This paper gives an overview of a study conducted at the University of Winchester to explore students’ ‘sense of belonging’ at one particular UK institution. The project was completed in two phases: first, an investigation via a ‘Feedback Forum’ of the different stages and factors contributing to a ‘sense of belonging’ and the points in time during the student journey where this was achieved. Second, this initial data was coded to provide a series of categories which informed the creation of an institution-wide survey to investigate further which types of engagement led to a ’sense of belonging’, and to what extent, for each category identified. This research was influenced by the national policy and market economy within current UK Higher Education (HE), with a focus on retention and student satisfaction, which has, in turn, been linked to belonging (Thomas, 2012; Morgan, 2003). The study was undertaken, and the paper authored, through a student-staff partnership within the Winchester Student Fellows Scheme (described by Sims et al, 2014).
This article analyses the outputs of an institutional approach to student engagement that created sixty staff-student partnership opportunities aiming to enhance the learning experience. The Student Fellows Scheme awarded bursaries to students in return for co-leading a project in the broad area of educational development. The projects could be evaluations, research projects or interventions. This paper describes a systematic review of the final outputs of the Student Fellow projects and depicts the extent of staff-student partnerships and the impact of the scheme, demonstrating that the majority of projects are programme-focused, with students as the main beneficiaries. Whilst a key motivation of this review was to analyse the extent of staff-student partnerships, the lack of reference to partnership in many reports illustrated the limitations of the methodology. This review has facilitated a reorganisation of the scheme and developed a structure for continuing analysis of it into the future.
This case study explores practice in four areas of student engagement activity which were developed in partnership between the University of Winchester and Winchester Student Union. The development, motivations, stakeholders, and challenges of activities built around the principles of representation, change, feedback, and research are discussed. Relationships between practices will be explored in the context of a proposal for how discrete practices can complement one another to create a community of partnership. The case study focuses on four key initiatives: Student Academic Representatives, Student Fellows Scheme, Student-Led Teaching Awards, and the Winchester Research Apprenticeship Programme. The four key initiatives are contextualised with a discussion of an ongoing project that seeks to provide greater coherence to student engagement through an institution-wide movement towards embedding partnership.
The construction of what students constitute to be “good” feedback often plagues the minds of academics, who seem to continuously search for the holy grail of what it is exactly students want from their feedback in Higher Education. This aspect of the student experience in assessment and feedback continues to elude institutions by the nationally lower average scores in the United Kingdom annual National Student Survey questions on timely/prompt feedback (NSS, 2017, Gartland et al 2016) which makes this a topical area for exploration and discussion. To investigate student perceptions of feedback in an alternative method, this article examines the qualitative data from three years of Student-Led Teaching Awards (STLA) nominations for the category “Best Lecturer for Constructive and Efficient Feedback” at the University of Winchester. From this study, new revelations in regards to the student perception of the ‘best’ lecturer(s) feedback practice have come to light including terminology, language and emphasis on email turnaround, rather than the actual format of the feedback itself (handwritten, e-submission etc.). In order to tease out the repetitive emerging themes for what students are perceiving to be “good” feedback, this paper will outline the findings of this study, including the methodology and nomination process of the SLTAs at Winchester.
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