Supporting diverse learners in their transition to higher education

Abstract

Extensive research throughout the UK and elsewhere in the world has revealed that higher education students from certain black and minority ethnic (BME) communities are less likely to graduate, and those who do graduate achieve lower grades than other students entering university with equivalent qualifications. There are, however, other categories of students (such as white British working class males and some international students) where the retention and attainment profiles can be similar.

In common with many other UK universities, for some time there have been concerns about the relatively high attrition rate in some subject areas at Coventry University, which has a very diverse student population with a relatively high number of students within the identified at-risk categories. With this in mind, staff across the university have been actively seeking ways to more effectively support all students before and after their arrival to ensure that they integrate within the learning community, remain on course and achieve their full educational potential.

This paper describes one of these initiatives: to support students before their arrival on courses in the Faculty of Engineering and Computing. What distinguishes this from initiatives at other institutions is that central to this development is a website designed, created and operated by faculty students employed part time as student advocates in the faculty’s Student Experience Enhancement Unit.

The paper describes the difficulties encountered in creating and implementing the website and how these were resolved, with particular focus on the student led approach to development. Evidence is provided to support the effectiveness of the intervention within the wider context of the faculty’s implementation of activity led learning. Plans are presented for ongoing developments, enhancements and related resources.

Introduction

This paper centres on the development and operation of a website and related activities to assist black and minority ethnic (BME) students during their transition to higher education in the Faculty of Engineering and Computing at Coventry University. In fact, the website was accessible to all faculty students and their friends and family and not designed for or targeted specifically at BME students (either implicitly or explicitly). This decision was based on the understanding that effective pre-arrival web-based resources would be of great benefit to the whole student population and their supporters, especially other minority groups (such as disabled students), not just the BME students for whom it was initially conceived.

The primary motive behind providing the website was to reassure incoming students before they arrived on campus about the friendly community they were about to join; help them to understand and prepare for their forthcoming studies; provide pre-arrival orientation in terms of where to go and what to expect and resolve any difficulties with arrangements for admission.

The development of the Student Experience Enhancement Unit (SEE-u) is part of the faculty’s overall strategy for developing a community of learners. The faculty’s pivotal innovation is the concept of activity led learning (ALL), which is based on learning and teaching approaches such as problem and project based learning. The main impact of ALL on newly arrived undergraduate students is the “Six Week Challenge”, where they are required to engage in an integrative learning activity for at least the first six weeks of their programme. Most departments require a team-working approach to the initial ALL activity, encouraging students to actively communicate and make friends.

Significant research has been conducted and published on the development, implementation and evaluation of this pedagogic approach (Wilson-Medhurst et al., 2009; Wilson-Medhurst and Glendinning, 2009; Green and Wilson-Medhurst, 2010) which will be fully implemented across all levels by the time the faculty moves to a new building with purpose-designed learning spaces suitable for ALL in 2012.

Project funding context

To develop an effective learning community within the faculty, the whole of the “student journey” and all aspects of the student experience must be considered, not just the pedagogy. In this respect, transition to higher education is an area of particular importance, especially for categories of students known to be at risk of non-completion or low achievement.

Coventry University’s longer-term interest in BME student progression and attainment was rekindled during the autumn of 2008, following the publication of the Higher Education Academy report Ethnicity, gender and degree attainment (Farwell, 2008). Having read this report, a member of the Academic Board at Coventry raised questions about the completion and attrition rate of UK BME students at the university in comparison with the national situation. This led to the formation of a cross-university research team and the completion of a comprehensive internal report (Broughan, 2009) which confirmed that:

• in line with similar studies elsewhere (Broeke and Nichols, 2007; Connors, 2004), and after allowing adjustment for other factors when analysed on ethnicity, ‘differentials in degree attainment’ were evident in certain categories of BME students at Coventry University (Broughan, 2009, p2)

• in common with many other post-92 universities, Coventry University’s student population included a much larger percentage of UK BME students than some universities in the sector; therefore improving BME retention, progression and attainment was seen to be of crucial importance.

Early in 2009 the cross-university team was accepted on a National Summit Programme Improving the degree attainment of black and minority ethnic students, led by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and Equality Challenge Unit (ECU), which was launched to build on Ruth Farwell’s recommendations from the earlier HEA/ECU research project. Accordingly, the 2009 HEA Summit Programme encouraged participants to design and evaluate interventions to help make a difference to BME student outcomes in higher education institutions.

The website development took place in two stages and benefited from two sets of funding, each targeting initiatives for improvements to BME student attainment. The first funding was provided in 2009 by Coventry and Warwickshire Lifelong Learning Network (CWLLN) and Coventry University (CU) and the funding for the second part of the project came in 2010 from the Higher Education Academy Engineering Subject Centre.

The CWLLN funding (June 2009 – July 2010), matched by funding from the university, was used to support four “mini-projects” for which proposals were submitted competitively from across the university. The successful projects came from these areas:

• Lanchester Library Mentoring Programme

• Biomolecular and Sports Sciences

• Economics, Finance and Accounting

• Computing and the Digital Environment (CDE)

The CDE mini-project to build, operate and evaluate an interactive pre-induction website for the CDE department was the starting point for this initiative. Further funding later in 2009 (from the HEA Engineering Subject Centre) allowed the team to extend the (then prototype) pre-induction website to cover the whole Engineering and Computing Faculty. The timescale of the new HEA Engineering Centre funding was from February to December 2010. This was fortunate because it allowed for expansion to the functionality and scope of the website and its intended audience and gave some time for evaluation afterwards. The overlap with the CWLLN/CU funding enabled continuity in both development and implementation of the website and helped to fund the operational aspects of the working website during August and September 2010, after the CWLLN project had finished. Details on what has happened since the funded projects ended are provided later in this paper.

Project management

As with many small internal projects, the good ideas and intentions were soon stalled by a series of unexpected events which left the project without a development team. At that point (in 2009) the author agreed to manage the project and a postgraduate student advocate with a strong computer science background employed in the faculty’s SEE-u was appointed to develop the website as team leader of the team of student advocates.

The development team was trained in the use of different software tools to create quizzes and other objects for the website. The choice of platform and web server proved difficult; several alternatives were considered and tested before a page on a WordPress blogging site was allocated to the project. Although the technology had many limitations, this platform allowed the advocates to take control of the content management and style features and it proved relatively easy to set up most of the components that the site required.

When the project started in conjunction with the CDE department a set of requirements had already been captured for the website. This list was prioritised, adjusted and extended to factor in the limitations of the WordPress platform. The website design was based on a hierarchical structure with future extendability in mind (Figure 1).

The top level was for general faculty information, the second for departments and the third was designated for detailed course information, although initially only the CDE department link was to be developed and populated. Ask a student advocate and Ask a tutor blogs were made available at faculty level.

A decision was needed about whether the site should be publicly accessible or if a private portal should be provided, with individual student login. The initial plan had been to provide a link to the university’s VLE for accessing course materials but, considering the diverse student population, there were concerns about the “user-friendliness” of a Moodle or Blackboard interface for new students. Access to the site by parents and friends would also have been compromised by password protection or use of the VLE. Partly because of time constraints, the decision was taken to develop an openly accessible site, with the understanding that VLE access with password protection could be added at a later stage.

The initial aim was to release a prototype website to operate a pilot between August and October 2009, but delays in starting the project and negotiating a platform and resources made this unrealistic. At the start of September 2009, training in student mentoring was delivered to some of the student advocates. The team needed to develop these skills for making contact with incoming new students and handling queries via the pre-induction website, telephone, email or face to face after arrival. By late September 2009 a prototype pre-induction website had been developed by the team of student advocates.

Figure 1 Structure of the pre-induction website

Throughout September 2009, following the mentoring training, a call centre was operated by the student advocates who were attempting to contact all new faculty students by telephone and email to offer help and support prior to their arrival. This service was well received. Many students received assistance through the available services and their initial difficulties were resolved. It was particularly useful that the student advocates operating the call centre were multi-lingual, which eased some of the communication issues significantly. Positive feedback from surveys administered during the autumn 2009 induction suggested that the new students welcomed the contact with existing students in the lead up to their arrival, regardless of whether or not they had problems.

The newly arrived students and faculty staff were asked for feedback on the prototype website and this was sufficiently positive to encourage the team to continue with the development. The confirmation early in 2010 of the additional funding from the HEA Engineering Subject Centre was a great boost. As the project was now a faculty-wide development, the senior management helped to raise its profile, which led to a positive response from course leaders. Work continued on the website during 2010, when the team was led and supported by various CDE computer science students employed in SEE-u. Other SEE-u student advocates tested and checked the contents and generated publicity about the website in advance of the planned release date.

Student advocate web developers were particularly busy during the last month before the formal “release” date of 18th August 2010, which coincided with the release of A-level results and the clearing period for admissions. From August 2010 a leaflet was included in the welcome/arrival pack sent out to every new faculty student. The central university and local admissions services all helped with the distribution and publicity. Some students received a printed copy of the leaflet and others a PDF attachment to an email. Further copies were provided as handouts for students arriving to enquire about course admissions during clearing. The leaflet contained the website address and brief details of the information that could be found there.

The original CWLLN/CU mini-project funding for CDE allowed for the purchase of 500 USB memory sticks which were pre-loaded with the PDF leaflet and a video about the CDE department. These were sent to every new CDE UK undergraduate student with their arrival packs and there were enough USB sticks remaining to allow for international and European students from the CDE department to receive one during induction.

Pre-induction operations

The first live queries were posted to the Ask a student advocate blog the day before the intended release date in August 2010 and other comments and queries soon followed. A team of staff and student advocates monitored the website for comments posted via the blogs until late September 2010. The Ask a student advocate blog received 14 queries in total and 12 postings were made to the Ask a tutor blog. Although these numbers may appear small, surveys during induction week showed that many more people (students, staff and parents) browsed the website without posting queries and some of them contacted the team at the call centre by email or telephone. The student advocate on duty prepared the response to each of the queries, in consultation with a member of academic or professional staff where necessary before it was released. If the query was personal the reply was sent only to the person who posted the message, but where it was considered to be of wider interest the reply was made generally visible.

In parallel with the operation of the website, the decision was taken to again telephone all new UK students and send an email to European and international students. The only exception to this rule was for students with declared disabilities. They were contacted separately by advocates specially trained in learning support to give them the opportunity to discuss any special learning needs. All student advocates involved in this work had been trained in mentoring prior to undertaking this duty.

The UK student list provided by the central admissions team contained the contact details of almost six hundred new undergraduate faculty students. SEE-u student advocates telephoned the UK students using a script for guidance. Where there was no reply, a voicemail message was left. In some cases, parents answered. They were generally very interested in talking to the student advocate and asked a lot of questions about the student experience. The students or their parents were pleased and sometimes surprised to have been contacted. When those contacted were not planning to enrol this was reported back to the admissions service so that records could be updated. The telephone calls provided an excellent opportunity to ask whether new students and parents had seen the pre-induction website and, if not, to direct them to it.

Development of the website continued after the live date in August to correct identified inaccuracies and to add more detailed information in response to new queries. For example, links to official induction timetables and course details were added as they became available.

The funding ended in December 2010, at which point the faculty became responsible for the further development, maintenance and operation of the website. The website was repopulated and became operational again during the summer of 2011 for the September 2011 pre-arrival period. The updating proved at least as difficult as in the previous year, partly because there had been many structural and course changes.

The call centre operated during September 2011 as before, using a combination of email and telephone to make contact with incoming students. However, there was a new third dimension for some students: the use of social networking. An Associate Head in the new Computing department took advantage of the pre-arrival contact opportunity to create and activate Facebook groups for many of the students contacted. This allowed students to start communicating with their designated activity led learning team members before they arrived at the university. Many resources, useful materials and quizzes were made available to the groups of students via this platform.

The role of the Student Experience Enhancement Unit

A distinguishing feature of this development was the deployment of student advocates to conduct most of the development work and to ensure that the website was publicised and operationally effective. SEE-u was founded in 2008, based on research conducted into similar initiatives elsewhere, particularly in the US (Sullivan, 2008; Hubbard and Klute, 2009), and at the time of writing employs about 70 students, mainly as hourly paid student advocates. The activities of the advocates have been monitored and researched, forming the subject of several publications. The faculty has benefited in many ways from the decision to create SEE-u as part of the strategy to improve the local student support services (Glendinning and Hood, 2011). There is an equally compelling case for the benefits to the students in terms of being paid employees of their faculty during the course of their studies (Dunn and Glendinning, 2009).

There are many examples from the UK of students supporting students; these are often in mentoring and teaching support roles (Hampton and Potter, 2009). As this project demonstrates, effectively training students to support other students brings new insights and dimensions that may otherwise be missed. Student advocates were actively involved in the BME research undertaken by Coventry University from 2008, including running student focus groups, analysing results and attending seminars and conferences. The website design and development was student led from the outset, with the vision that a student-friendly and relevant interface, structure and content were likely to emerge.

The student led operational dimension of the website proved equally insightful. New students and parents who were contacted took advantage of the opportunity to speak frankly to student advocates, for example to explore their student experience or ask about resources, course content and teaching. Feedback suggests that most of those contacted gained some reassurance from this process. The student advocates also gained personally from the experience of taking responsibility for the development; some were team leaders and all benefited from a range of technical and interpersonal challenges that arose throughout the project.

Student advocates involved in the student-facing transition contact duties in September 2009, 2010 and 2011 were suitably equipped for the task after undergoing comprehensive mentoring training, some of which was paid for by the external funding. Using project funding to train and employ student employees to work on such projects provides excellent value for money compared to the cost and timescales for comparable development and operation without the use of student labour. Evidence from the subsequent employment history of former student advocates suggests that the experience enhances their longer term employability prospects (Glendinning et al., 2011).

As student advocates complete their studies and graduate, the annual turnover of SEE-u employees necessitates an ongoing cycle of recruitment and appointment followed by an extensive training programme for the student advocates. Since 2009 both new and continuing student advocates have been invited to attend a week’s intensive staff induction development programme held during the summer. Further training sessions are then scheduled before the new term begins and more specific “on the job” training is provided as required when advocates are assigned to particular roles. There are clear benefits to the student advocates in their future employability prospects and the faculty believes that the costs of the training programme represent a genuine investment which benefits the faculty and university community and the individual students involved.

SEE-u student advocates provide all front-facing reception services for the faculty. This includes an Advocacy Service, where students with complex problems can receive one-to-one support from a student advocate, connecting to the appropriate expert services (medical, counselling, finance, disabilities etc). Although no log was kept, advocates reported that there was a significantly increased workload of requests for help during September and October 2010 when compared to the previous year. This suggests that advance publicity from the call centre and the website appears to have raised awareness of the on-campus support services. The traffic on the website was monitored in some detail during September 2011 by the use of data from Google Analytics.

Problems encountered

It is important to record the problems faced during this development, as well as the successes. There are some negative aspects to employing students in such duties and roles. There were also difficulties with the technology deployed and the long-term sustainability of the website. This is allied to a sense of ownership and buy-in from faculty staff.

One ongoing problem was ensuring continuity for the development team. When the original team leader left the university in October 2009 it took some time before a suitably experienced student advocate could be appointed as a replacement. The succeeding team leader departed in October 2010 but (after lessons learned from the earlier experience) was replaced in a smooth transition by an existing member of the team who completed his finals and graduated in summer 2011. The new development team was appointed in July 2011 and the new team leader was briefed by the outgoing team leader. The former then took over responsibility for coordinating the development, maintenance and operational management of the website. This illustrates one of the perennial complexities arising from reliance on a student led workforce.

It was understood from the outset that perceived “ownership” of the website by key staff in faculty departments was crucial to its success and sustainability in the longer term. The reliance on student led development and maintenance of the website provided a cost effective means for the work to be completed but made departmental buy-in more difficult. One of the most frustrating tasks was persuading the departmental teams to provide detailed course and induction information for publishing on the website. The problem was overcome partly through persistence, but also through strong backing and intervention from faculty senior management, which proved essential to the success of this project.

A very different “ownership” problem arose in May 2010 when the central university web development team discovered the developing website. Discussions followed about longer-term management and some issues surrounding branding. It was agreed to accommodate the website in its existing location in the short term (with some minor look-and-feel modifications), with the intention of relocating it as part of the central university website at the earliest opportunity. Because of other pressures on the central web development team, it was agreed that website content updates for 2011 would be done in situ by the SEE-u development team before the site was migrated to the central server during the autumn term 2011 (URL www.coventry.ac.uk/newstudents/ec).

The visibility of the 2010 website was an issue because no direct links had been established from other parts of the Coventry University website. However, the combination of publicity material and call centre contacts ensured that a significant number of UK-based students and their families found the website and were able to access it both before and after their arrival on campus. Reassurance was given that clear internal links would be provided to the site in time for the release in August 2011.

Evaluation

The decision was taken not to formally survey students about their engagement with pre-induction activities on arrival because there is a danger of overloading them with too many questionnaires. However, informal feedback obtained from selected groups during induction activities each year helped to provide reassurance that the pre-induction provision was of value.

It had proved difficult to implement a “hit counter” on the web platform until Google Analytics was installed in September 2011. This tool provided clear evidence of the positive correlation between the call centre activities and the traffic on the website. There was also a very useful breakdown about the geographical location of those browsing, which provided reassurance that the different methods of contact were effectively encouraging students to access the website (UK students had telephone contact and overseas students were emailed).

There was a more than four-fold increase in traffic for UK-based students, starting on the day the telephone campaign began. There was a smaller (but still noticeable) rise in the number of international students browsing the web pages after an email including specific mention of the information available on the website was sent. The figures in Table 1 were collected at the start of the induction week in September 2011.

The vast majority of the people browsing the website (1,205, 89.86%) were from the UK. This figure includes students and staff making use of the website. The high number of return visits is an encouraging sign that, having found the website, the students were interested in returning for more information.

It is very difficult to justify and still harder to quantify how much impact the website and associated activities had on the problem they were designed to address, namely easing the transition to higher education of UK BME students, helping students to settle in to university life and giving them the best chance of success. The pre-induction website is a small component of a wide range of innovative interventions implemented by the faculty since 2007, including the pedagogical transformation to ALL and the development of SEE-u as described earlier.

The progression and completion rate for students in almost every part of the faculty rose significantly between 2007 and 2010 (Table 2), which provides a good indication that the combined range of measures is having a positive impact.

The combination of the website information and opportunity for interaction, backed by a comprehensive dissemination and support network and follow-up services through SEE-u, appears so far to constitute an effective package for student support leading up to and beyond students’ arrival on campus. The website provides a friendly blogging interface which allows new students to communicate with established students and/or staff. The telephone campaign that has been operated during the pre-induction period for the last three years has been a proactive way of contacting and alerting new students to available information. It has also been effective in identifying potential problems early enough to find solutions before term begins.

Table 1 Pre-induction website visitors, September 2011

Visits	1341
Unique visitors	801
Page views	8186
New visits	54.36%
Return visits	45.64%

Table 2 Faculty-wide progression rates for stages 1 and 2, 2007–2010

EC Faculty overall undergraduate student progression	2007/08	2008/09	2009/10
Stage 1	72.38%	75.11%	76.86%
Stage 2	77.98%	81.67%	89.89%

The faculty’s experience provides a model for the employment of students that others might draw upon. It is particularly useful to have a flexible workforce that can be deployed as required to develop and operate new resources and amenities for the support of other students. However, there are some practical overheads to be considered when employing a significant number of students (not least when taking into account deployment of project funding), including:

• recruitment and selection

• training and induction

• supervision and management

• workspace and resources

• processing payment claims and timesheets

• contractual details (absences, sick pay, leave etc)

• rapid turnover of student employees

• possible conflicts between work and study.

The relatively small amounts of funding provided by external organisations such as CWLLN and the HEA Subject Centres can still make a great difference to the ability of university staff to justify research, development and innovation they would like to initiate. Without the support from all of the organisations involved in this project it is unlikely the website would have been developed.

The structural design and aesthetic layout of the website was carefully considered and changed several times at different stages, according to the available platform and technology in use. The stated objective of the project was to design a student-friendly website which was also accessible to parents and teachers. The original plan was to provide early student access to the university’s VLE via the links on the pre-induction website. This aspect was not implemented, however, initially because the portal was being migrated from Blackboard to Moodle during the period of development.

The recent idea in 2011 of creating pre-arrival Facebook groups and interesting material for computing students provided an exciting model that will be the subject of further study, possibly for future adoption across the faculty.

There was some initial resistance to the suggestion of adding course materials to the website on the grounds of duplicating information already available on the university’s website. However, such objections were short-lived and staff were reassured when the student-friendly format began to emerge.

Some challenges and restrictions arose as a result of using WordPress as the platform for the current website. Some of these problems will disappear, but inevitably new ones will arise when the site is migrated to the university’s main server under SharePoint.

It is notable that several academic staff who are experts in web development and usability complimented the design and structure of the pre-induction website. It became clear during the early part of the year that academic staff were making use of its materials during tutorial discussions with students. This fact, along with other feedback, suggests that the look and feel of the current website is accessible to both staff and students.

Future plans

Strong management backing is crucial for the sustainability of the website together with continuity in the workforce that is responsible for its development and maintenance. It is important to ensure that the effort and money expended to date in creating this important resource is not wasted. Websites are of no value unless the information held is current and useful to its intended audience. Basic content at course level must be updated at least once each year to reflect new developments and staff changes. Since the hierarchical structure of the website reflects the faculty’s internal management structure, which is also dynamic, all aspects must be regularly maintained in response to any changes.

It can be determined from the large percentage and number of visits to the website by UK-based people (89.86%, 1,205) that the telephone contact by student advocates was effective in signposting the website and for establishing contact and identifying problems. It is therefore intended that this approach will be followed in future years, given sufficient resources.

It is noteworthy that this paper concerns an initiative that came into being to support disadvantaged UK students studying computing courses and was subsequently extended to cover the wider faculty population. A fitting point on which to close this paper is to consider the wider application of the pre-allocation of student teams for ALL and associated establishment of active Facebook groups, together with course-related materials. This has been implemented for computing courses in 2011 but, if the evaluation of evidence proves favourable, this example will be used as a model for adoption across the whole faculty for 2012.

The final reflection concerns the ownership and buy-in of the website and related pre-induction activities by faculty staff. Some academic staff have already discovered the value of having accessible resources available on the pre-induction website and are keeping these up to date while others are taking longer to convince. However, recent success in other difficult initiatives (most notably the development of SEE-u and the employment of students) persuades the author that evidence of acceptance by students and their supporters should help to convince any sceptical colleagues that these resources and initiatives are worth supporting.