Project lead: Celine Petitjean and Dave Lawson (Biological Sciences)

Project summary: This project focused on advancing the decolonisation of the Biological Sciences curriculum at the University of Bristol by continuing our work from the previous academic year.

A significant achievement was the successful inclusion of our two student partners in the second iteration of the "Decolonising Biological Science Research" workshop. This workshop was integrated into the first-year unit, Current Topics in Biology, and provided a platform for students to discuss positionality and explore ways to enhance inclusion in research. Their participation was welcome by the cohort, and both their expertise and their status as peers supported fruitful discussions (~80 student participants with 4.07/5 satisfaction and 4.27/5 for relevance to the students).

Student partners also produced a "Demographic of Researchers Report", highlighting the extent of diversity in the representation of researchers, especially regarding gender, ethnicity, and global north/south origins, featured in our curriculum (focused on Year 2 Biology). The findings from this report will inform future efforts to diversify the curriculum.

They also facilitated a focus group for international students and students of colour, providing a much-needed space for these groups to share their experiences and perspectives on the support and representation they receive within the School. Findings and subsequent recommendations are captured in a report which we plan to present to relevant school committees. Implementations of (at least) some of these recommendations can have the potential to impact positively, these groups but all our students by creating a more inclusive environment.

Finally, they also directly engaged with two units director, and with our student society, to suggest and advocate for changes in a decolonising effort.

Overall, the project advanced decolonisation efforts, impacted already and will continue to impact directly the education and environment of many students, as well as empowered student partners by developing their skills in qualitative research, thematic analysis, and leading focus groups.

Project lead: Alice Robson (Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience)

Project team: Bronwen Burton and Caroline McKinnon

Project summary: In 21/22 the three Biomedical Sciences Schools begun collaborating on a project which works towards decolonising and diversifying the curricula. The project aims to promote diversity and inclusion in Biomedical Science teaching, but also in wider student and staff communities within the University. Taking feedback and findings from this initial work the project team plans to run a decolonising and diversifying the curriculum workshop with undergraduate students, providing them with a safe space to explore and discuss complex issues around the epistemic legacy of their discipline. Alongside this, repeating staff and student surveys will gauge changing attitudes towards decolonising and diversifying the curriculum after initial survey results indicated that there was interest in the work, but also a lack of understanding and a desire to see more discussion of the issues within the curriculum. By understanding staff and student views, the project team is working towards making curricula more inclusive, building students’ sense of belonging and promoting their wellbeing.

Project lead: Peter Fowler (Dental School)
Project team: Jonathan Schofield and David Dymock

There are currently 65 postgraduate students enrolled in four speciality training programmes provided by the Dental School. Following COVID19 there have been significant changes to the postgraduate learning environment with a shift to hybrid teaching of academic material, a more restrictive research subject participant, reduced clinical loadings, increased PPE requirements and restricted aerosol-generating clinical procedures. This project aims to engage postgraduate dental students to explore and explain their perceptions of the current clinical, academic and research learning environments provided by the various PGT programmes within the School. An understanding of how PGTs perceive their environment will provide educators with strategies to improve/enhance their student’s well-being.

Project resources: The postgraduate educational environment at the University of Bristol Dental School - case study

Project lead: Claire Spencer (Accounting and Finance/Biological Sciences)

Project team: Emily Bell

Project summary: This project links student ambassadors from the Schools of Accounting and Finance and Biological Sciences to develop an intra and inter-school peer network. The student-led network, supported by staff mentors, will empower student ambassadors to create practical initiatives to support and tackle the transitional needs of students through proactive peer support.

Project resources: Supporting postgraduate tutoring through building a sense of belonging and community - case study

Project lead: Emily Bell (Biological Sciences)

Team member: Rose Murray

Project summary: This project supports the 1^st year data collection and analysis of a 4-year longitudinal research study which follows the 2022/23 cohort of Biological Sciences undergraduate students throughout their degrees and measure what impact an early residential field course has on student community, engagement, resilience, peer networks and wellbeing. Field trips not only deliver essential biological field skills training but provide a unique opportunity to help build a community cohort also.

Project resources: Together from the start - infographic

Project lead: Becky Selwyn (Electrical, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering)

Project summary: Students as co-investigators form an important part of the EERG’s work and, where possible, this is recognised through opportunities for conference presentation or authorship. Mostly, students have contributed to individual research projects, with little or no visibility of the other projects being undertaken. Few, if any, projects have been student-initiated, despite our students being best-placed 
to suggest areas for investigation. A small but significant number of UG students see an understanding 
of education, learning and teaching as useful for future career opportunities, but there is no formal 
process to support them. This project aimed to create a sub-group of the EERG to provide structured opportunities for students to propose, work on, and share their experiences of, education projects. The sub-group will be primarily for UG students, though not exclusively. PG students will be encouraged to contribute where they wish to reflect upon their experiences of assisting teaching.

Project resources: Creating a student engineering education research group - case study

Project lead: Laura Contu (Psychological Sciences)

Project team: Kit Pleydell-Pearce and Alex Anderson

Project summary: Students enrolled in distance learning courses often lack opportunities to experience campus life, which can lead to feelings of isolation. This project aims to implement and evaluate Virtual Library sessions for students on Distance Learning courses in Neuropsychology. It will explore how online study groups can be curated online and match the in-person experience, developing students’ sense of belonging and promote wellbeing whilst also fostering cohort cohesion and confidence.

Project lead: Annika Johnson (Economics)

Project team: Anastasia Papdopoulou and Stefania Simion

Project summary: Through a pilot data-analysis workshop this project aims to: explore the use of pair programming for teaching data analysis skills and build learning communities in a higher education setting. It will achieve this by providing students with an authentic challenge, strengthen the student learning community by providing industry focused collaborative activities across year groups and programmes and by developing best practice guidance to run in conjunction with industry and public sector partners.

Project resources: Adventures in Pair Programming: Building data literacy in social learning environments - case study

Co-project leads: Emma Love and Chloe Anderson (Bristol Vet School)

Project team: Lindsey Gould and Sheena Warman

Project summary: The BVSc (AGEP) was launched in 2019 and uses case-based learning (CBL) as the pedagogical basis for delivery of the majority of core content in years 1 and 2 of the programme. The form of CBL employed in this programme uses the seven-step methodology developed at Maastricht University. It follows the constructivist learning model, actively engaging learners in collaborative learning (Woolfolk et al 2013) to encourage an inquiry mindset, self-direction, scientific curiosity and peer learning. This project aims to determine how best to scale up small group case-based learning sessions so that they can be effectively delivered to a larger cohort using existing physical spaces and staffing resource.

Project resources: Case-based learning for large cohorts - case study

Project lead: Ros Death (Geographical Sciences)

Project team: Rachel Flecker and Brian Stollery

Project summary: In 2022, more than 50% of final year geography undergraduates required an extension for their dissertation. This number is part of a pre-pandemic rising trend in extension requests across all assignments, despite an overall decline in assessment requirements over the same period. This project will explore the reasons for high cases of extension requests within the School, surveying and running focus groups with 2nd year undergraduate students. The project aims to co-create and implement a strategy/interventions with students to tackle this issue based on the outcome from this investigation. Possible reasons for the increase in extension requests may be due to; a need to better develop students time management skills, the design of the programme or possible assessment bunching, all of which will be explored through this project.

Project lead: Becky Selwyn (Electrical, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering)

This project will evaluate the peer feedback process adopted in the 1^st year undergraduate Engineering by Investigation unit, delivered to upwards of 550 students each year. Peer feedback was implemented in 2020/21 and enables students to receive more detailed and timely feedback on each formative report than would be possible through academic feedback. This project will use a combination of surveys, focus groups, and analysis of peer feedback responses to evaluate the student experience and perception of peer feedback, the effectiveness of peer feedback and will highlight any possible improvements for the future.

Project lead: Patricia Neville (Dental School)
Project team: David Dymock, Isabelle Cunningham

Project summary: Since 2019, the Bristol Dental School has undergone a comprehensive curriculum redesign to establish a dental curriculum fit for graduates of the 2020s and beyond. BDS21 is an integrated, spiral curriculum where student learning is scaffolded on authentic clinical encounters, co-teaching between clinical and non-clinical staff and student engagement (SE). Despite the academic enthusiasm for this educational metric there is no shared definition of SE or agreed methods of measurement (Buntins et al 2021). Relatedly, concerns have been raised as to whether SE is an effective measure of and vehicle for student learning. This study proposes a qualitative research approach to address the knowledge and research gaps on SE in dental education. It will investigate how SE, as an assessment metric, impacts student learning. Staff and student perceptions of, and attitudes towards SE will also be explored through qualitative research methods. Findings will inform wider debates on the theme within professional programmes.

Summary of project achievements: Following an extensive literature review, the project adopted a two-pronged research design. First, a curriculum analysis of BDS21 curriculum was undertaken to ascertain how student engagement (SE) is conceptualised/operationalised in the curriculum. Using Lwa- Bowden et al’s (2021) theoretical framework of SE, a working definition of student engagement was agreed and tested for against the BDS21 curriculum. This analysis offered an insight into the learning priorities and expectations of the curriculum at the curriculum design level. It revealed that student engagement in BDS 21 curriculum is largely operationalised as a predominately behavioural phenomenon, contributing to a model of learning where learning is principally conceived of as knowledge based, observable, and testable. Less attention is paid to the agentic, affective, social and socio-cultural dimensions of learning in the BDS21’s student engagement tasks. This finding is interesting because while behavioural outcomes are important on professional healthcare programmes to ensure students are meeting certain professional standards (e.g. attendance at lectures, completion of essential training, timely submission of course work etc), less attention is given to notions of student affect, wellbeing and belonging in BDS21. Educational research notes that for learning to be authentic and meaningful it needs to be inclusive of all the dimensions of student engagement.

Follow-on qualitative student and staff focus groups in Phase two were planned to allow us to delve deeper into the implications of this lopsided construction of student engagement in the BDS21 curriculum. Student recruitment to this has proved difficult, the data collection window of the initial ethics application to start a new recruitment drive for student participants will take place in 24/25.

Project resources: Student engagement in BDS21 curriculum - case study

Project lead: Stephanie Pellegrin (Biochemistry)

Project summary: The School of Biochemistry offers a lab-based Group Research Project (GRP) a five-week, supervised research project giving 3rd year students the opportunity to develop as independent thinkers, developing their research and analytical skills. Project funding has enabled the School to engage 3 students in gathering feedback and co-creating teaching resources to improve the activities, resources and overall delivery of the GRP which will be rolled out in January 2023.

Project resources: Year 3 experimental group research project delivered in the biochemistry teaching laboratories - case study