CIT Teaching & Learning Unit

• Support the transition to MTU for students on the BSc (Hons) Nutrition and Health Science programme
• Foster a sense of belonging within the Nutrition and Health programme by enabling staff-student partnerships

• This project will allow students in later years to partner with staff members to instigate new Transitions initiatives for first year students. Partnerships between staff and students are needed to understand the students’ experiences of belonging, retention and success, and students in later years are best placed to provide support to first years and identify with their needs and wants. This student-staff partnership approach will foster a sense of belonging and promote engagement and student retention for students, both transitioning to MTU and in later years.
• Collaborative student-staff partnerships can enhance student engagement in higher education. Further, creating an environment in which everyone is responsible for improving student belonging, retention and success can improve student capacity to engage and staff ability to offer an engaging experience.
• This project will further develop students in a supportive environment and prepare them to make positive contributions in their careers and as members of society.
• The National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education prioritizes student success, more specifically, affording all students the opportunity to fulfil their potential and be community engaged and equipped to flourish in a global world.
• Providing students with opportunities to engage with the wider MTU community will enable student success, beyond academic grades. In fact, the following have been identified as key actions to support student success (HEA, 2019):
  • encouraging teaching staff to embrace participative approaches and foster relationships with students
  • building staff and student capacity for engagement and partnership
  • identifying and utilizing opportunities to adopt students-as-partners initiatives
• Additionally, the National Student Engagement Programme (NStEP) supports student engagement by championing a strong culture of student and staff partnership (HEA, 2019).

• Students will have advanced their skills, specifically leadership, teamwork, communication, project management and networking, thereby improving their employability.
• Participating students will have increased enjoyment of and engagement with the college experience, resultantly increasing retention.
• Being afforded the opportunity to work with students on extra-curricular activities may bring new learning for teaching staff, while also affording opportunities to raise their institutional profile and the possibility of reporting in a research capacity on the learnings from the partnerships.

Collaborators: