Conference sessions in Non-traditional students

Engagement, empathy and communication – teaching economics to business students

An increasing number of economics tutors find themselves teaching economics modules to business students. It is common for both staff and students to view economics and business as two distinct disciplines, with each having little to contribute to the understanding of the other. This misunderstanding has created a vicious circle making economics increasingly difficult for business students to engage with economics, and for tutors to engage with business students. From our experience, some of the causes of this vicious circle include the following: First, we often select topics that are perceived by students to have little relevance to the rest of their degree. Second, we struggle to find ways to communicate the purpose of economics and to explain economic concepts due to their subject-specific language and tools. Third, we focus frequently on the tools rather than their application, as evidenced by an overreliance on mathematics and diagrams, often at the expense of intuition and application. To overcome these problems, we suggest a series of constructively aligned activities that facilitate empathy and engagement with economics. This requires economics tutors to think carefully about the materials they cover, the way they communicate them and the way they assess. Our paper provides guidance and practical examples drawing from our own experiences in teaching economics modules to business students. Our aim is to make the teaching of economics a more rewarding experience for both staff and students alike.

• Presentation

Blended learning for public engagement

We have been running an innovative blended course for government officials and others since early 2018, and will discuss the design, content and assessment of this course at DEE. In particular, we will focus on lessons learned about designing online courses for busy in-work learners who are completing the course as part of employment requirements but with few other incentives (the course is currently not part of the promotion or review process). We discuss the choice of online platform, learning pathways, interaction opportunities with learners, assessment and evaluation of the course. A second focus of our discussion will be the use of such courses as a way to engage with various stakeholders on important social issues such as financial crises, climate change, globalisation and inequality, and a way to introduce potential influencers to state of the art academic research on these topics. Thus we highlight the use of online learning to engage with non-economists about the power of economics to study and suggest policy on the hot-button issues of the day.

The impact of targeted workshops on engagement and performance for under-performing students

Academic under-performance is often associated with disengagement on the part of under-performing students. In large university cohorts, if students start to dis-engage from their programme of study, it is often difficult for educators to re-establish a productive engagement with these students. In order to start this process of re-engagement, targeted workshops for second year and final year students were run. Students who were identified as under-performing were invited to attend workshops at the beginning of the academic year and at the beginning of the second semester. These workshops asked students to discuss their levels of engagement, reasons for limited engagement, student perceptions of time commitments for private study and specific goals that these students had on entering their programme and their current goals. We investigate the impact of these workshop interventions to see if student attendance improved and academic performance improved. We also investigate differences between second year and final year students for both their opinions and the effectiveness of the workshops for both cohorts.

• Powerpoint slides

Utilising TRIBE (online-teaching and learning website) to bridge the gap between teaching Economics at schools, FE & HE

This paper examines the use of online technologies as a means of improving student engagement and improving student outcomes in the teaching of economics to level 3 BTEC students. The paper explores the impact of WBS-TRIBE www.scoop.it/t/WBS-TRIBE as a teaching & learning tool in the teaching of economics to BTEC level III Business students at Newham Sixth Form College (New Vic). TRIBE is an online economic and business news curation service, curated by Westminster Business School academics, with regular contributions from further and higher education students. The curated content is accessible via multiple access points (laptops, tablets and mobile phones). New Vic students and their teacher used TRIBE to facilitate learning and completion of Unit 38 assessment on the impact of the economic environment and government policy on business. The paper found that students were more engaged with their assessment and built good habits by keeping abreast with economic and business news. In this way the collaboration between the two institutions provided an excellent bridge to studying at University. It also provided an opportunity for students to get an insight into studying and researching at University. This more direct Outreach activity enabled the BTEC students to get a greater insight into the application of economics and the relevance of economic policy to business, than would have been possible using standard methods. It also proved to raise overall aspirations of the students and made them more likely to consider Westminster Business School for their degree.

Widening Participation: academic and careers success. A case study

UK research on the academic and career achievements of students from a disadvantaged background suggests that "Young people from less advantaged backgrounds are less likely to enter a professional job on leaving university" (Macmillan et al., 2013) and that "students who attended one of the 20% of secondary schools with the highest proportions of free school meals (FSM) eligible pupils are, on average, 5.4 percentage points more likely to drop out, 11.0 percentage points less likely to complete their degree and 21.8 percentage points less likely to graduate with a good degree than pupils who attended one of the 20% of secondary schools with the lowest proportions of FSM-eligible pupils." (Crawford, 2014). This paper adds to this existing body of research by investigating the educational and career attainments of students from a widening participation background who graduated with an economics degree from Queen Mary University in London. The evidence from four cohort of students (about 300 students in total) suggests that 1) widening participation is not an obstacle to educational attainment which, instead, can be better explained by previous school performance (A-level scores); 2) there is some evidence that students from a WP background have a lower probability of securing a graduate position. Furthermore, the quality of the degree classification and ethnicity seem to have some role in explaining the likelihood to secure a graduate position. The research is still ongoing and data from the latest cohort of graduates will add some further helpful evidence and will shed some further light on the relationship between disadvantaged background and academic and professional achievements.