Tag Archives: outreach

How free taster courses at Birkbeck are inspiring people to enter higher education

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For those who have never studied at a UK university, knowing where to start can be daunting. In this blog, Birkbeck Access Officer Ali Sheldrick discusses the taster courses available at Birkbeck and demonstrates how the courses are run by explaining the recent Management taster course.  

Applying to university can be a confusing and unsettling process. Deciding which course to take, which university to study at, whether to study part-time or full-time, or in-person or online, can easily overwhelm students. And this is especially true for those who are thinking about going to university for the first time. To help with this, Birkbeck’s Access and Engagement department have created a series of free taster courses to provide a way for potential students to try out a university level course in an easily accessible way.  

Our ‘Get Started’ taster courses are a free programme of classes which aim to give people without experience of studying at a UK university an opportunity to sample evening study at Birkbeck. We run each course in collaboration with Birkbeck lecturers, with a two-hour evening class running once a week over four or five weeks.  The courses also include access to a series of pre-recorded lectures and a Birkbeck site packed with free resources and readings which students can access in their own time. 

“The pre work was amazing and very insightful… it was a useful taster for what studying Management will be like at university”
Management taster course attendee

 Management taster course 

Our Management taster course ran for the first time between November and December 2021, and followed the success of courses in Law, Psychology for Education, History and Archaeology, and Community Leadership in the 2020-21 academic year.  

The pre-recorded lectures and first four classes were delivered by Dr Ian Harrison and Dr Mary Otiotio, both lecturers in the Department of Management at Birkbeck. The classes were delivered online using Microsoft Teams to a cohort of around 30 learners, many of whom were engaging with a university and online study for the first time.  

The course content revolved around some of the foundational questions in Management studies; asking attendees to consider ‘What is management?’, ‘What role does management play in organisations?’, ‘Who are managers?’ and ‘What do managers do?’. These broad questions were brought to life through case studies featuring Apple, Tesco and the NHS, and attendees contributed to classes by discussing experiences from their own places of work. Discussions even included thought experiments involving broccoli and Marmite! Here’s what we covered each week:  

Week 1: Managing in organisations  

In the first session we considered the role of management in organisations, what management is and what it involves, who managers are and what they do. 

Week 2: Models of management  

We introduced theories and models of management and how they have shaped management thinking and influenced approaches to managing in organisations. 

Week 3: Leadership and motivation  

We considered a specific but integral aspect of management: leadership. We looked into what leadership means, what it involves and how it influences other workers in organisations.  

Week 4: People management and diversity  

We focussed on the key resource of any organisation: its people. How we manage, inspire and empower a diverse workforce to achieve individual and organisational goals.  

Week 5: Emotional intelligence for managers and continuing your learning 

In the first part of this class, we explored the importance of emotional intelligence to managers, what it involves and what we can do to increase our own emotional intelligence. The second part of the session provided attendees with an opportunity to talk with current students and reflect on what they learned during the course. We finished the course by exploring potential next steps for attendees’ learning journeys. 

“The course exceeded my expectations. I came with no knowledge prior to the sessions and I feel enlightened.”
Management taster course attendee

The Access and Engagement department will be running a second free taster course in Law starting on Monday 28 February 2022 – sign up here to register your place! 

We will also be delivering a taster course in Psychology in Education in May 2022 (date tbc) and a wider programme of outreach activity with both current and prospective students across the academic year, including ‘Is University for Me?’ events in February and May 2022, plus much more!  

For more information about our work and how to get involved, please email getstarted@bbk.ac.uk or explore our webpage.  

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Birkbeck and Heritage Lottery: working together to build Newham resident’s social media skills

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Birkbeck’s Access and Engagement work to provide people who face additional barriers to accessing higher education with advice, guidance and free dip-in learning opportunities. The Department works with a lot of community partners and this year has been developing a programme of volunteering with professional services staff so that our non-academic colleagues can share their expertise with community organisations and residents in east London.

While planning our outreach work for Newham Heritage Month, the Heritage Lottery Foundation approached us to ask whether anyone at Birkbeck could help deliver a session to local community groups about how to use social media to promote their events. I straight away headed to the Comms team and asked them whether they’d be interested in getting involved!

I’ll hand over now to Jessica and Rebekah to tell you more about their experience with the Heritage Lottery- thank you both! We are still looking for volunteers across the College to deliver online content, so if you are interested in getting involved email Hester at getstarted@bbk.ac.uk.

Birkbeck, Stratford campus

We work in the communications team in Birkbeck. A typical day for us would be coming up with ideas and making content that is shared on our social media channels. Content can range from blogs, to videos to infographics and images and features staff, students and the occasional owl. We are often behind a screen (or camera), so we were keen to volunteer for this skill-sharing opportunity with some of the London Borough of Newham’s residents.

We decided to get involved because we wanted to assist the local community with developing their ideas on how to showcase their events to their audiences. Together we came up with a workshop that we hoped would introduce attendees to social media and help them start thinking of ways they can interact with existing and new audiences.

Social media can feel a bit overwhelming to someone who doesn’t use it in a professional capacity, so we hoped that we would be able to give practical steps that could help attendees promote their events. We also saw it as an opportunity to get out of the office and improve our communication skills and practice public speaking!

The session took place in Stratford Library, across the road from our Stratford Campus. The group varied in age, gender, and background and were all looking to learn how they can promote and run their events throughout Newham Heritage Month.

On arrival we were met by a room full of attendees, a positive start! We were introduced by Jan who had organised and facilitated the session. Our presentation opened with a brief introduction to Birkbeck and a chance for the attendees to write down and share their questions and intentions for the session.

We then talked them through the various social media platforms and demonstrated the best ways to showcase content on each of them.  We shared thoughts on how to write blogs to generate more content that can be shared on social media. Attendees were engaged and asked questions, so the session felt interactive.

To conclude, we referred to the questions posed to us. It was affirming to know that we were able to answer the questions and hopefully, we were able to put people’s minds at ease as they take their first steps into the world of social media.

Overall, the experience was great as it gave us the opportunity to reflect on what we do and the skills we have gained through our roles and then impart our knowledge on people who are making a difference in their community.

 

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Collaborating with east London’s university community

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Hester Gartrell, Senior Outreach and Access Officer for Stratford discusses the East London Collaboration Day that she organised with universities operating in east London. She also discusses the onus behind creating the East London Widening Participation Forum. 

While many might be used to universities coming together to recruit students at Higher Education Fairs, on the 25 February we brought universities together for a slightly different reason. 

Rather than just showcasing the courses offered by different universities, the East London Universities Collaboration Day aimed to make educational professionals working in schools, colleges and other organisations more aware of the outreach and widening participation offer available from universities based in east London.  

We all know that with increasing workloads and lots of things to juggle, it can often be difficult for teachers or other educational professionals to know who to contact at a university. Bring into the mix that universities have different specialties and their access work might focus on different groups and you have a situation where education professionals want to engage their students with the idea of university but don’t know where to start.  

This event that I set up and run in partnership with China Anya, Senior Outreach Officer at Loughborough University of London aimed to address this by giving people the opportunity to find out about the different universities specialities and meet face to face with widening participation teams. Attendees had the chance to network with universities and hear more about their outreach work, as well as take part in a workshop and panel session which covered topics such as student wellbeing, part-time study and funding options.  

Ten universities attended including established east London Higher Education institutions such as Queen Mary and the University of East London, and more recent arrivals to the area including Loughborough, Coventry and Staffordshire Universities.  

The day was part of a wider initiative, the East London Widening Participation Forum that was set up in 2019 as part of the Access and Engagement Department’s outreach work in the Borough of Newham.  

It’s important that universities work together to help those who face barriers to accessing higher education. With lots of universities coming to east London as part of developments such as the Olympic park, 2019 seemed like the perfect time to bring established east London universities and more recent arrivals together. The aim of the forum is to see how we can work in partnership to help east Londoners take advantage of the activities and information about Higher Education offered by our forum’s members – who are right on their doorstep! 

We’re looking forward to seeing where the forum goes from here and are definitely hoping to run more workshops and events. We had over 30 professionals come along to the event and feedback from attendees has been great. There’s clearly an appetite for universities to come together and share their knowledge and expertise in a collaborative way. 

 

 

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