maths and physical sciences

Conversations about Risk and Disaster Reduction Podcast

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THE TEAM

Staff lead: Joanna Faure Walker

Student leads: Rebekah Yore, Candice Oreal

DEPARTMENT

Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction

WHAT HAPPENED?

We worked together as a team to design and co-create the beginnings of a podcast around disaster themes that could be run in the future as an Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction podcast. The project included considering how series and episodes could be structured and what topics could be covered. We recorded a pilot episode, including two members of the team, and then a focus group was led by the other team member among current students for feedback about structure, style and content, as well as being used as an opportunity to receive further ideas. Following from the feedback (which was useful and much appreciated), we then proceeded to make some minor amendments to the pilot and record further episodes. We now have a few episodes ready and a plan for the details of the rest of the first season, as well as some exciting ideas for following seasons. Having a staff, PhD student, and masters student work together allowed us to think carefully about different audiences and aims, and to recognise strengths across the team. I hope to have many opportunities to work with the whole team again.

WHAT ADVICE OR ENCOURAGEMENT WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE THINKING OF DOING A CHANGEMAKERS PROJECT?

Ensure to have a conversation at the beginning about why everyone is participating and what they would like to get out of it. We did this in the first meeting and allowed us to tailor activities and assign tasks in a way to help different team members get the experience in the areas wanted and help them develop the desired skills. Do be realistic about how much can be achieved in the time – it can be tempting to be overly ambitious. Think about what the legacy of the project will be and how to ensure that occurs.

Breaking down cultural barriers to improve student wellbeing and learning experience

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The team
Lead: Thao Anh (Tonja) Nguyen, Niloufar Abourashchi.
Support: Eleanor Chen, Tianshu Liu, Brilliant Dennise Wijaya
Department

Statistical Science

What happened?
As students of the Statistical Science department, we discovered strong cultural barriers between students from different countries, which resulted in a disconnect between students. The faculty has also noticed this and created the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) team that focuses to create initiatives to tackle this challenge. This project was created as a continuation of a survey from last year which shows that approximately 50% of the students agreed that their main goal at UCL is to make friends with peers from a different cultural background. However, the majority of the respondents agreed that they could sense a lack of intercultural interaction between students in the statistical department. This project has successfully gathered data on students’ wellbeing and learning experience through surveys and workshops. We are primarily interested in understanding on how we can provide a sense of “belonging” among students especially for international students that comes from various backgrounds. We gained students’ view of the community in the department, how this cultural barrier affects their educational experience and personal relationships, and what changes they want to see, either in the teaching delivery, style of assessments, or just in general. The feedback has been analysed and reported to relevant staff members, which will take this forward and improve the situation in our department. Similarly with last year, majority of the respondents feel that there was a lack of cultural interaction between students. This ChangeMakers project will act as ‘phase one’ of a two-phase bigger project where we will run social events to promote interculturality, and create a student-alumni network, where people can share their thoughts on inclusive community. This aligns with our survey result where it shows that nearly all survey respondents agree that running more social events could help breaking down the cultural barriers.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
We believe that it is crucial to have a clear objectives and goals and determining who are the key stakeholders of your project. You should ensure that the goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. Having clear and measurable goal will help you in quantifying your impact. It will help if you could engage with the key stakeholders and gained opinion from them to help improving your project. We also find it helpful to have a project timeline and tracker, it will give clear deadline and ownership to each team member, and it will also making sure them to be reliable to the task that they are assigned to. Lastly, it is helpful to have a prioritisation matrix, to understand what a quick win can be and what will be the long-term effect or strategy from this project.

Covid-cohort study – a survey of student performance and requirements in physics and maths after lockdown

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The team
Anasuya Aruliah and Mark Fuller (co-leads, academic and outreach respectively) Osnat Katz (PhD student); Francesca Waines (Y3 Astrophysics student); Rania Shafiq (Y3 Physics student)
Department
Physics and Astronomy
What happened?
UCL have a commitment to Widening Participation. The undergraduate cohorts entering UCL in 2020 and 2021 have experienced moderate to severe disruptions in their A level teaching due to the covid-19 pandemic. These are our current Year 2 and Year 1 undergraduates, respectively. Our small team is following these two cohorts to understand the consequences of this disruption by running staff and student surveys and focus groups. The goal is to advise the Department of Physics & Astronomy how to support and retain struggling students so that they achieve their true potential.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
Planning is important, and gathering a committed and enthusiastic team.

Supporting departmental student society in improving students’ experience and sense of belonging

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The team
Staff: Dr Yulia Ioffe
PhD Student: Mhari Gordon
MSc Student: Kim-Anh Anastasia Chau
BSc Student: Libby Kay
Department
Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR)
What happened?
The idea started with student representatives at the Staff-Student Consultative Committee mentioning students’ feelings of isolation and desire for more social interaction. A student survey was sent at the beginning of the ChangeMakers project (with 30 respondents) where students expressed the desire for a department society in order to improve the student experience, sense of belonging, and collaborative environment society. This ChangeMakers project aimed to gather the opinions of current students of the IRDR to formulate recommendations for the upcoming new department student society. This project benefits the current 170 students of the IRDR and is expected to benefit the creation of the student society and future IRDR students as the overall student number is expected to grow in the next 5 years to 500 students. In order to capture the wider views and be representative of the IRDR student community, the team comprised of a student from each cohort (BA, MSc and PhD). Furthermore, the project was run in collaboration with a staff member. To meet the project aim, the team organized and ran both a focus group discussion (FGD) session, including 12 students (4 per cohort), as well as social events open to all IRDR students, including a tea and coffee morning and pub evening. After the FGD and events, the team met to discuss the success of the project and write a report to hand over recommendations to the new department society. Overall, the findings were that the IRDR students wanted a more vibrant student community and the ChangeMakers team was able to identify social events that students want next year, such as regular social events which are per cohort, across cohorts and with alumni, including activities such as picnics, game nights and museum trips, as well as taking part in activism, volunteering, and seasonal activities including ice-skating trip and end of term dinners. The team is confident that the new department student society will start with strong based on the contributions and recommendations of the efforts from the ChangeMakers team and the ‘starter kit’ report.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
Taking part in a UCL ChangeMakers project reinforces the feeling of belonging in the department, a great way to get to know students from other cohorts, as well as the wider UCL community. It is rewarding to contribute to building the student’s sense of belonging and identity by supporting the development of a new society. To know the project will be impactful, you should start by questioning what would be very valuable to the student community you are part of. This can be achieved by running surveys or simply discussing with your peers. To ensure the project is successful, set targeted and quantifiable goals. Set and follow clear deadlines. Discuss with your colleagues or staff if you experience difficulties. Organize reflective sessions.

Creativity vs Consistency: Evaluating the student online learning experience in MAPS

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The team

Staff: Richard Osborne, Sophia Macblain

Students: Baljeet Kaur, Zuzanna Kocjan, Surrabhi Luthra, Noella Kalasa, Shim Shim, Mark Rassam, Kate Trollope, Anita Allikmets, Raj Ramani, Jiguang Yu

Department

MAPS faculty office

What happened?
One of the consequences of the global pandemic that began in March 2020 was a huge increase in use of the centrally managed Moodle Virtual Learning Environment at UCL. Realising this early on, the Digital Education team responsible for supporting the VLE acted rapidly to produce extra guidance and support so that new content could be produced to a high standard. However, this was very much a self-service model, as the number of support staff available to help adapt existing content fell far short of providing one-to-one assistance. The sheer volume of new content that was required, under very short timescales, combined with a wide level of digital literacy across the academic population, naturally led in turn to a wide range in quality in terms of the content that was created. Subsequent student surveys, run not only in the MAPS faculty but also across UCL – and indeed the wider sector – revealed the impact of this wide range in quality in terms of the student experience. Whilst individual modules were often in themselves internally consistent, and potentially even very creative, students tended to have a wider ‘diet’ of modules than individual staff perceived, hence they had to contend with a wide range of course design choices, approaches to organization, and activity types, to name but three elements of online course creation. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the student experience of online learning by analysing all currently running modules in the MAPS faculty, utilising a simplified version of the guidance on good practice created by Digital Education. The overall objective was twofold: to reveal the extent of good practice across the faculty, and to focus support services where they were most needed. Early analysis has been promising, revealing some excellent organising of student activities, clear contact and communications, and detailed assessment information; but it has also revealed some areas where key information is absent, occasional pages which are too long and badly organised, and some missing “Have your say” sections, meaning students have no way to offer their own module evaluations. Future work is now planned to celebrate the good work that has been achieved and start to address obvious shortcomings where they have been identified.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
Give yourself plenty of time to plan events and structure your project well ahead of time. Personally, I found the three stages of the project in the application form (1. Preparing, 2. Undertaking, 3. Identifying / Sharing) very useful in terms of shaping what I hoped to achieve, especially when used alongside the UCL calendar.

Evaluation of Disability Services

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The team

Alexa Wong (lead); Asma Lali (support), Rebecca Nasterlack (support), Peter Bratby (supervisor)

Department

Natural Sciences

What happened?
The EDS UCL ChangeMakers project was proposed to evaluate existing support services available for neurodivergent/ disabled students in the hopes of making the Natural Sciences Department more inclusive. We aim to identify existing policies, practices and resources that make a positive difference for students with neurodivergence and evaluate shortcomings in wellbeing services. This project was proposed by students in response to student feedback about wellbeing services. The project saw Natural Sciences students and staff come together to understand the experiences and needs of persons with a disability/ neurodivergence through research, surveys, and one-on-one interviews. Through conversations with the Student Wellbeing Services team and departmental mental health services, deeper insights were gained into the inner workings of support systems. Findings from the surveys and individual interviews will be compiled into a report which will be used to advocate for changes to Natural Sciences Departmental policies and practices with the goal of strengthening support systems to better meet the needs of students. By working closely with staff to analyse data, especially thematic analysis, a report analysing both the quantitative and qualitative data will be created alongside recommendations to improve such services. This report will be shared within the Natural Sciences department to increase awareness about these needs, with the potential of disseminating our findings to the larger MAPS faculty.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
My first tip is to find a team of people who are equally passionate about your project and committed to the cause. Juggling your project on top of academics will prove challenging at times, but being surrounded by dedicated people who remind you of the project’s importance will allow you to find it rewarding in the end. Secondly, maintain good communication between your entire team, including staff/ student partners. Thirdly, keep an organised checklist of things to be done and ensure everyone keeps to deadlines!

AstroSyndicate

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The team

Students: Nancy Yang, Maurane Gisiger, Nasko Stefanov, Patrycja Lakomiec.

Staff: Prof. Giorgio Savini, Dr. Steve Fossey.

Department

Physics and Astronomy

What happened?
The goal of the AstroSyndicate was to bring together astrophysics students from across different years of study. Events were catered to our shared interests in astrophysics and were held around campus and at the observatory. Examples include astrophysics talks and observing nights.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
Starting something from scratch can be difficult but don’t give up on it. Take note of what works and what doesn’t and don’t be afraid to change your plans slightly as you go along.