Welcome to Retention and Success Change Programme Residential

1. Welcome toRetention and Success Change Programme Residential • Weetwood Hall, Leeds • 4-5 June 2013

2. Housekeeping • Fire procedure. • Cloakrooms. • Refreshments. • Catering. • Work spaces. • Administration and staffing. • Wifi code.

3. Introductions • Professor Liz Thomas, Academic Lead • Dr Helen May, Academic Lead • Andrew Fleming, Academic Development Officer • Cathryn Stoddart, HEA • Denise Barrows, Paul Hamlyn Foundation (PHF) • Professor MantzYorke, PHF and HEA • Associate • Michael Hill, Action on Access and HEA • Associate • Professor Chris Hockings, HEA • Associate

4. Objectives of the residential • To undertake a review of your institutional context to identify the priorities for development for the core team. • To plan to address the underpinning strategic challenges to achieving effective change to policy and process at the institutional level. • To plan to evaluate the effectiveness of the institutional level changes.

5. Objectives of the residential • To build the capacity of the core team to work with disciplines to align the themes of induction, active learning and co-curricula with the principles that underpin students’ engagement, belonging, retention and success. • To develop your approach to advising discipline teams on evaluation of impact the outcomes of interventions to align to the principles of the programme. • To share expertise, practice and resources across institutional teams.

6. Day 1 Programme 11.00 Icebreaker 11.20 Recognising and exploring institutional cultures 12.15 Lunch 13.15 Defining your strategic priorities, action planning and evaluation 15.45 (Optional) Roundtable Discussions: Strategic issues and challenges 17.00 Poster session and ‘swap shop’ 18.00 Free association

7. ‘Rules’ of engagement • Mutual respect, trust, support and encouragement • Remain open minded and non-judgemental. • Confidentiality • Work within ‘Chatham House Rule’. • Consent • Obtain permission prior to disclosure of data, materials or other information.

8. Levels of working towards change • The core team has to work at least two levels: • Strategic or institutional level • Discipline or programme level • In reality you may well be working at a range of other levels in order to make change happen. • During the residential we would like you to: • Be more specific about the facilitative changes you make at the strategic level. • Develop evaluation criteria for change at the strategic level. • Develop effective ways of working with discipline teams to support implementation and evaluation.

9. Strategic enablers from the report The institutional commitment to a culture of belonging should be explicit. Nurturing belonging and improving retention and success should be a priority for all staff. Staff capacity to nurture a culture of belonging needs to be developed. Student capacity to engage and belong must be developed. Institutional data should be used to identify departments, programmes and modules with higher rates of withdrawal, non-progression and non-completion. Systems to monitor student behaviourand take action when at-risk behaviour is observed. Partnership with staff and students to implement change across the student lifecycle and throughout the institution.

10. Further activities identified at visits • Developing staff belonging. • Training or developing staff to work in different ways. • Space for social integration: organisation and timetabling • Developing a retention framework or drafting a new learning and teaching strategy. • Implementing and embedding a strategy or framework in faculties across the institutions. • Developing a co-ordinated approach to induction, or personal tutoring or similar. • Presenting data in user-friendly formats. • Researching student engagement.

12. Ensuring a Transformational Process Policy Practice

13. Levels and Forms of Change

14. Role of change managers Two key roles: ‘public performance’ and ‘backstage activity’. The change agent has to support the ‘public performance’ of rationally considered and logically phrased and visibly participative change with ‘backstage activity’ in the recruitment and maintenance of support and in seeking and blocking resistance… ‘Backstaging is concerned with the exercise of ‘power skills’, with ‘intervening in political and cultural systems’, with influencing, negotiating and selling, and with ‘managing meaning’. It is the combination of public performance and backstage activity that distinguish the role of change agent from that of the project manager.

15. What kind of change managers? Techno-rational: change accomplished by planning and then managing its implementation. Resource allocation: change achieved by allocating central resources, which leads to results. Diffusionist: the provision and dissemination of clear messages, aligned to audience priorities provokes change. Continuous quality improvement: an expectation of the continual enhancement of practice leads to change. Complexity: aim to create the conditions for change, from which change occurs organically.

16. The role of the change programme • The two day programme includes time to think about • Priorities for change • Processes for change • Tools for change • Roles of the core team • Issues facing the team • Space for the team to work together • Learning from other teams and supporters • Use the time and opportunities to maximum benefit to move your change initiative forward. Think strategically and spread the team across the parallel sessions.

17. Please remember to … • Put up your poster (if you haven't already) and nominate one team member to represent your institution for the ‘Swap Shop’ session at 17.00 pm. • Identify your strategic issues and challenges to progressing your initiative and sign up for a workshop if you wish to attend by 15.00pm today. • Think about topics associated with the functions of the core team you would like tomorrow 13.00pm. • Be prepared to submit your impact evaluation plans, as part of your plans to be submitted to the HEA by 31 July 2013 to change@heacademy.ac.uk.

18. Icebreaker - People Bingo • Professor Chris Hockings

19. People Bingo! • The task is to find an individual in the room that matches each of the statements on your bingo sheet. • The Rules • The individual must sign their name against the statement that applies to them on the answer card. • Each statement must be signed by only one person • Each statement must be signed by a different individual • You may sign your own sheet once • Shout BINGO when you’ve got a full house!

20. Recognising and exploring institutional cultures • Facilitator: Helen May

21. Objectives of this session • To help your team identify and express creatively the various cultures you will be working with during the programme. • To visually represent your vision for the work. • To reflect upon where this has come from, culture and progress to date and future vision. • To surface different understandings or perspectives within the core team. • To help overview what you are seeking to do to others. • To have fun.

22. Background to Rich Pictures • Rich pictures were originally developed as part of Soft Systems Methodology for gathering information about a complex situation and identifying multiple viewpoints. • The methodology was developed in 1960-70s by Peter Checkland and his students at Lancaster University. • Rich pictures were proposed at the beginning of the process and seen as an iterative process of understanding and refining that understanding. • Originally constructed by interviewing people.

23. Visualising Institutional Cultures PRACTICE POLICY ATTITUDES

24. Cultures picture Informative Challenges and uncertainties Insightful Funny Picture Happy Sad Connections Political Graphics Pictures Symbols Doodles Scary

29. Defining your strategic priorities, action planning and evaluation • Andrew Fleming, Liz Thomas and Mike Hill

30. Aims of the session • This session will offer you a range of tools to help you… • understand your context for change • identify your needs and priorities • plan what you are going to do to achieve your goals • develop your approach to measuring the outcomes and impact of your change initative

31. Reviewing and planning tools

32. Cultural web • Culture is ‘the way we do things round here’ – it’s often invisible or taken for granted • The cultural web helps you map culture by focusing on the ‘artefacts’ of the institution: • stories • symbols • power structures • organisational structures • control systems • routines and rituals

33. Cultural web • Mapping culture can help you identify and understand barriers to change at institutional or departmental level • Is the strategy for change compatible with the culture? • Where do you need to focus your attention to achieve cultural change?

34. Stakeholder engagement matrix • A slightly different version of the ‘Power/Interest’ grid: • impact instead of power • engagement instead of interest • intended to be dynamic, • not static • Once you have mapped your stakeholders, use the stakeholder engagement plan to outline how you are going to increase their engagement

35. Star diagram A tool to identify areas for development against the outcomes of ‘What Works?’ Step 1: Rate ‘where you are now’ on a scale of 1 to 10

36. Star diagram Priority for development Step 2: Rate ‘where you need to be’, according to your own particular contexts and goals

37. Force field analysis • A tool for examining the factors for and against change: • Assess your current position – draw on horizontal line against a point on the scale • Identify the forces that will hinder progress (‘restraining forces’) • Identify the forces that will help progress (‘driving forces’) • Draw these forces as arrows pushing up or down on the horizontal line (the bigger the force, the bigger the arrow) • How can you maximise the driving forces and minimise the restraining forces?

38. Force field analysis Partnership between students and staff Perceived staff-student divide Full curriculum Workload Student experience committee New SU President

39. Theory of change • A theory of change defines the building blocks needed to achieve a long-term goal: • How do you expect your activities and outputs to lead to outcomes and impacts? • Are you doing the right activities? • What resources do you need? How you expect to realise a return on investment?

40. Theory of change Change narrative Return on investment

41. Action planning Use the activity planning template to help define your milestones and deliverables, and schedule the actions you need to undertake to achieve them Use the responsibility chart to analyse and define roles within the team for each activity

42. Strategic enablers:Observations from institutional visits

43. Observations from visits • We observed how each core team member displayed her or his own experience and involvement of strategic planning; operational experience; institutional resources, and partnership working. • We observed how core team members were understanding how as a team they could support discipline leads directly but also act as a facilitator as to how other “central departments” would need to support discipline leads, often in a more coordinated way than at present. 43

44. Team roles • Team Leader: own institutional role often crucial but also in terms of the programme has a good perspective of engagement of core team and discipline leads. • Senior Manager: aware of and involved in the development and implementation of high level strategies, reporting “up and down”. • Academic Lead: empathise with discipline leads and related to their challenges, requests and requirements. • Data Expert: provide expertise and understanding of requirements for a variety of evidence needs as the programme progresses. • Student Representative: provide insights and information and advice to discipline leads on spectrum across student engagement and insights as to how academic staff could partner with students to gain insights, and more effective buy-in and credibility. 44

45. An example • The role on the Core Team of members with connections to the university’s Institute for Learning Enhancement/ Centre for Learning and Teaching/Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching/Centre for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching etc. • Looks like a potentially crucial and significant relationship with discipline leads as can provide: • History of relationships with academic staff in delivering LTA interventions. • Insights across the university and appreciation of different discipline cultures. • Insight into perspectives of and pressures of experienced and new staff. 45

46. Example continued 46 • Looks like a potentially crucial and significant relationship with discipline leads as can provide (continued): • Ability and role to support staff development as required by discipline team leads (themselves and colleagues). • Ability and role to relate to student experience and perspectives of effective interventions. • Ability and role to inform design of intervention (experience of best institutional and sector practice).

47. Evaluation: Logic, indicators and methods

48. Anticipated causal relationship 48

49. Evaluation indicators and methods Unintended consequences 49

50. SMART indicators • Specific – Key indicators need to be specific and to relate to the conditions the activity seeks to change • Measurable – Quantifiable indicators are preferred because they are precise, can be aggregated and allow further statistical analysis of the data. However, process indicators may be difficult to quantify, and qualitative indicators should also be used. • Attainable – The indicator (or information) must be attainable at reasonable cost using an appropriate collection method. • Relevant – Indicators should be relevant to the management information needs of the people who will use the data • Timely – Information on an indicator needs to be collected and reported at the right time to influence many management decisions. • ) 50