Dr Jen McBride (Senior Lecturer in Psychology, School of Biological Sciences)

Jen’s submission shows how she created a flexible learning experience that encourages student engagement and sense of belonging in a digital environment. Jen is the Programme Director (PD) for BSc/MSci Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, a joint-honours degree delivered across two schools, where students can sometimes report feeling overlooked by both sides. Prior to the pandemic Jen had begun to combat this issue with bespoke tutorials, specific practicals and social events like “Cup of tea with the PD”. To combat a reduction of on campus activities during the Covid-19 pandemic, Jen created CogNeuro News - a regular e-newsletter that contains accessible summaries of recent high-impact CogNeuro research/news, advertisements to relevant employability events/opportunities, well-being resources and CogNeuro themed jokes. The newsletter was well-received and is now created in partnership with students. It has remained popular despite the returnto campus, with students reporting the key benefits to be employability and belonging. The NSS scores for the course in 2020-21 went up by 9.7 for overall satisfaction when everywhere else was declining.

Jen also delivers year 2 labs to over 300 students. During the Covid-19 pandemic she introduced ‘watch parties’ as a way to use the flexibility of online learning combined with the sense of belonging you get in-person. The students watched pre-recorded materials together at the same time and could discuss in a chat box throughout. The students thought it was a great way to engage and feel part of a community whilst also being able to ask questions anonymously so they didn’t feel uncomfortable. Jen wanted to determine the causal factors behind the sense of belonging the students were feeling so secured an ITL Fellowship to explore this. Analysis so far reveals that it’s being together with staff not just other students that is crucial in creating a sense of belonging. Jen is supporting others to use this format by co-delivering a unit on how to engage students in the FBMH NAP, she presented at the FBMH summer 2021 training programme, is working with the Manchester Institute of Education to create a case study of the approach for education students in “Blended Learning for a Digital Age” and she will be publishing her work.