the institution decided to do it? How does it link to the institution’s strategic priorities in the sector? What is the scale of transformational change you hope to achieve with the project? How do you think participation in Change Academy will help?
162 The project aims to put students at the heart of the educational experience, not just as recipients, but as co-designers and co-deliverers. It will create a structure that enables students to be employed to advise, deliver and support all aspects of the learning experience at Birmingham City University.
The project will develop a student employment framework that will engage students in all aspects of the educational experience at the University. It will seek to place students at the heart of curriculum process through enabling positively students to be part of the delivery, design and assessment processes. We anticipate that this could result in students being employed in a variety of areas such as academic skills support, clinical placement support, ICT support; as librarians, teachers, assessors and curriculum design consultants. Through this we will build a broader academic community that takes cognisance of the student voice as part of its everyday working. In addition, and aligned to this work, we will also explore the employment of recent graduates in a variety of roles to support the student experience at the university, as we seek to share the knowledge they have gained through their university experience with those presently undertaking their studies.
The vision for the project is derived from two sources:
1. The Student Academic Partners (SAP) scheme which is an employment scheme in the University that recently won the THE award for outstanding support for students. It is a collaborative scheme, with the Students’ Union, that was developed through work with Copenhagen Business School (CBS) which employed students in its educational
development unit, Learning Lab. SAPs are paid to work alongside academic staff in the developing innovations that will improve the learning experience. This project has demonstrated clear benefits, both individually and through the body of change agents at work across the University.
2. The University has a collaboration agreement with Northwest Missouri State (NWMS) University which focuses on sharing ideas and practices around student employment. NWMS was identified by HEFCE as offering good practice in student employment. BCU and NWMS staff and students have now visited each other and we seek to build on their experience of employing over a quarter of their students in a huge variety of functions across their University.
The proposed project would seek to learn from NWMS experience and expand and integrate the opportunities and lessons learnt from the SAP scheme to create a university wide student
employment framework that would impact on all aspects of learning provision. In this pursuit we would expect to draw on the wisdom of our colleagues at NWMS and CBS.
Strategic priorities
The University’s vision is “to be recognised regionally, nationally and internationally as a university which fosters intellectual, critical and creative endeavour and, through continuous innovation provides an educational experience of the highest quality with a strong commitment to employability and to flexible and practice-based learning
163 The creation of student employment opportunities will enhance creativity and innovation
throughout our courses and we believe it will significantly improve the student experience through greater peer to peer engagement. The employability skills of our students will be stretched and developed as we ask them to lead, manage and communicate within the jobs they perform supporting the learning experience.
The university vision also stated that it will provide an educational experience that “is a force for equality and inclusion”. In the uncertain financial futures that universities and students face we believe that this project could be utilised as a mechanism to financially support students who most need it. This will enable students from widening participation backgrounds to study and work at the university. We would like to think that if we design the opportunities appropriately this could be of significant attraction and benefit to students. Recent scrutiny of retention figures at the university has shown that a significant number of students still cite financial problems as a reason for leaving. In the uncertain financial climate with student fees escalating we hope that this project will create work opportunities that are better able to support students who need to generate income, but have to balance that with a busy home and university life.
The employment of recent graduates in a variety of support based roles, such as academic coaches, will also impact on retention as we would wish these graduates to engage in supportive roles with existing students at all levels of the University. We believe this initiative could benefit our existing students and offer a first employment opportunity for many graduates seeking work in a testing job market.
The University has recently undertaken a major drive to seek to improve the student experience. Disappointing NSS results led to serious debate which has manifested in significant action across the university. Survey data highlighted the fact that students do not feel part of an academic community when they study at Birmingham City University. As a result, the University has undertaken an initiative, led by the Director of Learning and Teaching, to develop the learning community. This has been manifested through the SAP scheme and other initiatives. However, discussions with international universities have shown us the pride that students develop in their university when they actually work within it. It is no longer “students vs staff or us vs them”, a new dynamic is created that encourages a new relationship between students and staff as the students become part of the organisation in which they are studying. We believe that the creation of this student employment initiative will take the university a significant way down the road of building the academic community that would benefit students and staff at the university.
Scale of change and use of Change Academy
NorthWest Missouri State University employs just over 2000 of their 8000 students. Birmingham City University has over 24,000 students and could not anticipate employing a similar proportion, in the first instance. However, a target of 1000 student employees by 2015 would prove a testing, but achievable target if the appropriate framework, process and commitment can be achieved.
164 Institutionally, the impact on human resources and employment processes will need to be
developed through the change academy process as we seek to redefine our staffing needs and processes to recognise the pool of talented students that exist at the university.
Student employment will be a university wide initiative that will require support from across the university. Students will be working within faculties, presumably reporting to local faculty managers, so how does the university as a whole ensure the student employees are best supported. Change Academy will also be used to determine how we manage the student employees. North West Missouri State has created a functional role of Co-ordinator of Student Employment. This person manages the initiative and identifies new opportunities for students. Would this model be required in Birmingham or would we wish to cede control to the faculties and HR as if the student was similar to any other employee. We would work with Change Academy to answer some of these structural questions as we seek to develop a framework that ensures student and organisational success.
The project will have to determine how it communicates the message that student employment is the first choice for this university when seeking to fill vacancies. It will require great thought and a clear communication strategy that we would see as being a key component of the change academy process.
Finally, we would also welcome change academy support in developing an evaluation strategy that is able to share the lessons gleaned from this initiative. We believe that student employment in the learning experience will have a significantly beneficial experience on the student experience at this university. However, we will need to put in place evaluative work that can prove the impact of this striking new area of work.