1. The power of graduate interns
doing TESTA
@solentlearning
@tansyjtweets
2. Graduate Intern Model
• 10 x graduate interns for
six months
• TESTA training workshop
• Paired on different courses
• 7 courses
• Guidance on process and
data analysis
4. Why is it powerful?
• Recent graduates close to student experience
• Trusted, persuasive, and accessible to students
• Academics tune in to graduate interns
• Freshness, surprise and openness to challenge
• Insider-outsider
• Seeing student experience in new ways
• Understanding of academic processes
5. What has been most engaging GI
moment?
Working on TESTA with current students and
knowing that our work will create positive
changes for the course due to our fresh
approach… the analysis and application of
the case study feels like a piece of very real
world work that will make a difference to the
university.
6. What have you learnt?
• Seeing how much academics care about their courses
• How different courses have to adhere to different rules
• Before I did TESTA, I had no idea like what the definition
of formative and summative were...
• It would have been really nice to have had more official
formative opportunities on the course
• How much planning does go into how they design it and
that there is thought behind it, it's not just like "Oh we'll
do an essay here, and something else here"
7. What have you learnt about research?
• Not everything goes to plan
• You have to go out of your comfort zone and adapt for
things to work
• Encouraging students to take part
• Persuasive language
• Persistence when academics don’t respond or students
don’t pitch up
• Detachment but making a case in your research
8. What has been most challenging?
• Thematic analysis of the focus group text
• Crafting the headlines
• Making sense of the statistics
• Keeping momentum
• Getting students to focus groups
• Knowing enough about assessment and feedback
principles to make sense of the data
9. The brief
Courses TESTA
Audit
AEQ Focus
Group
Case
Study
Team
meeting &
actions
Computer Games
Development
Performance
Media Technology
Media Production
TBD
TBD
TBD
TBD
TBD
TBD
TBD
TBD
January
9 January
March/April
March/April
Psychology January
Fashion Styling TBD February
Engineering January
Finance and Accounting TBD TBD TBD TBD March/April
