New podcast by Northumbria University on student engagement published

“One of the things we wanted to know was, how do we try and make them a bit more sustainable, how can we set up a partnership and have it last. So, we started to look at bits of research and we thought, what better way to do it than to do it properly and do it as a full review, to think about whether a partnership works and how it works, how do you measure that it’s actually worked and can it be measured objectively?” said Dan Peart, Head of Education in Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation.

Co-host Penny Rumbold, Head of Subject for the Sport and Exercise Science from Northumbria University, said: “We ended up with four different categories to try and make it clearer what different elements within those categories inputted into the study design.”

Category one was ‘robust data’, category two was outcome data with no comparator, category three was student voice, and category four was miscellaneous information including editorials, secondary data, and author perspective.

In part two, Penny said: “When the partnership was successful, the student didn’t necessarily have to be in the same subject area as the staff member.

“In terms of student confidence, a big thing that came out was social media use, students really liked the fact that they could set up their own WhatsApp group and Facebook groups and they’re seeing it as a real benefit in terms of peer support.”

Dan said: “The other broader finding was that 81% of the papers were from geographical regions. So, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and the USA accounted for 81% of all the papers that came back. It became obvious that it was the same countries and quite often the same authors repeating. It makes you wonder where everybody else is and what’s going on?”