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Spanning Boundaries: Academics and Professionals in Partnership to Foster Student Engagement Sarah Parkes & Julie Blackwell Young

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• What is SAST?

• What does SAST do?

• Relevance of SAST activities to your institution

• Challenges of working in the ‘Third Space’• Higher Education Academic/Leadership Foundation

project

Aims of the Session

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Senior Academic Support Tutors

• Replaced the previous Academic Support Tutor system

within School of Human Sciences

• Comprises of five academic colleagues

• Base room from 9-4pm for drop-ins or appointments plus email, mobile and landline telephone

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SAST Activities

• Advise and support academic and personal issues including but not limited too:

HEADstart Personal Development Planning Presence at various committees

Mitigating circumstances, Programme Assessment Boards, Academic Standards Student Services , Pastoral and Welfare Group, Student Support Group.

Academic progress and regulations - extensions; Individual Learning Plan’s; Reasonable Adjustment Plan’s;

transfers; suspension; withdrawal Supporting and liaising with staff in their support of students Advocacy

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SAST Operating within the ‘Student Engagement to Improve Student Retention and Success’ (Thomas, 2012)

Site of student

belonging

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HEADstart: generating a sense of belongingSupporting social and academic integration, managing student expectations and encouraging the development of appropriate academic study skills (Gorard et al, 2006; Crabtree et al, 2007).

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• Introduce potential students to the nature and demands of study at higher education level

• Provide practice in relevant academic tasks• Enable students to demonstrate that they are ready to progress onto a

relevant higher education programme• Promote academic integration• Foster self awareness and thus development within applicants • Provide familiarisation with the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)• Promote the process of completing a Personal Development Portfolio• Reduce non-traditional student attrition through improving preparedness for

Higher education.

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Online Elements of HEADstart

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Five stage model for e-tivities

(Salmon, 2004, p 11)

‘Community of Inquiry Model,

(Garrison et al , 2000 p 87-105)

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Post Event Feedback

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1. What have I found to be the most valuable thing about HEADstart?

2. How will I use my experiences of HEADstart during my studies?

3. If I was able, how or what would I change about HEADstart?

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Focus Groups and Interviews after First 6 Months

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‘I never got my GCSE’s […] HEADstart was good for me … it gave me a taste of what I needed to do.…and it helped identify my Dyslexia.’

…I suppose it makes you realise that these aren’t the dreaded teachers from school who, are up on Mount Olympus or whatever, they’re just other human beings the same as everyone else…

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HEADstart made me more nervous … it reminded me of how to do a group presentation, an essay and research everything…helped me prepare for what was ahead in the next couple of months…’

‘I didn’t make the grade at GCSE or ‘A’ level […] It was good to not be thrown in the deep end.

‘Feeling of confidence when you start the course - some [students] said they had wished they had done HEADstart, especially mature students.’

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‘…by the time university started properly, we were; we already knew what we were doing and we were comfortable in the environment, and we knew our way around, and we were so much more …ready.’..

‘…we were the ones telling other people how to do things , and, so you go from being,…someone who, in your eyes isn’t…might not be good enough for university…to someone telling the people who got in through their A level’s you know, ‘this is how you do it’, so you feel on an equal footing again, so it’s a really big boost to your confidence…

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Progression and Retention (after the first two years of study: March 2012)

School of Human Sciences (09/10 cohort)

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HS School HS School

Original cohort 30 526 30 526

PFT 22 342 18 301

PWR 0 71 0 49

Retake year / Suspended 6 47 5 46

Total retained28 460 23 396

Withdrawn 2 66 7 130

Retention 93% 87% 77% 75%

Progression Rate 73% 78% 60% 66%

Pass rate (w/o resits) 73% 65% 60% 57%

Withdrawn 7% 12% 23% 25%

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Pre-entry Activity in Your Own Institutions

• Does your institution do anything?• What would/did you need to do to actually be able

to get it moving?• Requirements of students• Formal structure• Staff capacity• If not useful – why not?

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Other SAST Activities

• PDP – individual, group• Academic skills – essay writing, presentations,

referencing• Personal skills – time management, team working• Pastoral care – signposting, finance• Game changer – granting extensions

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Institutional Transformation

• Able to see both perspectives– Professional– Academic

• Overview of systems and procedures• Voice and authority• SAST now sit on Programme Assessment Boards (PAB),

mitigating circumstances committee• Initiated Institutional Support Group and identification

of vulnerable students prior to assessment boards• Championed move from student deficit model

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Who Does these Functions in Your Institution?

• Who does these kinds of functions, if anyone?• Why do they do them?– E.g. Historical, planned, organic

• Could another model work for you?• If so, what could that model look like?

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Challenges of Third Space

• What is third space?• Boundary Spanning? • Differences between the two?

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Third Space Professionals

• Whitchurch (2013) defines third space environments as being “between professional and academic spheres of activity” (p. 3).

• Third space professionals–mix of aspects to their job:• managerial • professional • academic

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Working in Third Space

• Higher Education Academy/Leadership Foundation for Higher Education funded project on:

• “Leading the student experience: academics and professional services in partnership”

• All Higher Education Institutions in UK and NI sent survey about third space activity

• Ten institutions chosen for focus groups and interviews

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Benefits of Third Space Activity

• Organic, flexible, responsive, creative• Teamwork and Collaboration• Personalisation for students• Holistic overview• Professional development

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• “I’d never in my seventeen years at the university been round the table with somebody from so many different areas who all had at the centre of their initiative for being there, supporting students”

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Challenges of Third Space Activity

• Institutional reward and recognition• Institutional/departmental commitment• Creating right atmosphere and space• Organic, flexible, responsive, creative• Boundaries and roles• Not always examples of third space/boundary

spanning as no movement in the types of activities staff do.

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SAST Survey 2011

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A Postcard For You

• You will each be given a postcard• Put your own address on one side• On the other side write down something

transformational that you would like to achieve in the next year

• This could be– Personal?– Departmental?– Institutional?

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ReferencesCrabtree, H., Roberts, C. and Tyler, C. (2007) Understanding the Problems of Transition into Higher Education [online] available at http://www.ece.salford.ac.uk/proceedings/papers/35_07.pdf (accessed 05.11.08).

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3),87-105

Gorard S., Smith, E., May, H., Thomas, L., Adnett, N. and Slack, K. (2006), Review of Widening Participation Research: Addressing the Barriers to Participation in Higher Education, [online]. Available at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rdreports/2006/rd13_06/ (accessed on 11/09/08).

Salmon, G (2004) E-tivities: The Key to Active Online Learning, Koogan Page: London

Thomas, L. (2012) Building student engagement and belonging in Higher Education at a time of change: final report from the What Works? Student retention & success programme. London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation/HEFCE

Whitchurch, C. (2013). Reconstructing identities in higher education: The rise of third space professionals, London: SRHE