student-staff partnership

LGBTQ+ Toolkit for Medical Educators

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The team

Dr Jayne Kavanagh, Dr Santino Coduri-Fulford, Dr Marchesa Ataide-Da Costa.

Department

UCL Medical School

What happened?
A toolkit to help medical educators make their teaching resources and sessions more LGBTQ+ inclusive.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
Factor in feedback and the time needed for this.

Optimisation of Short Answer Question Assessments

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The team
Staff lead: Dr Martina Wicklein
Student leads: Yuvraj Jadeja, Kaja Posnik, Qu Ukai
Department
Neuroscience, Pharmacology and Physiology
What happened?
Our focus was on the 1st year module: Foundations of Neurobiology. Our goal is to improve the assessment experience for all students and increase the inclusivity of the exam process, aiming at researching how assessments benefit the learning process and establishing effective communication between lecturers and students. We formed a focus group of 12 students to discuss students’ viewpoints collected via surveys of a cohort of 100 students (60% response rate) after taking assessments on Moodle and AssessmentUCL, feedbacking the results to a team of academics and professional services support staff; to determine the optimal assessment platform meeting our criteria by developing a mutual understanding between staff and students on the challenges of assessment delivery. The data we gathered will be implemented to inform future improvements of in-course assessments. We will showcase results and examples of how we achieved our aim.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
Get insight from as many people as possible. This way, you’ll get an understanding for how useful/impactful your project is for your community. We took survey data from the first year neuroscience cohort, and collaborated with the first year neuroscience leader (Dr Martina Wicklein) and other UCL faculty members.

Development of an Inclusion Student Advocate Programme in the Faculty of Medical Sciences

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The team
Lead: Dr Nephtali Marina-Gonzalez
Support Students: Moon Cheng, Tala Al Ajmi, Emma Last.
Department
Division of Medicine
What happened?
At the beginning of the year, we gathered together to develop a program that promotes equality, diversity and inclusion within the Faculty of Medical Sciences. In hopes that by collecting the opinions of the cohort, we can identify the areas of improvement and come up with solutions that could allow a better sense of belonging in the faculty. As a faculty with many students from different backgrounds, race and gender, we believe that it is essential for us to keep EDI awareness high in order to help everyone reach their greatest potential in their academics whilst feeling supported as a unique individual. We planned 3 sections to the project, the survey, Interviews and Alumni Talks. In which the survey and interviews were constructed to collect data from the student body and the Alumni Talks are planned to invite previous students from different career fields to share their experiences with current experiences. We have finished collecting responses form the survey and are currently in the middle of organising interviews with students who self identify as having disabilities and understanding what we could do in order to help them have a more smooth learning journey. The alumni talks will be held next academic year. Since the student advocates are also student representatives from different courses in IMS, we are able to attend SSCC meetings and report to leads and other student representatives about our project. This is for the purpose of letting staff in the faculty of medical sciences to be aware of students opinions and concerns. This project is still ongoing and we hope our efforts put in this project will be able to benefit current students and most importantly prospective students as well.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
Make sure you could keep a good balance between your degree coursework and the Changemakers project at the same time. It would need good time management and also be self-motivated to progress the project throughout the year because you would have to set deadlines yourself and try to achieve them. Always communicate with your lead and other team members when you are confused with parts of the project since more ideas and opinions come up in discussions.

Improving the wellbeing of students at UCL who identify as male through physical activity

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The team
Lead students: Anne Cole and Nadia Yeo
Support students: Millie Morgan, Letitia Leong, Marta Radosevic
Project Active Lead: Lilley Kennedy
Department

Psychology and Language Sciences

What happened?
Our project has continued the work of a project completed last year. Our aim has been to increase the participation in Project Active classes of students who identify as male. Project Active runs engaging, non-competitive physical activity classes and the aim is to improve student wellbeing across the UCL community. We used behavioural science theories to gather data through surveys and focus groups to understand what could facilitate increased uptake of classes amongst male students. Results included increasing awareness, focusing on the social element of classes and providing incentives and loyalty schemes. The team and Project Active are now devising an initiative that can be rolled out in Term 1 2023 drawing on this data.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
Ensure you have clear, achievable goals and have a clear timeline with other teams.

Using students’ expertise in identifying extra educational resources to be incorporated into the teaching material to support student learning of advanced human genetics and statistics

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The team
Dr Elvira Mambetisaeva
Student leads: Laura Caton, Aanadita Kothurkar, Keerthana Sunilkumar, Tom Roberts.
Department
Genetics, Evolution and Environment
What happened?
The ChangeMakers project “Using students’ expertise in identifying extra educational resources to be incorporated into the teaching material to support student learning of advanced human genetics and statistics” aims to enhance student learning of these subjects by complementing module teaching material with available on the Web short educational multimedia videos chosen by students. Some students find advanced human genetics and statistics difficult as they require competencies in mathematics and understanding complex concepts in genetics. This project tries to address this issue. Research shows that university students are increasingly using short educational videos available on the Web to meet their own learning needs. They help students quickly to recall prior knowledge or to close the knowledge gap they might have. In this project, the ChangeMakers partners Dr Elvira Mambetisaeva and four students from the MSc Genetics of Human Disease and the BSc Biological Sciences first identified the topics in human genetics and statistics that students find difficult drawing on their experiences of learning these subjects. Then, they gathered the list of links to educational videos and resources for identified topics using their perspectives of understanding how these resources were helpful in developing their own competencies. Finally, they divided the compiled resources into two groups: the first group of resources will supplement the reading list for students so that they can use it prior to starting their study of these subjects. The second group of resources will be incorporated into the module Moodle resources along with lecturers’ material to be used by students during their study. The list of identified educational resources is in the process of evaluation by current MSc Genetics of Human Disease students. In addition, module organisers will go through the list of suggested links before incorporating them into module resources.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
(A) Identify an area where students’ perspectives and experiences can change students learning to be better and (B) identify student partners who are enthusiastic and wants to work in a partnership with you.
A clear understanding of the goal of your project by all partners is very important for the success of the project.

Exploring podcasts as an educational tool for Neuroscience students

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The team
Martina Wicklein (staff lead)
Miriam Jansen (student lead)
Ferran Junoy, Aiste Viduolyte, Evan Moffitt, Maria Gonzalez-Gancedo (support students)
Department
Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology (NPP)
What happened?
As students, we spend most of our time staring at a screen or flipping through a textbook. The little time we have left is spent on commutes, grocery shopping, and gym sessions. The goal of this project was to test out an alternative studying method – podcasts – that students can use to learn whenever and wherever they want. To reach this goal, we developed Brains Discussing Brains: an educational podcast covering undergraduate-level neuroscience through faculty interviews and scripted segments. Although the podcast is still in its infancy, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. By analysing student and staff feedback, we’re figuring out the optimal formula for the podcast in an educational context. We’re varying episode length, content, interview to segment ratio, topics covered, and more. In spite of the strides that still need to be made, it’s clear that the flexibility and (most importantly) fun that podcasts offer make them great candidates for supplemental or student-led study materials. They can be listened to when you wouldn’t normally be able to study (such as walking to class), but if done right, it barely feels like studying at all. Give the first episodes of Brains Discussing Brains a listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
Don’t be afraid to delegate and form a team for the tasks ahead. Since it’s your project, it’s easy to feel as if it’s thus your responsibility to get everything done. I would argue that’s not the case at all! Forming a team to help you bring your idea to fruition will open up your project to new opinions and perspectives and make sure you’re not putting all the workload on yourself. Don’t be afraid to reach out to people you don’t know to join the team: create an open application if you can.

Code Camp Rebooted: an interactive training and self-testing environment for first-time

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The team
Staff/Lead: Dr. Jonathan Readers
Students: Peijun Xie, Sangbin Lee, Elika Sinha.
Department
Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
What happened?
We tried to deploy a dynamic, engaging remote learning and self-testing environment that empowers students to acquire the fundamentals of programming in Python at their own pace outside of formally timetabled activities. First, we evaluated existing materials via a student-led consultation process; We made a questionnaire to collect students opinions about code camp, and then, based on the questionnaire, we organised 2 workshops to collect students suggestions about Code Camp. Second, our three try to map out the content, examples, forms, videos based on the suggestions we collected. Then, in the next step, we will draft examples, problems, questions, and answers for use in an online platform; We will also try to deliver at least three dynamic online lessons using the selected learning platform. We will then evaluate the impact on incoming student confidence and capabilities in order to undertake iterative improvement on an ongoing basis in the future.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
When you try to generate a project, try to think about how more people can benefit from your project.

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.

Masterclass series

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The team
Konstantina Tetorou, Nandaki Keshavan, Ellie Chilcott, Ashley Boyle, Juan Antinao, Riccardo Privolizzi, Tania Castillo.
Department
Institute for Women’s Health
What happened?
Our project aims to create a forum through which early career researchers of the Institute for Women’s Health (Masters, PhDs, PostDocs) could be trained in different lab techniques and provide structured, targeted feedback on ongoing research projects. We will organise two technical masterclasses, one poster session, one writing retreat session and one wellbeing session to take place in a 3-month period (April-June 2022). The technical masterclasses will include training in lab techniques that are commonly used across the Institute, such as ELISA and western blot. Also, peer to peer feedback will be given on general presentation skills.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
This is a great opportunity for engaging with the community and sharing the skillset within our institute. We advise seeking the opinion of the target attendees to determine what they think would be most useful to cover in events before applying. No idea is too small for this application as long as it is well planned and justified.

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.