Transforming transitions in CBHE

 Author

For a long while, my work has been driven by a philosophical commitment to the value of exploring how we can best develop our understanding of the relationship between learning and teaching and how we can apply that understanding to secure concrete enhancements to the way we do those things. At the heart of this has been a belief that such sustainable and meaningful improvements need to be driven by the central players in these processes – the teaching staff and students themselves.

In the past, pedagogic interventions have tended to focus primarily on the perspectives of teaching staff, but we've found, over years of driving these approaches, that it's utterly fundamental to their success that students are involved alongside staff from the start of, and at the heart of, such initiatives.

It's clear that further education colleges play a vital role in widening access to higher education, particularly for students from underrepresented and non-traditional backgrounds. However, it's also the case that college-based higher education (CBHE) remains lamentably under-researched – and that the distinct challenges faced by CBHE in supporting students' transitions into and through HE represent a particularly critical focus for attention.

In partnership with colleagues and students from Bishop Burton College and University Centre, Derby College Group, Nottingham College, Solihull College and University Centre, and Walsall College, our QAA-funded Collaborative Enhancement Project (CEP) has therefore conducted a new study to address this gap in pedagogic research by exploring how flexible pathways and effective transitions in college-based higher education can be enhanced through student-staff collaboration.

Our project has involved staff and students from our five participating further education colleges who volunteered to pilot the use of an innovative model designed to facilitate structured, dialogic engagement between students and staff – a model we've developed at Birmingham City University and which we've dubbed the Cycle of Collaborative Observation, or CoCO. In short, this model comprises six stages: pre-observation reflection, pre-observation discussion between students and staff, observation, post-observation reflection, post-observation discussion between participants, and a reflective write-up.

This pilot study has demonstrated remarkably positive results. Students found that participation in the CoCO model enabled them to develop a stronger sense of ownership over their learning, alongside enhanced reflective and critical thinking skills. They reported increased confidence, improved understanding of assessment expectations, and greater engagement with feedback processes. Meanwhile, staff found that their participation supported the development of more student-centred and facilitative pedagogical approaches, reinforcing the value of student voice in shaping their teaching practice.

Some of the impacts we found were pretty much as we'd anticipated from our own experience of this approach. But some came as a genuine surprise to us. What was particularly striking was the uplift that students experienced in what are often called "soft skills" (though I must admit I dislike that phrase as it downplays the importance of those skills). When it comes to students making the transition into higher education – especially in the cases of "non-traditional" students (and I find that phrase problematic too) – issues around confidence, self-esteem and belonging are key to their success. Students involved in the project noted significant improvements in these qualities, and in their abilities to communicate with their tutors and with each other, as well as major boosts in their beliefs in their own abilities.

Let's take one example: their first HE assignment. For many of these students – accustomed in their previous studies to learning and assessment processes that were heavily structured and prescriptive – the expectations of self-directed study and the freedoms of intellectual exploration and expression presented by a traditional academic essay can be overwhelming and intimidating. Yet students who'd been schooled in rather more rigid and even, one might say, straitjacketed ways of approaching assessed work, found that the supportive and collaborative approach offered by our model enhanced their understanding of, and confidence in, this mode of assessment.

In fact, some of the students participating in our project reported that, when they'd started, they were achieving marks between 45 and 50 per cent, but that by the end of their engagement in the project they were averaging marks in the mid-to-high 60s. They were clear that they'd felt enabled through their involvement in these collaborative groups to develop an understanding of the processes and expectations of assessment, which contributed to their increased levels of success.

Overall, our study has highlighted the importance of collaborative pedagogical relationships in supporting these crucial transitions. We found that collaborative dialogue between students and staff helps to build trust, challenge traditional hierarchies and create more inclusive learning environments. These relational dynamics are closely linked to improvements in students' sense of belonging and academic identity, both of which are critical for persistence and success in higher education.

Our research has also highlighted the value of embedding transition support within curricula. Practices such as the explicit teaching of assessment criteria, structured opportunities for feedback engagement and scaffolded academic skills development were shown to be particularly effective when integrated into programme delivery. In addition, experiential and collaborative learning approaches contributed to the development of transferable skills and professional identity.

We're therefore making a series of recommendations to support flexible pathways and effective transitions in college-based higher education.

The first of these is to highlight the importance of embedding partnership and collaboration, through structured student-staff partnership approaches and the adoption and adaptation of collaborative frameworks to support ongoing dialogue and shared reflection.

We're also stressing the value of supporting transition through curriculum design, by integrating transition support within the curriculum rather than relying on reactive interventions, and by providing scaffolded learning experiences that progressively develop students' independence, academic confidence and criticality.

At the same time, we're emphasising how assessment and feedback practices can be enhanced by strengthening assessment literacy, embedding structured opportunities for feedback engagement, and using assessment as a site for dialogue.

We believe that educators and institutions should work to promote opportunities for reflective and dialogic learning and prioritise the development of pedagogical relationships in inclusive and supportive learning environments, as well as recognising the importance of staff development and the allocation of appropriate resourcing.

Within these structured approaches, flexibility in delivery remains crucial, and, to ensure the sustainability of these practices, such approaches to transitions should be embedded within institutional strategies and quality processes. In this way, student-staff partnership approaches can play a transformative role in supporting effective transitions in college-based higher education.

The focus, contexts and scale of college-based higher education raise for both its students and its educators unique sets of challenges – as well as extraordinary opportunities to add value to communities and to transform people's lives. We believe that a collaborative and dialogical approach to transitions into and through CBHE, by mirroring the best aspects of that provision itself, can enhance both the learning experience and the learners' prospects of success.

A couple of our study's student participants had moved from their college studies to university, but said they'd returned to their colleges to continue their HE studies, as they'd felt lost at university in a sea of students, and they hadn't felt like they mattered. They said that when they'd had problems understanding their assignments, they'd found the responses of some lecturers to be somewhat blasé or dismissive, referring them to their institution's provision of general academic support rather than directly offering them specific advice and guidance themselves.

This can often be a consequence of scale. The personalisation that's possible in CBHE is so crucial in helping students make these transitions and enabling them to succeed. CBHE teaching staff are used to working closely with their students. They have the space in which they can develop close and supportive (and, through such initiatives as our project, visibly collaborative) pedagogic relationships with their students, to understand and address their aptitudes and aspirations, as well as the challenges they face and the everyday issues they grapple with.

Don't get me wrong – I'm not saying that this can't and doesn't also happen in universities. It's just that the scale of delivery and the focus, experience and expertise of teaching staff in CBHE can more commonly prioritise and make possible this approach.

The narratives surrounding CBHE are all too frequently driven by a presumption of deficit – the (frankly patronising) notion that somehow these students aren't as capable as so-called "traditional" learners. This is really, of course, nonsense.

But it's influential nonsense – insofar as the proliferation of such assumptions may contribute to the reluctance these students have felt to get involved in higher education in the first place. It may also be one of the reasons why they choose to continue their studies at their FE colleges rather than going to university.

This is why their senses of identity, belonging and self-belief are so important to their academic, professional and personal development – because the choices they make and the parts played by their tutors are crucial in this. Recognising their own value as active contributors to the learning cultures of their institutions – through collaborative processes of dialogue – can dispel any hint of that "impostor syndrome" which can sadly for many students be symptomatic of the discomforts and difficulties of their transitions into HE – and can empower them to succeed to the very best of their abilities in their higher education journeys and beyond.