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Welcome to Light 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 Light 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 to the latest episode of Light Bites.

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I'm your host Dave Riley, Research and Impact Officer at Light.

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In this episode upcoming, I interviewed Laura Loyola-Hernandez, who is a lecturer in the

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School of Geography and the Programme Lead for BA Geography.

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Laura has recently completed her Light Fellowship, Community-Based Pedagogies to Diversify the

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Curriculum.

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And in this interview we talk all about it.

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I've re-recorded the opening segment here, mainly because I bashed the mic a few times

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unintentionally in the original recording.

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But whilst we're doing this and have the opportunity, Laura would also like to clarify that the

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name of the artist that she collaborated with to produce the amazing poster about sense

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of belonging that she speaks about in the interview is called Nicole Marie Burton and

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not Anne Marie Burton.

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Anyway, here is the conversation that I had with Laura.

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Hi Laura, how are you today?

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Hi, I'm okay.

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Thank you so much for having me.

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That's alright, you're welcome.

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So just to start, can you just tell us a little bit about your fellowship?

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Like what is the broad synopsis?

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So my fellowship was 12 months and it was really working with students to understand

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how they feel a sense of belonging and unbelonging being students that feel marginalized by being

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at university.

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So how that experience has been and how that has impacted their time at university, their

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learning journey and their progression throughout the course of uni.

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Cool.

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And what methods did you use to investigate that?

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So I use, so we, the fellowship consisted of working with students in two workshops

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and one focus group.

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But in the first workshop, I did something called an alphabet attack.

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So this is something where you might have a topic in hand.

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So for example, one of the words or prompts that I used was university and then students

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together have to go through the entire alphabet and then think of the, you know, write the

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first word that comes to mind that's associated with that particular word.

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And then we use those posters that they did and I had four words as prompts.

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For the second hour of that workshop, they had to, so I use a technique called the Lego

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serious play and it's when I asked students, what would your ideal university look like?

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And I brought a bunch of my kids' Legos that I had in the house and they had to build everything

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from the ground up, from the little people, the Lego people to the building.

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So what that would look like.

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And then I left the room just to leave them to negotiate and have these conversations.

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And then I came back and then they kind of explained what it was, but it was really interesting

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because it brought up a lot of conversations that really can't translate physically.

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So for example, should there be a VC in our university?

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What would that look like?

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So that's the one activity.

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Another thing is I did a lot of artwork.

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So I brought art supplies and students, I said, if money wasn't an issue, what would

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you, one ideal event organized by the university look like?

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And you know, some students came up with like a music festival around like having workshops

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as well around feminism and capitalism, the environment.

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Others had, you know, festivals, environment festivals.

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So it was really great to kind of engage with students as to what they want.

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But also it led to interesting conversations about like staff workloads and like staff

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doing this, a lot of these type of events in a voluntary basis and whatnot.

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And then finally I did a technique called body mapping, which is a technique used by

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a lot of Latin American feminists to understand in ways that traditional maps can't our relationship

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with a particular space.

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So you basically trace the person's body in a big piece of paper and ask questions in

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this case around the university.

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So you know, how do you get to university?

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What are the spaces where you feel most comfortable at university?

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And for example, some of the students drew hearts, not hearts, sorry.

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They put the student union where the heart is.

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And then when they had more intense conversations, let's say around climate change and how they

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felt a bit uneasy of the university inviting certain, you know, companies for career fairs,

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they put it in the stomach.

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So it just, it really was mediums to allow students to explore their like contradictory

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experiences at uni.

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And was all this done in one session?

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No, no.

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So I've had, I had three sessions with them in around three or four months.

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So they weren't like continuous.

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We also did a black history walk on campus with Heritage Corner, which is if anyone can

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go to their walks by Joe, who works really closely with the university.

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And that was just a really nice experience to do with students because we just learned

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so much.

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You know, that the university has a lot of like abolition history that we just don't

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know about.

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And then the final activity to close the fellowship was I organized a community conversation around

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climate change and climate activism.

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And we had a short documentary and we had the director here and then we had some community

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activists as well.

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And it was open to the public.

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So it was really great to kind of end the community led pedagogies project with the

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entire community.

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And that was, that was like an open forum or?

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Yeah.

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Open forum.

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Anyone even outside the university could come.

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We had tea and coffee and cakes.

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And it was just a really great way to close the fellowship.

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Yeah.

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It's really innovative methodology as well.

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And I've got a question.

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How do you got, you described in a very rich data set there.

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So how do you sort of like bring that together to produce some conclusions?

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So for me, it was really important to be clear with students when they would be recorded

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and when they wouldn't, because I wanted these conversations to happen in a really organic

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way.

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So I only recorded them when they had finished doing all the like the university and the

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posters and it was more, I recorded their reflections on what they have done.

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Because I didn't want it to be kind of really extractivist and invasive.

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But what I've done afterwards was obviously I tried to document as much as I could, particularly

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the university, the Lego university, because I had to take it apart.

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So I then, I basically just had all this rich material from the recordings, but also in

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conjunction with what students made, because I really do see this as a co-production with

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students.

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They were really the ones that dictated, for example, the codes, you know, what were the

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key things that I was going to look for.

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It just really emerged in an organic way.

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How did they dictate the codes?

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Did you ask them specifically?

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No, so it just, it was just things that kept coming up.

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The weather, it's this, so for example, I'm now doing the proofs for an article based

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on this project.

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One of the strands of the analysis is the complex contradictions that come with working

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and studying in what's called the no liberal university.

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And this just emerged out of not only the conversations I had with students, but also

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the material itself.

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So for example, one of the posters that we did in the alphabet attack with the keyword

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was university.

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And they had some really lovely words like community, like decolonization, inclusivity,

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but they also had like really contradictory words towards that, like xenophobia, oil investment,

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stress.

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So they themselves without actually telling me this is what you should be coding, it just

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really came in a really organic way.

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This leads me on to the next question.

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So what, and you've touched on it a little bit, like what were your findings from your

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research?

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So one of the findings that I wasn't really anticipating that was surprising is because

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most of the students that participated felt marginalized, particularly they were students

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of color.

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They were issues around neurodiversity.

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So how even within the university, there's still a lot of restraints and stigma that

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come from being neurodiverse, but especially being a person of color that has neurodiverse

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issues.

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Because when we have mostly these discussions around flexibility, accessibility issues,

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they're mostly centered around white students and their experience has been compounded by

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the fact that they're not only racially minoritized, but also some of them are from working class

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backgrounds.

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So that's a finding that I hadn't really envisioned, but it's given me a better perspective

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in what we could do.

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And the second one that I also wasn't really envisioning was the importance of the physical

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space.

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So where the university, but also the schools, where they feel they belong and they don't

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belong has a massive influence on their learning and overall experience at university.

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Where do they belong?

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Where do students belong and where don't they belong in the university?

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That's a really interesting point.

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I think, as I said, one aspect was the physical, so how welcoming or not is a particular space

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or how they perceive it.

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But a lot of it as well was, do they feel represented by the staff body?

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Some of them don't because they don't see staff that look like them.

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Others were just building that sense of community and they have managed to do that, but outside

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of the restrictions of going to lectures, going to seminars, going to practicals, it's

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how they've built that community with them friends.

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That's really what has kept them thinking, well, actually I do belong here.

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Very, very interesting.

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Something of space, something about physical, but you also talk about more abstract.

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My next question is about the outputs that you might have had from your fellowship.

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Well, obviously I know about what you've been doing with your cool outputs, but can you

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tell the audience for us?

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Yeah.

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I mean, well, I've written an article.

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I'm hoping it comes out in the next couple of months, but one of the biggest outputs

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I think I've had with this is a poster that I've done in collaboration with Ann Marie

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Burton, who's an artist.

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The poster is called Who's Uni.

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It's available at the Light website.

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It really is a reflection of the dialogues I had with students throughout the project.

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The poster is meant to almost be a vehicle or a tool for staff, for students, for activists,

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for just anyone really to incite conversations around maybe difficult topics.

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In the poster, there's stuff around having to work more because they can't afford to

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buy food at university, which is increasingly more a reality for our students, but also

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for staff.

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There's stuff around climate change, about how feeling a bit complicit about learning

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about climate change, but then having really difficult conversations around who invests

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in our university, for example, about how to generate a sense of belonging of students

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that might not necessarily feel like they belong, but they do.

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That's one output that I've had.

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The poster is available to download online.

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If people want a hard copy, they can always get in touch with me.

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I've been really, really lucky that I have a really supportive head of school who has

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embraced some of the practical ideas or pilot ideas.

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I'll just talk about one.

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We now have a community shelf in the reception area of our school.

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It will eventually be filled, but it has now board games, it has mind games, it has mindful

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art coloring stuff.

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The idea is just another tool to generate a sense of community for students to feel

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welcomed.

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We're now in talks in the school to have what we're calling a community pantry, which is

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basically a food bank in recognition that if students are hungry and staff are hungry,

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they can't really work or learn.

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We have to come together as a community to remove the stigma of that.

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While we work on more structural ways in which we can change that, we also need to offer

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practical, simple, quick solutions to support people that are having a difficult time under

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current circumstances.

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Cool.

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I think you sort of might have answered my final question a little bit there.

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But I would say about this post, about the post of the Who's Union poster, obviously

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we think it's a fantastic output.

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We've shared it through all of our channels.

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If you're watching this, sorry, if you're not watching, you'll be listening to this,

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then it will be shared on our Twitter.

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It's on our team space and it's on Laura's page on the Light website as well.

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So I do encourage you to have a look.

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And also, if you're thinking about doing a Light fellowship, this is the kind of creative

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output that you might want to produce.

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So that's really, really good.

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Final question is, and I think the community shelf might fit into this too, but what impacts

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have you had or continuing next steps since the end of your fellowship, which was a couple

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of months ago of time recording?

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Yeah.

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So I've really tried to pilot some activities that emerge from the students themselves in

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a way that I just, I didn't want to finish the Light fellowship, write some articles,

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which are important, but then just kind of leave it in a really abstract way.

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I wanted there to be a connection and that in a way in which students might benefit,

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but also staff.

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So one of the things I've done is also, I'm going to start to implement using the Who's

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Uni poster in one of my classes and see if it does anything to help engage these conversations.

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I've mentioned the community shelf as well.

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I'm also working with education engagement to see ways in which we can help each other,

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I guess, because a lot of the students had really fantastic stuff to say about education

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engagement and that they were really key in creating the sense of community, particularly

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for marginalized students.

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So I'm hoping that I can work more in a better way with these amazing people to generate

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a sense of belonging that includes everyone while recognizing our differences and celebrating

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them.

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Well, that's great.

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And we obviously at Light, we're really, really proud of the work you've done, Lara.

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So we'd like to thank you for that.

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I just want to say thank you to the Light staff, especially Raka, who has been instrumental

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in helping me organize stuff and Dave as well, who's answered so many questions over email.

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Really appreciate that.

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Thank you very much and thank you for your time today, the podcast.

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So that's the end of our latest Light Byte.

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We'll see you in the next episode.