Effective Teaching in a Humanities and Languages Foundation Year: Lessons Learned from Teaching During a Pandemic

This paper will explore key research around Foundation year entry at a large Northwest university in England, UK and explore what makes effective provision. It will share lessons learned during Covid-19 from student feedback from a Humanities, and Languages foundation year. There is some research around what makes for a successful foundation year. This has not had the attention it deserves, and there are still only a few papers based in the UK context. The paper explores and discusses key aspects that make a foundation entry programme successful. Furthermore, the paper explores the experiences of students from non-traditional backgrounds, (or with non-standard qualifications), and how they can underperform in comparison to students with more traditional academic backgrounds, i.e., those that have successfully passed standard Advanced Levels. In relation to non-traditional students, a good Foundation Year can help improve the outcomes for these students, and offer them opportunities to be as successful – or indeed more successful – than traditional entry students

Intersectional Imposter Syndrome: How Imposterism Affects Marginalised Groups

This chapter provides an overview of imposter syndrome and how it is not just a personal feeling, but has much wider socio-political implications for marginalised groups especially those with intersectional oppressions. Culture of power (Delpit in Harvard Educational Review 58:280–299, 1988) and intersectionality (Crenshaw in University of Chicago Legal Forum 1:39–52, 1989) theory are used to explore the embodied experiences of marginalised people, which feed into an internalised feeling of imposter syndrome that is culturally conditioned. The process of marginalisation is ascribed onto people’s bodies and within their identity. Drawing on a student survey, this chapter looks at widening participation and foundation entry programmes in Higher Education that enable access to the culture of power. It concludes with teaching recommendations that help increase confidence and alleviate imposter syndrome in marginalised groups

Discovering the Digital: Reimagining a Module and Co-creating Assessment at Foundation Level

This paper will describe the adaptation of a foundation level (UK level 4) module to include the use of digital tools and discussions of digital ethics. Previous years’ feedback indicated Humanities students did not feel digitally prepared for either university or the world beyond. The previous version of the module involved an extended essay working with a subject specialist supervisor. However, while some of the students coped very well with the assignment, many were not prepared or did not have the emotional maturity for this kind of self-guided study at this stage. This was an opportunity to adapt the module to incorporate more digital humanities-related content so that the students would feel more prepared to both use digital tools and discuss the issues and ethics of digital society, whilst providing more scaffolded learning. Part of this change involved the students co-creating the assessment criteria, so they would feel a sense of ownership and responsibility for their learning process. In incorporating these module changes, we discovered that students do not always understand the concept of digital, frequently confusing it with more general concepts like technology or electronics, nevertheless, this module gave us the opportunity to address this misconception after submissions of initial project plans for assessment. Early signs suggest that the students are appreciating the challenge of using new digital tools and are finding creative ways to adapt their final project to their chosen degree programme. Additionally, the co-creation of assessment criteria has given them a sense of agency and investment in the process