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The pedagogical implications of diversity

Published on by Claire Wedley
This project draws together a team of colleagues from across the three Schools in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) to explore uptake and participation in ‘live’ online learning events, and recorded ‘Learning Event Summaries’ (LES). In particular, the project considers barriers to participation by BME and Widening Participation students, disabled students, and students who require reasonable adjustments. The project asks how our current practice can be improved to better enable student engagement with live events and LES: this has implications in terms of the broader context of institutional policy, as well as drawing in operational and pedagogic issues. The project brings together two ‘strands’ of investigation; a statistical analysis of students’ use of LES, and a qualitative exploration of their experiences of engaging with live, online learning events and LES.

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Funding

​FASSTEST funding provided.

Project lead(s)

Lindsay Crisp

Team members

Donna Smith; Katy Smith; Melissa Bailey; Joanna Robson

Authorship group

  • Academic - Regional/National (Staff Tutors and Student Experience Managers)

Project start date

Project end date

Institutional priority category

  • Students’ Learning Experiences
  • Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
  • Other

Subject discipline

  • Social Sciences and Global Studies
  • Arts and Humanities
  • Psychology and Counselling

Project findings and recommendations

On the basis of our findings we conclude that FASS needs to provide greater clarity on the purpose and pedagogy of ‘live’, online learning events, LES, and the practice of recording ‘live’ events. Should current policy around the provision of these elements be maintained, measures need to be put in place to enhance their impact. In relation to LES, FASS needs to be explicit about who the main target audience is and to set clear success criteria about attendance and access to enable a proper assessment of its success. In the absence of this, we would ask the Faculty to consider whether current attendance/access levels (and which students are attending) warrant FASS’s time consuming LES policy. A number of practical steps may improve the quality and accessibility of ‘live’, online tutorials as experienced by students. These include further, more accessible training for both students and tutors within the Faculty; ‘visits’ to live events by line managers in order to develop practice in this area; improvements to technical elements (for example in terms of sound quality); the provision of a mixture of daytime, evening, weekday and weekend timings; and clear labelling of learning events to enable students to plan and prioritise their attendance.

Keyword(s)

accessibility guidance; attendance; barriers to learning; benchmarking; disability; engagement; online teaching; online tuition

Project ID

440

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