Teesside University - Improving the degree attainment of Black and minority ethnic students

The team aims to explore ways to build strong institutional commitment for enhancing BME degree attainment and in doing so create an environment where change is possible. We also aim to improve the use of data to enable the University and its staff to direct support effectively. Building on our findings from qualitative research with BME students we also aim to work with staff to explore curriculum change and make better use of student learning spaces.

Teesside University has a relatively small number of students from black and minority ethnic groups, but NSS results and data monitoring had suggested that some of these students were apparently less satisfied than traditional students and less likely, in general, to do well. This varies across disciplines and to some extent across cohort group. While these findings are replicated across the sector, Teesside’s commitment to supporting the success of non-traditional students led to the implementation of a qualitative research project exploring BME student learning experiences. Findings from this suggested BME students were generally satisfied with the support they received and were happy at Teesside; we did identify areas of success that could be spread and issues that could be addressed.

Building on these findings, the team’s proposed activities are in three key areas: establishing institutional commitment; curriculum development; and enhanced support for BME students.

Activities relating to institutional commitment include providing regular updates and highlighting issues to senior managers; underpinning this with actions via our Learning Teaching and Assessment Strategy working groups.

The team also intends to support improved use of data, both quantitative and qualitative, to raise staff awareness and to adapt the curriculum to more effectively support BME student experience and achievement. Workshops and other staff development activities will be introduced to facilitate this. Data will also be used to underpin enhancements in support. Examples of activities include using findings from the qualitative research relating to use of learning spaces to feed into a review of Library spaces.

Diane Nutt, Head of the Student Retention Team
Diane.nutt@tees.ac.uk (team contact)

Liz Jolly, Director of Library and Information Services

Tom Cawkwell, President Teesside University Student Union

Nicola Poppitt, Learning and Teaching Co-ordinator (Teesside Business School)