FEASST@8 Project: Working With PhD Students to Develop an Online Community to Enhance Transferability and Researcher Skills

Author(s):

Cristina Devecchi(presenting / submitting)Ratika Velu(presenting)Yu Zhao Remi Odunsi Chau Tran My Belinda Green

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 10 D,

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-24

15:30-17:00

Room:

K5.19

Chair:

Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela

Contribution

General description, objectives and theoretical framework

The FEASST@8 project, funded by the Institute of Learning and Teaching, Learning Enhancement Innovation Grant, addresses the dual need of developing doctoral training and embedding employability skills at doctoral level. In acknowledging that there has been an increased interest both at the EU (EC, 2011, 2013; Blackmore and Burquel, 2012) and UK level (BERA, 2008; ESRC, 2015; RCUK, 2016) doctoral training and career development remain an under-researched and, somehow, overlooked area of pedagogical practice. Current HE sector changes across Europe have highlighted the importance of providing Doctoral students with the opportunity to gain valuable employability skills within an excellent research environment, encapsulated in the Seven Principle for Innovative Doctoral Training (https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/belgium/jobs-funding/doctoral-training-principles). Such principles have been included in the regulatory frameworks for UK universities in the form of both Research Excellence requirements (Stern, 2016) and quality assurance (QAA, 2012), and the incoming Teaching Excellence Framework (HEFCE, 2017). All such documents stress the need to prepare PhD students for a diverse and complex employment scenario through the provision of a more structured, supportive and varied approach to doctoral training programmes.

Specifically to the University of Northampton, a number of major strategic and operational changes in response to external drivers are impacting on both policy developments and their implementations. While strategically the focus has been mainly on ensuring undergraduate student experience and employability, attention has now shifted onto its doctoral students through the application of the University’s ChANGE attributes for Graduate Employability (ILT, 2017).

Besides the institutional strategic goals, the need to give doctoral students the opportunity to gain valuable researcher skills also stems from the specific make-up of the doctoral programme in Education which the lead author is responsible for. Demographically, students in education tend to be teaching professionals undertaking their PhD part-time and as part of their professional development. Despite this advantage, evaluation of a previous project, designed to enable students and staff to learn how to be successful at conferences and from which this project follows, highlighted the need to address some research specific and generic transferability skill gaps (Vitae, 2011), such as management and leadership (Devecchi, 2015a). Additionally, the evaluation of the 7^th PhD led Annual Conference (Zhao and Padayattil, 2016) recommended the following:

To formalise the researcher employability skills gained by participating and organising a conference,
To develop further advanced academic skills expected of researchers to include digital literacy and competencies.

The project is innovative in ensuring the key success criteria of:

Feasibility – to test and monitor the efficiency, effectiveness and fairness of both outputs and processes
Engagement – to include PhD students as co-developers, users and evaluators of learning material and learning activities
Accessibility –to establish an inclusive community by developing online learning material accessible to all PhD students whatever their status and wherever they are located
Sustainability –to create resources and schemes of work to ensure the sustainability of the discipline-based development provision
Scalability – to develop resources and ways of working which build knowledge to be used to further develop a more complete discipline-based development provision
Transferability –to enable students to gain valuable employability and learning skills which can be transferable across a range of jobs within and beyond academia

The aims are:

To upskill PhD students working as researcher on the project in the area of project management and leadership, and online delivery
To extend and enhance the Student Experience beyond our existing Discipline-Based Development (DBD) provision by developing online pedagogical practices meeting the learning outcomes at Level 8;
To contribute to the development and testing of 21^st century employability skills frameworks.

Method

Methodology The FEASST@8 project (https://mypad.northampton.ac.uk/feasst8/) adopted a participatory action research approach involving academics, professional services colleagues and students in the training, design and delivery of the online sessions and activities. Firmly located within a student voice framework (Cook-Sather, 2002; Cook-Sather, et al, 2015; Fedeli, 2017) four doctoral students, who had been previously involved in organising the annual conference, were formally employed as research assistants to work on the project, thus enabling them to gain new skills and formalise the ones they already had. The participation of colleagues and students external to the team aims to ensure the sustainability and viability of the project beyond the funded period, but it also aligns with the University’s approach to collaboration across departments and within the workforce as part of developing inclusive strategies to cope with change. The project therefore had two overlapping strands with regard to employability skills. Strand 1 focused on developing the online community and the necessary researcher skills relevant to conference participation. Strand 2, the focus of this paper, focused on developing the team researchers’ knowledge and understanding of project management and leadership. To enable the success of both Strands and to embed and support the four researchers to gain employability skills, the project was organised into 6 workpackages as follows: WP1 – project management WP2 – review of existing literature and university-based practice WP3 – design of online module WP4 – Delivery of online module WP5 – technical development WP6 – evaluation Team researchers were responsible for leading and managing one Workpackage on basis of the skills they already had or wanted/needed to developed further. The design of the e-tools and e-tivities drew from lessons learnt through past Innovation Fund projects. Specifically to the evaluation, the project used Patton’s (2008) utilization-focused evaluation comprising both quantitative and qualitative methods, such as analytics to gauge online student engagement, and interviews and surveys to monitor student satisfaction. The evaluation made use of and contributed to ongoing university projects, the following: • Available and ongoing frameworks for student engagement and work carried out by the ILT in regard to both student and staff development • Review and development of Level 8 specific transferability skills framework including viability of ChANGE skills set • Conceptual work on changing student identity and the purpose of the civic university (Devecchi, 2015b, 2016)

Expected Outcomes

Outcomes and findings At the moment of writing, work has been carried out on WP1, WP2, WP3 and WP5 although all Workpackages extend throughout the lifespan of the project to be concluded in June 2017. Thus, the presentation will share the findings from the final evaluation taking place in June 2017. It is expected that we will be able to provide evidence on both strands of the project, that is how the project has enhanced the doctoral programme and specifically the development of an online community of practice through the use of digital technologies; and how working on the project as co-researchers has positively impacted on the employability skills of the doctoral research assistants. In regard to the latter, partial evidence collected through line-management and informal discussions with the four doctoral researchers has already shown they have improved the following researcher skills: • Networking – They now have a broader knowledge and understanding of how the University works and who are the key players in the area of learning and teaching and student support services; • Communication – in order to engage with university stakeholders and with the wider community • Digital skills – increased and more confident use of social platforms (Twitter and project blog) • Curriculum development at HE level – by working with learning designers to develop the module

References

References British Educational Research Association (2008) The 2008 BERA Charter for Research Staff. Macclesfield: BERA Blackmore, M. and Burquel, N. (2012) Erasmus Mundus Quality Assessment 2012. Handbook of Excellence – Doctoral Programmes. http://emqa.eu/Downloads/Handbook%20of%20Excellence%202012%20-%20Doctoral%20-%20Final.pdf Cook-Sather, A. (2002). Authorizing students’ perspectives: Toward trust, dialogue, and change in education. Educational Researcher, 31(4), 3 Cook-Sather, A., & Luz, A. (2015). Greater engagement in and responsibility for learning: What happens when students cross the threshold of student–faculty partnership. Higher Education Research & Development, 1-13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2014.911263 Economic and Social Research Council (2015) ESRC Postgraduate Training and Development Guidelines Second Edition 2015. London: ESRC European Commission. (2011). Supporting growth and jobs an agenda for the modernisation of Europe's higher education systems. http://ec.europa.eu/education/library/policy/modernisation_en.pdf European Commission. (2013). Report to the European commission on improving the quality of teaching and learning in Europe’s higher education institutions. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union Devecchi, C. (2015a) Open spaces, open minds: Universities as drivers of socially responsible learning. Paper presented at ‘The Urban University: Universities as place makers and agents of civic success in medium sized town and cities. Northampton, 2-3 July, 2015 Devecchi, C. (2016) Student Voice in HE: Students’ identity in the changing role of universities. Voices in HE: Students Participation and Institutional Cooperation for Quality Improvement and Innovation in Higher Education, University of Padova, 23 February 2016 Fedeli, M. (2017) Student-Faculty Partnership: The European Framework and the Experience of the Italian Project Employability & Competences, Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education: 20, http://repository.brynmawr.edu/tlthe/vol1/iss20/2 Higher Education Funding for England (2017) Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). http://www.hefce.ac.uk/lt/tef/panel/, accessed 19 January 2017 Institute of Learning and Teaching (2017) ChANGE Framework of Graduate Attributes. Northampton: ILT University of Northampton. https://www.northampton.ac.uk/ilt/current-projects/change/ Patton, M. Q. (1996) Utilization-focused Evaluation. 3rd Ed. London: Sage Quality Assurance Agency (2012) UK Quality Code for Higher Education - Chapter B11: Research degrees. London: QAA Research Council UK (2016) Statement of Expectations for Postgraduate Training. London: RCUK Stern, N. (2016) Building on Success and Learning from Experience. An Independent Review of the Research Excellence Framework. London: BIS. Available from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/541338/ind-16-9-ref-stern-review.pdf Accessed, 19 January 2017 VITAE (2011) The Concordat to Support Career Development of Researchers. London: VITAE Zhao, Y. and Padayattil, J. (2016) Evaluation report of the 7th Annual Research Student Conference 2016. Northampton: School of Education, University of Northampton