Student-Staff partnership at Newman sees work published

14/06/2019 by Charlotte Knowles

Last month it was announced that a team from Newman University had been nominated for a prestigious national award; Advance HE’s Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE). Read more.

Following the announcement, the team have seen their research on the collaborative work published in a peer-reviewed international journal – Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism Education.

The students, Aaisha Akhtar, Tamara Smith, Penny Keeling and Rae-Anne Preece, from subjects including English, Sport and Youth and Community Work respectively, have worked together with staff at the University, Dr Adam Benkwitz, Sarah Parkes, Helen Bardy, Dr Kerry Myler and Professor John Peters, are named as co-authors on the paper.

The paper focuses on how UK Universities are increasingly being ‘encouraged’ to focus on student engagement, retention and performance, with learning analytics becoming commonplace. Based on inter-related student-staff partnerships, the study adopted a human and compassionate approach to the use of student data and subsequent interventions.

The students and staff members conducted research and analysis of focus group and interview data from 86 student participants explored key themes: peer-mentoring increasing engagement with the communal-habitus; increased confidence and engagement; and the demystification and humanisation of the university environment.

The findings highlight the importance of emphasising human and compassionate support for students within rapidly developing learning analytics approaches, with subject-specific peer-mentoring found here to be beneficial.

The article can be views on the ScienceDirect website.