ENTRANTS Staff Training successfully completed
In the course of the Erasmus+ university research project ENTRANTS - Enhancing the transition of non-traditional students, the staff training for more than 30 participants from the three partner universities University of Duisburg-Essen, Birmingham City University and FH Oberösterreich was held in Linz from May 23 to 25.
The nicely designed program made it easy for the group to get into good conversation and to get new ideas for daily practice in many discussions. On the first day, after a short introduction, the participants worked intensively on the terms "stereotype threat", "othering" and "unconscious bias". The free accessible moodle course developed during the Erasmus+ project was of great help to the participants. After a lunch break with a "gallery walk", where the results of the other groups on the morning topics could be admired and discussed, the afternoon was dedicated to "empathetic teaching environments". In group work, the participants considered which social, but also which actual spatial factors (pleasantly warm rooms, good acoustics, seating arrangements, etc.) enable students to feel psychologically safe enough to perform well. The discussion groups were made up of both professors and administrative staff, which meant that many topics could be considered and discussed ideally in their entirety and additionally from different perspectives.
The second day of the training began, as all days, with a check-in phase, in which the motivated participants could prepare for the day, as well as clarify questions that remained open on the previous day. This time was also used for networking. Afterwards, the main outputs of the project were presented and discussed in so-called "studios". While one studio dealt with the "Community Building Course", another studio dealt with the Europe-wide survey on the "Sense of Belonging of first-year students", which was the starting point of the project. In the third studio, the project team presented the FH OÖ Kompass website, which is accessible to all students and contains relevant information for first-semester students, as well as an app that can also be used to send this information out to students. The feedback from the participants will be used to further expand and improve the named outputs.
Finally, the afternoon of the second day focused on the topics that the participants themselves had brought with them. Everyone was able to bring in problems or challenges, which were then dealt with and discussed in the course of a collegial case consultation.
The third and last day of the training was held by two FH OÖ colleagues who presented a self-evaluation tool on resilience and wellbeing that was developed especially for the ENTRANTS project. With the automatically generated evaluation, the participants also receive tips for improving their work and personal life in case they have a tendency to procrastination, could make use of more self-compassion or improve their mental health in general. If it is suspected that the person might have a clinical diagnosis such as depression, first points of contact are given as well as an emergency number. The morning was concluded with general information on resilience, relaxation skills, procrastination, etc., as well as an evaluation of the entire training, before the participants took a warm farewell from each other and departed again towards home. After three intensive days with about 30 participants, the organizers draw an absolutely positive conclusion.
We would like to thank our partners at BCU and UDE for the excellent cooperation and the very helpful colleagues from Linz campus for the perfect organisation of the training environment and are already looking forward to our Closing Event on Wednesday, September 6 - Save the Date!
All outputs will be adapted after the evaluation of the feedback and subsequently made freely available.
