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Case study: The Psychology Student Engagement Hub

Department of Psychology
Alex Reid

Alex Reid describes the purpose, structure and contents oof a community VLE site designed to facilitate student engagement in the department.

He describes the purpose of the site as follows:

  1. To improve student feedback processes, an issue highlighted as important in the department's NSS results
  2. To reduce administrative workload by providing easy access to information when needed.
  3. To celebrate and promote staff-student collaboration.
  4. To facilitate community, by bringing together the different initiatives taken by the department to help with this over recent years.

He then outlines the development of the site with students and staff, highlighting:

  • the iterative nature of the process built on feedback
  • the choices made to set up the site in the VLE under the 'communities' tab
  • the use of Pixel Art to try to make the look and feel of the site fun and engaging
  • the steps taken to signpost the site to students and weave it into the cultural context of the department.

Providing a site walkthrough he highlights the following aspects:

  • Department rep information and contacts
  • An anonymous feedback form with a shared and regularly updated action log to report on responses to feedback.
  • Feedback bulletins created by reps and plans to share an overarching report to communicate changes made as a result of feedback.
  • Key links and contacts within the department, and links to departmental and University based resources and opportunities to join communities and societies.
  • Resources disseminating and celebrating staff-student collaborations in the department.
  • An interactive map sharing student recommendations about York and the surrounding area.

Finally Alex shares future plans to keep developing the site and offers some advice and resources for other departments that might be interested in similar developments, highlighting:

  • The need to consider accessibility, communications, and to set up roles correctly to meet GDPR obligations.
  • The importance of planning and resourcing to ensure that information and links are kept up to date.

Watch their presentation:

The Psychology Student Engagement Hub (Panopto viewer) (19 mins 41 secs, UoY log-in required)

Transcript

Hi. I'm Alex Reid from the Department of Psychology. I'm a lecturer on a teaching and scholarship contract, and one of my many roles in the department is to facilitate student engagement.

So what I'm going to be talking to you about today, briefly, is just our psychology student engagement hub. And this is a platform that we've developed on the VLE to facilitate student engagement. So this space that I'll be showing you in a moment has a number of functions.

So firstly it is to improve student feedback processes. And just to be more transparent on this. What we call closing the feedback loop. So it came clear in our previous national student survey, the NSS, that we could be doing a better job of this. So that is why we've implemented this particular aspect of it.

A second function is to reduce administrative workload and to provide easy access to information to students regarding who to contact, when and why. The idea here is that it saves staff being contacted repeatedly with the same queries about who to contact, and at the same time, it allows students to do this more easily, so they can find that information fairly instantly and without having to wait for us to email back, particularly during busy periods.

A third function is to celebrate and promote staff-student collaboration. So at the University of York Department of Psychology, we do lots of really cool things. And there are lots of deliverables or outcomes from the projects that we've run with our students. And we felt that we could be doing a better job communicating them too just to encourage further kind of engagement with us.

And relating to this in the fourth and final thing. It's just to facilitate student community generally. So my colleagues and myself have developed quite a few initiatives that are on the go that help our students in various ways, various communities and groups. And I'll be showing you some of those in a moment.

And really, that needs to be collated into one space. There were just kind of quite a lot of them. So if you like this, this VLE, this community hub acts as a kind of menu of opportunities that students can get involved in.

So this platform was designed with our student reps and it underwent three phases of feedback. So first was an initial meeting with our reps where we discussed what the platform might look like. After that, I developed the platform and then this was circulated and these students were added as participants. They added an additional wave of feedback where I adjusted a lot of things. And then the final wave of feedback was circulating this to staff. So staff had a good look at this, checked the information was accurate, checked that they were reflected properly in the links and who to contact and that their initiatives were represented properly on the platform. And I still continue to get feedback regarding this on an ongoing basis, which I'm happy to adjust.

So this platform is now signposted in supervision meetings and in particular moving forward with year one students This will be part of that onboarding process to the department. Just to kind of get this into the kind of cultural context of the department.

The last thing to mention before I show you the platform is that it's under the community tab. So this is not a normal VLE module. This is in a separate space on the VLE. And there are advantages to having it just generally on the VLE and just in this community space. First of all, there's a shareable link that can be generated and a QR code that can be generated that can link students directly to the hub. This can be favourited as well within the VLE and on browsers. So if students want to access the hub, it can be just implemented. So it's at the top of their web browsers when they use it. And another important feature, or the reason why you might want to do this, as opposed to, say, just making a separate Google site or putting this in a wiki is that when you make notifications in the VLE, you can tick the box to email students, but also this notification will pop up literally when they access the platform. This means that students that maybe don't check their email so much might catch it in one space, or people that don't maybe use the VLE as much might capture the email. So you're casting essentially a wide net to communicate whatever it is you're talking about to as many people as possible.

So what I'm going to do now is walk you through the hub and just what the platform looks like, and just maybe give you some insight into the development process and maybe just think about whether this is something that you want to implement in your own department.

So this is the platform in all its glory. And just to show you what I mean by it being on the communities tab, if I just close that and go to courses, you won't see it there. This is something that is not available in the courses menu. Students won't see it in that particular space. However, under the communities tab, when it loads, you can see it here right at the top and students will have the option to favourite this, should they want easy access as part of the VLE space moving forward.

Now if we go into the hub actual, I've deliberately picked a kind of art style which relates to Pixel art, and this was a deliberate choice, partly due to my own sort of nerdy proclivities, but also in a very real way, we want students to find this fun and engaging. This can be a little bit challenging sometimes with the VLE which tends to make a lot of the different VLE pages perhaps look quite similar. So as such I structure things in a way that allowed us to put an icon, that was representative pixel art for all the things that we're talking about. Um, so this was just a fun challenge for me. And there is software online where you can take any image and kind of pixel art it and this is what I did for here, for example. So this is a clip art that I put through a pixel art generator in order to create a sort of fun bit of pixel art. Um, and this is just a way of kind of making the space more fun and engaging for students.

Now the layout of this hub is actually done very carefully and thoughtfully in terms of what comes first in terms of the order. So a big priority for us as a department in terms of the NSS, as I discussed, was feedback. This relates to these first two kind of slots here.

So on this tab, it's just who your department reps are. And this will change on a yearly basis. So right up front we have everyone's emails and just who you need to contact. We have the department rep which is a kind of paid position where we have a student that represents all of the students. We have a bi weekly meeting with Millie in order to kind of discuss ongoing developments and student feedback, but also each group has its own representatives. And here you can see we've got some missing reps that we're still trying to encourage to join our processes. Now we scroll down, there's a little bio. I collected all of these through a Google form and you can see all our reps just as a kind of face so people know what who it is that they're communicating with. And this is all accessible. So students with screen readers can also navigate this particular page. So yeah, this is the student reps. And it's important, we feel, to kind of put a face to people who they can approach and just understand and humanise them a bit.

We also have an anonymous student feedback form, so this doesn't come to us as staff. This comes to the reps for the year groups respectively, and is checked very frequently by our reps. And this is just to make students feel a bit more comfortable and maybe more candid about the feedback that they are passing on. We also have an Instagram feed for the reps. So this is a platform run by two dedicated reps. And this is just another way that that information can be circulated.

We also have responding to your feedback. So there's two things here. We have the feedback action log. So if I open this up. You can see here all the aspects of feedback. You've, you've we've adopted the dates, what we've approved what's in progress. And indeed, if you click on my Google sheet here, you can see approved, under consideration, unable to do, or in progress. Um, and in this sense, we've actually got someone in the chat now. So someone is actually looking at this now, which indicates that it is actually getting used and viewed by students. Um, we've got a lot of who did what and when. And also we felt it was important to communicate when we couldn't do something. So this kind of lowers the tempo in terms of student frustration. If they can't, if they they've given us feedback and then they don't know what's happened to it, they won't know. And another advantage of this is that some feedback might be implemented across the year groups. So for example if year two gave us some feedback and then they move to year three. They won't know what the changes have been in year two. So part of the function of this sheet is to mitigate that and just be transparent about what we've done. So we're very clear. We give an explanation about everything we've done. We give dates, we give relevant links where possible, and we tell the students which group is affected. Because this also gets around the issue of just making the feedback specific to specific groups and only communicating with those specific groups, when really in terms of the optics of giving feedback, we want to make sure we cultivate an environment where feedback is shared so people can see which which groups, which groups of people have been kind of like affected. So for example, we've got Muslim students in the most recent bit of feedback regarding us as a department, perhaps doing more to accommodate issues around Ramadan, which we've been happy to do.

So going back to the hub, we've also got rep-orts, nice little play on words there. These are feedback bulletins developed by our reps. These are circulated in Friday emails, but also kind of stored here, um, just so students can view these things. And again, we've made a kind of emphasis on, uh, making these as accessible as possible. So we've got one here for the year two, sorry. Uh, yes. Uh, three and you can see here just some of the feedback. They talk about the hub itself and just various steps and things and information. So this is another level of information in terms of providing feedback.

I'm going to combine this with an overall report, which I'm actually going to physically stick around the department. And in particular I'm going to strategically put it in toilets. Um, because um, that's where, you know, everyone has to go to toilet at some point or another. And this is just where people might see this, just in, in that moment. But I also be putting all over the department in various spaces on Noticeboards. So on a kind of combined report, probably using a similar art style to this, just to communicate that we are actually giving feedback and we're also receiving feedback.

Moving on. We've got key links and email contacts for students. So this was, uh, these are all kind of like requested features from our reps, so I was happy to accommodate this. Again, a fun little bit of pixel art that I, um, I created in publisher. I split this up into three chunks just to help students navigate it. So we have primary department contacts - that means your main points of contact in our department. Then we have things relating to department welfare and community. And then we have a general university level student support. And I just had a note here just to tell them to keep scrolling down. Um, because they might just think that the form ends. But actually, as you can see here, we've got these two key lines of contacts. So this is a kind of triage if you like, if students are looking for something and again, with key links, um, to the right and this is all in, in a table. So again, it should be accessible by a screen reader.

You've got key departments links as well. So these are all things that the students reportedly click on quite frequently or may look for or have a scramble to look for, particularly if the deadline's close. So we've got the student wiki. We've got something called the Jobs and Opportunities Board. And I do really advocate for Padlet as a platform for keeping dynamic documents up to date. This is actually maintained by another colleague. Although I initially created this as well. So here we have um, quite a lot of opportunities. We have different columns relating to job advert, volunteering, internships, placement years which I currently run. Training programmes, other opportunities. Just general useful resources. And also just a special column for people who are maybe getting to the end of their time with us and are considering PhDs as well. So this is again live. We keep the deadlines in, um, at the top of the document. Just maybe, uh, delete that post because it's out of update. Uh, but generally speaking, this is maintained. And we do kind of keep this updated just so deadlines, when they pass, students are aware of what's past and what hasn't.

We have a number of other things here. Psychology student report support page. This is something in our department that, um, we've developed, um, myself and Sally Quinn and Amanda Hickey in our department. So all of these take you to links on the wiki. Um, just to help navigate the range of resources. And there is a lot of information at the university. So again, a big part of this platform is streamlining things and making sure students get access to the information they need as easily as possible. We got the Student Wellbeing hub. So this is a resource created by my colleague Doctor Karisha George and, um, our departmental wellbeing officer, Daisy Whitwood. Um, so, yeah, we've got a list of resources here. And who these people are, wellbeing champions, personal supervisors, year tutors and so on. So this is all hopefully useful information for our students. We got their student handbooks as well, and we'll probably be adding other links moving forward, should they become apparent to us. We've got key University links as well. So the York Students Union and the university support hub.

This was a requested feature. And indeed I actually changed the logo of this based on student feedback. So originally it was the classic disabled wheelchair icon. And apparently that's not in use. Um, or I wouldn't say not use, but perhaps not in vogue at the moment. And, um, what this community of individuals prefer, or so I've been told, is the sunflower, which has become representative of, um, differences, particularly hidden disabilities. So I made a, uh, or found a nice little pixel art sunflower here to represent this subsection. And this is just on getting SSPs so student support plans, um, organising exam arrangements and deadlines and just accessing university level support.

Next up, we have, uh, represented by the pixel brain here. Uh, various communities and committees that students can join. So we've got the psychology student society, um, the disability committee. a working class student committee run by Thomas Davis, my colleague. A BAME support hub, um, for students. And also we've got Psychout which is our student-run magazine. So if, for example, they clicked on this, they could see all our back issues and maybe even join the editorial team, should they so wish. We've also got a set of resources that we've designed as a department to help enhance the student experience. This is the result of various projects, and this taps into that aspect I was talking about, about communicating some of our more collaborative initiatives. So, for example, here's one I developed, interviewing alumni. So this links to a YouTube set of YouTube videos where we actually interviewed alumni, and they give advice and students can actually tap into this advice and watch these at their own pace, depending on the topic that they want.

So, just closing this section. We've also got communities at the university and beyond. So we have communities within the University of York. And this is, again, is a growing list. So, a variety of resources relating to the college system, the York Students Union. Organisations that might be particularly relevant to psychology students so the York Drug Science Society is a student group that really explores the use of sort of psychedelics and psychoactives, and how they - what the evidence is like in terms of their medical applications. And they host talks and events. And this is particularly relevant for some of our students as psychologists and particularly those doing, say, our advanced module on consciousness and free will, which goes into altered states. And again, this list will be added to in the future. We've also got communities at the University of York. Um, and these are, again, more lists of things that students can join including the academic skills community. And I would say generally, I've tried to keep this separate from kind of more of the curriculum based stuff. Um, but inevitably there is some kind of overlap. So this is intended to be its own independent space away from kind of like the more teaching or taught content, hence its own separate space on the VLE. But nevertheless, we do flag up these kind of resources. We've also got the York Students' Union students room and the Voice of Young Science Community, an international network of young scientists.

This section, represented by the Bee, is a staff and student collaboration Padlet. So here I ask staff to submit their collaborations with students. So we could just share them and disseminate them and celebrate them. So once it loads, you will see here, um, we've got different columns. So we've got publications published with students learning and teaching materials that we're developing or that are in progress are being developed. Our various student groups and communities. Again, opportunities for outreach and other collaborations as well.

Just finally, and for a bit of fun, I've also got a student generated map of student recommended places to visit in York, and this is actually part of our Friday email. So students submit this on a weekly basis and I add one every week. Um, but if we click on this, a map should pop up covered in little red dots with student reviews on the left here that I've copied and pasted from this form. And sometimes they give tips regarding - kind of - discounts or things of that nature. So you can see here all of these red dots are places and locations in York represented or kind of flagged by students - some are actually getting quite far out now. I got a backlog of about five of these that I will be adding over the next five weeks, and students continually update this as they go forward.

So just a couple of other things just before I wrap up. That's the student engagement hub. Just a couple of things in terms of GDPR. So if you're getting student feedback on this from your reps, for example, you might want to make sure you add them as students rather than give them full managerial positions because they'll have access to every email, of every student in that year group, which could be problematic. Um, so you just want to bear that in mind and make sure you add them with the proper permissions, which can sometimes be a little bit opaque on the VLE.

Um, another thing to consider just moving forward is what we might do with the space in the future. And we definitely got plans for it. One, for example, is to add a subsection here, which I'll add a new pixel art for. Um, and this will be on, um, outreach. So our Outreach Committee, run by Professor Katie Slocombe, is going to be looking forward to getting students involved in opportunities, going back to their home institutions, where they went to sixth form or college and maybe doing outreach initiatives. Um, so this is another way of getting students involved.

Um, a third and final consideration is that if you're creating a dynamic document like this, it does need to be updated. So I need to go through this every semester and I will need to remove any dead links. Um, and I also need to make sure that we're kind of - all these links point to where they get they're supposed to be going. So we don't want to end up in a situation, for example, where we're funnelling students who are vulnerable and maybe seeking welfare support to a space that's incorrect or not appropriate. So you need to monitor the links very carefully and just keep on them. And certainly have like a spring clean. And this is just part of a normal thing, um, about maintaining an online digital platform.

So anyway, I hope that's it. I hope that's useful for you. And please do get in contact if you have any questions. I'd be happy to share this template. If you wanted to emulate something like this in your own department.