Go to any higher education conference and you are almost guaranteed to hear an SU member of staff say something along the lines of “fewer students are engaging with our opportunities, including academic representation”.
And it’s true – the days of students fighting over representative seats are no longer. Now the battle is to encourage them to run in the first place.
I won’t shy away from this being something we’ve experienced ourselves at the University of York – even before the pandemic in 2019/20 the number of students voting in our rep elections was falling.
We haven’t seen the post-pandemic boost in engagement – in fact other areas including student nominations have suffered.
So we decided to try and do something about it.
In the last academic year, in six departments we tore out the rule book and started again. We ran a pilot project where we replaced course and department reps with a “Student Action Group” – a collective of undergraduate and postgraduate students working together to resolve academic issues in their department, empowering liberated voices and having the agency to be changemakers.
We also gave each member a £600 stipend over the year. This was possible through switching from an often inaccessible elections process, to a recruitment-based model.
At Membership Services Conference in August I had the pleasure of speaking about our pilot project to delegates. It was clear this was an audience also seeking a solution within the representation field – we asked attendees which type of representation system their institution used and over 75 per cent were still using a voluntary model of representation.
Just as I did there, in this article I will explain how we ended up at Student Action Groups, how the first year has gone, and what is next for our pilot project.
Rip it up and start again
Our first step to figuring out what was going on was a series of co-construction focus groups with staff and students, during March to April 2022.
Our findings were dramatic, yet not entirely surprising. Students, particularly first years, viewed elections as “popularity contests” and a barrier to participation. They also saw course reps as individuals with little influence – perceiving their departmental role as “transactional”.
Staff members expressed concerns with how seriously representatives took departmental committees and meetings. At the end of each group we showed participants four potential representation models – the majority liked the model most akin to the Student Action Group format the most.
During the summer break we found our six pilot departments, and worked closely with them to tailor the Student Action Group model for their individual needs. The result was a representation system which at its core encompassed the suggestions made during our focus groups, but could also be tweaked for individual departments.
For example, whilst in each group all student representatives (known as champions) worked collaboratively on feedback and projects, each group had a different number of open and reserved seats to reflect the student makeup in that department, ensuring EDI could be succinctly interwoven.
Traditionally YUSU has run undergraduate course rep elections whilst the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) has run these for postgraduates – at York there are two SUs, and the GSA is the representative body for registered postgraduate students. This project was the first time in years we had coordinated the representation process together.
Another issue raised by both staff and students was the timing of rep elections – all agreed that representatives were appointed too late in the academic year.
For this pilot project we moved this timeline forward, with the recruitment process beginning in week one of the autumn term.
Applicants filled out an expression of interest form before attending a two-hour recruitment session, where they participated in a group activity and one-to-one interview.
Sabbs and staff from both YUSU and the GSA, and for some departments their staff members, then selected champions based on their performance during the recruitment session. Following appointment, champions received full training, and were supported by YUSU, GSA and their departments over the year.
But my arms stuck like glue to my sides
So, how did the first year of our pilot project go? The data so far has been fascinating. Despite there being four times more the amount of departments using the rep system, Student Action Group applications far exceeded course rep nominations.
In fact, all Student Action Group positions were filled before the end of the first term, and 86 per cent of champions were still engaging with their role at the end of the year.
The majority of champions self-reported feeling either “very” or “fairly satisfied” in their roles, and many also successfully used their roles to develop or strengthen new skills including confidence, communication skills, and organisational skills.
Postgraduate-taught champions were more likely to work with undergraduate champions – due to the course structure of postgraduate-research programmes being very different, PGR champions tended to function quite independently from the rest of their group.
However, this data didn’t tell us the full story – separately from the pilot project, we surveyed non-representative students and asked them specifically about academic representation.
Out of 577 respondents, 32 per cent (which included students from pilot departments) had no understanding of academic representation, and 53 per cent could not name their representatives or the system used.
When asked “how well do you feel the academic representation in your department is working”, 38 per cent were unclear / unsure and this was the most common response to this question. We had thought there would be a chance Student Action Groups would improve the effectiveness of representation in the pilot departments, so this data was quite surprising.
To ensure our evaluation process was robust, we also asked an external company to compile their own review of our project. Through co-creation sessions with the champions, and conversations with us and departmental staff, the firm identified a number of KPIs to evaluate our project against.
After interviews with champions and departmental staff, Alkhemy’s findings mostly mirrored ours for champions, but they were more of a mixed picture for staff. The levels of communication, collaboration and engagement staff experienced with champions varied across departments, with some feeling the project hadn’t yet resolved the challenges they faced when using the rep system. Based on their findings, we now have short, medium and long-term recommendations for us going forward.
I would’ve held you
So, what is next for Student Action Groups? A year is still not enough time to definitively conclude how well this system has worked, but whilst we are yet to fully reap the benefits of this system, we have seen its potential.
Importantly, academic representation did not collapse in any of the six departments – and they ended up with a greater amount of engaged representatives.
Our champions did not just gain experience, but also lifelong skills and for some, even friendships. Despite more mixed departmental feedback, ultimately two thirds of the pilot departments also saw its potential – they will be continuing to use this model next year (many others have veered away from the traditional course rep system and are doing something unique).
Whilst next year will provide us with a better understanding of whether there is longevity to the Student Action Group model or not, from our work over the past year the greatest challenge to unexpectedly emerge is the widespread lack of awareness non-representative students have of academic representation.
Our goal is to improve this. Taking into consideration our evaluation findings and recommendations, our plan is to increase our presence on campus with weekly events, and encourage our current representatives to attend these too.
Our thinking? If students see their relationships with YUSU as less transactional and more frequent throughout the year, hopefully they will positively engage with us more and subsequently learn about the opportunities we offer – including academic representation.
