Assessing the impact of Widening Participation initiatives on the personal and academic development of student ambassado

1. Assessing the impact of Widening Participation initiatives on the personal and academic development of student ambassadors Friday 7th May 2010 Jim Riches, Aimhigher London WECAN

2. Synopsis Introduction An overview of Aimhigher Research methodology Findings

3. Why this research? Research in the last 10 years has pointed towards improved ‘targeted learning support’ as a key principle of retention (Sellers and van der Velden, 2003). For example, providing enhanced: Study skills Key skills Discipline skills Pastoral Support Lack of support outside of timetabled sessions is cited as a key factor in attrition rates (May and Bousted, 2004). We wanted to discover if the WP work of students plugs these gaps.

4. What is Aimhigher? Aimhigher is a national programme started in 2004 aiming to widen participation in higher education. Mission: raise HE awareness, aspirations and attainment among young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds and under-represented groups. 42 regional Aimhigher partnerships across England use to further these aims. Funded by HEFCE & BIS – Total Aimhigher budget £600m+ (2004-2011)

5. Aimhigher London WECAN

6. HEIs represented

7. Aimhigher Associates Scheme In 2008, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) announced £21 million of funding for Aimhigher Associates The funding was initially distributed in the first year among 21 pilot areas (‘Pathfinder’ areas) before being circulated to the entire 42 partnership areas in years 2 and 3. The London WECAN area was selected as a Pathfinder in 2008-09. ‘Associates’ are university students that have been recruited by Aimhigher to provide school and college pupils between Year 9 and Year 13 with long-term help and support.

8. WECAN Perspective Engage 1250 learners in Key Stage 4 and Post 16. Target disadvantaged learners identified as the widening participation cohort in the WECAN area. Recruit and train 250 Associates from local HEIs Aim for at least 15 hours of contact time with a group of 4-6 Learners.

9. What do Aimhigher Associates do? Mentoring and guidance including: Introductions and icebreakers. An introduction to HE and student life Student finance and budgeting A guide to the UCAS process, website and personal statements Courses and subject choice Learning skills: revision techniques, language, time management Careers and vocations University visits and tours Wrap up session inc Q&A and feedback.

10. The Focus Groups Fieldwork dates: Feb 16-19th 2010 Semi structured interviews 43 students took part in focus groups held in University of Westminster and UCL. Participants have been Aimhigher Associates for 2 consecutive years and were also student ambassadors at their local university.

11. Quantitative Analysis A short online survey was produced using the SurveyMonkey tool and was circulated to all 149 Aimhigher Associates working in WECAN during 2009-10. A total of 69 responses were gathered (or a 46% response rate) which will be included in the analysis below.

12. Universities represented

13. Questioned asked Why did they chose to go to university? Why did you become a Student Ambassador / Aimhigher Associate What skills have you gained from WP work? Have you gained confidence? Have your career prospects been enhanced?

14. Findings Personal Intentions Key Skills Learning Skills Retention Employability

15. Personal Intentions – why did you chose to become an Aimhigher Associate It is important to frame the reasons why students chose to become Aimhigher Associates, as this may affect the findings of this research. WE can see from this graph that the reasons why students chose to do this work were mainly altruistic, many of them said in the focus groups that they had come from poor backgrounds themselves – and felt the need to do something to help others. It is interesting that the need to oncrease employability skills features very low on this graph.It is important to frame the reasons why students chose to become Aimhigher Associates, as this may affect the findings of this research. WE can see from this graph that the reasons why students chose to do this work were mainly altruistic, many of them said in the focus groups that they had come from poor backgrounds themselves – and felt the need to do something to help others. It is interesting that the need to oncrease employability skills features very low on this graph.

16. Key Skills

17. Communication skills “I was in a school where I had five 13-14 year old boys and given their diversity and interests I don’t think they had a choice about going to their focus group, they had to go. IT was a really good time to be able to learn how to catch people’s attention and keep their attention for about an hour. It’s been really helpful in terms of my studies, given that we have to do presentations and you have to be able to capture your audience.” LSE, Health Policy   “Some people on my course are really afraid of doing presentations and I’m like, I do these twice a week! Easy! So I always score a really high mark on anything that involves speaking, as in maths I don’t get to do a lot of speaking so whenever I do, I do really well because of practice with Aimhigher Associates, that helps my communication.” UCL student, Mathematics

18. Flexibility “I had to speak at the national Aimhigher Conference with no preparation. I was told, you’ve got 15minutes and we want you to talk about your experience and I walked in and there were 30 teachers, school coordinators sitting there and I turned around and said no I'm not and they said yes you are. I suddenly realised how much I’d learnt from just a few weeks with young people and it’s definitely been of benefit” King’s College student, Religion and Ethics “I went to a school and thought - I’ve got my USB stick, it’s going to be great... and there was no computer, I thought oh. So you have to learn to adapt and be flexible and you have to change things like that and you can’t dwell on it.” RVC student, Vet Science

19. Time Management “I had a year 12 health and social care group and I was doing nursing so I thought perfect, but then I had everything else I was trying to do with church and work and trying to juggle everything, plus almost like being a teacher and making my own resources and I actually managed to do that in a very short space of time. So actually it’s improved my lastminute.com-ness. I really do things very well in a very short space of time and I’ve done that the whole way through.” TVU student, Nursing “I have to prepare a lot before each Aimhigher session with the students, and this improved my organisational skills.” LSE, Actuarial Science

20. Responsibility “Being treated like a role model for the students at the Aimhigher Associates scheme gave me a real sense of responsibility and what it would be like if I were to become a teacher in the future.” London Met student, Accountancy & Finance   “I’m hoping to initiative my own motivational programme with UCL within the Asian community and I’m also hoping that post my international development career, I’ll be able to work in the development sector so that education is something that’s valued and advanced not only in this country but in other countries as well.” UCL student, Politics and Eastern European Studies

21. Leadership “At the moment I’ve moved from London to Slough and I’m now the choir coordinator for my local church. That was not going to happen any other time for the fact that I was scared of taking leadership roles but the whole student ambassador thing has shown me that I do have the ability to do that.” TVU student, Nursing “Student ambassador work has affected me actually, I’m going to become a football coach and I think sport in general is a good way to connect with young people and get them to work together and develop skills, so it’s definitely opened up that possibility in the future whatever I do.” UCL Student, Philosophy

22. Academic Impact? “I’m talking to the kids, the naughty ones or whatever and you’re getting to control them and stuff like that, that’s stuff with my education as well with my patients and stuff like that so for me that’s really helpful.” City student, Health Psychology

23. Learning Skills

24. Any impacts? “I do think sometimes you have to think outside of the box. If you have to deliver 15 sessions, even assuming you do 15 or even ten sessions, you have to work out how to use that time properly.” Westminster student, Law “I was working with year 12’s on their personal statements and by the time we’d finished theirs, I had to do mine for my Masters and I think all the work I put in to help them write their personal statements and all the research kind of helped me do mine as well so yeah it did help me.” Queen Mary student, Finance and Investment

25. Confidence Dividend = More employability skills “For the shy people, it’s the best work you could ever do. Kids can be the biggest critics, they’ll just tell you how it is. They won’t try to be polite about it, they’ll just tell you how it is. So definitely confidence is the biggest thing I’ve taken away from it.” TVU student, Advertising and PR   “The whole experience has given me the confidence to engage with new people in new surroundings. I am normally quite shy to start off when dealing with new people but this has improved because I can't really send those vibes across to the young people or now to my peers and lecturers.” TVU student, Nursing

26. Retention? “My career path’s changed because of doing this and now I don’t know if I’m doing the right course really and I don’t know if university is what I want to do because I want to get into this and I don’t really see how they link up really apart from the fact that I’m a student ambassador. So now, this is really changed my mind. I feel it’s a better career for me to go for and I feel like there are more options for me to go for and job satisfaction if I go into teaching, mentor or motivational speaker.” TVU student, Music Technology

27. Strengthening Resolve “When I was young, university never was an option and it took a lot of strength to come. Working with these mentees reminds me of why my journey was worth it as they too face many challenges I did before and staying at university has changed my present and will definitely change my future.” TVU, Advertising and Public Relations “Because working with pupil and be able to get the message across and share my own experience of studying and telling them how that is, is amazing. I wish we had Aimhigher in my country to tell us about academic progression, when i was at their age, Working as an Associate and being able to share has made me appreciate even more my decision to come to this country to study and get a degree that will benefit my career and make me an educated person myself!” Westminster student, Public Relations

28. Plugging the gap “My first day I was at a secondary school and I didn’t really know what was involved and I was so nervous, we had to talk about work experience and I didn’t know what to do, I wasn’t confident talking to a class or reading out loud. And to tell you what I did, I just watched the teacher, took part a little bit and gradually throughout the day my confidence grew so by 3:30 I was confident and the next day I had it, I was totally fine. The students were looking up to me because I’m at university and I’ve done what they’ve done and I think the confidence just grew from that really.” Jim: “Do you think you could have gotten that from your course?” “No definitely not. Music, you’re just sitting at a computer all day” TVU student, Music Technology

29. Limitations The pool of Aimhigher Associates seems to be limited to those that have a strong desire to help Longitudinal study needed

30. Conclusion WP work often provides opportunities that students wouldn’t otherwise have on their academic degree programme Improvements in key skills Covert impact on academic work – the holistic university experience. These experiences have significantly enhanced their skill set and employability. To be proved if these skills has an impact on retention.

31. The paper Currently in draft form Will be published on the UCL Transition website in the next week.

32. Questions? Thank you!