be able to do small group work. Also you need to be able to build a rapport with the students. Less than 15 students per session is good.

Q. What are people most interested in knowing when contacting the Equality Challenge Unit?

A. Whether they are breaking the law!

Q. Does the issue about declaring disability, affect statistics ie. self-declarers are more proactive, so get more help?

An institution should proactively reflect on their course set up and contemplate imaginary scenarios, for example, having a visually impaired student on a course. This is so disabled students are already hypothetically accommodated and outreach or other material can reflect this. The idea being that students with disabilities may be deterred by institutions that do not proactively seek to accommodate them.

Other points of interest:

If Ed Foster could do one more piece of research it would be to ask “what should excite academics about teaching 1st year students?”
During Maths café sessions, students enjoyed spending time with academics in a semi-social setting.
Students struggle in transition between FE and HE due to lack of contact with HE staff, independent learning, timing of feedback and the fact that deadlines are real.
In FE “staff and students collude to beat the system”, in HE “staff are the system”.

There also followed a discussion on how to manage a PAL group / session:

Have PAL as a timetabled activity
Use Facebook but make sure PAL leaders know that not all students use it
Students use VLE for announcements
Facebook quite good if used via a PAL leader as a conduit.

Q. Is there an issue about students wondering why they are getting “taught” by students instead of staff?

A. in a survey of 500 students, only one raised it.

Q. Do you expect PAL leaders to answer all student questions?

A. No PAL leaders are trained to redirect questions, rather than to answer them. It is a safe space for students to try answering questions themselves (as found by Helen Watts in her research). PAL leaders learn lots of questioning skills to establish what the problem actually is for the student.

Q. Do PAL leaders identify themselves as “students”?

A. Yes, they tend to “level” themselves rather than “distance” themselves.

Q. Do you have small group tutorials as well?

A. Some institutions do, some don’t. Some are reinstigating this. It is harder for modular degrees.

Q. Do problems with lectures get fed back to lecturers?

A. Yes. It can be a very useful way of getting direct feedback to lecturers so that they can address any problems in subsequent lectures.

Q. Does each PAL session have a pre-determined agenda?

A. Yes, students tend to suggest in advance usually.

Seminar Feedback

Feedback from the day was very positive, as witnessed by the following delegate comments:

Thanks for a very interesting day. This was my first event about these subjects and so I found it very interesting and a great way to pick up the latest ideas and research in the area. Ed Foster's talk was probably the most relevant to my current practice, as I deal with students who are struggling with their academic work and therefore often in that mode of "doubt" about higher education.

I also found Sally Alsford's talk very interesting as it revealed a lot about the way students view events such as Induction week.

So, many thanks again. The discussions were interesting and informative and the whole day seemed seamlessly put together, in an excellent location.

As a result I've joined ALDinHE and hopefully will be attending other events .

I found the speakers’ talks very interesting. All the talks were very useful and relevant to the topic.

I found the discussion part very useful. There were many people there with the experience of working with PAL. I could take some advice regarding my fears of poor attendance of students’ participants during the running the scheme.

I got a very good advice on allocating the rooms for PAL group. Something really simple such as allocating a flat room instead of a big lecture theatre in which seats are not at the same level would make a lot of difference on working groups, which I didn’t notice before.

I find a blog or discussion board for people working in this area very useful.