Project description

In the National Student Survey (NSS) typically there are questions like the ones below assessing how an institution forms a learning community to support each student:

“I feel part of a community of staff and students”

Traditionally, the focus in higher education (HE) has been full-time students, where various community-building and engagement activities exist, and a huge number of resources available. On the other hand, little is known for part-time students especially the degree apprentices (DAs) in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines, which are gaining huge popularity nowadays and constitute important future growth of the University. Given that there is already high isolation and less sense of belonging for part-time students, the recent move to hybrid teaching caused by the pandemic makes the situation even more challenging. Now the question arises – what can we do to improve the situation?

Compared to their full-time peers who mainly encounter academic challenges, community-building strategies for part-time students especially the DAs must incorporate the following dramatically different dimensions: 1) balancing their study and work. DAs all have full-time employment. Even though they are typically given designated time off work to concentrate on their study, it does not change their employment nature; 2) combining work-based learning with university education. DAs have the opportunities to be exposed to the real-world commercial environment to practice their knowledge and skills learned at the University, and this is not common for their full-time peers; 3) a hybrid of face-to-face and online learning. Due to the distance of travel and associated costs, some companies may choose a hybrid model for their DAs even after the pandemic. This presents huge challenges in the STEM disciplines where students are used to the physical laboratory environments.

These dimensions redefine the community-building efforts offered by an institution, and hence will inevitably affect the NSS results for part-time students, especially DAs. As such, it is important to investigate how our existing resources, procedures, and policies contribute to those efforts, to what extent these efforts are being managed. However, for our part-time students to feel inclusive, it is also important to recognize the challenges we face, as well as the opportunities those challenges bring such as a better impact of the HE and future career development for the DAs. The current project aims to explore these questions in 3 successive stages:

1. Identifying the gaps. There is existing research (Lee 2017) that investigates part-time students’ engagement patterns. However, most research focus on the students’ perspective and their expectation. The current project will explore from both teachers’ and students’ angles, and identify the current gaps between the two ends of teaching and learning towards community building, using the above-mentioned different dimensions.
2. Surveying tools and technologies. The University and WMG have provided different software tools for our students to facilitate subject-relevant teaching/learning. However, little exists for community building and engagement, which is vital due to physical and psychological isolation for part-time students. Based on the gaps identified from the 1st stage, this stage will survey tools and technologies, especially those web/mobile apps that can assist the part-time students.
3. Operational procedures and policy enhancement. Finally, the project aims to propose operational procedures that can assist our teachers in communitybuilding practice during their day-to-day teaching. The project also aims to propose policy enhancement that can be built into our degree apprenticeship programmes.

Lee, N.E., 2017. The part-time student experience: Its influence on student engagement, perceptions, and retention. Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 30(1), pp.1-18.

Duties and responsibilities

The student will be responsible for:

• Meeting with project supervisor(s) regularly, present, and report project work.
• Obtaining ethical approval for the relevant part of the research as guided by the project supervisor(s).
• Conducting research as guided by the project supervisor(s), which include but are not limited to, literature research, questionnaire design and analysis, surveying app stores such as the Google Play Store (an Android tablet will be provided if required), and drafting project report, etc.
• Performing independent research not explicitly defined in the project proposal.

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