I met with Leanne Benford with an interest in understanding the role the Post-Grad Community (PGC) played at UAL, having attended several museum visits with them in the Spring. As a department in the Research, Knowledge Exchange, and Enterprise arm of UAL developed for PhD students, PGC now works to bring together post-grads into a community. There is overlap with my project of creating connections.
And in fact, I had a warm and productive conversation with Leanne. She had heard Poojitha and I talk at the WDWTWA conference and was interested to discuss our concerns.
Background: Goldsmiths
Leanne recently came to UAL from Goldsmiths, where she had been working in Communications in a department of around 1000 people and actively engaged with community building and student engagement. There used to be a question on the NSS about community that her department scored low on, which is how she got her push in that direction.
She specifically has researched and tested online community building—I was very curious to hear her findings as I haven’t attended any online sessions that were able to actualize this! She relayed that through testing, she found that “social” events do not work online. But, they had success in networking events, where students met in an online space to specifically discuss projects. She mentioned this did require her facilitating, and also offering structural knowledge of Goldsmiths, giving advice and pointing students to resources.
She shared a bit about the structure of Goldsmiths, that it is part of a collection of colleges united as the University of London (which includes London School of Economics, SOAS, Kings College, etc), and how that structure is different from the one in place at UAL. In that system, independent schools are linked as “Member Institutions” rather than subsumed as different schools within the larger University of Arts London (UAL). She indicated that that system was not necessarily better, as there was very little sharing that happened between the different universities.
Community Building
Leanne is obviously passionate about community building and mentioned that the work she did in online community building was funded through a small grant available to staff at Goldsmiths, not an inherent part of her job. This is, of course, something else I am curious about, as it plays into the observation that connection skills are not understood or valued enough to be included in funding structures.
She discussed how community is a key part of HE (Higher Education), that students are “not autodictats, they come for peer-interactions and peer support.” Another key finding from her research showed that the cost of living can be a major inhibitor for social events, especially for undergraduates: financial pressures can make it difficult to come to anything other than taught classes.
One way to mitigate this is to explain why and how these sorts of events are good for students, to them. This makes sense to me in the same ways that the necessity of community can be overlooked by administration, not all students are aware of the value.
She has found that people need a common project to work on for there to be true community building. I can understand how working together towards a common goal can aid in creating connections. I described the socials and the work I did to make introductions and have name tags, welcoming and orienting people as they arrived, and helping make sure people were talking to others beyond their cohort.
She said that yes, she has seen that Socials can work with this sort of facilitation work. Then the “common project” becomes explicitly shaped into meeting, exchanging information, and connecting. We discussed more about facilitation and she mentioned she is reading Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, which I just re-read when I was in Los Angeles and am in the process of writing a blog post about.
Post-Grad Community
We discussed the mandate of the PGC, which is to provide a platform and opportunities for postgraduate students and alumni across UAL. Because the emphasis is UAL-wide, there can’t be PGC events connecting postgraduates only at, say, CSM: it must be open to all post-grad students at UAL.
She explained the upcoming events for the PGC, including interest groups, a symposium, an exhibition, as well as introductions. There are currently around 4000 postgraduates across UAL, and more than 9000 students and alumni on the PGC newsletter. She specifically pointed to the interest groups as a “student-led activity” where people can put forward whatever they are interested in to form a group around it, utilizing the existing network.
Leanne also described how she had successfully created a message board for exchange using Moodle at Goldsmiths. She is working on the same thing for PGC at UAL, where every postgrad would automatically be opted-in to receive messages posted there. It could be things like skills offers or project needs, etc. I explained that Poojitha and I have been talking about the need for this very thing, so I was excited to hear about it. I am curious if it will get used and what the format will be. If it’s successful, that seems like a fairly easy thing that could also exist within course and programme Moodles as well.
In discussing the “Post-Grad Community Ambassadors” who are selected each year, we discussed the possibility of my coming onboard to help discuss facilitation, so that they could be aware of and bring those skills to the events they attend.
Beyond
Directing me to LCF’s Collaborative Challenge led by Tiff Radner, Leanne suggested I take a look at what they are doing, listen to the podcasts, and perhaps get in touch with Tiff to discuss.
I think the PCG is a valuable resource and has the possibility to become even more of one. My experience so far with PGC has been with small (around 8 person) groups viewing museum exhibitions together. Even on those, I found less focus on interacting as I was interested in focusing on the exhibits.
I can imagine facilitated socials at each of the schools, something like “Spotlight on: Central Saint Martins Social and Networking for UAL Post-Graduates” where there would also be an overview of what the programmes even are at each school, and specific opportunities for postgrads to meet each other and discuss their interests.