Thursday 15 November 2012

URB@N Project: Student perspective on a quality learner experience


The School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton has funding from URB@N for three projects. URB@N stands for ‘Undergraduate Research Bursaries at Northampton’. It is a bursary scheme offering opportunities for current undergraduate students to participate in a pedagogic research project taking place at the university. Details of one of these projects is included here.



Scott Turner
John Sinclair

Overview
The project will form part of the larger work going on within the school
on what is a “quality learner experience” both from the staff and student
perspective.

The URB@N student project focus will be on the student perspective and as a peer can hopefully get an more unbiased view through staff not being directly involved in collecting the information.

It is anticipated that results will be disseminated throughout the School
and will inform all Subject teams in terms of the student perspective on
the current learner experience. With the expectation that this will lead to
proactively targeted enhancement activities at subject-level.


Over several years, the School of Science and Technology has been
concerned that its NSS scores, whilst improving, lag behind those of the
rest of the University of Northampton. The development of the KIS has
permitted ready comparison with competitors and whilst there is a recognised
sector-wide issue with low scores in science/technology students, we are not
managing to exceed the outcomes for the majority of similar institutions. In
2011/12, efforts were made to establish student focus groups to investigate
this issue, but student participation was low. We therefore wish to try a different approach, in which the research will be conducted by a student,
which we hope will enable greater buy-in and participation from students
within the School.

The URB@N project would enhance the ongoing project within the school into
what is a quality learner experience.


For more information about this project go Student perspective on a quality learner experience
More details about URB@N can be found at: http://www.northampton.ac.uk/urban

No comments:

Post a Comment