Welcome to LITE Bites, an occasional podcast from Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence
at the University of Leeds.
Episodes will be hosted by members of the LITE team.
And we'll be showcasing the scholarship of teaching and learning from across the university.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the LITE Bites podcast.
It's Emma Peasland here, Research and Impact Officer in LITE at the University of Leeds.
And today I'm delighted to be joined by Emily Crosby, who is Engagement Manager at Leeds
University Business School.
Hi, Emily.
Hello, Emma.
I'm really happy to be here.
That's great.
It's great to have you along and on the podcast.
So Emily is going to tell us a little bit about the fellowship that you finished in
September.
That's right.
Yeah.
And the fellowship was called In-Module Student Engagement with Business Professionals.
And one of the kind of like key focus of your fellowship was this Leaders in Residence program
that you run in the business school.
So I thought maybe a good place for us to start would be if you tell us a little bit
about what you do and about that program.
Yep, absolutely.
So as you say, I work in the business school with the management department there and I
run the Leaders in Residence initiative, which is a network of just over 100 business professionals
who volunteer their time to come onto campus and share their real world insights and experiences
with our students.
And the critical bit about that is they do that usually within embedded within modules.
Brilliant.
So how did that relate to your fellowship?
Can you tell us a bit about your project and what it was that you wanted to investigate?
Of course.
So the Leaders in Residence program has been running for 10 years.
And during that time, we've done some kind of informal finding out of what the impact
of the program has been.
But I wanted to study that in more depth, so to understand exactly what benefits the
students gain from interacting or engaging with the Leaders in Residence.
How can we kind of improve what the program offers to students?
And also to understand a bit more about the motivations of the Leaders in Residence who
volunteer their time.
Why do they do it and what do they gain from it too?
Brilliant.
That sounds really interesting.
So how did you go about investigating this?
Well, I was conscious that I only had a year to do the project.
So it was a professional services fellowship.
And obviously I had to do my day job at the same time.
And I had a set time to do this project alongside it.
So I wanted to, well, I was advised really well by the LITE team to kind of keep the
focus quite tight and specific.
So I decided to focus specifically on two Leaders in Residence events that happen every
year.
So one with our undergraduate students and one with our postgraduate students where the
Leaders in Residence come and spend time with the students within a module.
And in terms of data gathering, I gathered data from the three main stakeholders within
those events.
So obviously the Leaders in Residence, I did a survey with them after the event.
I gathered data from the students who attended the event through a survey and also some
focus groups and interviews.
And then I also ran a focus group with the module, the relevant module leaders to find
their perspective too.
And after that, with the support of the LITE team, I undertook a thematic analysis to identify
the findings of the project.
Cool.
And you mentioned that the Leaders in Residence meet with the students twice.
Was it one time per module or twice per module?
One time per module in those main events.
Yes.
And what happens at those events?
So it's a bit different between undergraduates and postgraduates.
So at undergraduate level, the module is all about personal and professional development
and thinking about life beyond university and the skills needed for that.
And the Leaders in Residence event was in the form of discussion groups.
So a few students and a couple of leaders with some set topics to discuss, 20 minutes
on each topic with the leaders kind of giving their insights and experiences and, you know,
what do employers look for from graduates, specific careers, advice maybe if the student
was interested in a particular career that the leader also had experience in, and then
a new topic and the leaders move from table to table so that students gain quite a few
different perspectives from leaders during the course of the event.
And then at postgraduate level, a little bit more of a hands-on activity for the students,
which is the form of a business challenge event.
So the students are given a business challenge.
They don't know what to expect when they walk in the room, but they need to work together
as a team to come up with some recommendations to present to their imaginary chief executive
at the end of the three-hour session.
And the leaders in residence are there to kind of inject some real-world input into
that thinking that the students are doing.
So how can they take the theory that they're learning across their master's programme and
convert that into kind of practical thinking and thinking of things like commercial awareness
and time management and who's going to present and presentation skills and how you can kind
of influence the decision-making of the chief executive.
Excellent.
And then so you said you collected data from these three kind of key groups, so from students,
from the leaders and from the module leaders.
So can you tell us a little bit about what you found out?
So yeah, I can.
I think the sort of headline really was that the students find the interactions with the
leaders really beneficial.
And the second key finding was that those benefits align really well with the expectations
of the module and the aims of the module.
And the third finding was that, which I was really surprised by the sort of wealth of
evidence about this, was that the students don't just attend the event and go away and
get on with their lives, that they feel inspired afterwards to take action, motivated to take
action related to employability.
So whether that's connecting with the leader in residence on LinkedIn to kind of further
their personal network or ask follow-up questions, or whether it's investigating a particular
career that they might have discovered existed that they didn't know about, or whether it's
thinking, oh, maybe I should investigate internships because I had a conversation with the leader
where they mentioned the value that having some internship experience brings when you're
coming to apply for graduate jobs.
Brilliant.
And then what did you find out from the leaders?
Yeah, I had some really interesting insights from the leaders, which I think has helped
me to understand what their motivations are.
I found that them having a strong connection to Leeds is a real motivating factor in them
volunteering their time.
Quite a few of the leaders are alumni, but not all of them.
But it's kind of a motivation from them to work with Leeds University, which is really
nice.
I think what motivates them the most is giving back their time to help the next generation
of leaders.
But what was also really interesting was finding out how useful that leaders in residence network
is to the leaders themselves, and also how much they learn from the students from their
conversations with them.
So it's not by any means a one way process where the leaders come and impart their knowledge
and off they go.
It's very much a mutually beneficial relationship.
And that's kind of helpful to understand when I'm recruiting new leaders to the network.
Yeah, definitely.
So that's interesting that the leaders talked about the fact that the network was useful
for themselves.
So do they use it also as a networking opportunity amongst the leaders?
They do.
Yeah, they do.
They do have events through the year, lunches and things that bring the leaders together.
And quite a few of them have told me that they've done business together as a result
of meeting.
Quite a few of the leaders are based in Leeds.
So that's nice to have that kind of sense of community, although several are kind of
from further afield as well.
But yeah, it's definitely a benefit for them that they come together as a network and meet
people that they, professionally, that they've not come across before.
Yeah, that's super cool.
And you mentioned that they learn things from the students as well.
Did they give you any examples of how the students had helped them in, I don't know,
their thinking about work or their, well, I don't know, you tell me examples.
They talked, the main thing that they talked about was having that perspective from the
student point of view.
And so they might, some of the leaders are quite far along in their careers.
They might be chief executives and they might not necessarily very often hear from a 20
year old or somebody who's going through university at that moment, whatever age they are.
And so I think they find it, they said that they found it really useful to just get that
perspective on what it's like as a student at the moment and what their, you know, might
be what their customers are thinking.
So it gives them that kind of completely different perspective that they don't necessarily have.
I suppose it's a kind of a little bit on a mini scale sort of reverse mentoring kind
of approach.
So yeah, they might share some knowledge with the students that students find useful, but
equally I think the leaders said that they also find those conversations really insightful
too.
That's marvellous.
And then lastly, you said you collected data from the staff as well.
So what did you find out from them?
I found out from them how, and this will be really useful, I think, in sharing the results
of how they integrate the leaders in residence events into their modules and how they ensure
that it's an embedded part of the sort of learning experience, which I hadn't appreciated
quite so much previously.
I found out what their hopes were from the sessions and therefore was able to kind of
match that to what the benefits the students actually reported and to find that there was
a really nice synergy between those two things.
And I also found out that the module leaders, just their enthusiasm and eagerness to bring
real world insights into the classroom is a really important factor in making that work.
Yeah, so their enthusiasm is a catalyst for success, I suppose.
Yeah, a really kind of critical factor, really.
And so in talking about how they make sure that these events are embedded fully into
the module, what does that look like in practice?
Do you know, does that mean they link it to other kind of sessions or elements of the
module or, yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, so there's some pre-work that they do with the students to make sure that they're
prepared and know what's coming up.
And then the sessions are linked to the assessment at the end of the module.
So the students don't have to, it's built in such a way that if the lead, if the students
miss that session, it doesn't impact on the assessment, but it is something that the students
can mention in their self-reflection at the end of the module to demonstrate what they've
learnt.
So it's embedded in that respect.
Excellent.
So it sounds like you've got some really interesting insights into this opportunity.
And actually, so you said it had been running for 10 years.
Have you been running it for 10 years?
No, I've been running it for about seven years.
Okay, so you've been doing it for quite a long time.
Yeah, you found out loads of new stuff, I guess, through this.
It's been amazing.
I think just having the time and the support to sort of step back from the day-to-day role,
because if you're not careful, you just do the same thing year on year and you think
it's working well and it probably is working well and it seems to be well received by everybody.
But to step back and look at it in a more critical way and in a more sort of robust
and evidence-based way has been invaluable and that has helped to find ways that we can
enhance the programme and do things more and differently.
So yeah, I'm really, really glad that I did the project.
Brilliant.
So that kind of takes us nicely, I guess, to the what's next, what's the implications
from your findings and how are they going to influence the programme or other practice
with engaging business professionals in the future?
So I think, yeah, going back to one of the aims of the project was to find out how we
could improve both the events and the programme as a whole.
So there's lots of feedback from students about how we can improve the events and some
of those are quite small things, but when you put them together, probably will have
a big impact.
So things that we can do before the events to prepare the students and make sure that
they're enthusiastic and turn up.
There are things around the events themselves and how they run so that the students gain
the biggest benefits that they can from them.
And then there are suggestions for post-event and I think that's the area that to me feels
like the most, the area where we can improve the most, because finding out that the students
had such felt so inspired after the events, it's a question of how can we harness that
motivation and take action to maximise the benefits that they've gained.
So there are things around the events that we can work on.
So I'm really excited about that, but there are things around the programme as a whole
that I'm really looking forward to improving.
There was a lot of feedback from students about how, yes, they really enjoyed the events,
but they really wish that there were more opportunities to engage with the leaders.
So that's something that I'm talking with colleagues in the management department about,
how can we maximise those opportunities and get even more real world input into our curriculum.
And also with the feedback from students and leaders themselves, how can we diversify the
Leaders in Residence Network to make sure that students can really benefit from that
diversity of perspective.
And then I think being able to have crystallised the benefits that students gain from the programme
has really helped me to be able to communicate those benefits to others.
So that's a big part of why I wanted to do the project, was to be able to share this
work as a hopefully a useful case study for others across the university and perhaps beyond.
And to have the evidence that sits behind that in a quite a robust way hopefully will
be useful to others if they want to do something similar.
OK, so that's interesting.
So if you were going to be talking to someone who wanted to do something similar elsewhere
in the university or at a different university, what would be your kind of top three tips
for success?
OK, so I think the first would be academic buy in.
So make sure that the academic who's running the module is really enthused about bringing
real world input because there is quite a bit to do on their side in terms of enthusing
the students and preparing them.
The second thing is trying to embed it within a module because I think on the one, first
of all, that makes the students attend.
And what I found in the research is that the students don't necessarily know what the benefits
are going to be until after they attend.
And that's a surprise and it's great.
But if it perhaps hadn't been a compulsory element of their studies, they might not have
attended.
So make it part of a module.
And finally, select the right leaders in residence.
So there's a lot of feedback from students about how the characteristics of the leaders
really helped them to gain the benefits.
Things like being open and honest and willing to share their perspectives and encouraging.
So it's not just a case of bringing in some external professionals.
It's about finding the right type of leaders and the right diversity of leaders from early
career professionals right through to senior executives to bring that diversity, but also
that encouragement to the students as they learn.
So you need not only a module leader who's enthusiastic about it, but you also need the
business professionals who are really enthusiastic about sharing their experience.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And probably you need somebody like me who will kind of bring all that together as well.
Yeah.
That kind of support role, I guess, to facilitate everyone being in the right place at the right
time.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Excellent.
So you might also share some of the practical changes that you've decided to make going
forwards in light of the research findings.
Right.
The practical things going forward.
I think probably the changes won't kick in till next academic year.
And so I haven't maybe discussed in detail with the, because of the timings of the events,
haven't kind of discussed in detail with the module leaders.
Yes, we're going to do this, this and this.
In terms of an event coming up next month, thinking about post event follow up, we're
going to try and do something creative at the end of the session to, for the leaders
and the students to put, to record in some way what they've, their sort of key take out
from the session.
And the aim of that is to sort of inspire the students to take action after the event.
So to capitalise on that enthusiasm that they come away with.
Yeah.
That's brilliant, isn't it?
Because how many times have we all been on training courses or to conferences and come
away with loads of interesting ideas, but not gotten around to following them up or
putting them into practice?
Exactly.
And I think it creates that opportunity for the leaders and the students to continue
to be connected after the events.
So we know that that happens on a bit of an ad hoc basis at the moment, a student might
connect with the leader.
But I think having the leaders put down what their key take out is or what their key piece
of advice is, gives a really nice hook for the students to be able to say, oh, that's
interesting.
I'll follow up with that person on LinkedIn and maybe ask a follow up question.
Brilliant.
That sounds marvellous.
So it sounds like you've found out something new from this scheme, but you've also got
some really kind of practical insights that are going to inform it going forward.
Definitely.
Yeah.
And so I'm curious to know if you were going to start your fellowship again.
Is there anything that you would have done differently?
I think if you'd asked me that question in the early stages or after I put the ethics
approval in, I would have said, yes, I'd really like, I wish I'd asked this extra question
in this survey or I wish I'd drawn on this other data set that's available, because that
would have been, you know, I've been able to triangulate all the information then and
it would have been even more super duper.
But actually, with the sort of benefit of hindsight and knowing that I only had a year,
I'm glad that I took the advice of my LITE colleagues in keeping the focus really clear,
keeping it manageable, because then I came out at the end of the year with the answer
to the question that I'd posed at the start of the year.
So I think now I probably I'm happy with the way that it went.
I'm happy that I came out with an answer and I've got some action, like you said, some
practical things that I can implement.
You know, there's always opportunity in future to do new and different and exciting things,
but to have got the project done and find out what I wanted to find out, I think I'm
happy with the way it's gone.
Excellent.
That's all very positive.
It's good to hear.
Yeah, it has been a really positive experience, definitely.
And then I'm interested in how the experience was for you.
So did you find out anything new about your role or yourself or did you encounter any
professional development opportunities from taking part in the fellowship?
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, I've really enjoyed it from start to finish.
And the support that I've had from LITE has been incredible.
I've learned I think every stage of the research process has been quite new to me.
I've never done any research before coming from a kind of professional background.
So just going through the ethics process and the data, you know, designing the questionnaires
and collecting the data and analyzing it.
Everything was new and interesting.
So I've learned something at every stage, which has been great.
And I think the most kind of valuable thing is being just able to step away, like I said
before, step away from the day to day and have that time and support from LITE to be
able to understand, to learn new things about the work that I focus on.
And I think what motivates me along with a lot of people who work with me at the business
school and probably beyond as well is bringing some value to the students.
And so knowing that what we do with leaders in residence brings the benefits that we hoped
it did and sort of crystallize those benefits has been really valuable.
But also knowing how we can maximize that and improve that in the future is just a really
nice thing to have come away with from the project.
So, yeah, I've learned a lot and it's been great.
Marvelous.
Well, from our point of view, we worked relatively closely, I guess, as you were going through
your fellowship experience and it was great to watch.
And like you say, I think the fact that you have that really tight focus has really benefited
your fellowship and these practical insights that you can now put into practice.
So yeah, I think it's marvelous.
And thanks for sharing your experience today and all the best for making leaders in residence
even better and hope it goes from strength to strength.
Thank you very much, Emma.
It's been great to be here.