All students at London South Bank University are asked to complete a Personal Development Plan (PDP), and this year over five thousand students have done so. The PDP asks students a series of questions which help assess students’ confidence and areas of need. This allows us to support each individual student and to understand trends in students’ self-analysis across disciplines and cohorts. In this presentation, we compare cohort-level PDP results across the School of Applied Sciences and the School of Engineering.

From this comparison between Applied Sciences and Engineering, we find for example, that 75% of engineering students express confidence in asking for help, compared to only 67% of applied science students. However, engineering students are somewhat more likely to say they are considering interrupting or withdrawing (11.3% compared to 10%). We can also use the data to understand potential barriers to learning. For example, our engineering students are more likely to be working for over twenty five hours a week, and more likely to say they have a challenging home environment, or parenting or caring responsibilities.

We show how insights like these, collected through the PDP data, can also lead to increased understanding of similarities and differences between groups at the course level, and support course leaders' and personal tutors' action planning. This increased understanding can also feed into course and module design, and into cohort-centred support by university support services. This helps us help students to achieve their goals at university and beyond.

Authors:
Ben Lishman, London South Bank University, United Kingdom
Nadia Gaoua, London South Bank University, United Kingdom

About the Presenter(s)
Ben Lishman is Associate Dean for Education and Student Experience in the School of Engineering at London South Bank University, and an Associate Professor of Engineering.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Sunday Schedule

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