Author: Carol Azumah Dennis (Editor)

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Supporting minoritised student experience of Taught Postgraduate assessment: a co-creation project

This blog post is another in our series of scholarship-focused posts and summarises a report of this project, which investigates minoritised students’ experiences of assessment in higher education. The project lead was Dr Judy Chandler, and the co-researchers were Bob Hallawell and Rhiannon Moore. The project was funded by Praxis – WELS Centre for Scholarship and Innovation.

This blog post been edited by Dr Jane Cobb based on a Praxis project report by Dr Judy Chandler et al.

The Supporting Minoritised Students co-creation project found evidence of disparities in outcomes for minoritised PostGraduate Taught students and highlights the importance of students’ feedback literacy and existing capital.

“The general module assessment guidance… I seldom check that guidance because that’s too long and sometimes I think the information for me there is…is like too…too abstract, too general (interview participant).”

This study uses a change laboratory (a type of participatory, collaborative research within which ideas are tested) and case study methodology, in combination with analysis of quantitative data from outcomes of two Open University Master’s Programmes (in Education and in Childhood and Youth) and builds on existing literature.

The project reports the following key findings:

  • Many minoritised students do less well in qualifications than their counterparts. (The project defines minoritised students as: “students minoritised by language, social processes or institutions”.)  For example, Black, Asian and students who choose to share mental health conditions were awarded the lowest outcomes on certain courses.  Further, black students completed their taught postgraduate studies with the lowest course outcomes of these three minoritised demographic groups.
  • Application of feedback requires feedback literacy and is associated with students’ prior experiences and expectations. (I understand feedback literacy as being required to interpret the guidance and feedback around assessed work, which students have gained from previous study, and which would then feed forward to future assessed work.) The project finds that feedback literacy is associated with students’ prior (and cultural) experiences and expectations.
  • Existing assessment support contributes to the replication of patterns of existing capital and academic identity. Credit transfer students, those with prior experience of study or work within similar domains, and those who were already familiar with the Open University systems, are more able to navigate their assessment experience and emerge with positive course outcomes.  For students without pre-existing sources of this capital, strategies of navigation or resistance were more limited, as they were less able to draw on existing knowledge and experience to navigate the interpretation of assessment requirements, documentation, or feedback.

 

  • Data highlights the impact of negative feedback on a student’s confidence and view of their own ability. Further, a lack of clarity and specificity meant that feedback was sometimes difficult for students to apply, particularly for those for whom English is an additional language.

The project makes the following recommendations:

Academic teams should consider assessment data across courses, pathways and qualifications.

When designing assessment guidance and support, it is important to consider any assumptions made about students’ existing knowledge and skills and to ensure that support is in place for those students without this experience.

At a qualification level, endeavour to provide some consistency in tutor support.

Students declaring mental health conditions should receive continued support throughout their course, not just at its outset, in preparation for final assessment.

Create ways for all students to feel a sense of belonging during their course.

This project provides insight and empirical data which can be drawn upon by practitioners interested in improving student experience of assessment in higher education, particularly in a distance and online setting.

In so doing, it supports, for example, the ongoing work of the Anti-Racist and Inclusive Assessment.

The project team states that future iterations of this project will incorporate the experiences of course team members and tutors working on the Master’s in Education and Master’s in Childhood and Youth, alongside those of minoritised students. There will be a continued emphasis on the co-creation of inclusive and accessible assessment support, which builds upon the varied experiences of this diverse group of co-collaborators.

For further information on this project, please contact [email protected] or visit the Open University Scholarship Exchange 

 

“The proposal to develop this project to investigate the experience of all participants (tutors, course team and students), viewed as co-collaborators, seems an interesting way to strengthen and illuminate the data further.  Both the concept of feedback literacy itself and the fact that it is associated with prior experience resonate with me as an ex-OU tutor (of many years!).  Moreover, I have experienced that feedback can (unintentionally) affect a student’s confidence, and there is evidence to support this. Finally, the recommendation that a sense of belonging is created for students is something that, as tutors, we have been continually trying to achieve with varying degrees of success, such as by encouraging an active online student forum.” Dr Jane Cobb.

 

What are your thoughts on the findings and recommendations of this project?

 

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Print or Digital: that is the question!

bookshelf at dusk
Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash

‘There are more unread and book questions I could ask and answer, of course. Which book have I put down and won’t pick up again? Which books do I most often recommend to students? What books influenced me most? If I had to choose only one book to keep what would it be and why? What books are likely to stay unread?’ (Thompson, 2025).

Anyone reading this blog will agree that reading is a central part of academic life. During our last bloggers’ meeting, we spoke about the books and papers that most influenced us. Although I happily reminisced about many moments that shaped my doctoral thesis, for example, the discovery of Stake’s (2006) Multiple Case Studies and Rogoff’s (2003) Guided Participation, among others. I realised that each was tied to its own time and context. Therefore, instead of revisiting those influences, I want to reflect on a seismic change in my reading life: the shift from print to digital.

I have embraced digital reading with passion. Living in a country where English is not the first language, I appreciate being able to buy an eBook in seconds rather than carrying heavy suitcases of books across borders. A Kindle device stores thousands of texts, spares my eyesight with adjustable font sizes, and avoids the damp that damaged many of my treasured print editions. However, when it comes to proofreading, I still need paper. Indeed, research confirms that printed text encourages slower, more careful reading, provides stable spatial cues, and reduces skimming and eye strain, making it easier to catch mistakes (Baron, 2015). Despite these advantages, research shows that people still prefer print over digital for both study and pleasure (Charry & Roje Tomic, 2023). Therefore, two concerns came to mind.

How Do Academics Balance Convenience with Depth?

Digital formats offer unmatched convenience, speed, portability, and instant access, but print still supports greater focus and accuracy (Singer & Alexander, 2017). The challenge for academics is not choosing one over the other but knowing when to use which. I have found that working to each format’s strengths is the answer: use digital for access and portability and print for tasks that demand deep concentration and precision, such as proofreading. Institutions can support this balance by maintaining resources in both formats and by helping readers develop strategies for enriching digital reading.

Is Digital Disrupting Reading for Pleasure?

Leisure reading remains more immersive and relaxing in print and Kindle devices. In contrast, smartphones, computers and tablets often encourage distraction through scrolling, notifications, and skimming (Quintero & Brennan-Gac, 2024). If these habits replace sustained reading, academics risk losing a key source of curiosity, renewal, and imaginative thought. Therefore, institutions should protect print-based leisure reading by providing quiet, book-friendly spaces and by encouraging the use of dedicated e-readers over multipurpose devices supporting both wellbeing and scholarly creativity.

To conclude, I would like to relaunch Pat Thompson’s questions cited at the beginning of this blog post and add the following: What is your position on digital reading? How do you overcome the issues reported here? Have you embraced it, or do you reject it?

by Lesley Fearn (PGR Blogger Editorial Team)

 

Dr Lesley June Fearn is a secondary school English teacher in southern Italy. She is also an affiliate researcher at the Open University’s (UK) Faculty of Well-being, Education, and Language Studies (WELS), where her research centres on linguistics and sociocultural theory. 

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When Passion Becomes Exploitation

Problem

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

Every year, teachers and academics are expected to dedicate time, energy, and ideas, but often without any additional support or compensation. In academia, researchers are expected to publish regularly, review peers and even pay high open-access publishing fees. Expectations vary in schools, but educators are still taken advantage of, nevertheless. They are expected to implement new programmes, reshape curricula, and take on responsibilities that reach well beyond the classroom, resulting in a quiet but widespread form of exploitation.

Teachers

As an EFL teacher in Italy, I have seen this unfold year after year. Policies shift, priorities change, and teachers have to adapt. For example, since 2010, the government has implemented CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) in the final-year curricula of technical schools (DPR 88, 2010) and licei state secondary schools (DPR 89, 2010) and teachers must integrate a CLIL module into their curricula without providing adequate training or structural support. More recently, teachers have had to find considerable time to incorporate ‘Civic Education’ (MIUR, 2019) and ‘Orientation’ (MIUR, 2022). Although the school is given funds to nominate a coordinator for any new method, it is the teachers who put these ideas into practice and are expected to do it as an extended part of their already full workload. Moreover, although there are training courses, they are seldom focussed on single subjects or contexts. I, like many colleagues, feel underqualified to do these things, and it takes us an enormous amount of time to organise, carry out and assess on top of our existing responsibilities. Each reform promises innovation, but in practice, it often means unpaid overtime, rushed adaptation, and mounting stress. That is without counting the emotional labour we need to perform in supporting students who face increasing personal and social challenges (Day & Gu, 2010).

Academics

Meanwhile, in higher education, academics are under pressure to research and publish regularly. Also, many journals charge high publication fees for the privilege of publishing open access (Eve, 2014). That means academics are writing in their spare time, self-funding their articles, and balancing research with full-time teaching and administrative responsibilities. Additionally, academics altruistically peer review these journals, so while publishers profit, scholars are left financially and emotionally drained (Tennant, 2020).

Possible solutions:

Firstly, schools and universities need to formalise and compensate for extra responsibilities. If a new reform or initiative is introduced, there should be dedicated time within working hours, appropriate training, and financial recognition. These considerations are both reasonable and necessary for the meaningful and sustainable implementation of this initiative (OECD, 2020).

Secondly, higher education institutions and academic publishers could take joint responsibility for developing equitable publishing models by reducing excessive article processing charges (APCs), increasing support for open-access models that do not penalise authors, and ensuring that publishing remains an integral part of academic life. Scholars should be able to share knowledge without being demoralised (Tennant, 2020).

Question

Finally, my concern extends beyond money and hours. It is about dignity, autonomy, and respect for our profession. When passionate professionals are treated like unpaid volunteers, everyone loses, especially our students and future specialists.

When Passion Becomes Exploitation

Problem

Every year, teachers and academics are expected to dedicate time, energy, and ideas, but often without any additional support or compensation. In academia, researchers are expected to publish regularly, review peers and even pay high open-access publishing fees. Expectations vary in schools, but educators are still taken advantage of, nevertheless. They are expected to implement new programmes, reshape curricula, and take on responsibilities that reach well beyond the classroom, resulting in a quiet but widespread form of exploitation.

Teachers

As an EFL teacher in Italy, I have seen this unfold year after year. Policies shift, priorities change, and teachers have to adapt. For example, since 2010, the government has implemented CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) in the final-year curricula of technical schools (DPR 88, 2010) and licei state secondary schools (DPR 89, 2010) and teachers must integrate a CLIL module into their curricula without providing adequate training or structural support. More recently, teachers have had to find considerable time to incorporate ‘Civic Education’ (MIUR, 2019) and ‘Orientation’ (MIUR, 2022). Although the school is given funds to nominate a coordinator for any new method, it is the teachers who put these ideas into practice and are expected to do it as an extended part of their already full workload. Moreover, although there are training courses, they are seldom focussed on single subjects or contexts. I, like many colleagues, feel underqualified to do these things, and it takes us an enormous amount of time to organise, carry out and assess on top of our existing responsibilities. Each reform promises innovation, but in practice, it often means unpaid overtime, rushed adaptation, and mounting stress. That is without counting the emotional labour we need to perform in supporting students who face increasing personal and social challenges (Day & Gu, 2010).

Academics

Meanwhile, in higher education, academics are under pressure to research and publish regularly. Also, many journals charge high publication fees for the privilege of publishing open access (Eve, 2014). That means academics are writing in their spare time, self-funding their articles, and balancing research with full-time teaching and administrative responsibilities. Additionally, academics altruistically peer review these journals, so while publishers profit, scholars are left financially and emotionally drained (Tennant, 2020).

Possible solutions:

Firstly, schools and universities need to formalise and compensate for extra responsibilities. If a new reform or initiative is introduced, there should be dedicated time within working hours, appropriate training, and financial recognition. These considerations are both reasonable and necessary for the meaningful and sustainable implementation of this initiative (OECD, 2020).

Secondly, higher education institutions and academic publishers could take joint responsibility for developing equitable publishing models by reducing excessive article processing charges (APCs), increasing support for open-access models that do not penalise authors, and ensuring that publishing remains an integral part of academic life. Scholars should be able to share knowledge without being demoralised (Tennant, 2020).

Question

Finally, my concern extends beyond money and hours. It is about dignity, autonomy, and respect for our profession. When passionate professionals are treated like unpaid volunteers, everyone loses, especially our students and future specialists.

Therefore, the question I pose is: How can we, as educators and academics, reclaim our time and value without sacrificing the passion that brought us here in the first place?

Blog post written by Lesley Fearn

I recently achieved my EdD regarding learning and teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) using online community projects in secondary schools. This interest stems from more than thirty years of experience teaching English (as a Foreign Language) and English literature in state schools in the south of Italy. During this time, I have continually experimented with new approaches and techniques, especially with technology, to motivate students in their schooling. Other areas of interest include Fine Art and English literature that I studied as a BA and MA. As far as research is concerned, I am particularly interested in Action Research and sociocultural paradigms.

 

 

 

 

 

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LABOUR OF LOVE Part 1 

In early 2025, the blog editorial team comprised Professor Carol Azumah Dennis, Doctors Jonathon Hughs, Jane Cobb, Adele Creer, Madeleine Pilcher, and Lesley J. Fearn discussed the managerial and institutional expectations placed on academics. Among the various definitions, we recognized a presumption that much of our work would be done for ‘love’ and unpaid. Inspired by this subject, we decided to all write a paragraph entitled ‘Labour of Love’, and Jonathon would put it together.  Jonathon decided to link this collaborative work with one we did in the past on AI, specifically Chat GPT, in academia and compare the results with the definitions we had given. The outcomes showed that Adele, Jane and Madeleine’s notes resonated with ChatGPT, while Lesley and Azumah differed slightly.

As we have had previous discussions about the use of AI, specifically Chat GPT, in academia, I began by asking Chat GPT to explain ‘labour of love’. It suggested:

‘A ‘labour of love’ refers to work done out of passion, dedication, or deep personal satisfaction rather than for financial gain or obligation. It often involves significant effort but is pursued because of genuine interest or affection for the task cause or people involved’.  

Adding:

‘Despite its idealistic appeal, the ‘labour of love’ in academia can sometimes lead to exploitation, where passion is used to justify long hours, precarious contracts, and under-compensation’. 

This idea resonates with Adele, who says, ‘I’m happy to go over and above what is expected, oodles of marking, tutorials, preparing work, emails, forum activities…. All a labour of love. I sometimes put in more hours than I wish to count and got involved in extra projects. This work is what fires me; it’s challenging and interesting. I try to stay within the working hours allocated – but it is impossible; it always takes longer than planned, and I can be found at my desk late in the evening; this is, of course, my choice’.

Additionally, Jane wrote about the way that pursuing her doctoral thesis led to a feeling of separation from those close to her – ‘The doctoral thesis and my compulsion to achieve it was, indeed, a labour of love and looking back a major milestone for me, a transformative journey (see Savva and Nygaard, 2021).  It was also a particularly personal journey, separating me from those I saw day-to-day.   Perhaps studying and working at a distance enhanced this feeling of separation, as the much-valued sharing of ideas and experience with my dedicated supervisors, fellow journeying academic friends, and colleagues, generally occurred remotely, online.’

Likewise, Madeleine also describes her EdD studies ‘as a labour of love because it was a piece of hard work you do because you enjoy it and not because you will receive money or praise for it or because you need to do it (Cambridge Dictionary, 2024). She notes: The task ahead of me felt insurmountable at times, but I was determined to overcome the difficulties I faced to continue my research and fulfil my potential. My EdD has proved to be a fantastic opportunity for learning and an enlightening experience. It truly was a labour of love.

In contrast, Lesley compares the Italian approach of ‘dolce far niente’ (the sweetness of doing nothing) with her ‘need to fill every moment with something worthwhile. In my case, I like to do something that will help me learn.’ She wonders whether ‘when I retire in a few years, I will be able to enjoy ‘dolce far niente’, but if not, I will continue learning new things and loving every moment’.

Finally, Az outlines her situation as a central OU academic where, nominally, 40% of her time is study or research time, which we can control … and devote … to our passion projects. ‘But the reality is, I find it hard to recall a holiday in which I simply holidayed. However, Az accepts that […] it (is) hard to complain about this since I appreciate how privileged I am to work in academia: a job that allows me space for autonomy and creativity. Az recognizes that there is a significant downside to academics in the toxic university, about stress, micro-aggressions and associated ill-health; I really wonder – I may well love my job, but does the job love me, or is it a sad case of unrequited love?’’

In conclusion, are some nested paradoxes at the heart of the ‘labour of love’ notion? Can something be both a ‘labour’ and done ‘out of love’? Is this only possible if a ‘free’ individual choice is untainted by the context in which that choice is made (Gill, 2016)? It may be difficult for individual academics to make a real choice in a toxic university (Guardian, 2000).

A follow-up blog is planned to interrogate some other ideas identified by ChatGPT. In the meantime, what does a ‘labour of love’ mean to you?

Blog written by Jonathan Hughes

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Initial Teacher Education and the Use of Video Technology in Open University Partnership Schools

 

Project lead: Alison Glover – [email protected]

Video technology offers a range of benefits as a pedagogical tool to support student-teacher learning. The challenges identified are not related to the use of the tool for effective student-teacher learning but are practical or personal.

Photo credit (1)

 

This blog post is another in our series of Scholarship focused blog posts and summarises the Open University, Wales-PGCE Team study, funded by Praxis – WELS Centre for Scholarship and Innovation. the team found the use of video technology for reflection on lessons to be inconsistent. They reports that there is a need to support embedding the use of video technology in student-teacher reflection.

It can be difficult to remember how things have gone, so the video is another ‘thinking’ device, as I can’t take it all in at the moment.

Student teacher

Introduction

The potential for and application of video technology in Initial Teacher Education is constantly evolving. This project established the current level of schools’ engagement, the activities video technology is used for, and the perceived benefits and challenges to all involved. More than 100 participants, including student teachers, mentors, school senior managers and pupils, contributed their views on the use of video technology in lessons. These views were collected using an online survey, interviews and group discussions.

Results

The findings from focus group participants/mentors overall indicated that the use of video technology is reported to be inconsistent, whilst conversations with mentors and school colleagues are reported to be the most effective approach for reflecting on practice. There were both benefits and challenges of using video technology in lessons. Benefits included their role in supporting the identification of improvements and strengths and facilitating the observation of different techniques, which then provided a basis for mentoring discussions. The challenges of using video technology in classrooms involved the missing of aspects of learning, safeguarding concerns, and feeling self-conscious while filming.

The results of this study showed that there is a clear need to embed support to encourage the effective use of video technology in lessons for it to have a positive impact on reflecting practice. The project then led to increased awareness of two important needs. Firstly, there was an increased awareness of the need to provide further training and support to use video technology for reflection in lessons for both student teachers and for the school staff who support them. Secondly, the project led to an increased awareness of the need to provide scaffolding to support reflective practice using video technology. It was then decided that support mechanisms and resources would be developed to address the challenges that had been identified by the project.

Proposed outcomes

A bank of video recordings has been collected and is currently being edited. Further clips will be sourced to ensure that a broad range of themes are included in the resource bank. This will be made available to the Open University Partnership schools. The resource bank will showcase effective examples of using video technology alongside content and a training tool that will support how to video record lessons and use the video technology to support reflection of teaching practice.

For further information on this project, please contact [email protected].

What are your own thoughts around the use of video technology as a means of reflection on teaching practice? Do you think the use of video technology would benefit reflection on practice in Further and Higher Education? How far do you feel that the practical and personal challenges that Alison reports would outweigh the advantages in comparison with other methods of reflection on teaching practice available?

(1) Photo by George Milton: https://www.pexels.com/photo/happy-young-black-woman-setting-up-smartphone-before-shooting-podcast-6954220/

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my research journey: reliable routes, untried tributaries

Research Poem

Marilyn Long is currently undertaking a doctorial degree with the Open University exploring:  ‘Autistic students and online higher education: an investigation into equity and inclusion within a non-autistic majority group paradigm’

 

Photo by Kağan Karatay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-walking-in-tunnel-25051324/

PGR Blogger editorial team discussed this contribution over several weeks before publishing. It does not fit in with the format of our usual posts  – there are no refences and, well – it’s a poem. But it is clearly engaging with the doctoral / research journey. We liked hearing Marilyn’s voice in the literal as well as figurative sense. We felt that the poem highlighted the anxieties experienced by so many PGRs and academics (seasoned and emerging) about the value of their contribution. Academic self worth. Amidst the emotionality of these thoughts is a diagnosis of autism and the experience of being autistic in an environment dominated by neurotypicals.  This is a densely packed poem which inspired  unexpected depths of thought and discussion. 

my research journey: reliable routes, untried tributaries

Please click on the link for access

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F_6dp6DeBhjgbzB8FjzofL8umUKQ7NLB/view?usp=sharing


Poem by Marilyn Long.

I am a Year 3 doctoral research student in the WELS Faculty, Institute of Educational Technology. The focus of my investigation is equitable and inclusive provision and support for autistic students in HE, underpinned by the premise that the online education platform has potential to maximise autistic student potential. I am working with autistic students and staff who are allies of this student group, and am passionate about my role as an autistic researcher and as an OU Accessibility Champion Advocate. In the 1980s I gained my B.Ed (Hons) degree and worked as a Primary school teacher, with responsibility as Early Years Co-ordinator and Staff Development Manager. I have also been awarded the MA in English Literature and MA in Online Education, both from the OU.

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Does it matter if it’s true or not? 

 

Photo by Anh Nguyen: https://www.pexels.com/photo/artistic-portrait-woman-message-hands-face-29504304/

 

 

 

“Those things I told you were just [false]statements. Isn’t it I was representing girls who live like that?” –

Participant X  

 

 

 

 

 

I had just finished data analysis and was about to write up my findings for my study, which explored the education experiences of six girls in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) who were characterised as ‘marginalised’. These girls had been recruited onto a vocational education and training programme by an international organisation, which sought to improve their lives through training them in skills for their livelihood. The findings were, to me at the time, a compilation of a neat and compelling narrative about these girls’ lives, which resonated a lot with the broader literature on girls’ education – mostly how vulnerable they are, how they lack access to important resources and how they lack voice and agency. I drew this narrative from these girls’ stories told in their own voices, a very important part of my methodology in this study. Nothing prepared me for the moment when one of the participants in my study (Participant X in the excerpt above) revealed to me in a WhatsApp message that all she had told me during my two long interviews with her was a misrepresentation and her narrative about being a ‘marginalised’ girl was not true!  

To say I was shocked and confused is an understatement. In that state of panic, I went back to the data, carefully observing my conversation with her and all the girls in this study, and to my horror, I realised that the stories of five out of six girls had inconsistencies and contradictions. At that point, disappointment set in, and I felt disappointed with myself, the participants, and my study. How did I miss that?  

My claim to having taken a constructivist stance in this study was tested by this revelation. I had gleaned from authors like Guba (1990) and others that constructivism denotes a relativist ontology, whereby there are multiple realities that are socially based and local and depend on the one who holds them. In this instance, my approach as a researcher was to (subjectively) interpret the participants’ experiences and perspectives, thereby taking an interpretivist epistemology (Cohen et al., 2007; Creswell, 2007; Crotty, 1998). What I had not anticipated was whether it matters if what the participants report is true or not and if the intention is to tell their story through their own voices, how this can be achieved when the participants have misrepresented themselves. 

After I recovered from my initial shock, I discovered that there were many important lessons from this experience, lessons which have shaped me as a researcher. For now, I will share this one: it is important for us as researchers to remember that the interview process is not neutral, and this has far-reaching consequences than we are consciously aware of. There are power dynamics at play, which are negotiated by the interviewer and interviewee both during and after the interview. For instance, as posited by others like Kvale (2006), typically, it is the interviewer who rules the interview, where the interview is an instrumental, even manipulative dialogue, in which the researcher has a goal and an agenda and maintains the exclusive privilege to interpret and report what the participant has said. Inherently, the expectation is that the interviewee will tell the interviewer what they want to hear. However, less emphasised, and often assumed during research, is the power that the participant holds. Not only do participants have the power to consent or not to the study, to choose to respond to a question or not, but they also have the power to select and transform details of their lives to suit the narrative that they want the researcher to remain with (Gubrium and Holstein, 2011). In my case, the participants exercised their power by presenting the persona they wanted to present and telling me the stories that they wanted to tell me, whether the stories were misrepresented or not. Their power certainly impacted me during data analysis and how I interpreted and reported the findings. 

Now, to the golden question: when it comes to reporting the findings, does it matter whether what the participants said is true or not? I think this is subjective to the researcher and their goals. For instance, I realised in revisiting what it meant for me to take a constructivist approach that my goal as a researcher was not to find or tell the truth because truth is indeed relative. I discovered when I engaged this line of thinking that the contradictions and inconsistencies of the participants in my study told an even more powerful story (Watson, 2006) though different from what I initially thought. In her work about ‘hearing’ girls’ voices, Khoja-Moolji (2006) emphasised that it is important to be open to diverse narratives about their lives rather than to reduce their voices to a homogenous narrative. For me, the complexity that came from the unexpected discovery underscored one of my strongest contributions about ‘marginalised’ girls, as I interpreted and reported all the stories – the truth, the half-truths, the outright misrepresentation.  

Does it matter to you if what your participants tell you is true or not?  

blog post by Jane Doka, a Research Associate in WELS – Faculty of Well being, Education and Language Studies.

Dr. Jane Doka is a skilled researcher with expertise in Comparative and International Education, specializing in the areas of youth transitions, inclusion, and gender within educational contexts. Her work emphasises the nuanced experiences of adolescents, particularly girls/young women characterised as marginalised within development frameworks, with an extensive background in both applied research and practical project implementation in the Global South. Her current and past projects underscore her commitment to ethical, culturally responsive research and the development of inclusive education systems. Jane is a member of the Centre for the Study of Global Development (CSGD) and is part of the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (open.ac.uk)

 

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Student Perspectives of Associate Lecturer Support for Students who share Mental Health Difficulties

A Praxis funded Research, Scholarship and Innovation project led by Professor Joan Simons in HWSC (Health, Wellbeing and Social Care)

If you have a tutor there that is supporting you throughout your studies or that you know knows and understands your conditions or your mental health, that in itself is so helpful because you feel supported and you feel that, OK, they’re there, they understand, they get it.

 

 

Introduction

This blog post summarises a critical OU study led by Professor Joan Simons and funded by Praxis – WELS Centre for Scholarship and Innovation. It explores how Associate Lecturers (AL) at the Open University can provide practical support for students who share that they have mental health difficulties and thus help them succeed in their studies. This research is of particular importance because although there has been an increase in students with declared mental health issues over the past few years, they are the most likely to be unsuccessful in their studies or even drop out entirely. Therefore, focus group discussions were organised to identify ways to help these students continue and succeed in their studies.

Results

The results of this study showed ways that the OU can support their associate lecturers so they can, in turn, support the students they have with shared experiences of mental health issues. Firstly, students strongly preferred email as their primary communication method, as it allowed them to take the time needed to formulate their thoughts carefully. However, some noted the challenges of miscommunication via email. In contrast, phone calls were generally seen as stressful unless scheduled in advance. Secondly, some students struggled with Tutor Marked Assignments (TMA) and found that getting extra support from their tutors was hugely valuable. Finally, students had difficulties navigating the OU resources.

Discussion

Personalised communication was seen as essential in building solid tutor-student relationships. Students appreciated individualised, rather than generic, responses from tutors, which made them feel supported and valued. Timely responses and clear boundaries around tutor availability also helped alleviate anxiety. To help students who share they they have a mental health condition and based on the results of this study, Joan proposes the development of an intervention aimed at enhancing academic and pastoral support for students with shared mental health difficulties. This intervention would include regular check-ins, tutor video introductions, clear boundary-setting, and structured communication. The impact of these strategies will be assessed by tracking retention and attainment rates.

On the other hand, students also noted a significant variation in how well different tutors understood and supported mental health challenges. Some felt that a lack of understanding from their tutors hindered their progress, indicating a need for more standardised training. A warning light that students who are likely to experience mental health issues need extra support or a modification in the support they are receiving is if they are asking for repeated extensions.

Conclusion

In conclusion, based on the results of this study, Joan aims to implement various modifications to the support that students who share that they have experienced mental health issues receive. For example, comprehensive academic and pastoral support will be tailored to students with mental health difficulties. Interventions will include personalised check-ins and engaging video introductions that respect these students’ requests for precise boundary settings. Additionally, regular check-ins will be organised in time for the TMAs, and extra support will be provided if necessary. The effectiveness of future support will be rigorously assessed using questionnaires, focus group discussions with ALs and feedback sent to the OU. Additionally, participating students’ retention and attainment rates will be compared against their peers. By better understanding the needs and preferences of students who share they they have a mental health condition, the OU will be better equipped to help them fulfil their studies and continue to a successful and satisfying future.

We would love to hear about your experiences of mental health  (directly or in supporting others) and study in higher education. What more should the sector be doing.  Please send us a comment in the box below.

Thanks to Lesley Fearn for peer reviewing and helping to shape this blog post.

 

Dr Lesley June Fearn is a secondary school English teacher in southern Italy. She is also an affiliate researcher at the Open University’s (UK) Faculty of Well-being, Education, and Language Studies (WELS), where her research centres on linguistics and sociocultural theory. 

 

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What was the emotional impact of providing students with video feedback on their written assignments?

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In this post, one of a series of Scholarship focussed blog posts, authors Ximena and Gerry talk about their recent research project exploring the emotional impact of  providing students with Video feedback on their written work. The OU – like so many other institutions – has its own quirky language and so I have editorialised to help someone who is unfamiliar with the OU to make sense of some of the highly specialised language OU colleagues use.

Written by:  Ximena Arias-Manzano [email protected]  & Gerry Howley [email protected]

Video feedback for TMAs : The emotional impact of hearing the tutor 

(TMA is an abbreviation for Tutor Marked Assessment, a formative assessment provided in response to students formal submission of course work, marked by their tutor rather than someone external to their course).

In the context of a distance learning University, this is feedback written by a tutor who had had little direct contact with a student on their course. 

The project focuses on tutors using video feedback for a range of assessments. Triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data are brought together to illustrate the beneficial effect that video feedback can have on accessibility, personalisation, engagement, and the tutor student relationship

 

Having this opportunity [to receive video feedback] brought a humanity to the feedback and made a huge difference in [my] circumstances. It did encourage me to ask questions more and definitely made me engage more with the module. I thoroughly enjoyed it all.

 

For the majority of students on the project, video feedback is shown to be a highly effective tool that improves accessibility, personalisation, engagement, and the tutor-student relationship. Most tutors found providing video feedback an efficient, enjoyable and beneficial alternative to written only feedback.

What was the project about?

This project was about providing an opportunity to a team of LAL   ALs (LAL refers to the school of Languages and Linguistics, ALs refers to Associate Lecturers) to experiment with innovative ways of giving feedback on their students formally submitted written work. Exploring the use of screencast technology, ALs were able to develop their own style of feedback creating an interactive approach. The production of video feedback in a guided environment where ALs had the opportunity to be trained and to receive comments from their peers to continue improving the use of screencasts in a more effective way when correcting assignments. The emotional impact of hearing the tutor and receiving more personalised feedback has been the focus of this scholarship project. The reflection and feedback collected from tutors and their students will form the basis of our final report.

What were the findings?

From focus group participants/mentors…

Student questionnaire:

    • Students overwhelmingly welcomed the new approach to feedback
    • 77% of 81 students who responded to the feedback questionnaire stated they preferred video feedback to text-only feedback.
    • 91% felt video feedback helped them understand their weaknesses and strengths more than text-only.
    • 91% said video feedback made them feel they had a closer relationship with their tutor.
    • However, positive outcomes are shown to be dependent on the approach of the tutor. So, adequate training and monitoring will be important moving forward.

A key topic that came out of both student and tutor feedback relates to the isolation of teaching/studying online. Using video feedback felt highly personalised and made them feel more connected to their tutor/students.

Student comments:

    • ‘It felt like I was sat in a one-to-one session with my tutor’.
    • ‘I felt a part of a community of students and a university. Not like studying alone far away from everyone else going through text on the screen’.
    • ‘It made me feel more encouraged and part of the community. Distance learning can be very isolating at times and this personalised visual feedback helped with that.’

Tutor testimonials:

    • “My marking is more enjoyable now (less isolated) and I feel I am having a conversation with students”.
    • “All in all, the project really (re) opened up my eyes to what can be achieved online without being a tech expert”.

Tutors reported on their feelings when preparing the feedback and appearing on a webcam, but also the positive feelings of easing their isolation.

Tutors found it a positive learning experience to develop alternative and innovative ways of giving feedback. After the initial hurdle with technology and trial and error period, they felt more confident, and some decided to use this way of giving feedback in all the modules they teach.

We learned that…

    • Tutors have seen the potential of video feedback for positive outcomes for their students, as well as helping them to feel closer to their students. This is something that has been missing over recent years due to organisational changes within the OU teaching structure as well as the disruption caused during COVID.
    • Students’ reactions to video feedback also demonstrate its effectiveness in terms of closing the gap in the student tutor relationship, which in turn can increase engagement and accessibility.
    • The enthusiasm we have seen from the ALs who took part in the project as well as module teams and tutors who have not yet been involved is testament to the potential of video feedback being used much more widely in the future. This is the primary focus of our next steps.

What next?

The project’s next steps are to create a group of champions from those who took part in the project. This team of champions will be trained as trainers to cascade down their knowledge and expertise to Associate Lecturers in LAL from 23J onwards.  (23J refers to  September 2023) We have already received interest from two Module Chairs re. using video feedback on their modules and we will be rolling out the training to their ALs (AL = Associate Lecturers) in time for 23J TMAs.

A long-term future plan would be to also expand the delivery of SD sessions to ALs university-wide.  The team of champions will also have the role of creating a “Guide to good practice” to be discriminated across the OU to form an integral part of the training for the use of video feedback in TMAs.

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Defending my work or being defensive?

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I recently practised a presentation in front of my daughter; I’d asked her to say what she thought. She commented: “I think you should begin by explaining what you are doing.” I replied abruptly that no, I wanted this to emerge as I talked. 

 “It’s confusing.” 

“I don’t think so.” 

“Well, if you’re not going to take any notice of what I think, I’m going.”  She went. 

The boundary between defending my ideas and taking on board constructive criticism constructively is one I have needed to learn to identify along my research journey. I recognise a similar uncertainty between defending and being defensive amongst some students as I provide feedback on their assessed writing. 

A particular student on a first-level English language module was doing very well, gaining distinctions for almost all assignments, but they questioned most of the minimal (in my view) criticisms within my written feedback. I realised their persistent questioning resulted from an assumption that I had misunderstood their intentions; therefore, they felt they needed to explain their rationale whilst not contesting my grading of their finished assignment. Their questioning was the result of a concern for mutual understanding; yet, for a student achieving consistently in the nineties, this could be seen as defensive. 

I consider that this need to explain, to discuss, and for dialogue with an assessor/evaluator/supervisor/mentor is crucial in our feedback processes at all academic levels. As tutors, I think that we need to recognise the inherent power of our evaluative comments. Criticism – especially that which is not mitigated by dialogue – was shown to have a powerful impact amongst students in my research into multiple viewpoints around feedback practices, with one tutor commenting that a lot of students “see the feedback as a list of errors”. Young (2010), researching self-esteem and mature students’ feelings on assignment feedback, reports that feedback comments affected some students’ “whole sense of self” (page 409). Young’s article is entitled aptly, “I Might as Well Give Up”. 

However, a student, too, can be viewed as having inherent power within a different feedback context, such as when completing formal evaluations of their tutor’s practice. Macfadyen et al. (2016:821), in their multi-level analysis of the evaluation of teaching by students, note the extent of the rapid “emotional debate” that student evaluation evokes. Indeed, an experienced tutor in my research commented that a student’s criticism of their tutoring “sticks in your mind…and you can’t get rid of”. No talkback no dialogue, means the opportunity for both defending and mutual understanding is lost, and the negativity “sticks”. 

Therefore, in attempting to identify a boundary between defending my own work and being defensive, my emerging recommendations to myself are twofold. Firstly, allow time to digest evaluative comments, re-read, and attempt to understand where the other is coming from. Secondly, take any opportunity to engage in dialogue with the other – via whatever medium is available – to continually strive towards mutual understanding.   

My daughter was right about my presentation. My way was confusing. I had not taken time to listen to the listener, my audience, to acknowledge their opinion and allow it to negotiate with my own. If I had, I might have had the opportunity for an ongoing dialogue to defend my own rationale whilst not shutting out defensively the view of the other. 

This value of the joint construction of meaning is explained by Halasek (1999) in her book,  A Pedagogy of Possibility. Halasek presents a perspective on composition studies which adopts Bakhtin’s concept of the dialogic, seeing the relationship between participants in an evaluative process as a constant search for meaning. Halasek echoes Bakhtin’s emphasis on the importance of the audience, that “through the discourse, the audience constructs the author” (page 62). 

However, that opportunity to think then respond, question, and discuss is sometimes unavailable – perhaps following a final, summative assessment, feedback on an article submitted for publication or a formal complaint or evaluation, as in the example above. In such cases, when an opportunity for dialogue with the evaluator who possesses inherent power is shut off, how is the boundary between being defensive and defending our work and ideas to be navigated? Young (see above) finds that variations in reactions to tutor feedback are linked to self-esteem. So, is acknowledgement and moving forward – despite the inevitability of undefended, one-way criticism – perhaps what we mean by having academic confidence? 

I have been an Associate Lecturer at the Open University since 2002, tutoring mainly English language modules.  I live in Stourbridge in the West Midlands with my husband, two adult children and three Romanian rescue (street) dogs.  My recent EdD and my current research interests concern the multiple perspectives around feedback practices around assessed writing in HE.  This is my first venture into blogging, and I am looking forward to this creative space, where colleagues can share, debate, and discuss issues arising around their research.