student-staff partnership

Globalisation and Internationalisation of the IMS Curriculum

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THE TEAM

Student leads: Boya Zhang, Shawn Lee, Dan Kviat

Staff lead: Jacob Wright

 

DEPARTMENT

Cancer Institute

 

WHAT HAPPENED?

Our project aims to increase global awareness in the IMS Undergraduate Curriculum. The current curriculum primarily focuses on a more eurocentric context, limiting global exposure. However, especially in an increasingly globalised society and a vastly diverse student population, global awareness has become increasingly more important, for future careers or better representation of the diverse student population. As we aim to find ways to introduce more global perspectives into the curriculum, we have conducted a survey with both students and faculty members, to understand their perspectives and establish whether there is the need to increase global awareness. This is followed by a short interview with a few students and faculty members, to have them elaborate on their survey questions and for us to further understand their perspectives of globalisation (i.e. what it might be and how it might be challenging to incorporate more into the curriculum). We managed to gain insightful comments from both faculty members and students. The team will then gather and analyse all of the data, before designing a framework that can help faculty members/module leads, as a reference when they are designing the curriculum.

 

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

I would advise that they start earlier, as it will be hard to manage the project on top of school lectures and projects etc. I would also suggest that students/staff should do a ChangeMakers project on something they are really passionate about or have an immense of interest in.

The Dissertation workshop: Research as a community practice

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THE TEAM

Lead: Mara Torres Pinedo

Support students: Amanda Kartikasari, Hemant Kumar, Ismat Juma, Kenneth Franco, Maria Jose Ascenzo

DEPARTMENT

Institute for Global Prosperity

WHAT HAPPENED?

The Dissertation Workshop co-developed with students a collaborative learning community to support and provide a sense of belonging for IGP MSc students during their dissertation period while reflecting on the overall learning process to improve research skills and collaborative learning for future cohorts. This project engages well with the ethos of the Institute for Global Prosperity and its commitment to transdisciplinary approaches to create more prosperous futures for all. Bringing innovation and dialogue spaces to explore models of future teaching practices that improve the belonging and wellbeing of our community can open the door to an authentic transformative education.

 
WHAT ADVICE OR ENCOURAGEMENT WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE THINKING OF DOING A CHANGEMAKERS PROJECT?
The Changemakers project is just the beginning of a further change in our teaching practice and learning experience in our community, no project idea is too small. Co-designing with students from the beginning improves your opportunities to build something more meaningful and to have more active involvement from them. It´s incredible what you can achieve, innovate and learn by opening dialogue spaces with students. A changemakers project can open the door to explore teaching practices that improve the belonging and well-being of our community and start building an authentic transformative education.

Improving Pastoral Care Provision for Chemical Engineering Students

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THE TEAM

Staff: Isobel Mackay, Beth Hills, Seema Walker (and support from Katie Bretherick our student advisor)

Lead Students: Yi Hui Loh, Adam Izham

Support Students; Lance Simanjoentak, Rebekah Goldwag

DEPARTMENT

Chemical Engineering

WHAT HAPPENED?

In recent years the Department of Chemical Engineering has received large numbers of Extenuating Circumstances claims with students referring to poor mental health and wellbeing. Issues with students’ mental health were also raised in the ASER. When discussed in the SSCC student reps mentioned that they are comfortable discussing academic matters with personal tutors, but not anything regarding mental health. In response to this the department have put in a variety of extra provisions, including training several staff members as Mental Health First Aiders and offering wellbeing drop-in sessions with these staff members as well as directly with the departmental tutors. These drop-in sessions are very rarely attended by students so it is clear that this type of provision is also not one that the students are comfortable using, and we want to use this project to determine how we can help students more effectively. In order to improve the mental health and wellbeing of students in the department of Chemical Engineering it was decided to run a Change Makers project to explore how best we can provide pastoral care to our students, in ways that the students will find the most effective and valuable. There were two key sections to this project. Firstly, for the student partners to design and run a series of focus groups to canvas the opinions of their peers on the wellbeing provision already in place in the department, and what other provisions they would benefit from. Secondly, the staff and students on the project to get together and analyse the anonymised responses of the focus groups to create a series of recommendations for the department. These recommendations will be presented to the Departmental leadership team and where appropriate acted on and implemented in future academic years, led by the departmental tutor.

 

2022_CE_Mental_Health_Change_Makers_Report_Isobel Mackay

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

This is a really great scheme and excellent way to get students involved with decision making at a higher level in their department. Students were really excited about being asked to be involved with this project to be able to influence their future, but also as it showed the department cares about their voice.

Investigating the usage of Labster and its future implications for industry and academia

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THE TEAM

Staff leads: Dr Rana Khalife, Dr Chika Nweke

Student lead: Pierre Springuel

 

DEPARTMENT

Biochemical Engineering

 

WHAT HAPPENED?

Research has shown that the potential skills gap in engineering, exacerbated by the pandemic, has started to show when graduates go out into engineering industries (Hou 2020). Final year students in the department have also expressed worries via personal tutoring sessions about how the gap in lab skills will impact their employability and this has also been discussed in staff meetings, together with resulting increased burden on careers support from the departmental careers liaison officer and the UCL Engineering Careers team. It is holistically believed that the outcome of this project should not only help current and former students but can also help to alleviate some of the pressures on staff and industry. In understanding the impact of Labster, a number of stakeholders will benefit. If proved successful, the tool can be applied to other modules in the department with minimal staff training, meaning that academic and teaching staff can use it to train UG, PGT and PGR students. The tool can also be used in the training of industrial delegates who receive training from our department via MBIs (Modular Training for the Bioprocess Industries). The results of this study may also highlight some limitations of the tool, which can be fed back to the company that designed Labster, who the UCL Digital Education team have built a relationship with.

 

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

Have a good timetable for the project, make sure you would be able to give the survey/do workshop before term end. Even ask the students for feedback on the project.

Terrace Club

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THE TEAM

Staff lead: Frosso Pimenides
Student leads: Sammy Doublet, Tom Henly, Clive Burgess, Lola Wilson, Thomas Butterworth
DEPARTMENT
Bartlett School of Architecture
WHAT HAPPENED?
The overall aim of the Terrace at 4pm was to challenge the conventional approach of architectural education within the Bartlett. Providing an informal space for all members of the Bartlett community, from facility staff to students to industry professionals, the conversations that took place were inspiring for all that engaged. Guest speakers involved a practicing architect, a staff member involved with book-binding, architecture, origami and other creative fields; and the Faculty Dean. All students who attended these lectures were fully engaged; learning what options were open to them; that architecture is not purely academic, and, crucially, that their futures don’t have to be linear.

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

Changemakers funding can provide the step your idea needs to become a reality. Having the provision of funding direct from UCL means that your ideas gain legitimacy, and you can start to make an impact on your learning community from the outset and for future learners.

Conversations4citizenship

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THE TEAM

Kamille Beye

Stella Cheong

Rowena Palicious

Adam Peter Lang

 

DEPARTMENT

Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment, IOE

 

WHAT HAPPENED?

Conversations4Citizenship is an innovative, inclusive, international podcast capturing discussions and debates on a wide range of citizenship issues focusing on emergence from the COVID 19 pandemic. Re -imagining citizenship education for a better future in these troubling geo-political times. We look at topics large or small and try to tell stories that appeal to a wide range of students, academics and practitioners.

 

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

Go for it!

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.

Bringing Academic Work to Life

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THE TEAM

Lead students: Trista Wu, Chanju Mwanza, Michelle Kai Yee Wong, Wai Lok Ng

Support students: Kazunori Shishikura, Fu Kexin

Staff lead: Ieva Kelpsaite

 

DEPARTMENT

Student Services Team (IOE)

 

WHAT HAPPENED?

In this project lead students led three creative groups – podcast, website creation and video creation. The website and podcast groups have been incredibly successful as they have most participating students engaging with the project, following up the workshop and learning to either design their own website or create a podcast. We had participating students showcasing their work at the end of the year celebration. I found particularly inspiring that our student leaders needed very little support from the staff to lead their own groups and workshops. They were switched on and knew how to manage the groups, and how to engage. I thought that their leadership were exemplary and I hope something they will take away into the workplace as a great skill they’ve practiced.

 

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

Go for it, it’s currently the most successful way of engaging with the students. As it’s a long time engagement it also leaves greatest impact on the students.

Testing the use of spatially explicit online platforms for the delivery of computer-based practicals

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THE TEAM

Staff lead: Max Reuter
Student leads: Lilly Bartsch, Makarim Omar
DEPARTMENT
Genetics, Evolution and Environment
WHAT HAPPENED?
This project explored new ways of using online technology to teach statistics at UCL. Specifically we were aiming to improve the delivery of practical computer session accompanying the undergraduate module Computational Biology (BIOL0029), a statistics course for second and third year Biosciences students. An important part of the module are weekly coding practicals where students apply newly learned coding techniques under the guidance of PGTAs. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, practicals were converted from two-hour in-person sessions in a cluster room to one-hour online tutorials. Student feedback has deemed these tutorials less effective and inclusive; the condensed format prevented students from working at their own pace and the online delivery did not allow for interaction among and between students and PGTAs. Here, we built on recent developments in pedagogy (McClure and Williams 2021) and test a novel approach to delivering online practicals, based on the spatially explicit online platform Gather.town. This platform replicates the interactions of in-person sessions, by letting participants control avatars in a virtual space and allowing voice and video interactions between individuals that are ‘physically’ close on the online map. We recruited paid volunteers who had previously taken the online version of BIOL0029, either this or last year, to run two trial sessions that replicated real-world computer practicals. Analysis of questionnaire responses from the participants indicated that the Gather.town practicals were very well received by students across a range of statistical aptitudes. Participants appreciated the engaging and intuitive interface and the possibility to more easily interact informally and privately with their peers and the PGTAs. As a consequence, Gather.town was much preferred to alternative online platforms, such as Teams or Zoom. Face-to-face teaching was however still the preferred way of delivery. Our trials suggest that spatially explicit online platforms provide a promising solution to delivering effective tutorials where face-to-face teaching is not feasible, e.g. under the constraints of social distancing and/or limited room capacity. The platforms help learning by allowing students to have the more natural interactions among peers and with the teaching staff that are lost in standard online settings. While our test sessions have taught us valuable lessons that we can use to improve the use of Gather.town and similar systems, the lacking implementation of a full range of accessibility features remains a hurdle to implementation in a real-life teaching setting.

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

The staff-student collaboration was the highlight of this project, and I would recommend the ChangeMakers scheme for this opportunity.

Gamification of MBBS kidney/renal learning

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THE TEAM

Staff lead: Tom Olney
Academic lead: Dr Ben Caplin
Student leads: Sharma Ganesananthan, Praoparn Asanitthong, Max Rees
DEPARTMENT
UCL Medical School
WHAT HAPPENED?
We have created a revision tool for renal medicine, part of the 4th year of the MBBS, helping to cover a range of learning objectives through a story built in Articulate Rise. The story is set in Costa Rica where there are a high number of cases of CKDu (chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology) and follows a young farm worked called Carlos over a period of time. You take the role of a medical student on elective and have to answer various questions and quizzes to help test knowledge and keep it interactive. I had the idea for using CKDu, but the students and Dr Caplin put together the outline of a story and the students all worked together on creating the content, while I focused on ensuring consistency and interactivity, and Dr Caplin ensured it was academically correct. Feedback from a small focus group before release enjoyed going through it, found it more interesting than traditional methods, and felt it was a useful revision tool.

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

It’s a great opportunity to do something a bit different and have students and academics work together to create something that both meets academic standards, but also is interesting and will be used by students. The main advice I have is to try and complete it in a shorter period of time near the start of a term where students feel they have a bit more time, do this by having a clear plan of work to complete and deadlines. I did not do this and the project has stalled at various points as the students haven’t had time to work on it.