SPUR Project

2010 winner (4 of 19)

How does involvement in community engagement activities impact upon student employability, skills development and course enrichment

Supervisors: Dr David Hindley (Education), Andy Coppins (Schools, Colleges and Community Outreach)

The aim of this project is to establish the impact of community engagement activity on students. The three areas of work concentrated upon for the purposes of this research will be extra-curricular volunteering through initi8, Students in Classrooms and the Volunteering in Community Education (ViCE) 1st year module in the BA(Hons) Joint Honours Programme in the School of Education (this is a module which enables students to take part in volunteering activity and then critically reflect on their experiences and their host organisation’s interactions with volunteers). Student tasks will include a literature review, design and distribution of a questionnaire, in depth interviews and focus groups with various cohorts of students and subsequent analysis and reporting on findings.