Perspectives from the first JADE Undergraduate Student Learning Conference #JSLUG16 By Andrea Hernandez Hernandez and Aniqa Ashraf

The blog posts, images and video that follow offer different student perspectives on the very first JADE Undergraduate Student Learning Conference.  A full list of conference abstracts can be found here.   A special addition of the Journal JADE is also being published with all the work presented and can be found here.

The JADE Student Learning Undergraduate Conference 2016, by Andrea Hernandez Hernandez

On the 1st of June Keele University hosted the very first JADE Student Learning Undergraduate Conference. The event’s slogan was by undergraduates for undergraduates and indeed it was. This event offered an excellent platform for UG students to experience delivering verbal and poster presentations.

 

The event was opened with a warm welcome from Dr. Chris Little follow by the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Pro-VC), Professor Fiona Cownie, who with a full lecture theatre shared her path into the research through her keynote “The lived experience of academic research” outlining that we live in a daily research settings, in this setting we generate unpublished thoughts born through our curiosity and knowledge desire.

The conference held a total sixteen presentations covering a broad range of topics, ranging from the awareness of silent letters in English learners (Sercan Karakas & Ayse Gul Ozay), interesting studies of time perception in musicians and non-musicians (George Solomou) to the complexity of the implementation of a sensory hypersensitivity perspective as a new approach to address Autism (Steph Lonsdale). Every verbal presentation was followed by an audience discussion focusing on what they like about the presentation, what they could take from it as a future reference and provided a feedback to the presenter. This activity was benifical for the audience and the presenter as the presenter received powerful and encouraging comments and the audience picked up helpful tips.

The exhibition suite was full of excellent posters covering clinical, physiological, social, economic and political topics. Lots of comments from the poster presenters were received, the majority of them saw the conference as a great and enriching opportunity. To mention examples of the work exhibited and the presenter’s opinion, Kerry Exon, presented a poster titled “Delayed Cord Clamping” a topic that she is passionate about and could potentially turn into her research project. Kerry mentioned that it was great to be involved in an event like this and that it was a really helpful and excellent experience. Desire Gogo-fyneface shared her interesting third-year research project, “Use of stem cells for ameliorating age-related hearing loss”. She referred to the conference as a great opportunity to show her work with people that have the same or similar interest. Desire has never been in an event like this before and she felt that it absolutely boosted her confidence.

The JADE Student Learning Undergraduate Conference was a successful event that allowed UG students to present their high-quality work through a learning and formative experience. Additionally, enable them and other UG students to get a flavour of the fascinating topics and studies that other Keele students carried out, broadening their knowledge, interests and perspectives.

The JADE Student Learning Undergraduate Conference 2016, by Andrea Hernandez Hernandez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://lpdcsolutions.blogspot.co.uk/.

JADE Conference 2016 by Aniqa Ashraf

Looking to broaden your knowledge on some of the most fascinating undergrad research topics? This is exactly what I did on the 1st June. Come hither the day of students gathering around to share knowledge on their chosen specialities.

Stepping into the exhibition suite, it hits you straight away; the vast array of colourful posters hanging on the wall inviting you to come and take a closer look.

This was just a taster, there was yet more to come. Receiving the programme for the day, I could see a wide range of intriguing talks which were to be delivered by undergraduate students from Keele University. Topics ranged from, psychology and mindfulness to politics and geography, mental health a full lecture theatre on ‘An alternative approach to Autism?’ There were many talks to choose from, making the decision only harder on which talks to attend.

Before the day began, there was time to refresh with coffee/snacks and prepare for the fascinating talks yet to come. I attended a talk called, ‘below the breadline’ which made some interesting links between childhood poverty and education standards in areas such as Staffordshire. It was somewhat of a wake-up-call reminding us all that poverty may still exist closer to home than you may think. I had no knowledge of this as I’m sure you may not have either.

Then came a presentation on mental health which evoked many questions and interest during question time. The shocking statistics, such as ‘mental health accounting for 23% of the UK disease burden’ felt very prominent and remained with me throughout the day. Additionally, the statement of a “third world mortality in a first world country” is something that would stick with you. Wouldn’t it? Finishing with the thought provoking quote, “valuing mental health equally with physical health’ was a lovely ending.
Next came one of the highlights of my day, a talk on Autism by a student with Autism. This was a talk which was particularly heart-warming and moving for me as I am close to someone with Autism. The presentation was extremely captivating (the full lecture theatre is proof of this) and helped everyone and myself to gain some sort of understanding, whether large or small, of what it is like to live with Autism. The room erupted with a large round of applause and for me, this was without a doubt the cherry on top of a wonderful day and will be one of the highlights of my student life here at Keele!

JADE Conference 2016 by Aniqa Ashraf is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Based on a work at http://lpdcsolutions.blogspot.co.uk/.

Comments were also shared throughout the day on twitter a storyfi of the activity can be seen below

Tune in to the TuneIN Calendar: Academic, professional and personal development opportuntities for all, Dr Chris Little

The Tune In calendar (Available via (www.keele.ac.uk/studentlearning/tuneincalendar/) is a central calendar of developmental workshops and opportunities which all students and staff can attend at Keele University. This calendar is part of the Development Strand, which in turn is part of the Distinctive Keele Curriculum (Keele University, 2016a). Workshops are offered by colleagues from Student Learning, the Library, Health Library, Careers and Employability Services and Counselling and Mental Health Support Services. The live TuneIN calendar can be seen below

Many students and staff are unaware of these opportunities and this short piece will detail the provision which the Student Learning (SL) team contribute to the Tune In calendar.

Allen and Clarke (2007) note importance of such metacognitive and generic skills, like those featured on the Tune In calendar, as crucial to success both in HE and in the careers of our learners. While they do note that it is beneficial to have these types of skills developed within academic programmes, providing our students, and staff, with additional opportunities to develop further. These opportunities promote a reflective mindset and afford more opportunities to work towards Keele’s graduate attributes.

Student Learning Tune In workshops

The Student Learning team offers several academic, personal and professional skills workshops each week which run from October to May each academic year. These are advertised to students via two means: firstly, the workshops are advertised via the Tune In calendar website; secondly, all undergraduate and postgraduate students also receive a weekly email, named the ‘Study Skill Digest’, detailing our workshops.

These free workshops, designed to complement Keele’s academic programmes, are open to all staff and students at Keele. This presents a number of challenges for us as lecturers. Firstly, we have some idea, through our electronic booking forms, how many students will attend, but this does not always hold true so requires a degree of flexibility on group tasks and other teaching methodologies within the session. Secondly, it is not uncommon for us to need to cater for a significant range in academic levels. Any one session could have 1st year undergraduates through to final year PhD students within and our materials and delivery need to be flexible enough to handle this variety.

In the 2013/14 academic year the number of students attending these optional workshops rose to 350, a significant leap from the 50 that attended in 2012/13. The following data, gathered from student evaluative questionnaires (SEQ) at the end of each workshop, indicates a positive experience for learners at our sessions. SEQ’s have a contested worth in evaluating teaching practices, with some feeling they can ‘dumb-down’ discussions about and data surrounding teaching and learning (Johnson, 2000). However, for services such as ours which can, in some areas, have little long-term contact with students, they represent a valid and useful method of gaining feedback about the sessions themselves (Parlett & Hamilton, 1972), if not their longer term impact. Table 1, however, demonstrates a comparison across the last two academic years from SEQs:

	2013/14	2014/15
Number of students attended workshops	340	182
Average feedback score (1-5 scale)	4.5	4.5
% of students that would attend another workshop	94%	97%
% of students that would like to see these sessions embedded in their programmes	85%	89%

Table 1: Comparative data across 2013/14 and 2014/15

The data for 2015/16 has continued to echo the above, although we have changed the SEQ questions this year to further enact Kirkpatrick’s (2006) evaluative framework. In 2015/16, we have achieved an average feedback rating of 4.6/5 and 100% of students who attended the Student Learning workshops from the Tune In calendar felt it would have a positive impact on their studies and would recommend the workshops to students wanting to further develop their skills. We are currently working on a means of evaluating the longer term impact of the studies and hope to disseminate these findings at a later date.

While we have seen a decrease in attendance at freestanding workshops, this could be explained by the significantly larger number of students accessing our embedding study skills workshops, detailed in Issue 5 of the Journal of Academic Development and Education (JADE) (Little, 2016). One could infer from this that more students are getting this explicit learning development in their programmes thus not needing to perhaps visit freestanding, extra-curricular workshops.

We have also seen a dramatic increase in the number of students attending our Write Direction Study Skills service (Keele University, 2016b). The Write Direction is a confidential one-to-one tutoring service which allows students to work on any area of their academic, personal and professional skills on an individual basis. We predominantly focus on academic practices such as essay planning and academic writing but do also focus on other skills such as presentation skills and time management to name a few. If you feel a student may benefit from seeing us advise them to contact the team on student.learning@keele.ac.uk. Alternatively they can come to our drop in service which runs every Wednesday afternoon 2-4pm in the Tawney building.

Conclusions: What next?

The Tune In calendar is a valuable addition to Keele’s academic programmes and to many student’s surprise, attendance at any of the workshops is completely and utterly free of charge! If colleagues would like more information please do visit http://www.keele.ac.uk/studentlearning/tuneincalendar/ to view the Tune In offering. Alternatively, feel free to contact the Student Learning team on student.learning@keele.ac.uk to learn more.

Reference List

Allan, J. and Clarke, K. (2007) 'Nurturing Supportive Learning Environments in Higher Education through the Teaching of Study Skills: To Embed or Not to Embed?', International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. 19 (1): 64-76.

Johnson, R. (2000) 'The Authority of the Student Questionnaire', Teaching in Higher Education. 5 (4): 419-434.

Keele University. (2016a). Distinctive Keele Curriculum. [Online]. [Accessed 29th February 2016]. Available from: http://www.keele.ac.uk/distinctive/

Keele University. (2016a). Tune In Calendar. [Online]. [Accessed 29th February 2016]. Available from: http://www.keele.ac.uk/studentlearning/tuneincalendar/

Keele University. (2016b). Write Direction: Study Skills Advice. [Online]. [Accessed 29th February 2016]. Available from: http://www.keele.ac.uk/writedirection/Kirkpatrick, D. L. (2006). Evaluating training programs: The four levels. 3rd edn. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Little, C. (2016). The DKC People? The Student Learning team and the growth of embedding learning development in academic programmes. [Online] Journal of Academic Development and Education. 5: 58-63. [Accessed 29th February 2016]. Available from: https://jadekeele.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/jade-fifth-edition.pdf

Parlett, M. and Hamilton, D. (1972) Evaluation as Illumination: A New Approach to the Study of Innovatory Programs. Occasional Paper, London: Nuffield Foundation.

Tune in to the TuneIN Calendar: Academic, professional and personal development opportuntities for all, by Dr Chris Little, Keele university is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.