Skills for Success

'Skills for Success': a year 0 programme of guest speakers and workshops designed to support students holistic development as they transition into HE

Supporting inclusive learning resource design with Designing for Diverse Learners

This brief communication introduces the regulatory and ethical requirements of accessible learning design, and the Designing for Diverse Learners project. This communication is a call to action, asking for educators to share, support and help develop the Designing for Diverse Learners guidance

Assessing the value of integrated degrees with Foundation Year in context: institutional level responses to Augar

On the 20th September 2019, members of the Foundation Year Network came together to discuss ‘Assessing the value of integrated degrees with Foundation Year in context: institutional level responses to Augar’. We were joined by Chris Millward, Director for Fair Access and Participation at the Office for Students. He outlined some of the current policy landscape, and set us a number of challenges to respond to as a network of Foundation Year practitioners. We then heard 4-minute ‘elevator’ pitches from a variety of institutions around the distinctive features of their foundation years, and some themes emerged from these. One of the most important themes, which was common to all foundation years represented, was summed up by the University of Lincoln: “If you want to learn to swim the Channel, learn in the sea, not a swimming pool”. Foundation years are seen by both staff and students as an important extended induction into university life and offers a mode of studying that other pathways cannot provide. Foundation Year students are immersed in university workloads, assessments, and expectations, and are ready to face them in year one. Crucially, they are also studying on campus, so are inducted into student life and are part of the university from day one

Impact of Covid-19 on academic resilience and achievement emotions in undergraduate students

The aim of the study was to explore students’ perceptions of their academic resilience, as well as their positive activation, negative activation, and negative deactivation achievement emotions. Specifically, it sought to examine whether these concepts may be differentially associated with how students felt they were impacted at university during the Covid-19 restrictions. A total of 122 undergraduate students (89 female, 32 male, 1 non-binary; mean age = 19.76 years) completed self-report measures of their academic resilience, achievement emotions, and perceptions of how they were impacted by the Covid-19 restrictions regarding their well-being, changing learning environment, isolation, and assessment formats. End of year attainment data was also collected from official records. All data was collected between April and June 2020 during lockdown in the UK. A series of linear regression models revealed that academic resilience was positively associated with coping better with the change of learning environment, well-being, and isolation during the Covid-19 restrictions. In addition, positive activation emotions (i.e., enjoyment, hope, pride) were related with higher reports of well-being during the restrictions, whereas negative activation emotions (i.e., anger, anxiety, shame) were related with lower well-being during the restrictions. Resilience and achievement emotions were found to have no association with actual end of year grades however, or the perceived impact of any changes to assessment formats. While academic resilience was not found to explain university attainment, the findings of the study suggest that resilience may play a useful role in helping students well-being and ability to deal with the Covid-19 lockdown disruption. Developing strategies that foster higher resilience in student cohorts across the academic year may be beneficial in helping both well-being and the ability to deal with instances of major disruption to academic learning and teaching sessions

Effect of α-lipoic acid and exercise training on cardiovascular disease risk in obesity with impaired glucose tolerance

Obese subjects with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) are more susceptible than healthy individuals to oxidative stress and cardiovascular disease. This randomised controlled investigation was designed to test the hypothesis that α-lipoic acid supplementation and exercise training may elicit favourable clinical changes in obese subjects with IGT. All data were collected from 24 obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2) IGT patients. Following participant randomisation into two groups, fasting venous blood samples were obtained at baseline, and before and following intervention. The first group consisted of 12 participants who completed a 12 week control phase followed by 12 weeks of chronic exercise at 65% HRmax for 30 minutes a day, 5 days per week, while ingesting 1 gram per day of α-lipoic acid for 12 weeks. The second group consisted of 12 participants who completed the same 12 week control phase, but this was followed by 12 weeks of 1 gram per day of α-lipoic acid supplementation only (no exercise). The main findings show a comparatively greater rate of low density lipoprotein (LDL) oxidation in the group consisting of α-lipoic acid only (p < 0.05 vs. pre intervention), although total oxidant status was lower post intervention (p < 0.05 vs. baseline) in this group. However, exercise and α-lipoic acid in combination attenuates LDL oxidation. Furthermore, in the α-lipoic acid supplement plus exercise training group, total antioxidant capacity was significantly increased (p < 0.05 vs. baseline and pre intervention). Body fat percentage and waist and hip circumference decreased following exercise training (p < 0.05 vs. post intervention). There were no selective treatment differences for a range of other clinical outcomes including glycaemic regulation (p > 0.05). These findings report that α-lipoic acid ingestion may increase the atherogenicity of LDL when ingested in isolation of exercise, suggesting that in IGT the use of this antioxidant treatment does not ameliorate metabolic disturbances, but instead may detrimentally contribute to the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and development of CVD. However, when α-lipoic acid is combined with exercise, this atherogenic effect is abolished

Foundations for the Future: Lessons from a Science Foundation Year Programme

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have long been aware that some groups of adults are less likely to meet the entry requirements needed to access Higher Education (HE). In 2018 the Office for Students (OfS) set out ambitious targets for HEIs to eliminate the gaps in access, success and progression for students from groups which are underrepresented in HE. In relation to access, an increasingly popular approach for HEIs has been the development of Foundation Year (FY) programmes which constitute a fully integrated Year 0 of degree programmes (not to be confused with a Foundation Degree). FY programmes circumvent the standard admissions requirements whilst offering additional study skills support for non-traditional students with a view to preparing them for progression into Year 1. A recent report from The Sutton Trust, for example, recommended the expansion of Foundation Year or ‘Year 0’ programmes (Bolliver et al. 2017) at some of the UK’s most selective universities to widen access to HE. Our presentation considers a FY programme at a university in the East Midlands which began delivery in 2017/18. Set within a regional context of low levels of HE participation, geographically dispersed communities and with areas of severe deprivation, the Science Foundation Year (SFY) programme is an example of cross-institutional collaboration to support widening participation. Offering places to adults who do not meet standard entry requirements in terms of the required combination of subjects or lower than expected grades, it provides not only access to but support for continued success in HE for a diverse cohort including mature students, students with caring responsibilities, Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students and entrants with BTEC qualifications. This presentation draws on data from two teams at one institution – one from the evaluators of the university’s Access and Participation Plan alongside data compiled and analysed by the SFY team themselves. They have been brought together to provide practical and accessible insights into the SFY programme and the views and experiences of its students for those interested in finding out more about the ways in which they can best be supported to succeed. By bringing together the insights of the programme team, the voice of the students and the perspective of the external evaluation team, the presentation will provide a view of a SFY ‘in the round’

Music tempo: a tool for regulating walking cadence and physical activity intensity in overweight adults?

© 2021 The Authors. Published by MDPI. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18157855This study investigated if music tempo can prompt a desired walking cadence, and if music can provide a stimulus to regulate physical activity intensity in a longitudinal physical activity intervention with free-living adults. Overweight adults (n = 37; 94.26 ± 17.11 kg; 49.63 ± 12.37 years) were randomly assigned to an intervention (IG, n = 17) or usual care group (UC, n = 20) as part of a novel nine-month walking intervention. IG participants walked to self-selected music with a predetermined tempo and received a behavioural change support programme. At baseline, four-, six- and nine-months participants were asked to walk around an elliptical track at their habitual pace (0–2 min) and then in time to a predetermined tempo (2–8 min) designed to elicit moderate intensity. Cadence response (steps/min) was assessed and intensity (heart rate (bpm) recorded using wireless telemetry. A repeated measures general linear model (GLM) examined differences between groups over time (p &lt; 0.05). All data is presented as means ± SD. At each assessment point both groups displayed an immediate cadence adjustment in response to music tempo (p &lt; 0.01) i.e., habitual cadence vs. 3 METs target cadence (p &lt; 0.05) and 3 METs target cadence vs. 5 METs target cadence (p &lt; 0.05). Additionally, IG participants displayed an increased habitual cadence (0–2 min) at each assessment point (p &lt; 0.05; 110 ± 9, 121.80 ± 7.5, 121.46 ± 10, 121.93 ± 7 steps/min respectively). UC participant’s habitual cadence was unchanged from 0–9 months (p &gt; 0.05; 120 ± 10, 116 ± 13, 119 ± 12 and 119 ± 9 steps/min respectively). Music tempo may be a useful regulatory tool to prompt the free-living individual to reach an appropriate stride rate to achieve a walking pace that is at least moderate intensity. It also appears that results may be trainable as throughout the study an increased habitual walking cadence was observed, in the absence of music.Published onlin