By Eve Little, who completed a student research experience placement, at the Leeds Institute of Teaching Excellence (LITE).
My student research project involved investigating the impact of teaching and learning research.
I began by researching the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and the various LITE fellowships at the University.
I had very little understanding of these schemes prior to my summer placement, which was surprising as they are so relevant to improving students’ experiences. Therefore, my priority was developing a deeper understanding of SoTL and how I could measure the impact of such work.
Once I had familiarised myself with SoTL, I began to write my interview questions. This was a qualitative project, and as a psychology student who had already completed my dissertation, I was familiar with this type of research.
I asked four previous LITE fellows to take part in the study and then conducted interviews online, each of which lasted for roughly an hour.
The interviews included questions about their projects, where their findings have gone on to be shared, whether their research had triggered any action or further research, how they personally found the experience, and how they incorporated the student voice into their data.
I transcribed the interviews and began to analyse them by theme, searching for common themes that would help answer the question of ‘what impact does SoTL have?’. From these themes, I began creating a video on Biteable.
This part of my project took the longest: writing the script, rearranging the running order, constantly adding new ideas and hearing feedback from the LITE team. I thoroughly enjoyed incorporating creativity into a project output, and as a student, this was something new to me.
A lot can be learned about students from student-led research and my overall experience on the research placement with LITE was incredibly positive.