Making sense of emerging themes has been the key feature of this project on student engagements during November.

This image tweeted by @RacePhil of Dr Morgan’s presentation to the SEDA conference (15/11/2019) caught my eye because the pinch points she flags before studies and during year one parallel those appearing in my students’ data.

Of particular interest was the reference to wobble week (3-6). With our LA school half term week falling in week 5, our course sessions for that week are intentionally planned as asynchronous and online. My understanding is that this is intended to allow for parents to engage as effectively in week 5 as their peers, and to facilitate students to work from their non-university home for a week should they wish to touch home-base. (I’ll come back to ‘wobble week’!)

Meanwhile, the first level 4 student assignment deadline was Thursday of week 6. The due date for assignment two followed in week 8 (after feedback from assignment one had been received); the third assignment was due week 9 and the last of the term is due in week 12 (all on Thursdays for ease of remembering).

Between weeks 1-4 the most consistent theme to the feedback I was getting in a personal tutor context was that students felt like they should be working but they weren’t quite sure in what way or on what. This led me to create a Kaltura video for them (shared week 4 through the personal tutor folder of the programme NILE site) titled: “Week 4 – Where could/should you be up to at this point”. Part of the anxiety seemed to stem from ‘doing it right’ in relation to assessment preparation – especially where students may have been out of education for over a year. Where we would have liked students to have been reading around their assignments, taking notes and developing their ideas; in practice, many found having ‘only’ two timetabled contact days of teaching and learning left them with more free time than they wanted; with ’empty time’. 

Structuring the teaching timetable into two days is intentional and intended to give students separate time for placements as well as for scheduling in paid work, should they need to generate an income. It is also intended to support those commuting in from further afield as well as facilitate alternative caring arrangements for those students with caring responsibilities. However, the view of non-contact time as empty time sometimes tied in unhelpfully with students missing home and feeling they had yet to shape a social diary; If your timetable only requires you to be physically at university on two adjacent days of the week – why shouldn’t you go home for the rest of the week? How can you develop your sense of belonging to university if you are only there 29% of the time? The ’empty time’ seemed to exacerbate some students’ mental health difficulties, in that when they just wanted to stay in bed and sleep (which they would associate with a consequence of depression) on most days they could do this; some students who had stopped needing to medicate found they needed to do so again at this point.

Back to ‘Wobble week’: Week 5 seemed to bring together (1) a more immediate realisation of assignment deadlines such that feedback moved from ’empty time’ to ‘too many assignments’ (2) Many students who live in halls went home; three of these students communicated with me that week about dropping out and not returning to university (though all did remain); Overall cohort-level attendance in sessions went from 81% in week 4 to 75% in week 6 and 7, taking until week 9 (84%) to recover, then to a strong 88% in week 10. The time at home and the more imminently felt assignment deadlines seemed to come together for some students into a ‘discomfort of fit’.

This discomfort of fit has since been further explored (collectively looking at identity – what makes us who we are and how does that combine with our ideas of what makes a ‘successful’ university student).

So, there has been a great deal going on and much data generated and partially digested in relation to students engagements. We have a focus group (our first) scheduled for next week where some of these themes will be further explored – including ‘wobble week’! The next blog will feedback on that focus group and may bravely (or foolishly!) venture into some initial reflections on the experience of using LEARN alongside this project.

Any comments, ideas and own experiences you might wish to feedback to me would be most welcome.

Thanks for reading!