CELT | Good Practice Exchange
Transcript for Preparing Students for Your Course with Jacqueline Gladwin
Jacqueline Gladwin:My name is Jacqui Gladwin and I'ma Principal Lecturer in the Department of Nursing and the Programme Lead for the BSc (Hons) in Adult Nursing.
The team have developed a pre-induction workbook, which basically came from an idea that some of the students put in place, which was to try and give the students an idea of what the course was about before they actually started.
The programme does an awful lot of work pre-induction. We have 'Nursing Buddies' that students join and students often ask for reading lists. They often ask for additional work to help them understand what the course offers. We noticed that quite a few students, particularly students who came from BTEC courses, were really struggling in the first year and a lot of those students said that they didn't feel that they were prepared for the course, that their previous courses hadn't prepared them for the understanding the level that they were going to have to study, the types of activity and things that they were going to have to study.So we worked with a group of students to put together a workbook that we send out to the students, we upload it to Nursing Buddies and the students can access that as soon as they get their offer. They can work through activities that will prepare them for study and also give them some ideas of the types of things that they are going to have to think about while they are on the course, both in theory and in practice.
The workbook is quite small, because we didn’t want to make it over facing, but it starts with a gentle introduction to the programme and getting them to think about things like leaving home, things that they might not have had to think about, like how they are going to travel to placement, some tips and things from students that have been on the programme.And then in moves onto activities like word searches, looking at getting developing their knowledge of medical and nursing type terms. There is some links to some study sites, so getting them to think how you critically read an article, for instance. And then it uses the three units in the first year, so each unit lead has put in some kind of activity.
We got the Students Reps together and talked to them about the idea and said 'if we were going to put this together, what sorts of things would you want to have known?' I think if students are involved, they have some ownership over it and also it is from their perspective anyway. I wouldn't want to come along and say ‘this is what we think you need to know’. What we want to do is to make a difference. So,particularly with the BTEC students, we know that if we can get then to the end of the first year then they achieve just as well as anybody else but they really do struggle in the first year. So actually going to those students and saying 'what is it that was missing? What is it that you would have liked to have known before you started on the course that might have made a difference to your achievement in your first year?' And you can't just make assumptions about that you have to actually go and ask them.
I think the benefits of it - we haven't done a formal evaluation - but certainly the benefits we've seen so far is the level of engagement that students come in with. So first of all, you identify those students who are very interested because they are feeding back so you know that they have actually engaged with that process. But it also gets you to identify those students who may not have done it who perhaps may struggle in the future.So as a tutor you can pick up quite quickly on those students. And although, as I said, we haven't done a formal evaluation, our results for year 1 have improved. Now, there are lots of other things that we've put into place so it would be very difficult to say it is just because of this, but I do feel that actually students have said informally that they found it useful.
Student:When I first got it and was like 'oh I have to do work before!' But when I started reading into it there was an article about on how nurses were perceived. It was quite interesting. It was just a nice insight in the course. There was a task in there that we had to complete for our first week, which was then fed into one of our lectures, which was nice because I felt that I was doing something before uni started and it gave me something to do so I wasn't going into uni unprepared.