Graduate interns: a win-win for SLTI
In September 2017, SLTI took delivery of six keen and capable Graduate Interns, to support us in progressing various important teaching and learning projects around the university. They were joined a month later by four more, but now it is time to bid those original six farewell. We know what contribution they have made to us; what have they all got out of the experience in return?
The TESTA project is a major research project lead by Professor of Research Informed Teaching, Tansy Jessop. Standing for Transforming the Experience of Students Through Assessment, it aims to improve how assessments are run across courses. More than that, it has provided opportunities for Dannielle Ross-Barton, Ashley Richards, Tilly Bellinger and Christie Green to develop their research and data analysis skills, time management and organisation.
For Jordan Thomas, the highlight of his time as an Intern was creating the promotional campaign for the British Conference for Undergraduate Research (BCUR) and its partner event, Posters in Parliament. He and his colleagues Megan Llewellyn and Gerda Skirkeviciute must have done something right: Solent saw its highest ever number of submissions to the conference this year, with representatives from all five Schools.
Katie Crabbe has worked closely with the Instructional Design team, leading an audit of the SOL unit pages and gathering feedback from students to see how we can improve in the future and help make SOL a great teaching resource.
Other projects the SLTI interns have worked on include the Curriculum Framework Consultation, the implementation of blogging in higher education, attendance and engagement, learning spaces, and learning analytics. They have had to work alone and in collaboration with each other; run workshops and focus groups, or make observations; design projects and write up the final reports; talk to students, lecturers, managers and external partners, and reflect on their own journey through keeping a blog.
‘I have had the opportunity to help towards improving higher education for students and academics,’ said Christie, and Tilly agreed: ‘Hopefully my contribution will make a difference to the university as a whole.’
And in the process, they’ve developed their communication skills and critical thinking, their professionalism and their work ethic. ‘The internship allowed me to find my strengths,’ Gerda told us. ‘Most importantly, it gave me the confidence to pursue my future career goals.’
If you’d like to know more about how the graduate intern scheme could benefit you and your students, please get in touch with solent.futures@solent.ac.uk.