Student Project Partnerships

The following report was written by Nur Arshad (Final year MSc Biomedical Sciences) & Sina Purabbas (Final year BSc Psychology).

My experiences and thoughts regarding the SPP

I am a Student Project Partner of the Faculty Student Project Partnerships Programme. In November, I was initially assigned to Optometry department. However, due to some miscommunication and heavy workloads, my partner and were unable to complete and finished our project, it was halted in early December. Fortunately, the staffs from Faculty Student Project Partnership Programme have offered us a new project which both of us can work on during our second semester. The one thing that I was glad that I joined this Student Project Partnership Programme is when Christine, the Deputy Associate Dean for Student Experience of the Faculty gave us the second chance to let us experience the project partnership programme that we initially wanted to gain. The new project that we worked was on a podcast project: ‘Making the most of the Academic Advising System’.

Throughout the project progression, Christine and David have given full supports and helpful advices for both us. In completing this project, I was able to experience Agile Project Management which is new to me. This project management has given me a lot of advantageous especially during the lockdown. The agile management allow us to complete the project in iterative approach where we completed the task step by step. In my opinion, this project management was a favourable approach to ensure the project partner to be able to complete the task properly and efficiently. The staffs were also able to keep track and be updated with our progress easily through this agile project management and offer relevant help for us.

I really appreciated how thoughtful the staffs were to give us flexible time and tolerate with our timetable because of the exams and other academic engagements. This Project Partnership Programme has given me a lot of meaningful experience and allow me to improve my soft skills apart from being paid. Another advantages of being the Faculty Project Partner is not only that we were able to directly communicate with the staffs, but I was also able to learn the school’s academic system and the weaknesses of the system that may affect students’ performances. To be able to become the part of team that generate the ideas that can help to improve the school’s academic system is something to be proud of.

Podcast Project Progression during Lockdown

The podcast project that we worked on was completed whilst in Coronavirus lockdown. Since the government has ordered us to stay at home and the University was also closed, we fully utilised the convenience of modern technologies to execute our podcast project through virtual meetings an online group messenger for project discussions. We also used Trello and Slack to list out the tasks needed to be completed and as the platform to communicate between the members of the project. These applications allow us to be reminded of the task that we have to complete which is very convenient. My teammates and I successfully communicated through ‘Whatsapp’ that allow easy and quick exchanges of information between us in order to complete our project. Occasionally, we also attended virtual meetings through Zoom with the staffs to update our progress on the project.

Addressing the cultural barrier issue

In the podcast project, we aimed to improve the level of engagement and the effectiveness of the Academic Advisor meetings and interactions. From the surveys, we believed that the challenges that may have caused the ineffectiveness and reduced the interactions between students and Advisors are due to miscommunications and cultural barriers. My partner and I have come up with some solutions or advices that might help to reduce the impact of these challenges. We wrote the transcripts for two different podcast videos to address these issues. We are aware that the students of our university are majorly international students. Undoubtedly, we will have students that come from a variety of ethnic groups and cultural background. Therefore, students might be assigned to an advisor who comes from different ethnic group. As a result, the relationship and communication between the students and advisor may be a bit stiff or even uncomfortable for students to share their problems.

One way to prevent — Should the students be allowed to request for a change of advisor who best met their preferences? Preferably, before the beginning of the semester, students should be asked about their preferences on advisors that they would like to have.

One way to improve — know the actual purpose and importance of this academic advising system!

Advisors will gladly offer helping hands to students regardless of their ethnic or culture differences. They will try their very best to offer students an appropriate sense of security to allow students to communicate and engage with them with ease.

To look at this issue in a good way — Learn and getting to know different ethnic groups. Experience different cultural background. As Robert Alan said, “Cultural differences should not separate us from each other, but rather cultural diversity brings a collective strength that can benefit all of humanity new culture.”

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