“Making it OUR Year Abroad”: A student-staff collaboration to support the Year Abroad experience for Languages students

7 September 202311 September 2023 By michaelkilmister Comment Closed

By: Dr Chiara Ciarlo, School of Literature and Languages, c.ciarlo@reading.ac.uk

Screenshot of UoR Italian Year Aboard Facebook group — Screenshot of the private Facebook group created by students for their Year Abroad

Overview

In this blogpost, Lecturer in Italian Language Chiara Ciarlo illustrates how four Department of Languages and Cultures (DLC) students with experience of the Year Abroad (YA), collaborated with staff on a PLanT-funded project to help fellow Part 2 students deal with the difficulties and anxiety of preparing to study abroad in the post-Brexit era, by creating a successful network of support including a student-led Facebook group and a useful video-guide with tips on life abroad. This project demonstrates the power of student partnership for building belonging and engagement in ways that are meaningful and authentic to learners.

Objectives

The primary aims of this activity were:

– to enhance communication among students across year-groups in DLC;
– to encourage current and returning students to share their YA experience in an inclusive way, and Part 2 students to proactively seek help while preparing to go abroad;
– to identify key aspects which required more support for Part 2 students;
– to create online YA resources on these aspects that could easily be accessed by current and future students.

Context

Due to recent economic and political changes, students preparing to study/work abroad as part of their Languages degree, have had to deal with complex bureaucratic processes (e.g., visa application) and unforeseen problems (e.g., increasing difficulties in finding accommodation), which have caused them undue stress and anxiety. During her time abroad, Jess Mant, one of the student partners in the project, had the original idea of setting up a network for fellow students to offer support on the issues she had experienced when preparing to leave and while in the foreign country. This subsequently became a PLanT-supported project.

Implementation

The project was based on the students’ YA experience in Italy. After an initial planning meeting with staff, two of the student partners, Jess and Francesca Greatorex (Finalists), set up a student-led private Facebook group as a space for the Italian students to find out more about the YA. It was agreed that this group should have only students as members (i.e., no staff were allowed on it) to allow freedom of discussion. Past and present students of Italian were invited to join the group, and this was a great opportunity for alumni to contribute to the discussion and offer advice on different destinations. All student partners initially introduced themselves via videos, shared their experience and pictures, and used polls to encourage members to vote on topics to discuss. This worked particularly well and stimulated participation when Part 2 students had to choose their destinations, as questions on specific cities could be addressed.

Once the Facebook group was up and running, the other two student partners, Anna McTiernan and Rosa Lockwood-Davies (Year Abroad students), created videos on topics that had become popular in the Facebook discussions and in YA preparation meetings with staff and Part 2 students e.g., tips on the visa application based on own experience, finding accommodation, and how to make friends in a foreign country. These videos were later uploaded on the Facebook group and were liked by members. Despite having individual roles, student partners collaborated in both areas of the project, sharing ideas and reviewing each other’s work.

Impact

Aim: To enhance communication among students across year groups in DLC.
The Facebook group created by the student partners is a permanent space that Italian students of all year-groups can join. This year, the group will welcome the new Part 2 cohort and the administration will be taken over by the remaining student partners of the project.

Aim: To encourage students returning from the YA to share their experience in an inclusive way, and Part 2 students to proactively seek help in preparing to go abroad.
This aim was achieved through posts and videos (and the use of captions in the videos, which helped students focus on the content). Videos on some more sensitive topics (e.g., making friends) were carefully planned to include all types of personalities. Polls were particularly effective in stimulating members to ask questions and contribute.

Aim: To identify key aspects which required more support for Part 2 students.
The use of polls and discussions in the Facebook group, and the participation of student partners at YA preparation meetings, helped create a pool of topics to cover in the video-guide.

Aim: To create online YA resources on these aspects that could easily be accessed by current and future students.
The Facebook group became “the space” were all material could be found in one place by members: this included the videos and several useful links which were recommended by student partners during preparation meeting and immediately posted in the group. This will remain a great source of information for future cohorts.

In a survey carried out during the summer, Part 2 students commented particularly on the usefulness of this material and its ease of accessibility.

Reflections

The success of the activity lies in the determination and creativity of the student partners. From the very beginning, they all took on their role with great enthusiasm and were driven by the will to pass on their knowledge to make the YA an enjoyable experience for current and future cohorts of Languages Students. Additionally, other students who were on the YA found the initiative very stimulating and began to give their contribution, both in group discussions and by posting extra material that they had created to document their experience abroad e.g., a written guide on the student experience in Padua.

Student partners encountered some difficulties while creating and running resources, namely in making students interact in online exchanges and in producing videos whose format would appeal to peers. To overcome these issues, they came up with creative ideas, like the use of polls and the creation of shorter videos, to encourage viewings. For staff, having the input of the student partners was invaluable, as every activity was designed with the students and their needs in mind.

Follow up

Two of the student partners, Finalists in 2023/24, will continue with the administration of the Facebook group (possibly creating also an Instagram account to complement it), and will encourage this year’s Part 2 students to join. With the contribution of other members, who have also returned from the YA, information will be regularly updated, discussions will be stimulated, and new material for the video-guide will be produced, making this a permanent and dynamic space for Languages students to meet and share their YA experience.

A special grazie/thank you goes (in no particular order) to Jess, Francesca, Anna and Rosa for the time, dedication and enthusiasm they all put in creating these resources, and for demonstrating that the Year Abroad is an invaluable experience that needs to be preserved and shared with others.

Links

Link to the “UoR Italian Year Abroad” private Facebook group.

Academic Placements by Dr Cindy Becker

21 January 20134 October 2019 By edwardwhite Comment Closed

In the Department of English Literature we have been working hard, as have so many of our colleagues across the university, to make the most of the intellectual, personal and career advantages that placement learning can offer our students. We have devised a system of academic placements which is open to all undergraduates studying in the department.

In recent years we have seen a continuing appetite in our students for ‘real world experience’ and we believe that our academic placements offer this in the best sense possible by giving placement providers a tangible benefit from the activities of our students and by offer our undergraduate the chance of high quality, prestigious placements.

To support our work in this area, and to ensure that present and potential undergraduates are up to date with developments, we have created a dedicated webspace to cover this aspect of our work with students. It can be found through our department homepage by clicking on ‘See how our academic placement system works’ or by going to http://www.reading.ac.uk/english-literature/Undergraduate/ell-academic-placements.aspx

The department’s placement tutor, Dr Cindy Becker, would be happy to talk to any colleagues with an interest in academic placements. She can be contacted on l.m.becker@reading.ac.uk.

Digital literacies for student employability: Spotlight on work placements by Nadja Guggi

19 October 20124 October 2019 By edwardwhite Comment Closed

I have been working with a placement student, Rachel Glover, a third-year undergraduate in Politics and International Relations, to carry out research into digital literacies for student employability, focusing on the University’s extra- and in-curricular work placement schemes.

This research is part of the Digitally Ready project (www.reading.ac.uk/digitallyready), a JISC-funded initiative under the Developing Digital Literacies Programme (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/developingdigitalliteracies) to help staff and students at the University to prepare for life, work and study in a digital world. More information about our research can be found at http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/digitallyready/resources/wrp/.

Rachel and I were invited to speak at the Teaching & Learning Showcase on ‘Assessing work placements’ here at Reading on 11 October. (http://www.reading.ac.uk/internal/cdotl/NewsandEvents/InternalEvents/cdotl-TeachingandLearningShowcaseSeries.aspx) The showcase events are a series of informal lunchtime gatherings which provide an opportunity for colleagues to share T & L practices and ideas. The format is three speakers talking about a common topical issue for ten minutes each, with time for questions and discussion at the end.

Rachel and I were up first, followed by Cindy Becker (English Literature) and Hannah Jones (Agriculture, Policy and Development). Organiser Joy Collier had asked us to set the scene a little bit, so we thought we would share some of the insights from our research into digital aspects of work placements, and to show our colleagues the model that we use to evaluate students’ digital experiences. Our presentation slides can be found here.

The framework we use is adapted from Rhona Sharpe and Helen Beetham’s ‘Developing Effective E-Learning: The Development Pyramid’ (2008) which describes the development of digital literacies in terms of access, skills, and practices as prerequisites to becoming a critical, informed, expert user of digital technologies.

If we apply this to work placements, it becomes about affording students digital opportunities. Work placements can provide opportunities for students to experience and explore digital technologies (access); to develop technical proficiency in using digital technologies (skills); and, crucially, to apply these skills in a professional, ‘real world’ context (practices).

This is where the real value of work placements lies – in bridging the gap between students’ learning and how this is applied in a work environment, and in making that connection in the student’s mind, too, so that they are digitally ready and so that they have the awareness and the ability to articulate that readiness in order to make stronger applications, perform better in interviews, and, ultimately, better able to do their jobs.

Developing those higher-level attributes and attitudes – digital literacies – requires reflection. Cindy and Hannah spoke about the ways in which they encourage students to reflect on their placement experience and how this is linked to assessment, which surely then ought to be based on students’ ability to draw out and illustrate their learning and development rather than a descriptive account of, say, the company or their day-to-day tasks while on placement.

Hannah’s closing comments, which suggested that perhaps students should not actually be marked on this at all, that being able to truly reflect on their experience is enough, I found particularly thought-provoking.

My own closing comments were twofold: firstly, to encourage anyone involved in planning, assessing and evaluating placements to consider what digital opportunities might be embedded in them.

And secondly, to consider whether the development pyramid might be applied to planning, assessment and evaluation of work placements more generally, not just to look at the digital angle. After all, having the right tools for the job, learning how to use them and knowing what to do with them, are the building blocks required to develop any sort of professional competence. Thus the development pyramid might provide a useful framework for designing WRPL activities. I will say more about this in another blog post.