Parallel Session 2
Wednesday 29th (17:00-18:00)
2.1 Show-and-tell session, room W2.10
Creating a community of “Caring Minds”
Manushan Nesari & Yasmine Goossens, UCLL University of Applied Sciences, Belgium
UCLL launched workshops for staff and students to foster a “caring minds” community, echoing the institutions motto “Moving Minds.” These sessions, tailored to student well-being, communication, and self-care, engaged 600 participants. This initiative promotes inclusivity and accountability, emphasizing everyone’s role in supporting student mental well-being.
Leveraging the unique strengths (rather than focusing on the weaknesses) of large lecture courses to help build a strong culture of care.
Mun Chun (MC) Chan, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
This presentation will elucidate specific practices to build a community of learners with a strong culture of care in a first-year lecture course. Strategies like building smaller communities, emobodying and helping to build care for one another’s academic and mental well-being, and creating assignments that emphasizes different strengths, increases student persistence and builds metacognition. Importantly, they leverage unique benefits of large class sizes; increases diversity of students and power of shared positive experiences.
Working together to create a culture of belonging on campus – Experiences from the project Vibrant Campus in Northern Norway
Elise Johansen, The Norwegian Artic Student Welfare Organization & Benjamin Colding-Jarkowski, Artic University of Norway, Norway
The project Vibrant Campus (“Levende campus”) have worked strategically since Covid-19 with (re)awakening their campuses. In this Show & tell they will share their experiences with creating a collaborative project between students and staff, and elaborte on their failures and wins throughout the prosess. The participants will learn about inspirational strategies to accomplish senses of belonging on campus, and go home with new ideas about how to create a vibrant campus.
Why collaboration, and a shared responsibility between students and staff is important to enhance the First Year Experience
Ingvild Lorentzen, Maria Zachariassen, Robin Lien, Oda Bjørnsdatter, Trine Holm Larsen & Helene Rosså – UiT The Artic University of Norway, The Artic Student Welfare Organization, & The Student Parliament, Norway
The First Year Experience Resource Team is a forum where students, teaching staff, administrative staff, and student welfare counsellors work together to share knowledge and experience about initiatives that lead to improved learning, well-being, and a sense of belonging for the students. We will discuss key success factors and challenges, and present activities we’ve facilitated to create a community for students to enhance learning and well-being.
2.2 Show-and-tell session, room W2.11
High Impact Educational Practices (HIEPs) in first-year university Students and the Relationship with their learning approaches: a commitment to balance with extra-curricular activities
Isabel Muñoz-San Roque, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Spain & Eluska Fernández, University College of Cork, Ireland
The present study analyses the relationship between Learning approaches (Student Process Questionnaire, SPQ Biggs, 2001) and high-impact educational practices (HIEPs) in a sample of first-year university students of different degrees in a Spanish university.
Creating a ‘caring community’ for first year students to optimize student wellbeing & student success
Katrien Verhoeven & Ann-Marie Van Noten, Artevelde University of Applied Sciences, Belgium
Based on the public mental health perspective and inspired by the healthcare intervention spectrum, AUS developed a new policy on student wellbeing. Our approach to create a caring community will be illustrated with good practices that focus on 3 main objectives:
- acknowledge and prioritize the significance of mental well-being
- encourage selfcare and mutual support and inform students where help is available
- ensure that all students feel safe, welcome and connected
“Strategies to support first year students at TU Dublin” A Community of Practice
John O’Carroll, Technological University Dublin, Ireland
“Strategies to support first year students at TU Dublin”, a Community of Practice, was launched in September 2023. Both professional services and academic staff from TU Dublin joined this project group. Engagement and consultation has taken place between our staff and our first year student population through a Student experience survey and student focus groups on our five campus locations in Dublin. At the time of making this application this project group are analysing this data with a view to making recommendations for the next steps to continue to support and put in place a strategy for first year students at our university.
Do too many cooks spoil the broth? Staff collaboration in designing peer-to-peer services for disparate student groups
Dr Andre Biederbeck, Dr Prue Goredema & Anna Haase, FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany
Delivering a vibrant and effective first year experience for disparate target groups necessitates collaboration with multiple service units – some of which may have conflicting priorities. What defines a community in contemporary educational settings? What does effective stakeholder engagement look like? In addition to presenting our own good practice example, we will invite participants to contribute their insight into what it takes to develop and nurture a student-led peer-to-peer support service that serves diverse target groups.
2.3 Presentation session (outdoor), room W6.06 (basketball court)
Magical encounters? Lets explore the importance of High-Quality Conections for well-being and academic success among students
Tine Wåst Nielsen & Xenia Mejer Mattsson, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Denmark
Join us outside to discuss and explore the importance of High-Quality Connections, and micro actions for well-being and academic success for first-years students. High-Quality Connections are those magical encounters that leave us feeling alive, seen, and valued. They’re the coffee chats that spark creativity, and the classroom exchanges that lift our spirits. Hear from the students themselves and participate in a playful and engaging activity. This session is based on preliminary results from the Erasmus+ project SURFY.
How to: A guide to student-led improvements to induction.
Liz Radice, Nottingham Trent University & John Harrison, Student Consultant, United Kingdom
Working in partnership with student consultants, NTU’s school of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment will outline how they co-created changes to Induction leading to a 17% year on year increase in students’ perception of how useful their induction activities were for making friends. Our Student Consultant will reflect on the project and share their personal highlights and reflections. Together the presenters will provide a methodology for colleagues to implement in their own institutions.
2.4 Presentation session, room W3.10
Tailored Tactics: Measuring Peer Support Impact through Personalisation
Carly Emsley-Jones, Cardiff University, Wales
Our Student Mentor Scheme has helped retain over 500 first-year students but it’s not just about numbers – we prioritise personalised support, ensuring that every student has the opportunity to feel connected and part of our community. Over the past 12 years, 5,000 student mentors have provided guidance to more than 40,000 first-year students. Explore our data-driven insights and proactive strategies which have proven to enhance students’ first-year experiences and enable us to be sustainable.
Building connected communities in the first year at university: learning from Australian students’ academic and social expectations
Diana Perche, Inma Tomeo-Reyes, Sandeep Kirpalani & Melissa Nyholm, University of New South Wales, Australia
What do students know about university before they start? How does this impact on their ability to engage in learning communities during first year? This study of first-year students in an Australian university asks students about their social and academic expectations and considers how academics can support transition to university. In this session you will hear the students’ perspectives on building social connections with academics and peers to strongly integrate into the university learning community.
2.5 Workshop session, room W3.11
How can exercises in ‘collective guidance’ stimulate a sense of belonging among FY-students?
Andrea Hvid Hagn-Meincke, Charlotte Dahl & Rikke Ellegård Skotner, University College Copenhagen, Denmark
Let’s explore ‘collective guidance’ together! ‘Collective guidance’ covers study guidance activities that focus on the community rather than the individual. We provide insight into our workshops and exercises and offer resources for other practitioners. Our focus is that students, regardless of their prerequisites, experience being part of a community. After this session you will have shared your own thoughts and ideas with collegues, and you will have your own bodily experience of what our specific exercises can contribute to regarding a sense of belonging and creating and supporting FY-communities.
2.6 Workshop session, room W2.05
Building Success by Building Student Connections: A Strategic Enrolment Management (SEM) Approach
Steven Smith & Tom Brophy, Saint Mary’s University, Canada
A good SEM plan recognizes that to be effective, communities within institutions must be facilitated, created, supported, evaluated, and maintained. We will help participants outline who they need to work with at their institutions and how to include university structures, teams, funding consideration, staffing, and outcome assessments as part of their plans. We will help identify their readiness and next steps to take and discuss how we worked though this in our own SEM plan.