Parallel session 11: Frances Porritt & Iain Baird, Teesside University

1. New partnerships:
A tale of two projects
Iain Baird, Academic Librarian
Ethan Lumb, Projects Assistant
Fran Porritt, Academic Librarian
Teesside University

2. A tale of two projects
• Student as Researcher project
• Digital Literacies project
Selected findings
Impact upon our practice

3. Teesside University
 Five Schools: 20,104 students
 Vision: Providing Opportunities, Driving Enterprise, Delivering
Excellence
 Learning Teaching and Student Experience Strategy Goal:
To educate our students in their chosen discipline to become
confident, critical, creative, adaptable, articulate and aspiring.

4. Aim of Student Researcher Project
• Student insight for development of the
Learning Hub.
• Funding bid
– Enhanced credibility of student researcher
• Understanding of students’ perspectives
• Encouraging honesty in interviews
• Follow-up interviews

5. Key findings
& the student voice
• Lecturers – the power of the academic
• Peer support
• Impact of digital tools

6. Lecturers (1)
• Value
“I'd take anyone's advice but the true advice is from who’s taught you
it.” [Participant 8]
• Time and availability
“I knew to approach a lecturer early, and say ‘look I’m struggling….I’m
willing to give up as much time as I need to’ and he said ‘Yeah. The
fact that you’ve came to me early and acknowledged that you’re
willing to learn, you’re willing to progress and you understand that
you’re having difficulty, then yes, I will help you’. But with this
particular person I got the impression that if you were honest and
up front with him he’d be the same with you.” [Participant 5]

7. “They like to imply that they’ve got a lot of
other students to be looking after and you’re
going ‘all right I will find someone else to talk
to’…. a bit stressed out. Cos normally if
you’ve hit a point where you’re finding this
tutor, you’ve hit a stop point. And then when
they’re going ‘ah I’m busy’, you’re thinking ‘I
would be busy too if you would just help
me’.” [Participant 7]
Lecturers (2)

8. “I’ve got one lecturer that’s such a grammar Nazi to put it
bluntly. And like I put all the referencing in that no one has
ever had a problem with, and she capped me at 30% because
my references weren’t correct.” [Participant 7]
“One or two lecturers sorry did say oh make sure it’s 12 font,
1.5 spacing Arial. But no there was no sort of sheet to say this
is what we want ….I know a lot of people in the first
assignment got back, check the guidelines, check the
guidelines, check the guidelines. But one girl got, she put it in
Arial and she got feedback saying ‘wrong font, it should be in
Times New Roman’” [Participant 1]
Lecturers (3)

9. Student support: our response
• Promotion of one-to-one tutorials
• Improving self-booking
• Advocacy for University standard of
referencing in Harvard format
• Learning Hub project

10. Importance of peer support
“The help you can get off other students is
immense. Because everybody has their own way
of learning, and when you’re sat in a room and
there’s 5 or 6 of you, you’ve all got a slightly
different way of understanding and explaining
things.” [Participant 6]

11. Engineering a community
“Well, the psychology interest society page has been an
absolute godsend, it really has. For both recruiting
participants but also bouncing ideas off each other, or
if someone finds a really good journal… I think it’s
increased that feeling that we’re one big group and
we’re in this together.” [Participant 2]
“It’s the most important part of the course, I think,
talking to each other in class, because you get the
best ideas off other people... it’s a communal effort to
get to where you are.” [Participant 9]

12. Peer support: Our response
• Implementation of PASS
• Factor in the development of learning spaces

13. PASS
Where PASSisrunning
2013-14 (Jan-May) 2014-15 2015-16
English (level 5)
Physiotherapy (level
4)
Computing (Level 4) -
Feb-May
Engineering (level 5)
English (levels 4 & 5)
Physiotherapy (level
4)
Psychology (level 5)
Computing (Level 4)
Engineering (levels 3
& 5)
English (levels 4 & 5)
Law (level 4)
Occupational Therapy
(level 4)
Physiotherapy (level
4)
Psychology (level 5)
Radiography (level 4)

14. Evaluation of the PASS pilot
“It has really helped me to develop what I have learnt in lectures”
“I often shied away from asking questions to lecturers in order to avoid
looking stupid.”
“I found the PASS leaders from our programme very approachable, friendly
and helpful”
“Given a student’s insight on how to deal with the subject”
“Talking to students who were in our position”
“Guidance from second years – didn’t judge if we were unsure”

15. R
Recognition at Volun-cheers

16. Digital Literacies
“Blackboard is amazing for the lecturers that know
how to use Blackboard. BB is an awful experience
for the lecturers that don’t really know how to use
it. That seems to be the 2 camps, there seems to be
the lecturers that can use all of it… and other
lecturers will have claimed something is on BB and
uploaded it to some obscure place that no one has
any idea of. And we’ll spend weeks trying to hunt it
down.” [Participant 3]

17. • Leadership Foundation for Higher Education Future Leaders
Programme for Professional Services Staff
• Change management project
• High level support at an early stage
• Project included in our current Learning Teaching and Student
Experience Strategy
• Focus on developing and supporting the digital literacy skills
of academic staff through learning units.
Digital Literacies Project:
Background and Context

18. Questions for Focus Groups with Academic Staff
• What does digital literacy mean to you?
• Which of the elements would be most useful
to you in supporting your teaching?
• If there was CPD/training available in digital
literacies, what format would you prefer and
how would you like it delivered?

19. Findings from Staff Focus Groups
• Lunchtime Sessions
• Digital champions
• ICT infrastructure and Blackboard
• Time to play
• Online, self paced materials
• Communities of practice/sharing good practice
• Digital Literacy development day

20. Feedback from Student Focus Groups
• Not keen on student digital champions
• Want academic staff to model good digital
literacy practices

21. Digital Literacies: our response
• Digital literacy in the curriculum
• Quick Guide to digital literacy
• LibGuide
• Improving digital literacy skills of Library staff

22. • Digital Literacy Development Day (review of level descriptors)
• Webinar – academic staff sharing examples of embedding
• ARLG webinar
• Member of e-learning co-ordinators meeting
• Consultation and development of e-learning strategy
Other Outcomes from the Project

23. • Further development of the LibGuide with input from a range
of staff from across the university
• Webinar on managing your digital identity
• Work with staff delivering the PgC LTHE to introduce new
staff to digital literacy
Future Plans

24. Partners in learning
• Students as partners
• Students as researchers
• Academic staff
• Learning Technologists
• Careers staff
• And Librarians!

25. Questions/Discussion
Iain Baird (i.baird@tees.ac.uk)
Ethan Lumb (e.lumb@tees.ac.uk)
Fran Porritt (f.porritt@tees.ac.uk)