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Welcome to LITE Bites, an occasional podcast from Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence

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at the University of Leeds.

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Episodes will be hosted by members of the LITE team.

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And we'll be showcasing the scholarship of teaching and learning from across the university.

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Hello and welcome.

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I'm Emma Peasland.

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I'm a research and impact officer here at LITE at the University of Leeds.

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And I'm here having a conversation today with Michelle Schneider, who is learning advisor

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in the learning development team here at Leeds.

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How are you doing, Michelle?

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Yeah, I'm great.

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Thank you.

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Enjoying the sunshine?

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Marvelous.

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So you're going to share with us a little bit today about your LITE fellowship that

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you completed early this year.

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And so I wonder if you just want to start by telling us a bit about the research that

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you did and what it was that you wanted to investigate.

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So I'm going to try not to waffle on too much here and keep it as succinct as possible.

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I will just start by giving a little bit of context as to what I do and why I decided

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to research what I did in the end.

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So the learning development team, basically, we work with academics and direct with students

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to help students develop their academic skills and literacies.

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So we do this basically in two ways.

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So we work with academics to embed academic skills and literacies in the curriculum and

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directly linked to the discipline.

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But we also offer the skills at library co-curricular service as well.

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So the idea of that is students can reflect on their own needs and seek out their own

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opportunities to develop the skills that they want or seek extra help or different perspective,

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or maybe they're just looking for sort of quote unquote neutral space to discuss their

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work.

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That's the idea.

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So we see the skills at library as being quite co-curricular.

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But what the literature mainly says is that embedded is like the sort of goal standard.

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That's what we should be doing.

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And centralized support is often very much critiqued as being the kind of remedial deficit

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model.

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I can understand why that critique happens because I think at many universities that

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centralized service is seen as seen as being the main way that students, if they need anything

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to do with academic skills, they just go to the central service and it ends up really

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divorced from their discipline and what they're doing.

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But at Leeds, we see ourselves, as I say, very much as this co-curricular.

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And so what I was interested in though is whether staff and students here at Leeds,

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how they perceive the skills at library service.

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Like is it seen as this just place where if you're struggling or failing or not meeting

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the expectations that you think other students are meeting, whether the skills at library

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service, that's what it's there for.

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But I think more importantly from my perspective is that I worry that not only do staff and

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students see the service in that way, but maybe staff see students or students see themselves

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in that way as somehow being deficit and in need of like this kind of remedial help.

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And I wanted to know whether we perpetuate that idea in students, whether students see

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that.

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And I think the student voice is very much missing from the literature in terms of the

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centralised service as well.

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Like no one seems to be asking the students, well, what do you think?

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Why do you use it?

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So that's really what I wanted to kind of look at, mainly, I guess, the student voice,

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but also compare it to staff as well.

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Fascinating.

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So can you talk a little bit about how you did that?

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Yes.

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So I mean, I very quickly realised that it was very difficult to measure perception in

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this way, especially without saying directly, like, do you think Skills at Library takes

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a deficit approach?

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I didn't want to lead it in that way because students may never or staff may never use

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those terms.

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So what I did is I took a mixed method approach, quite standard one of a survey and focus groups.

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So one of the things that I did with the survey for the students is I used a validated educational

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self-efficacy scale.

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I wanted to ascertain whether students' confidence in their own abilities was linked to how they

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view or how they use the service.

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And within the survey, I then used quite open questions to try to ascertain, like, why students

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think that they would use different parts of the service, so workshops, one-to-ones,

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web pages.

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And then kind of try and take a bit of a thematic analysis of the language they use, especially.

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That was, like, probably one of the key bits of the survey.

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And I did something quite similar with staff, so I sort of mirrored the survey as much as

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possible, asking them, why do you think students might utilise the service?

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And then with students, I also ran some focus groups to try to delve a bit deeper into how

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they perceive Skills at Library.

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But I guess the focus groups was a little bit more trying to ascertain how the students

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saw themselves, so to really get a sense of whether they see some deficit in themselves,

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which is what I was hoping that they wouldn't.

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And that's really what you want to avoid with students, I would say.

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Cool.

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So what were your key findings then?

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What did you find out from this?

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So one of the key things that I think was really interesting was that there was no significant

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correlation between students' self-efficacy and their use or perception of the service.

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And so the students that answered the survey, their self-efficacy kind of ranged from high,

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low, but a lot in the middle.

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And there wasn't really any kind of relationship between that and the kind of wording that

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they used in the survey, and I thought that was quite interesting.

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And kind of linked with that, I thought from the focus groups, it really came out that

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most of the students, there was really an agreement that in terms of coming to university,

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they felt that the expectation on their academic skills needed for a degree should be quite

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minimum coming in.

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They felt that either that their schooling had only prepared them a certain amount.

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There was words like we were taught to regurgitate, not necessarily to analyse, to think critically,

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and that kind of thing.

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So students felt that actually coming in, they should be expected to be at a fairly

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minimum level, really.

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It wasn't as clear, because I didn't do focus groups with staff, which we talk about soon,

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may have been an error.

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But some of the words that the staff used in the survey suggested that they have higher

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expectations of what students should come in with, maybe not do come in with, but what

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they should come in with.

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So that was a bit of a difference, and I thought that was really interesting.

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The other thing that I think came out with the analysis of the language that's used

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is I think staff and student perceptions of the skills at library service were quite varied.

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So both kind of suggested that students would come for all different reasons.

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So that they wanted to enhance something or improve something, or maybe that they were

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struggling or maybe they just wanted to take all the opportunities available to them.

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But in general, what we saw students use was language that seemed more positive, like develop,

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enhance, improve, whereas the staff, often the terminology was slightly more negative.

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So use words like failing, desperate, struggling.

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So this suggests a kind of maybe a slightly different perception of students and what

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it means to need to develop academic skills and that maybe staff has seen students in

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a particular way of having some kind of deficit rather than, oh, students coming in and we

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need to develop them from where they're starting because this is a, you know, they're starting

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a degree and why would they have all of those skills that you need to be successful?

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Students are expecting to come in and develop their skills through their programme.

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So I guess that really shows or highlights that potentially that lack of student voice

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in the literature that you mentioned earlier and the fact the literature leans towards

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that deficit model.

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Yeah.

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And I think that it's, I think the way that we see students may encourage us to take a

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deficit, sort of a medial kind of approach.

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Like if you see that when students are coming in, if you think, oh, they're not at the

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expected level, so we need to send them to this service to get to the expected level,

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which isn't really the approach that we want to take and isn't effective, the most effective

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approach.

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Really, you know, skills development needs to be developed within the curriculum.

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And actually when we ask the students, like, whose responsibility is it to develop these

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skills that you've suggested that you need to be successful in your degree, they say

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it needs to be the university and in particular their programme, a school that needs to take

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responsibility for that development.

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A lot of them said they wanted that in collaboration with our team in the library.

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They saw us as having those students who had experienced our service said that they recognised

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the kind of expertise in that kind of area.

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But they saw that collaboration as being important, but that ultimately what they wanted was their

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schools to be the primary and that they wanted also a co-curricular offer that they could

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make a decision to use.

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And they gave a lot of different reasons as to why they might want to use the service.

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So they said for extra help or a different perspective or for something that maybe wouldn't

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naturally be in their discipline necessarily, like managing their workload or whatever it

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might be.

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So that was another interesting finding.

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The students were very much saw it like we hope that skills at library is a co-curricular

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and I think that's what the students want, but it doesn't necessarily mean they see

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it like that now.

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I think they worry that it's perceived to be the primary way that they're supposed

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to get academic skills and matrices.

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But they'd maybe like a little bit more embedded content if possible.

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Yeah, so they were definitely like they want it in their schools.

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Interesting.

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And you hinted at perhaps one thing before, but is there anything you would have done

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differently if you were going to start again?

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Yeah, so this is a really hard one because I think that anyone doing research would probably

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say I wish I'd done this differently or I wish I'd maybe taken the question in a slightly

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different way.

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I think the main thing was I think if it had more time, I would have maybe interviewed

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staff in more detail.

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I mean, there's some interesting literature already that it interviewed staff at other

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universities, but actually on reflection, I wish I had a bit more of that staff input.

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So with the survey, there was like 189 students and only 22 staff.

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Obviously, we do have a lot more students and staff, but I do now regret a bit not interviewing

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some staff as well, kind of posing some of the questions that students raised with staff

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possibly.

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Maybe that's an interesting follow-up project for the future.

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Yeah, that could definitely be something interesting.

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And then I think when I got to the end of my research, I definitely thought, oh, this

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could have been an interesting way to go actually.

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But then I guess that's what a lot of people, that's probably the interesting thing about

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research.

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So it's not necessarily I wish I'd done it differently because I probably wouldn't have

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ever got to that thinking.

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Because one of the areas I'm really interested in is how it impacts that sense of belonging.

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So if we have certain expectations on student skills and we're not just kind of taking students

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as they are and building on where they are, we're thinking, oh, you need to have this,

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this, and this to be a lead student.

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I wonder how that impacts on the sense of belonging.

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Do students think, oh, I don't have this that other students seem to have?

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Are we immediately putting them in a deficit?

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Is there something wrong with them?

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And then I wonder how they feel.

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Do they feel that then they don't really belong here?

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Or they reach this certain expectation?

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I don't know.

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Wow.

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But I mean, you've got lots of really interesting findings out of that.

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So what's what's what how are those being used now?

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Are you implementing them in your practice or yeah, what were your kind of implications

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for the future or recommendations that came out?

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So I guess there's two ways that we're looking at it.

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So one from our team perspective and then I guess at the kind of broader university

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level.

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So I think from from our team and what I'm really interested to do is work more in partnership

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with students to kind of review the skills that library co-curricular offer and ensure

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that we're not perpetuating that deficit approach.

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I think we've done quite a lot of work, particularly on things like redeveloping our workshops

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and how we run them to make sure that we are really student centred and the student have

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a lot of say in how the workshop runs for them.

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So it's not this kind of like, here is what you must know and we're the experts and we

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will feed you all this information.

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It's very much them taking control of their own learning and trying to empower the student.

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But I still wonder whether actually this service maybe does perpetuate it in some ways and

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I'd like to work with students to look at that and I guess then to really try and think

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of some novel approaches to improve how we communicate the role of skills at library

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to staff and to students so that it's very clear that this is complementary but not a

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replacement for embedded academic skills and literacy.

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So I think that's kind of how our team are going to look at it.

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And then from the university perspective, I think and this isn't all staff but I wonder

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whether there needs to be in some areas a kind of change of perceptions of how we see

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students so rather than when they come in we see them as being somehow in deficit but

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rather when students come into the university with lots of different experiences and backgrounds

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that we like amplify and build on their existing skills.

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So the student feels valued and what they're coming in with feels valued rather than what

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they maybe have, well, perceived to have not got.

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Yet.

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Yet, exactly.

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And I guess the other thing is really looking at the language we use so rather than kind

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of this, I don't know if it's officially called a deficit terminology but rather than

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talking about students having a lack of or issues with or an inability to, we can talk

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about much more developmental positive language like how we're going to build on or enhance

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or develop which seems like a bit more of, yeah, like students coming here to develop

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things rather than because there's something missing in them.

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Brilliant.

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Well, it sounds like you've got loads of interesting findings and lots of routes forward to implement

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those findings and also maybe a route for another project in the future.

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That would be great.

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Yeah.

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That's fascinating.

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So thank you very much for taking time today to join me for this conversation.

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And yeah, we'll hopefully we'll look forward to seeing how this research develops.