Towards a Sense of Belonging in an Inclusive Learning Environment Erasmus Project

Project Title

Towards a Sense of Belonging in an Inclusive Learning Environment

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Migrants’ issues; Access for disadvantaged; Gender equality / equal opportunities

Project Summary

The #IBelong project is an innovative programme of evidence-informed interventions to improve students’ sense of belonging and success in higher education, with a focus on – but not limited to – ethnic minority students and first-generation entrants in higher education. Central in the #IBelong programme are a suite of interventions that operate at course programme level, engaging first year students, student-peer mentors and the staff team to improve diverse students’ belonging and success. Interventions include dialogue about diversity, belonging and success (Dialogue Days; DD); staff engagement with and reflection on diversity, and changes to practice (Team Teacher Reflection; TTR); and student-peer mentors building a community (Student Community Mentoring; SCM). The three interventions interact as a suite of activities to improve students’ belonging, continuation and attainment. The #IBelong consortium started implementing these integrated interventions in single course programmes in Pedagogy and Education at the four partner universities involved in 2019/2020. During the 2019/20 academic year however, global challenges – both the COVID-19 pandemic and world-wide anti-racism protests – impacted the importance and the scale of our #IBelong project and activities. The #IBelong team redesigned and redeveloped all IO’s for online and blended education in 2020 and 2021. In the 2020/21 academic year the #IBelong interventions were implemented in additional course programmes with activities that were scaled up to faculty- or university-wide levels. #IBelong activities impacted directly on 5 higher education institutions, 11 course programmes, 2100 students, 208 staff members, and 73 mentors offering mentoring to the 2100 students on the 11 course programmes.

DD1 take place at the beginning of the academic year and are embedded into the face-to-face and online teaching as appropriate within each university. Staff is involved, sharing their stories and facilitating the sessions, and developing their own understanding of and capacity to be inclusive. DD2 takes place towards the end of the first academic year, and assist students with reflection on the year, and looking forward to supporting their success in year 2. TTR is integrated into regular staff meetings throughout the year and makes use of evidence and specific cases which may are collected by student community mentors, to stimulate authentic and continuous discussion. If necessary, the sessions can be delivered online to ensure that all staff are able to participate. SCM benefits from embedding the scheme into existing structures and models of mentoring and support available. There are different models of mentoring, including group and 1-1. Where individual mentoring takes place the matching (e.g., first- or continuous generation in higher education, migrant or non-migrant, urban or rural) is very important to help students engage and belong. A schedule of mentoring sessions or meetings is very useful for students, rather than relying on mentees requesting meetings.

Common methods of evaluation evidence collection have been used across the interventions and universities, drawing on a mixed methods design. Student surveys about belonging and student-staff interaction have been administered in each of the universities. Focus groups have been conducted with students and with staff about diversity, belonging and success and their experiences of the interventions in all four universities. The #IBelong team used Programme Theory evaluation tools, namely the Logic Chain Model and the Theory of Change (Thomas, 2020), for monitoring and evaluation. The #IBelong interventions had a range of short-term benefits for participants (students and staff) in terms of better understanding diversity, belonging and success as a result of the IOs. In the medium term the outcomes were generally changes to student and staff behaviours in response to the improved understanding, and which promoted improved engagement and belonging. In the longer-term we expected #IBelong interventions to contribute to retention and attainment. We have not been able to prove this due to the pivot to online learning and related consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. All of the partner institutions have however made changes to learning and teaching to ensure it is more inclusive, acknowledging and engaging with diversity, and facilitating belonging and contributing to success.

Overall, the #IBelong interventions have been (re)designed, (re)developed and implemented in on-campus, online and blended education in all the universities. We have (successfully) adopted an embedded, mainstreamed approach to reaching and supporting students from diverse backgrounds and others who may be less able to participate – to engage. The learning from the evaluation and experiences has informed the final outputs delivered by the #IBelong team.

Project Website

http://ibelong.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 401215 Eur

Project Coordinator

ERASMUS UNIVERSITEIT ROTTERDAM & Country: NL

Project Partners

• EDGE HILL UNIVERSITY
• UNIVERSITAET OSNABRUECK
• KNOWLEDGE INNOVATION CENTRE (MALTA) LTD
• UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO
• STICHTING ECHO EXPERTISECENTRUM DIVERSITEITSBELEID