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Info for students at Portsmouth university would be great! 

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Info for students at Portsmouth university would be great! 

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Would like to be involved in the discuss ionClaire.tea@port.ac.uk

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International Students' Sense of Belonging | MBA Project | Helen Fanouraki, UWE (helen.fanouraki@uwe.ac.uk)

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International Students' Sense of Belonging | MBA Project | Helen Fanouraki, UWE (helen.fanouraki@uwe.ac.uk)

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Hi, I work at the University of the West of England (UWE) and am currently doing an MBA dissertation project looking at international students' sense of belonging. I'd be really interested in hearing from colleagues in other universities. Please get in touch if you'd be happy to have a chat and share some of your experiences. Thanks. Helen (helen.fanouraki@uwe.ac.uk)

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Hi all!

We run personal develop and coaching programmes in universities across the UK. We work with students from Foundation Year to postgrad. Our workshops are particularly effective with non-traditional students and we have independent evidence on their impact on belonging, retention and achievement.

Always happy to chat with anyone interested!

Jon (jon@grit.org.uk)

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Belonging through compassion - Liz Bunting, University of the Arts London

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Belonging through compassion - Liz Bunting, University of the Arts London

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Vikki Hill and I are leading a programme of educational development at UAL to foster a sense of belonging through compassionate pedagogies and policies.

Our new online resource brings together contributions to support the design of compassionate teaching, assessment, leadership and policies. https://belongingthroughcompassion.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

We're currently working with colleagues at Leeds Arts University and Glasgow School of Arts as part of a QAA collaborative enhancement project, to look at ways that belonging in the creative higher education can be enhanced through compassionate assessment. Exploring themes of grading, feedback, and whole self through the lens of trauma informed education.  https://belongingthroughassessment.myblog.arts.ac.uk/https://belongingthroughassessment.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

On 24th November we're holding an online event to share QAA project findings and digital resources for dissemination across the sector. Get in touch if you'd like to join us, connect and collaborate!

l.bunting@fashion.arts.ac.uk v.hill@arts.ac.uk

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We are Liz Bunting, Educational Developer at University of the Arts London (UAL) and Vikki Hill, Senior Lecturer in Learning Enhancement and Academic Development at Queen Margaret University (QMU). We have been working together since 2019 to foster a sense of belonging in higher education through compassionate pedagogies and policies. We predominantly work alongside academic colleagues to co-produce teaching and learning strategies to ensure that students feel valued, respected, supported and included and that they matter. In our work and research, we have been increasingly aware of the need for compassion for all of us working and learning in higher education and recognise that our interconnected experiences contribute to a wider ecology of belonging and social justice. We take compassion as our guiding principle - of reducing distress and harm - and have developed this website to bring to together different contributions that have helped to guide, shape and challenge our collective thinking about compassionate pedagogy and belonging. We would like to thank our colleagues and kin who have guided our thinking and supported the development of our website.

Our website was supported by a UAL Exchange seed fund.

About

In our work towards social justice, we acknowledge structural oppression and aim to reduce its impact on staff and students in higher education. Key principles of belonging through the praxis of compassion are offered here. We define key terms and myth-bust some common misconceptions. We make the case for why compassion and belonging should be central to our practices and policies in higher education.

Image: Ceramics by Asuka Yamamoto, Foundation Show 2017, Central Saint Martins, UAL. Photo by Martin Slivka.

Institutions

Institutions have a responsibility in creating cultures of belonging and compassion by developing the infrastructure to nurture it.

We offer guidance and consider how policy, processes and systems can bring about positive change.

Image: Organic shape textile design by Anograini Stiady, BA (Hons) Textile Design, Chelsea College of Arts UAL. Photo by Alys Tomlinson.

Events

Find out more about our events that explore different ideas around belonging and compassion in higher education. Our events take place both virtually and in person and include speaker talks, practice sharing, listening events and embodied and creative approaches.

Library

Here you can find books and articles referenced on our site.

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We are Liz Bunting, Educational Developer at University of the Arts London (UAL) and Vikki Hill, Senior Lecturer in Learning Enhancement and Academic Development at Queen Margaret University (QMU). We have been working together since 2019 to foster a sense of belonging in higher education through compassionate pedagogies and policies.

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k.castle@qaa.ac.uk
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerrcastle/

Hello everyone, really enjoyed the event today and great to hear more about different interventions and initiatives you've introduced or plan to trial at your institutions. I lead on our student transitions activity in QAA Membership, so great to be able to connect and exchange ideas and practice around this!

We have a range of practical resources on our Membership Resources site that may be of interest to many of you, from building confidence and managing expectations to unpacking the hidden curriculum (for students and staff). Happy to discuss any and all in more detail, and feel free to reach out if you're keen to share your own examples of practice.

This page links to public resources as well as directing you to the relevant Membership Resources page: https://www.qaa.ac.uk/membership/membership-areas-of-work/teaching-learning-and-assessment/flexible-pathways-and-student-transitions/supporting-student-transitions

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Hi - I'm in the middle of organising an conference at the University of Sheffield next year on Building Community. If anyone is doing anything special with belonging/inclusion/building community (looks like loads of you are!) I'd love to hear from you. My email is c.bruno@sheffield.ac.uk

Thank you!

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Helen Elliott, Student Experience Manager - Newcastle Uni

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Helen Elliott, Student Experience Manager - Newcastle Uni

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Hi, I am Helen Elliott, Student Experience Manager at Newcastle University.

I am working across a lot of different areas and I am very much looking forward to going through this padlet in detail and making some connections.

Some of the things I am working on/ thinking about at the moment;

·         Student representation and closing the feedback loop

·         Student comms, personalisation and tackling overwhelm

·         PEC (personal extenuating circumstances) culture and digging into assessment design to tackle over reliance on extensions.

·         Induction and transition – with particular interest in IT capability of incoming students and also social capital and hidden curriculum.

·         Back to basics in terms of student interaction, lots of work around assumed knowledge and laying foundations and expectations.

·         Assessment and feedback practise – using agile methodology to implement change

My post is quite new and the remit has the potential to be huge, so working to try and develop a long term plan while tackling some of the above.

Really keen to make connections in other institutions and share/learn/collaborate.

Feel free to contact me; helen.elliott@ncl.ac.uk

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Thanks for setting this up- would definitely love to be included in any group coming out of this! (smhaugh@essex.ac.uk)
This year at Essex we designed a big part of our welcome activities around belonging and have learnt a lot that we'd be happy to share :)
Steve

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There seems to be pockets of this going on.  Interested in sharing?

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HE in FE: A different experience. Should Universities acknowledge what works in smaller organisations. Sharing ideas.

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HE in FE: A different experience. Should Universities acknowledge what works in smaller organisations. Sharing ideas.

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Pernille Norregard, Regent's University London

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Pernille Norregard, Regent's University London

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As Head of Comms, I'm interested in student comms, engagement, community building and behavioural insights.

We did a big student comms project last year, mapping out all the comms our students receive across the year, analysing the content and quality, and doing focus groups with students.

Based on the results, we've completely redesigned our student comms taking a student-centric approach and tailoring all our comms to their needs and wants. This has included building new digital platforms and content streams as well as changing our tone of voice. Now we're working to train staff and change the comms culture across all teams.

Get in touch via norregap@regents.ac.uk.

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Head of Welcome, Induction & Student Internationalisation Manager, University of Warwick. Recently relocated to brand new Student Experience Division. Currently working through a shift in our teams' work to accommodate new strands of work around curating a year-round offer of events focused on creating community, creating an online social space for students, and presenting a holistic, coherent offer on extra-curricular student experience to our community.

Interested in student belonging as a common thread in all areas of work for my team.
w.p.thomas@warwick.ac.uk

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Emma Beaudouin (Partnerships Executive at Unibuddy)

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Emma Beaudouin (Partnerships Executive at Unibuddy)

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We have been working on creating an official, safe space for students to communicate and connect in a group messaging platform no matter where they are in the journey.
Here is my email, if you would like to learn more about Community or just have a chat : emma.beaudouin@unibuddy.com

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I'm Adrianne Arendse (adrianne.arendse@falmouth.ac.uk). I'm very mixed race and from the Global South where I grew to adulthood. I've spent a long time looking at knowledges, histories, coloniality and decoloniality, decolonising methodologies, Black misandry and related areas. I run a small internal agency at Falmouth University but I also co-lead a Belonging Module in the Fashion & Textiles Institute with John Boddy, the Head of Fashion, as well as phenomenal support from Tatiana Mendez Rosas, Academic Partnerships Manager for FTI . The module was co-designed with students and is currently in it's first 9-week pilot. Please feel free to connect.
Kindly,
Adrianne

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Very interested to hear more ideas thanks. Valerie Pinfield

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Very interested to hear more ideas thanks. Valerie Pinfield

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v.pinfield@lboro.ac.uk

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In time for Welcome Week, we started an honesty library in our school with ~30 books all being selected from across the broad themes of equality, diversity and inclusivity either in terms of the book content or authorship. There are labels inside the front cover of each book which introduce the idea of the Library (to informally educate/ raise awareness and encourage discussion of EDI issues) as well as containing ways to contact our EDI Committee about any issues or ideas and a link to the library Padlet page which is where folk can leave reviews on the books or suggestions for other books to include.

The book list was curated by a local bookshop for us and then we added a few other titles. If anyone would like a copy of the book list, let me know as very happy to share it! - Helen.leggett@uea.ac.uk

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Suzanne Horton (Director L&T and QE, University of Worcester)

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Suzanne Horton (Director L&T and QE, University of Worcester)

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I am conducting an institutional review of personal and academic tutoring and would like to explore how we can use this to support and develop sense of belonging/community across diverse student groups, building on existing research.  We have looked at cross cohort tutorial groups and I would like to develop further to ensure purposeful. Also, exploring the links/boundaries with other services. Further area of interest is how admissions/application process can support/enhance student sense of belonging.
s.horton@worc.ac.uk

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Senior Careers Consultant - Warwick Medical School - University of Warwick
Keen interest in belonging and currently working on a co-produced project that focuses on the personal and professional development of students. Hoping that belonging and an intersectional impact across all of our programmes is a significant outcome from this.
More widely, as part of the central Careers Team we are keen to ensure that our service facilitates opportunities to develop connections and confidence.
kelly.coles@warwick.ac.uk

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I would be interested to discuss UDL with anyone who has looked at it in HE or is thinking about how we can apply the principles to our programmes.
debra.costley@nottingham.ac.uk

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Ira Hakim, Unite Foundation (supports care experienced and estranged HE students)

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Ira Hakim, Unite Foundation (supports care experienced and estranged HE students)

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I'm Ira, and I manage the This Is Us community for UK care experienced and estranged students. I'm always up for talking about or hearing advice/thoughts on belonging for these groups of students.

Please do get in touch with me at Ira.Hakim@unitefoundation.org.uk

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Here you can... chat with others, share helpful info, arrange meet-ups, organise games-night, find existing local groups near you, run day-trips/holidays, have serious conversations, give peer-support, pose questions, etc - whatever you'd like! You are more than welcome to extend the invite to other students you know.

It's free, national and open to all ages & years of study.

[This space is for HE students and recent graduates only. If you are a member of staff/support care experienced and estranged people and would like learn more about the community, please read our webpage This is our community or send our Community Manager an email and we can arrange a chat.]

Order more This Is Us community postcards - (tfaforms.com)

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This is our space to bring together other estranged and care experienced Higher Education students to connect and build student-led communities so that we can feel a greater sense of connection and belonging. This is the community's central square, the piazza... all roads lead from here.

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I'm Dave Ellis, AD for Student Experience at Oxford Brookes (d.ellis@brookes.ac.uk) and part of the https://www.decolonisingthediscipline.org/ in English studies group.

I'd like to hear experiences on rethinking assessment for inclusivity. This can be planned reductions, as many HEIs are attempting. I'm particularly interested in ways in which assessment choice and assessment reduction can retain confidence in academic rigour, without increasing workload and whilst also enabling change institutionally.

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We recognise that existing curricula, pedagogy and research are grounded in colonial sites of knowledge which reflect hierarchies of race, class and gender.

We aim to:

intervene in discussions concerning not only what is taught and studied but how it is taught and studied

develop platforms for discipline-wide conversations

foster and support collaborative action across English literature, language and creative writing

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We recognise that existing curricula, pedagogy and research are grounded in colonial sites of knowledge which reflect hierarchies of race, class and gender.

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Hi Everyone. I've loved the conversation today and hope we can bring about meaningful change to enhance student belonging. To build student belonging, maybe we need to help students build their identity. The way I do this at NTU is I make time during some of my lectures to help students understand their super strengths. This includes helping students to firstly identify them and reflect on where and when they use them in the curriculum and beyond. Students have expressed their delight at having a space to discuss such things and helps to create time to help them reflect on when they experience positive mental health in an era that it seems that students are so busy solving problems and keeping their head above water.

Feel free to get in touch - stephen.eccles@ntu.ac.uk

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Tribal Group helping shape Student Comms, Engagement and Support

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Tribal Group helping shape Student Comms, Engagement and Support

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I'm Reza, Head of Student Engagement at Tribal Group. I would love the opportunity to discuss the work we have done with regards to addressing the ideas/points being shared. Between our combined Student Record Systems (SITS + ebs), Tribal Engage and the Support & Well being solutions, we are confident that we can provide a holistic/integrated solution which has been considered from all angles of the student lifecycle.

Please get in touch - reza.mosavian@tribalgroup.com

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Samantha Rajasingham (UEA - Student Communications Officer)

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Samantha Rajasingham (UEA - Student Communications Officer)

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I am a recent student (MRes Philosophy), a sit on various anti-racist committees, co-chair the Racialised Backgrounds Staff Network, and am now helping drive our student comms project.

I have a few questions about how to help students connect to communications and would love a working group to talk about challenges and solutions.

My research is also focussed on language, race, diversity and otherness. If anyone wants to set up a working group on decolonisation work that would be good.

I can also talk about things that work pedagogically as I've had some great experiences recently and some really interesting different styles of learning.

I am neurodiverse, she/her.

Find me at s.rajasingham@uea.ac.uk

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Interested in hearing from others who've reduced the volume of assessment but also moved away from exams to more authentic assessments

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Alexia Jones - Student Services and Wellbeing Manager, Norland College (Bath). I would be interested to hear about the ways in which tutors, student support and academic staff communicate with students, and the software or digital platforms you use. We are looking at changing the way we currently do this so that we are able to reach every individual instead of just those who opt in (though this will always be a barrier, unfortunately).                                                  My email address is alexia.jones@norland.ac.uk                       

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Alexia Jones - Student Services and Wellbeing Manager, Norland College (Bath). I would be interested to hear about the ways in which tutors, student support and academic staff communicate with students, and the software or digital platforms you use. We are looking at changing the way we currently do this so that we are able to reach every individual instead of just those who opt in (though this will always be a barrier, unfortunately).                                                  My email address is alexia.jones@norland.ac.uk                       

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Sebastian May - Student Experience Lead at University of the Arts London (UAL)

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Sebastian May - Student Experience Lead at University of the Arts London (UAL)

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Hi all, at UAL we're currently doing a lot of work to develop online education for creative practitioners, and I'm particularly interested in embedding belonging / mattering into our core design and wider Student Experience. Would love to speak to anyone doing similar work! sebastian.may@arts.ac.uk / @_sebastianmay

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Lars Willner - Social edtech entrepreneur - Differ.Chat (lars@differ.chat

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Lars Willner - Social edtech entrepreneur - Differ.Chat (lars@differ.chat

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Online safe space + social chatbot = student belonging?

Can a social chatbot help students build peer connections and belonging pre-induction?

I'm Lars from Oslo, been working with peer connections and belonging the last 3 years. Just launched a new innovative social platform, funded by EU and now running at University of Leeds. Early evidence of positive impact on peer connections and belonging.

Looking for connections with unis and unions that would be willing to pilot this, creating a stronger evidence base. Happy to connect and chat!

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Chris Blackmore, University of Sheffield - c.m.blackmore@sheffield.ac.uk

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Chris Blackmore, University of Sheffield - c.m.blackmore@sheffield.ac.uk

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Hi, so interesting to hear from colleagues doing such great and varied work around belonging.
I have a special interest in student mental health, and am working on a couple of related areas:
1. student transitions (both into and out of Uni), e.g. SNAP project for PhD students (with Glasgow Uni) -https://sway.office.com/foJUp6uiJhwocSjV
2. narrative approaches to student well-being - currently developing an approach to this using immersive technology (https://lifepathvr.org/) as well as paper-based approaches
I see both these bits of work as fundamentally about student belonging.

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SNAP! A photo-sharing project for new PGRs

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Navigating your way through the first few months of your doctorate can be tricky, but there's no need to go it alone.

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Yvonne Harkness, Head of Student Experience, College of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow 

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Yvonne Harkness, Head of Student Experience, College of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow 

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yvonne.harkness@glasgow.ac.uk
Interested in student progression & retention, assessment & feedback, employability, balancing embedding with co-curriculum provision re skills development, academic advising systems and student support.

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Victoria Summersgill, King's College London SU

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Victoria Summersgill, King's College London SU

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Hi everyone, I'm Victoria. Currently acting up as one of the Wellbeing and Welfare Managers at KCLSU. I work with Lottricia who is also on this padlet. My focus is divided up into a few sections.

Peer Support - Along with Black Student's Talk (managed by Lottricia), we have a team called the Positive Peers. They are trained by Student Minds to provide listening support via workshops, 121s and events.

Wellbeing Activities - I support over 250 Wellbeing Leads (student group committee members) to run wellbeing events throughout the year. I also lead on Wellbeing Projects such as a month-long exam wellbeing initiative across 4 campuses.

As a note, we work closely with the Transition and Outcomes team at the University which is a unique dynamic but have found it really beneficial.

Email: victoria.summersgill@kclsu.org

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Hi All Safina Kausar Student Information Desk Manager at University of Bedfordshire ; interested in how front line service teams can support a sense of belonging and what activities we could get involved in. safina.kausar@beds.ac.uk

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Ben McCarthy - HE Student Support Champion - Service Design

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Ben McCarthy - HE Student Support Champion - Service Design

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I am supporting Edward Peck - NTU's VC - in his Ministerial appointment as the HE Student Support Champion. We're looking to begin a new programme on student support service (re)design. Very briefly, we'll look at which core functions we should deliver, and how best can we deliver them. We expect this to encompass everything from pedagogy, mental health and wellbeing support, employability, transition, etc.

Really great discussion so far which touches on this and I'm keen to discuss with other colleagues on the call who may have (or be in the process of) service design thinking.

My email is ben.mccarthy@ntu.ac.uk

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Stacy Gillis (Director of Education - School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics, Newcastle University) 

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Stacy Gillis (Director of Education - School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics, Newcastle University) 

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Have worked on student engagement projects in the School such as revising our peer mentoring process (to focus on community-building and digital literacy), revising our comms to be more personal, reviving the student cafe in the building, working with students to build back societies and student-staff committee after COVID depletion, creating an academic journal for all UGs.  It is very slowly to bear fruit, but it is a long game! stacy.gillis@ncl.ac.uk

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Nicola Dennis, Marketing and Communications Manager

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Nicola Dennis, Marketing and Communications Manager

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I lead on student comms at Sheffield Hallam University. I'm keen to hear how others have supported creating a sense of belonging via the content/opportunities they promote, the tone of voice and channels used. How do you cut through all the other messages students receive?

n.a.dennis@shu.ac.uk

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Access and Participation Manager & Social Capital Lead.

Umii is one of our key projects. We are only 5 weeks in, but seeing some interesting results from the data. Currently compiling an initial engagement report and happy to share an external anonymised version with sector colleagues when its done.

a.crane@chester.ac.uk or connect with me on LinekdIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamdavidcrane/

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Helen Herold - The University of Sheffield

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Helen Herold - The University of Sheffield

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I support WP students, who are in our Social Science programmes, leading on our faculty WP strategy. We've recently embedded WP support across both academic and PS roles within the departments, with a view to ensure support is embedded throughout programmes, as opposed to relying on just single events. I'm also doing work around coproduction within the faculty with a group of Student Coproduction Associates, who identify as being from WP backgrounds, looking at education and student experience.

Very keen to chat to anyone who is also supporting current students, across WP/EDI and wider student populations. (h.herold@sheffield.ac.uk)

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Melissa Jacobi Head of Academic Advising at Sheffield Hallam University.  (melissa.jacobi@shu.ac.uk).

Interested in how Academic Advisers/Personal Tutors can facilitate student development of a sense of belonging.

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I am the EDI lead, PALs lead and a lecturer in Sociology at Man Met.  I recently completed my PhD on the award gap and these themes of community, belonging, empowerment and co-cocreation are exactly what I'm discussing with my department and implementing various strategies around this.

I would love to hear about what you are also doing around these themes, share ideas and practises. If you would also like to have a chat and connect, feel free to get in touch: n.ismail@mmu.ac.uk

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Our main institutional belonging campaign is called #TeamMDX

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I work at Middlesex Uni as their Head of Student Engagement and Advocacy and lead on our institution's belonging action plan. In the last year, this has involved running a research project with members of academic staff to look into what they have found has worked to build belonging at a programme level. I'm talking about this a bit later this year at the Leeds Uni Student Success conference (8th Nov) and the Action on B3 Indicators event on (23th Nov). I'm also one year into a part-time PhD on the topic of student belonging - running the research at both Middlesex Uni and the University of Southampton. My focus is around how each student has a unique set of belonging needs and how we (as unis) can help them follow their their own path, rather than feeling they just need to do the same as other students. My email address is D.Gilani@mdx.ac.uk - very happy to be contacted and chat through anything related to belonging.

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Matt Coldrey - Programme Manager (Course Leader) with an interest in inclusion and all things teaching and learning. A lot of the information in the report and CPD reflect my thoughts and ideas that I have had and implemented previously. I am keen to arrange an informal group across institutions to discuss ideas relating to student belonging moving forward. Let me know if you're keen :)

matt.coldrey@hartpury.ac.uk

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We are running a pilot programme this year with 6 unis aimed at supporting students from less-advantaged backgrounds as they transition from school to university, with a focus on academic skills and sense of belonging. (More info here: https://thebrilliantclub.org/join-the-dots/). Would love to speak to anyone doing something similar or who would like to chat more about it! catherine.healy@thebrilliantclub.org

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Gianna De Salvo (Queen Mary University of London)

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Gianna De Salvo (Queen Mary University of London)

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I am working as a Transition Project Officer at Queen Mary. We've run book clubs for new students, built a website and are running different workshops/talks. We are looking to widen out transition to include students at all levels (PGT, different cohorts, re-induction, etc) so I'm always open to new ideas. My email is g.desalvo-foulsham@qmul.ac.uk

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We've been trialling a mentoring scheme in Psychology with upper year students, Personal Tutors + first  year students, discussing important things like time management, employability, in small groups where they can work together (trying to facilitate creating bonds with other students + knowing their own personal tutors so they can talk with them + getting experience from upper year students).

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I work at UoG, and I am also doing an MRes looking at belonging within the first in family male group. It's early days in my research, but would love to connect with anyone who is also interested in / has any insight into this group of students

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I work at UoG, and I am also doing an MRes looking at belonging within the first in family male group. It's early days in my research, but would love to connect with anyone who is also interested in / has any insight into this group of students

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Stefan Krummaker | Deputy VC Education QMUL (s.krummaker@qmul.ac.uk)

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Stefan Krummaker | Deputy VC Education QMUL (s.krummaker@qmul.ac.uk)

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We have worked on Student Engagement projects such as Peer-Led Team Learning where we saw very positive impacts on student connection/belonging and student attainment. As well on student Online Communities. Currently exploring a larger strategic project on Belonging together with our SU with a link to Empowerment and Flourishing...Very early thinking - happy to connect and share

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Helen Leggett, UEA and Kelly Edmunds, UEA

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Helen Leggett, UEA and Kelly Edmunds, UEA

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helen.leggett@uea.ac.uk
kelly.Edmunds@uea.ac.uk

We introduced a summer school including a "getting to know you" survey and online socials. In Welcome Week, we then organised team building and social tolerance sessions for all new students. Very happy to share our experiences :) Either email us or leave your email in the comments below.

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I am the Peer Support Coordinator at King's College London Students' Union. We are currently in the middle of a 1 year Peer Support Development Project which aims to improve the quality and consistency of peer mentoring programmes across King's through providing centralised training, a handbook and evaluations. One of our key evaluation measures is belonging!

At the SU we also have peer support groups that are aimed towards Black students and also towards students experiencing mild mental health difficulties and/or want to boost their wellbeing. We're also in the early stages of piloting a mature students mentoring scheme.

Feel free to get in touch at lottricia.millett@kclsu.org if you are interested