Enrichment workshops to enhance student engagement and employability

• Project leader(s): Janet HaresnapeRuth GilbertHeather FraserHanne BownDavid Ruiz
• Theme: Supporting students
• Faculty: STEM
• Status: Archived
• Dates: June 2022 to October 2024

The aim of this project was to evaluate the programme of enrichment workshops which had been offered to biology and health sciences students in the School of Life, Health and Chemical sciences at the Open University during the summer months in 2022 and 2023.  The aims of the enrichment workshops had been to enhance and enrich our students’ experience, help them to understand and appreciate the employability benefits of engaging with practical science investigations in their modules, recognise their employability skills and employment possibilities, and feel a sense of belonging to a scientific community.

The project involved evaluating the success of the programme. This was done by scrutiny of feedback comments submitted by students who attended the workshops in a pilot programme of workshops presented in June and July 2022 and in a more extensive programme which was presented in 2023, and through informal discussions with one student who was a regular attendee at the 2023 workshops, and helped represent the student perspective at the 2024 eSTEeM conference workshop who is, therefore, listed here as a project coauthor.

Feedback comments were submitted by participating students in response to a survey which was provided via a link to those who attended the live event. Some of the survey questions related to the individual workshops and their content, and others related to the programme as a whole. In this project, we scrutinised all the comments, and grouped them into themes. This was conducted by manual tagging rather than use of software. Comments from the student coauthor were gathered through verbal and email communication with the other project team members whilst planning for the eSTEeM workshop. Suggestions for possible future improvements and additions to the programme were discussed by workshop attendees. Evaluation of the programme indicated that it had been successful in helping students to appreciate and articulate their employability skills, especially those gained through engagement with the practical investigations on their modules. Moreover, it led to an increased sense of community among students, and provided an opportunity to maintain engagement over the summer months when there is a break in module presentation and when many students tend to lose their study momentum.

Following the success of the programme as demonstrated by this evaluation, the LHCS Board of Studies agreed to continue to fund the enrichment programme. A further series of workshops were held in the summer of 2024, and it is hoped that the programme will continue.

Recommendations for the future include involving OU graduates who are now in employment, and encouraging more tutors to join as participants to gain more understanding of the student viewpoint. These actions could enrich the online community of participants in the programme.

Other recommendations include exploring the reasons why many students did not engage with the online enrichment programme, and what might make our online offering more attractive to a larger number of students.

A similar online enrichment programme could potentially enhance employability, engagement and community building in other OU Schools, and also on a more extensive STEM-wide basis and at other HE Institutions.