Leading learning: enhancing the learning experience of university students through anxiety auditing

Abstract

This article reports on an innovative strategy for auditing university students' anxieties across the study cycle. It discusses the shortcomings of traditional feedback mechanisms and identifies the opportunities that anxiety auditing presents in terms of providing scope for students to discuss and to more directly influence improvement in course delivery, learning and in creating real opportunities for dealing with some of the more enduring anxieties they experience. Students' anxieties are tracked three times across the study cycle through a standard questionnaire with follow up discussion between students as a group and between students and staff. The research found that despite the reduction of anxiety across the majority of factors over the academic year, three areas of student experience appeared to be associated with increasing student anxiety as the year progresses. The three areas were: the anxiety about students' ability to make the transition from undergraduate learning to post graduate learning and outcomes; the anxiety associated with cultural integration between home and international students; and issues associated with consistency in the application of assessment criteria across the lifecourse of the students' experience. The research also finds that female students and international students generally register higher levels of anxiety across the study cycle. Learning and management implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords:

• feedback
• learning
• leading learning
• students' anxieties
• anxiety auditing