Written Evidence Submitted by Coventry University

(DIV0055)

Overview

Higher Education institutions can play a crucial role in promoting STEM skills and careers to ensure the UK does not miss out on talent and potential for some of our most essential industries. Capturing children’s interests in the subjects starts in schools. Through outreach, Universities are actively building relationships with organisations such as councils, schools, job centres, libraries, charities, and community groups that can access hard-to-reach groups to inspire the next generation of STEM students.

Both the DfE and the sector have welcomed “unprecedented” growth in STEM subjects since 2011, including a 400% increase in acceptances for students wishing to go on to study Artificial Intelligence courses at university.[1] The challenge now is retaining students throughout their education and progression to and within industry. Our evidence reflects some of the best practice work on diversity in STEM currently going on across Coventry University Group.

About us

We are the fifth largest provider of undergraduate education in the UK with over 38 thousand students in 2019-20.  Our focus is applied education and we have locations in Coventry Scarborough, London and local regional partnerships with links to employers. Coventry University Group prides itself on pioneering innovative education in line with our commitment to equal opportunities and our ambition for flexible learning pathways that empower students to think critically.

Recommendations

1. As well as the statutory requirements of the Higher Education Access and Participation Plan, higher education institutions should be supported to be creative about their outreach to achieve greater diversity in STEM subjects.

2. Outreach interventions must be continuous over a longer period to have the best impact. Being able to share work in new settings is an important element as it builds confidence and enables school students to meet other children who might be aiming to go to university. Schools need the staff and resources to do this effectively. Universities can play a great role in providing that support.

3. Industry should be supported to more actively and consistently mentor their employees or potential employees to enable retention and progression of underrepresented groups in STEM. Government procurement contracts could include a requirement on mentoring existing and incoming staff on particular projects, for example.

4. Where possible, organisations should be supported to evidence the full impact of STEM outreach and diversification projects, which often requires tracking outcomes over longer periods of time.

5. Progression and diversity data could be more actively reviewed in tandem with one another, showing academic staff why certain students or modules are successful at retaining diverse students and others are not.

6. Ensuring minority groups are protected and represented on university campuses and across curricula will support specific diversity efforts in desired subject areas such as in STEM.

1. Case Study from Coventry University Group: AI, data science and diversity

Coventry University Group is collaborating with the DCMS and the OfS to develop postgraduate conversion courses to support the Government’s Digital Strategy[2] to help address the shortage of AI and data specialists in the UK. As well as helping to meet industry demand for these graduates, this project is focused on increasing the number of people from groups currently underrepresented in the AI and data science fields, and to encourage graduates from diverse backgrounds to consider a future in these occupations[3]. Coventry University has created a Data Science MSc course, building on the expertise of the Institute of Coding. The MSc Data Science[4] is a conversion course for graduates from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds looking to pursue a career, or upskill, in this new and rapidly developing field. The MSc Data Science is designed to support students with little previous experience of data analysis or computer programming to gain new skills such as working with databases; statistical thinking; programming in high-level languages; modelling; applying data science tools and packages; machine learning; information retrieval; data visualisation; and addressing the challenges of big data.

Ensuring diversity has been built into the course design and both full-time and part-time students will be supported through:

• student representation
• the development of student personas to aid training
• equality, diversity and inclusion awareness training for staff.

There are also dedicated scholarships that are targeting:

• female students
• black students
• disabled students
• students from areas of the UK where young people are less likely to go on to higher education (POLAR quintiles 1 and 2)
• children from military families, veterans, and partners of military personnel.

The Office for Students has made 1,000 scholarships available across a number of Universities to help achieve this aim and applicants to this course at Coventry University may apply for these scholarships of £10,000, to be paid in instalments to assist students with the financial aspects of studying this degree. The project is ongoing and new intakes will join our university in January 2022, September 2022 and January 2023.

2. Case Study from Coventry University Group:  STEM Enrichment Partnerships

Our widening participation outreach enables schools to increase the time they can spend on STEM activities. We deliver specific STEM projects across the West Midlands, providing support for teachers in the form of resources and networks. Our ongoing activities include:

• Bringing a group of 12 students who have experience of the care system from years 7-9 onto campus for an engineering masterclass. The group then goes to Mercedes to explore career options. We do similar workshops at the school of health, showing pupils a patient’s journey where they can consider all types of professions within healthcare from paramedics to nursing.
• The Nuffield Research Placements give year 12 students from a range of disadvantaged backgrounds the opportunity to do a research project with a supervisor in academia or industry. We match students to placement providers and the output is a portfolio and a relationship with specialists.
• The widening participation team supports teachers to set up STEM clubs in schools from low participation areas. We provide resources for activities that are outside of the normal curriculum. One such activity was creating buoys to soak up food colouring, representing the well-known BP oil spill, prompting students to think about the environment, materials, and problem-solving. These clubs are ongoing meaning students have frequent opportunities to explore new STEM interests.
• Our widening participation team ensures all opportunities to reach wider audiences are used. For example, the team transforms outreach talks into books that can be sent to many schools. 

3. How data can be used

Data on progression and diversity is collected within universities but it could be more actively reviewed, showing lecturers why certain students or certain modules are successful and others are not, especially in STEM. Considering these questions in the context of diversity information which is currently collected could ensure year-on-year improvements include diversity considerations. Coventry University is actively researching how to use diversity data to positively impact student support and ensure that resources are targeted where they are most needed.

Led by Coventry University, DRIVER (Data Responsive Initiatives as a Vehicle for achieving Equity in Results)[5] was a West Midlands regional partnership project to address barriers to student success that uses learner analytics to personalise support for higher education students. DRIVER was a partnership project between four colleges and four universities to address barriers to student success. The project focused on the transition between colleges and universities where students from disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g. black and minority ethnic (BME), commuter, mature and those from low socio-economic backgrounds) are highly represented yet less likely to achieve a good degree.

The partner universities worked together to create a total of 36 interventions, aimed at structural changes such as re-shaping services to meet the needs of commuter students, or providing new services for students without family experience of university or graduate careers. The partner universities supported students through Academic Practice Tutors and a Student Engagement Coach as preparation for our higher education courses. Student feedback was positive, with the interventions contributing to a retention rate across all Access programmes of 82% - that’s 3.5% above the national benchmark. In response to these findings, Coventry University has set up Curriculum 2025 to ensure that similar changes inform the teaching and learning in each course.[6]

4. Case Study from Coventry University Group: protecting student diversity on campus

Diversifying STEM goes hand in hand with ensuring diversity on campus as a whole. We are very proud that the OfS has recognised the leadership that Coventry University Group have shown in tackling harassment and barriers to participation in education on campus. For example, we feature in the Universities UK brochure on tackling islamophobia.[7]

Building on Coventry University’s previous HEFCE-funded Catalyst project[8] which created an online reporting system for harassment and hate incidents, a second project focused on tackling the problem ensured this worked well for religion and belief-related harassment and hate incidents and we employed a harassment case manager with religion expertise. The project ran a campaign to raise students’ awareness of university support, with a survey of students undertaken before and after the campaign to demonstrate and evaluate impact. The project produced a written guide: 'Tackling religion and belief-related harassment and hate incidents: a guide for higher education providers'[9] and a report: 'Religion and belief-related hate incidents in higher education: a research and evaluation report.[10] This project has become part of best practice advised to registered providers in ensuring wellbeing on campus and forms part of the evidence base as the regulator considers a new condition of registration on protection of student mental health, wellbeing, and harassment prevention.

(January 2022)