Business School

1

Module Assistants

Berry O’Donovanbodonovan@brookes.ac.uk

PL Student Experience

Business Faculty

2Business School

Module assistants

3Business School

Module assistants

Undergraduates

Paid

Uniform – t-shirts

Work with module leaders and teaching teams on ‘large’ modules – 24-30 hours per semester.

Short general training including a ‘behind the scenes’ tour and on confidentiality.

Work is very varied and module dependent.

Initial resistance from some administrative staff

4Business School

Part of a suite of initiatives to support ‘density of interactions and involvement’

Technical Advisers

Student Researchers

Societies & Clubs

Module Assistants

Peer Assisted Learning

One year work

placementsInvolvement in projects, committees

& conferences

Showcasing opportunitie

sAlumni

mentoringSocial EventsAudio

Diarists

Outcomes and evaluation

7 Staff (4 submitted audio diaries)

Eleven student module assistants (focus groups and audio diaries). 4 international and 7 home.

Transcription and thematic analysis

Emergent themes

“ The relationship between us, the thing I’ve enjoyed is that XXXX does make a lot of time; perhaps the reason he’s so busy is he often makes a lot of time personally for you, so I know that if I went to him about anything related to perhaps my other modules, he would definitely have time for me. And also the fact that I feel like we have become more of a personal relationship, so we do have chats now and then about different things, about university, but also about work and getting jobs and things.”

(Student C)

Changing relationships: colleague and friend

Emergent themes

“…gained a really good knowledge and insight into how they worked and how much workload they had to put in, and you could really work out the frustrations that they felt when other people, like when the students didn’t really do anything and things like that, and seeing some of the emails they received was just really shocking – with what they had to put up with from students when trying to sort out groups and things. Very stressful. It was really good to get to know the module leader.”

(Student F)

Looking over the fence: staff and students as ‘brokers’

“I was surprised by the amount of different things that he actually does, and the fact that you only see the module leader normally when they’re doing the lecture for example, and the seminars, but there’s a lot of background work that goes on which makes them quite busy doing different things.” (Student C)

“It’s a valuable experience because it gave me an insight into the life of students. One could chat about what they were doing and what their aspirations were.” (Staff L)

Emergent themes

“ I was able to show the module leader some information on Excel and how to use it, which I was quite surprised that she didn’t know. And yeah, I just think that being able to help them for that long, and providing that Excel help which will speed up her process, is much better.” (Student B)

Finding complementary skills. Novice? Expert?

“XXXX worked a little bit as a project manager to the extent that they’ve probably made sure that I stay on track in terms of timings when I’ve got competing deadlines and the like.” (Staff M)

Emergent themes

“this particular student always came up with good ideas,

helped with the visits enormously – I handed over most of the visit admin for Business of Sport to this student. I recommended them to another member of staff who used them for the student conference that we put on in Economics and they were brilliant in that.” (Staff K)

“The big benefit has been the fact that one is not stuck with these tasks on one’s own, one can discuss them and how they could be carried out successfully with the students, and they enable you to think things through and talk things through and plan, which is marvellous”. (Staff L)

Sharing the burden: a real sense of partnership

Emergent themes

“I also got to understand behind the scenes of uni, and just made it easier and made sense of what things we were asked to do and why we were asked to do it as students, and also made it a lot easier … I just learnt how to speak to module leaders a lot easier, and it makes you realise they are real people”. (Student F)

“The most important impact of module assistant on me is I feel more involved in the university. It is interesting to see the other side of the module and know more about how other modules are actually organised.” (Student J)

Feelings of involvement

Problems?

Flexibility is an issue: a few students felt that they were expected to be around ‘just like that’.

“So sometimes it was hard and I wasn’t able to help as I had loads of other commitments and coursework, especially as I was in my final year. But I really wanted to help and it was hard that I was unable to do that, and I felt I wasn’t actually able to help and the tutor would have to do much more work along with what they have to do normally.” (Student H)

Overwhelming successful, but flexibility is an issue