From Obstacle to Opportunity: Empowering Mature and Care-Experienced Learners.
Barriers that I have identified in learners:
The majority of learners that I have engaged with and supported are mature learners that have characteristics related with disadvantage and under-representation in higher education. The average age of mature learners I engaged with and supported were 30, and they had non-traditional qualifications, a family or caring responsibility, a disability or learning difficulty, and were from a BAME group (Bolton and Hubble, 2021). I also supported a niche group of care experienced learners that usually do not have an outside support system. In addition, mature learners go into paid positions straight after they complete secondary school and return to study when they acquire life experience (Griffiths et al., 2008). Other barriers for learners include but not limited to financial pressure such as repayments of fees, IT and new administrative processes. However, recent research suggests mature learners that started a course in 2021 are up by 24% (Bolton and Hubble, 2021). Removing complex barriers for learners overcomes their fear to embark on a course at higher education with the right supported provided.
My role in enabling learning for mature and care-experienced learners:
Within my role as a senior administrator, I had a duty of care to eliminate any complex barriers, introduce simple and straight forward steps, and give everyone the opportunity to study at higher education. When I curated processes, I ensured it was in the best interest of learners and that their needs are met. I created a friendly and professional relationship with learners and built a level of integrity, trust, security (Cameron and Green, 2015) and a sense of belonging. Even when learners were on a course, they contacted me for course related issues, or required signposting to an internal service. For example, a learner that was IT challenged contacted me to inform me that they found it difficult to upload their essay. I arranged a dedicated time to support the learner through the process via Microsoft Teams, in incremental steps. I also provided constructive feedback to the learner on how to avoid this issue in the future. Eventually, adopting a mentoring approach, they successfully uploaded and submitted their work and I received verbal feedback to say, “Thank you so much for your support.”
Evidence of my support to learners:
To evidence the impact of my support, I collated feedback from learners and maintained effective progression statistics. Some key highlights of my support are as follows;
“I wish to thank you so much for all the support towards my academic career”;
“Thank you for all the help you offered. Really grateful”;
“Thank you so much for explaining, that makes much more sense”.
Between;
April and July 2020, I supported 108 learners to access a pre-entry programmes course
September 2020 and March 2021, I supported 88 learners to access a pre-entry programmes course
I have also supported 19 learners that declared a disability, learning difficulty or long-term illness, and 7 learners that are care experienced to access a pre-entry course, between September 2020 and March 2021.
Therefore, evidently, the feedback and statistics mirror the impact of my support I provide learners, with their learning journey as they start as a novice, and finish feeling competent and confident (Dreyfus, 1980).
Impact of my role on colleagues and learners:
The impact of my role is imperative to university’s strategy, as it aligns to customer journey, and also to learners as they are more likely to complete and pass a course. I achieved this by liaising with professional and academic staff to make sure learners feel a sense of belonging, trust and security. Moreover, in my MA research findings, 8 participants (100%) said the administration support they received had an impact on their confidence to start and/or complete a course.