Learning to learn together – building belonging from the beginning
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56433/p2nwf493Keywords:
belonging, optometric education, inclusion, inductionAbstract
Prior to 2024, the induction for new first year Optometry students at The University of Manchester followed the Institutional format of “Welcome Week”. In the academic year 2024/25, a new integrated Master of Optometry programme was launched, and the academic team took the opportunity to reframe the activities, intentionally designing induction to establish the collaborative learning culture required for Team‑Based Learning (TBL), a central feature of the new programme. The Optometry ‘Learning to Learn’ team designed, organised and delivered four weeks of Welcome and Induction activities, which were aligned with the pillars of belonging (connection, inclusion, support, autonomy) found in the WONKHE report (Blake et al., 2022) and with the principles of transitional pedagogy (Kift, 2015). In this paper we will describe how we mapped activities onto these pillars, in particular the pillar of “support”, its impact on the student participants and recommendations for future practice.
In this induction, students undertook a variety of events from staff “speed meet & greet”, mathematics games, visits to the Whitworth Art Gallery, a treasure hunt in the Manchester Museum and a sound bath. In addition, there were several introductory Team Based Learning sessions and group academic advisor meetings at a range of coffee shops in the University spaces. Our aim was to enable students to build a sense of connection (between themselves, staff, the different year groups and the wider university) and belonging from the beginning.
Full ethical approval was obtained to run the evaluation of these activities as a mixed methods study using questionnaires and focus groups. Out of an intake of 80 optometry students in 2024/25, a majority of students stated they felt at least partially part of the optometry community. Participants also reported making on average 19 connections with other individuals. Survey data was supported by results from focus groups. In addition, Belonging, Engagement and self-confidence scores were obtained at the end of the first year (Yorke, 2016). They significantly increased for the 2024/25 first year cohort in comparison to the 2023/24 year cohort.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Andy Gridley, Catherine Collin, Jennifer Blake, Ketan Parmar, Catherine Porter, Will Holmes
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