08:20 – 08:50
Registration – grab a drink and sign-in
Room: Creative Centre Atrium
09:00 – 10:10
Opening Remarks
Dr Ruth Windscheffel, Head of Teaching & Learning Enhancement
Keynote: Designing authentic assessment for teams: Our compassionate brains on the case
Dr Theo Gilbert, University of Hertfordshire
Keynote Presentation – Our Compassionate Brains
Appendix 1 – Grading criteria for individually marked team observations for co-team management
10:15 – 10:25
Morning break – Bun and run
Room: Dining Room Extension
10:30-12:00
Presentations and Talk Abouts
Session 1: Academic tutoring/coaching and student wellbeing
Room: SK 037
-
Mental health literacy and Academic Tutoring
Sarah Trussler & Michelle Yeoman -
Embedding academic tutoring to increase engagement
Nicola Cutting – Presentation -
Using student evaluations of teaching (SETs) to inform pedagogy
Catherine Bedwei-Majdoub – Presentation
Session 2: Supporting specific student communities
Room: SK/128
-
Understanding stressful experiences of international students: How academics and wellbeing service can help
Francis Achi, Chi Maher & Sharon Hocking – Presentation -
Co-creating holistic caring spaces for our postgraduate students and early career researchers
Brendan Paddison – Presentation -
Supporting students on placement
Antony Stones – Presentation
12:05-12:50
Session 3: Lunchtime and Poster Presentations
Room: Holgate Dining Room
Poster presentations by:
- Cassie Price
- Andrea Woodward
- Toni Giblin
13:00 – 13:45
Session 4: ‘Have a go’ practical workshops
Option 1: Yoga psychology: An evidenced-based and practical intervention for student and staff wellbeing
Jasmine Childs-Fegredo – Workshop
Option 2: Creative self-reflection for wellbeing
Samantha Goddard – Workshop
Option 3: What else can video games do? An interactive exploration into the educational and mental health benefits of video gaming
Matt Spokes, Jack Denham, Matt Coward-Gibbs and Caitlin Veal – Workshop
13:55-14:55
Presentations and Talk Abouts
Session 5: Digital wellbeing and teaching during / after COVID
Room: SK/037
-
Connecting the dots among digital transformation, digital competence, student engagement and students’ wellbeing in Higher Education
Zoi Charis Belenioti -
Clarity, transparency and pre-emptive facilitation: Pre-seminar resources after COVID-19
Adam Smith – Presentation
Session 6: Attendance, engagement participation and belonging
Room: SK/128
-
Barriers to student attendance and engagement
Jennifer Boland and Nicola Cutting – Talk about -
Belonging, participation and a sense of place in a learning community
Gary Rivett and Liz Goodwin – Talk about
15:00 – 15:10
Afternoon break – Tea and cake
Room: Dining Room Extension
15:15-16:15
Presentations and Talk Abouts
Session 7: Assessment-related stress and anxiety
Room: SK/037
-
Reframing exam anxiety and mitigation strategies
Sarah Fitzgerald and Sarah Crabbe -
How many words…?! Discussing issues of anxiety and wellbeing for staff and students on undergraduate dissertation and capstone modules
Steven Cock – Presentation
Session 8: Impact of COVID-19 on the student experience
Room: SK/128
-
Working creatively to enhance student engagement, attendance and wellbeing
Penn Smith, Trish Hobman and Jenny Collyer – Presentation -
Back to normal after Covid 19? What support do undergraduate students require in order to help them return to university life?
Gary Shepherd and Eve Fothergill
16:20-17:30
Plenary: ‘Convergence’: The changing role of a university in relation to mental health
Professor Nick Rowe, Director of Converge, York St John University
17:30-18:30
Drinks reception, with wine and non-alcoholic beverages
Room: Creative Centre Auditorium
Abstracts
Keynote: Dr Theo Gilbert, University of Hertfordshire
Title: Designing authentic assessment for teams: Our compassionate brains on the case
In this keynote, Dr Theo Gilbert translates rich, current scholarship on the psychobiological model of compassion into evidence-based, practical micro-skills of cognitive compassion for students’ group-work management – and its assessment. In evolutionary terms, compassion in task-focused teams’ communications is not an emotion but an intention: to notice, not normalise, the distress or disadvantaging of self or others, and to take wise action to prevent or reduce that (Compassionate Mind Foundation).
But what do the key behavioural micro skills of compassion in student group work look like in action? Why are they so easy and quick to teach? And why are they so effective in studies so far at dismantling two very common behaviours that undermine students (and staff) social and learning experiences of their own team or group work? How are these smart skills assessed in different disciplines and what has happened to the BAME awarding gap where this approach to teamwork has been used, compared to controls?
Theo is delighted to share with colleagues at York St John some fascinating evidence in response to these questions showing them that this approach to teams pedagogy could not be in better hands than theirs as we face together the hard questions in HE that this conference is addressing so directly.
Bio:
Dr Theo Gilbert (SFHEA) is Associate Professor, Teaching and Learning, at the University of Hertfordshire’s Learning and Teaching Innovation Centre and Business School. His research and practice revolves around compassion and compassionate approaches to team- or group-work. As an ex staff-elected Governor of his university, Theo has ensured that an empirically understood pedagogy of compassion is embedded in the university’s five-year strategic plan. He is the creator of the Compassion in HE website offering free, practical resources for any compassion-curious educator. This network has been joined by staff from, so far, 75 universities to help each other get the science of compassion explicitly onto the curricula, in almost any discipline. Theo was Advance HE’s/Times Higher’s Most Innovative Teacher of the Year in 2018, and keynote speaker at the 2020 NTF/CATE symposium. He has a strong presence on YouTube in relation to his research and is published in a number of journals and book chapters. Alongside his research and publications, Theo is focussed on promoting public conversation around the growing, multi-disciplinary scholarship on the science of compassion to help address the growing mental health crisis in HE.
Plenary: Professor Nick Rowe, York St John University
Title: ‘Convergence’: The changing role of a university in relation to mental health
Mental Health: the financial anxieties created by changing economic fortunes and the impact of COVID-19 have significantly increased the number of those experiencing mental ill health.
The University: The financial crash of 2008 and its long-term effect has profoundly changed higher education. In light of shrinking budgets and changing priorities, universities have had to reconsider their role and their civic responsibilities. This has particularly been the case for smaller universities, which have actively turned their attention to the cities and regions of which they are a part. As ‘anchor institutions’ they can make a massive contribution to their communities, not only in their research but also through exchanging knowledge and skills.
The Convergence: through discussing Converge, Nick will provide an example of how a university can turn outwards to the community, opening its doors and welcoming those who often would not have an opportunity to benefit from what it has to offer. Converge illustrates the convergence of interests of the mental health services, which need non-stigmatising opportunities for those who experience mental ill health, and a university which needs real life learning and research opportunities for its students. Nick will suggest that, in a time of shrinking budgets, convergence provides a means to release considerable resources to address social need through bringing together the interests of a university and that of a service provider.
Bio: Professor Nick Rowe is the founder and Director of Converge, a partnership with the NHS offering educational opportunities to adults who have lived experience of mental ill health. His background is as a psychiatric nurse and dramatherapist. He has worked at York St John University for 30 years, first as a lecturer in occupational therapy, and then latterly in theatre. Most of his work is now focused on managing and developing Converge.
Session: Academic tutoring, coaching and student wellbeing
Format: Talk About discussion
Title: Mental health literacy and Academic Tutoring
Presenters: Sarah Trussler and Michelle Yeoman
Set in the context of the increasing need for students to receive support for their mental health and wellbeing, this Talk About session will examine academic staff confidence to meet these needs in academic or personal tutoring. Discussions will focus on the challenges of what can be called ‘mental health literacy’ and how far academic/personal tutors feel they are able to recognise and meet student need. Participants will be invited to examine case studies of students who present to them with pastoral needs related to mental health. They will also hear the outcomes of research the presenters have carried out with tutors and students on this topic. As a result of the conversations and activities, we hope to have raised awareness of some of the common concerns from students, of how to provide supportive conversations rather than counselling, and how to recognise when an issue needs referral.
Session: Academic tutoring, coaching and student wellbeing
Format: Presentation
Title: Embedding academic tutoring to increase engagement
Presenter: Nicola Cutting
Academic tutoring forms an important part of the student university experience. Academic tutoring interactions and relationships are often the largest support mechanisms that students receive whilst at university (Malik, 2000). This personal contact between tutor and tutee helps foster a sense of belonging and is an important factor in student mental health, continuation and retention (Evans, 2003; Hixenbaugh et al., 2006). Despite these benefits, rates of engagement with academic tutoring are often low, with those who would benefit most from the collaborative relationship not engaging with the opportunity. To address this poor engagement, academic tutoring engagement and participation has been embedded into a non-credit bearing pass/fail module across a range of Psychology programmes. In this session, I will showcase how academic tutoring has been embedded into our programmes, including detail of the academic tutoring portfolio students complete to demonstrate their engagement. I will then present our semester 1 attendance and engagement statistics (which at week 4 stood at >92% engagement) before discussing the advantages and disadvantages of using this embedded approach. I will invite participants to join this discussion and ask an open question as to whether a successful academic community with meaningful engagement can only be achieved by embedding participation into the curriculum. Will an embedded academic tutorial approach help us to better support student mental health and wellbeing?
Session: Academic tutoring / coaching and student wellbeing
Format: Presentation
Title: Using student evaluations of teaching (SETs) to inform pedagogy
Presenter: Dr Catherine Bedwei-Majdoub
This presentation will be based on how students’ evaluations of teaching (SETs) can offer formative aids for lecturers and tutors. It will show that those wanting to renew students’ attitudes to learning – to guide them towards deeper awareness of their capacities to learn and the freedoms that learning gives – can find the right teaching approach in students’ open-ended responses. The methodology explored will enable lecturers and tutors to become more skilful at coaching students on how (not what) to learn, and to examine their own pedagogical practice in view of students’ depictions of their sessions, providing them with deeper understanding of what should be fine-tuned to help develop students’ learning independence. By placing students’ commentary on their learning experiences at the centre of their self-assessment, academics can become more alert to opportunities to embolden students to ‘flip’ the teacher-student control of content. This can empower the lecturer or tutor with coaching aspirations and also inspire students who are comforted by more traditional teaching techniques to own their own learning, thus lessening their stress and anxiety, and enhancing their wellbeing. Accordingly, the presentation will end by recommending SETs as effective formative tools that enable a systematic self-evaluation and improvement of pedagogical praxis in line with student-led teaching philosophies and student wellbeing.
Session: Supporting specific student communities
Format: Presentation
Title: Co-creating holistic caring spaces for our postgraduate students and early career researchers
Presenter: Brendan Paddison
Pre-pandemic research revealed evidence of a significant mental health crisis in postgraduate education. Specifically, research has drawn attention to the prevalence of stress and anxiety impacting academic performance, personal wellbeing, work-life balance, and issues regarding trainee-adviser relationships. The pandemic has exacerbated these concerns and, along with additional caring roles and/or work responsibilities, has contributed to the already challenging learning environment. Indeed, the pandemic has interrupted a whole generation of scholars. Therefore, it is incumbent upon academics and the broader academic community to set a tone for prioritising personal wellbeing and a mindful work ethic supporting healthier work and learning environments. Doing so could enable spaces where postgraduate students and Early Career Researchers (ECRs) not only feel supported, but thrive. In April 2022, the Tourism Education Futures Initiative (TEFI) and Tourism RESET held an online symposium entitled “Intentionally Co-creating Holistic Caring Spaces for our Postgraduate Students and Early Career Researchers”. Taking an arts-based methodological approach, the symposium invited contributions from postgraduate students and early career researchers that focused on their lived experiences of working through a pandemic. Drawing on the findings from the symposium, this presentation reflects upon the unique challenges the pandemic has presented to our postgraduate students and ECRs. It examines their concerns and how we, as an academic community, can improve our supports to intentionally create holistic caring spaces to ensure our postgraduate students and ECR flourish and attend to their personal wellbeing in the process.
Session: Supporting different student communities
Format: Talk About session
Title: Understanding stressful experiences of international students: How academics and wellbeing service can help
Presenters: Dr Francis Achi, Dr Chi Maher & Sharon Hocking
The aim of this session is to examine the major sources of stress experienced by international students and the impact it has on students’ academic performance and wellbeing. Stress is a reality of our everyday lives: it is the process by which an individual or a person reacts when opened to external or internal problems and challenges. International students are more likely to experience stressful situations for various reasons. Research suggests that causes of stress among international students include financial challenges, new cultural experiences, different academic systems, loneliness, language proficiency and heavy academic workloads (Cao, et al., 2021; Forbes-Mewett et al., 2019; López,2020). The presenters have conducted a study that employed a mixed-method qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative (survey) approach to understand the major sources of stress experienced by international students. In this session, they will 1) identify the common causes of stress among international students at YSJU, and 2) explain how academics and wellbeing services can help these students cope with such stress. Some research has been done on stress and its management; however, this session proposes pragmatic solutions – based on the findings of this study – to assisting international students to manage and mitigate the complexities of academic life and associated stressful experiences.
Session: Supporting different student communities
Format: Presentation
Title: Supporting students on placement
Presenter: Antony Stones
This presentation identifies and discusses the elements associated with clinical placement blocks that may impact student’s mental health. It highlights the barriers to adequately supporting this particularly vulnerable sector of the student population, and the mechanisms and processes that should be developed to prevent students falling between the cracks and finding themselves supported by neither the university nor the placement provider.
Session: Lunch & Posters
Format: Poster presentation
Title: Investigating student anxiety in Higher Education
Presenter: Toni Giblin
After attending the Mental Health in Higher Education conference in November 2022, it became evident that there is a growing need to become more aware of mental health statistics pertaining to undergraduates in the UK. In this poster presentation, I aim to explore the main contributing factors to student anxiety in recent years, and to consider strategies that could be implemented in and across the Higher Education sector.
Session: Lunch & Posters
Format: Poster presentation
Title: A review of Open Forum’s 2022 conference: ‘Student Mental Health: Identify-Respond-Support’
Presenter: Andrea Woodward
The Open Forum conference in Autumn 2022 focused on developing and sharing methods of supporting positive mental health and resilience in HE students. The objective of the conference was to promote sharing ‘best-practice’ knowledge by creating a cross-industry community, consisting of HE institutions as well as external partners. This poster will give a summary of those practices identified and information pertaining to the external partners presented.
Session: Lunch & Posters
Format: Poster presentation
Title: ‘What harm have students experienced while left in limbo?’ Resourcing academic misconduct
Presenter: Cassie Price
Download Resource: 01. TAT 2023 Poster (Finalised – Cassie Price)
In 2020-21, the UK welcomed over 600,000 higher education international students. Of those, over 80% constituted non-EU students, denoting not only a recovery from COVID-19, but an increase on pre-pandemic quotients (HESA, 2022). International students experience unique challenges that place them at risk of academic misconduct (AM), including language barriers, cultural variance and upheaval, stress and anxiety around academic expectations and readiness, and difficulties with policy comprehension. AM has the potential to jeopardise student continuation, retention and achievement, leaving international students especially susceptible to the academic, mental health and wellbeing consequences of an infringement (Parnther, 2022; QAA, 2022). In efforts to address this, the London Campus has appointed an AM Lead, created the ‘AM Production Line’, increased student support provision and hosted targeted training packages. Intended outcomes included streamlining the AM process and decreasing the number of allegations and/or infringements. These outcomes have caused a ‘ripple effect’, generating a series of positive additional sequels, including improvements in student satisfaction , students’ mental health, and thus the overarching student experience.
Session: ‘Have a go’ practical workshops
Format: Workshop
Title: Yoga psychology: An evidenced-based and practical intervention for student and staff wellbeing
Facilitator: Jasmine Childs-Fegredo
Yoga has been evidenced as beneficial for mental health and wellbeing. Research in this area is proliferating, with an understanding that what we do with our bodies affects our minds. Everyone in life experiences difficulties at some time or another – for some, this distress can become overwhelming while, for others, it can dissipate. Nevertheless, it could be argued that improving wellbeing and increasing resilience to stress applies to all. Students in universities are under a lot of pressure, and research suggests that an understanding of mind-body techniques can enhance not only wellbeing, but also emotional regulation and academic performance. This workshop seeks to take the audience through some of the evidence on the link between yoga and psychology, and how to apply this knowledge in everyday life. The session will offer the opportunity for the audience to participate in some basic yoga-informed practices (no special clothing required), some of which would be seated on a chair and others standing up. The aim would be to allow the audience to experience the mind-body connection, thereby opening the door to a plethora of skills and techniques available to achieve ‘good’ psychological health and wellbeing. This knowledge and insight would hopefully pave the way for those who take part to apply skills in everyday life in order to enjoy a better sense of wellbeing, emotional regulation and resilience to stress.
Session: ‘Have a go’ practical workshops
Format: Workshop
Title: Creative self-reflection for wellbeing
Facilitator: Samantha Goddard
Join art psychotherapist and PhD student Samantha Goddard in a practical, collaborative workshop to explore creative tools and practices that can help us reflect on boundaries, burnout and building personal resilience. As burnout and mental health become increasing priorities for students and staff at every stage of the HE experience, what learning can we learn from creativity and mental health research, and borrow from psychotherapeutic practice? In this workshop, take some protected space to play, and prioritise the valuable reflective practice that so often gets bumped from the bottom our pressured to do lists. By the end of the session, we will have shared experiences and started to build a toolbox of small strategies you can use to build your own self-awareness and improve your own sense of wellbeing, or to use in learning and teaching.
Session: : ‘Have a go’ practical workshops
Format: Workshop
Title: What else can video games do? An interactive exploration into the educational and mental health benefits of video gaming
Facilitators: Matt Spokes, Jack Denham, Matthew Coward-Gibbs & Caitlin Veal
Video games do more than entertain. As an educational opportunity, they place players in fictional or real-world settings; counter assumptions; present challenges to overcome; test patience and comfort zones; foster skills through the practice of specific actions; and serve as communicative platforms for connectivity between players across the world. Games routinely require engagement with scarcity via resource management and, importantly, push at the positionality of the player through virtual embodiment/engagement with myriad classes, races, genders, levels of wealth and cultures that may be aspirational, unfavourable or misaligned with personal experience. Inside of a sometimes testing virtual environment, they offer space to explore differing ideas, identities, perspectives and problems, and our current research suggests this has positive effects in terms of mental health and self-care, with the potentiality for therapeutic applications moving forward. This workshop is informed by, and will begin with, the findings of two research papers from the Interactive Games Research Group [IGRG]. After this, participants will play games, both alone and together, and participate in structured, reflective discussion around their function beyond entertainment. To round off, workshop participants will be introduced to a developing bank of online resources held and created by IGRG, with an invite to test, contribute to and feed back on their utility. You do not need to have played a video game before to benefit from and contribute to this session.
Session: Digital wellbeing and teaching during / after COVID
Format: Presentation
Title: Connecting the dots among digital transformation, digital competence, student engagement and students’ wellbeing in Higher Education
Presenter: Zoi Charis Belenioti
The rise of the Web 2.0 era and the dawn of Digital Transformation (DT) have massively transformed people’s lives and business models, along with students’ experiences of Higher Education (HE). During unprecedented ‘black swan’ events like COVID-19, digitalisation acted as a ‘first aid kit’ within culture and education: closed museums remained virtually open via the Web and social media, boosting museum visitors’ engagement, resilience and well-being; similarly, in both compulsory and higher education, on-site teaching moved fully online. Online or remote teaching via Moodle, Blackboard and even social media augmented the didactic experience by enabling access and on-demand education and disseminating knowledge via ‘edutainment’ outside of the classroom. Nevertheless, the digital transformation of HE has also led to a renewed interest in the students’ mental health, wellbeing and engagement. Of particular concern are the notions of digital wellbeing, digital engagement, digital competence and digital resilience. Although the literature on the transformative power of digitalisation on students’ wellbeing and engagement is infant, this paper will mobilise case analysis from across the Higher Education sector to a) provide a classification of the recent literature, and b) propose new research topics and implications on this research stream.
Session: Digital wellbeing and teaching during / after COVID
Format: Presentation
Title: Clarity, transparency and pre-emptive facilitation: Pre-seminar resources after Covid-19
Presenter: Adam Smith
The facilitation of teaching during the first full year of the COVID-19 pandemic presented a host of challenges when delivering discussion-based seminars. Seminars were delivered in two formats: 50-min seminars delivered on campus, masked and with the implementation of social distancing, and 90/120-minute seminars delivered on Microsoft Teams. In neither case could students easily talk to peers. To manages these issues, I had to deconstruct my seminars, disperse the student labour across different times and formats and, in doing so, developed a range of pre-seminar practices that were warmly received by students, and which are now embedded in my teaching. Now, over a year later, I have conducted a survey on how students engage with pre-seminar worksheets, which has revealed a reoccurring perception amongst students that pre-seminar materials reduce anxiety and improve wellbeing during the seminars themselves. This paper will highlight my key findings.
Session: Attendance, participation and belonging
Format: Talk About discussion
Title: Barriers to student attendance and engagement
Presenters: Jennifer Boland and Nicola Cutting
A noticeable drop in student attendance at timetabled sessions has been noted at York St John and amongst Higher Education Institutions across the UK. Low attendance in itself is not necessarily an indicator of poor engagement with a university programme. Although previous research has found positive but weak correlations between attendance and grades, it is argued that it is not whether students attend class, but how (Buchele, 2020). Readily available teaching materials mean that some students remain heavily engaged with their studies despite low attendance, whereas other students may attend sessions but not engage with the content presented. Additionally, the Covid-19 pandemic may have changed student views on what is expected of them in terms of attendance and what students expect from the institution in terms of availability of materials. Whilst we know that attendance does not necessarily equal engagement, what we do not know is the possible reasons for this and the impact this may have on students’ mental health and wellbeing, and vice versa.
In collaboration with colleagues from the University of Hull, our research programme aims to take a deeper look into the relationships between attendance (and barriers to it), student engagement, student’s sense of belonging and student outcomes, all of which can have a direct impact on students mental health and wellbeing. In this ‘talk about’ session, we will introduce this topic area, share initial findings from a student survey on this topic conducted during semester 1, and engage in an open dialogue with colleagues about their thoughts, experiences, and ideas surrounding this research programme. Finally, we will explore and discuss the links between these preliminary findings and mental health and wellbeing in students.
Session: Attendance, participation and belonging
Format: Talk About discussion
Title: ‘Belonging, participation and a sense of place in a learning community
Presenters: Gary Rivett and Liz Goodwin
It is widely noted that a sense of belonging to a community at University can support better outcomes for students, increase their confidence in their learning and enhance engagement with their degrees. However, from our experiences, we have begun to wonder how far students trust staff motivations and guidance when setting module tasks and assessments. This perception coincides with signs that students lack confidence in their abilities either to appraise evidence critically or understand tutor expectations. A gap appears to have developed between tutors and students, into which rumour, anxiety and panic has flowed, with miscommunication about tasks, activities and expectations between students often superseding direct communication with tutors as the source of information and support. Our developing research project has pursued a particular approach to understanding these issues, asking how student perception of their learning shapes their transition to, and expectations and experiences of University. We are particularly interested in the educational biographies of students and how they have experienced and appraised their learning in the past. Additionally, we want to explore how students perceive the core relationships between themselves, their tutors and professional services, with a focus on how experiences of deference, hierarchy and authority have informed student understandings of how learning communities are created. Building upon a successful Student-as-Researchers pilot project, we want to raise discussions of these issues beyond our immediate experiences of the Humanities.
Session: Assessment-related stress and anxiety
Format: Talk About discussion
Title: Reframing exam anxiety and mitigation strategies
Presenters: Sarah Fitzgerald and Sarah Crabbe
This session will introduce our research about supporting students with exam stress. The purpose of our research is to investigate whether exam-related stress can be reframed or reduced to enable students to improve their wellbeing and performance. We will discuss the interventions we have used and our initial findings on the impact of those interventions. We will then invite contributions of suggestions from colleagues for alternatives. Students’ mental health is an increasingly important issue and any actions which can be taken to support this through reducing stress are of great importance and, if this also leads to improved outcomes for students, then this is of value to individual students and more broadly society. Staff will take away a list of ideas to support their students.
Session: Assessment-related stress and anxiety
Format: Presentation
Title: How many words…?! Discussing issues of anxiety and wellbeing for staff and students on undergraduate dissertation and capstone modules
Presenter: Steven Cock
Undertaking a final year dissertation or capstone project is an integral aspect of most undergraduate degree programmes. As one of the largest and potentially more complex modules on their course, students can at times experience increased levels of apprehension or anxiety at the somewhat ‘unknown’ prospect of undertaking a relatively large, self-directed and independently-driven research investigation, often for the first time. Similarly, there are instances in which staff members – particularly those who are new to academia or new to the processes of supervising undergraduate student research projects – can also be apprehensive and uncertain about the tasks, roles, expectations and processes that are involved in the supervision process. In this context, many staff members have often traditionally relied on their own prior anecdotal experiences of the research and supervision process to guide aspects of their practice. Within this presentation, the types of processes and frameworks that have been developed in an attempt to support staff and students who are involved in undergraduate dissertation or capstone modules in York Business School will be discussed. It will be argued that such frameworks might potentially provide a basis to begin to alleviate some of the common initial concerns or anxieties that both staff and students can experience, at times, during their involvement in the undergraduate research process.
Session: Impact of COVID-19 on the student experience
Format: Presentation
Title: Working creatively to enhance student engagement, attendance and wellbeing
Presenters: Penn Smith, Trish Hobman and Jenny Collyer
As we returned to face-to-face teaching following the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, we noticed particular challenges regarding engagement, attendance and wellbeing for our BA Counselling and Mental Health students. This case study details our growing understanding of the impact of the pandemic on students as well as the changes we have made to our programme since to support students in readjusting to university life away from online study. The impact on students’ sense of belonging and ability to forge relationships was particularly noticeable in our counselling skills module where students are supported in learning how to develop helping relationships as part of their studies. Our presentation will mainly focus on the changes we have implemented over the past two years to our counselling skills module, which underpins our degree, including new assessment and feedback practices that have been adopted, and more recently structural changes that have been made to the module’s overall delivery across three levels. We will reflect on feedback received both from students and staff, and consider how best practice can be implemented across other areas. We will also share some of the changes we have introduced to the degree programme as a whole and reflect on how we can build on this in line with the School of Education, Language and Psychology’s continuous Improvement Plan 2022-23.
Session: Impact of COVID-19 on the student experience
Format: Presentation
Title: Back to normal after Covid 19? What support do undergraduate students require in order to help them return to university life?
Presenters: Gary Shepherd and Eve Fothergill
The 2020 Covid 19 ‘lockdowns’ had a significant effect on university students throughout the UK. Over the course of the academic year, lockdowns demonstrably affected students’ learning and curtailed their ability to socially interact with their peers and academic staff alike. Reports indicated that locked-down students became more prone to anxiety, depression, self-harm and even suicidality. This interpretivist study explored the lived experiences of first year students who were required to learn under lockdown conditions. Students were asked to reflect upon the type of support they needed when entering face-to-face learning, as second years, for the first time. Our results are discussed through the lens of Kolb’s learning cycle, allowing us to consider the perspective of both our student participants and the research team. Our recommendations include the need for more mental health student support, the use of digital platforms to help promote closer student/programme cohesion, and teaching strategies which help build rapport amongst students in class.