Creating a community of support through social activities

Project leader(s):  Sue Pawley Cath Brown

• Theme:  Supporting students
• Status:  Archived
• Date:  October 2021 to November 2025

Academic resilience and a growth mindset are recognised as critical factors for student success (Johnston-Wilder & Lee, 2010). Barber et al. (2019) highlight how creating social spaces that foster online presence and peer connection contribute to the development of these attributes. This project set out to cultivate a social space for Mathematics and Statistics students by running a series of informal, non-academic events. These events were designed to encourage friendships and connections away from the rigours of study, providing students with a network for peer support and a sense of community to help build resilience and sustain engagement with their academic studies. 

As part of our evaluation of the social events, we distributed a survey to both attendees and non-attendees amongst students studying maths and stats modules. The survey was designed not only to gather feedback on the events themselves, but also to explore students’ perceptions of community and belonging during their studies. Specifically, we asked participants to reflect on the importance of being part of various student communities, to assess the extent to which they felt connected to those communities and how those feelings had changed over the time they had been studying.

Outcomes and main findings

During the 2021/22 academic year, a series of social events were organised for students studying MST124, to encourage the development of peer support and community. In 2022/23, the initiative was expanded to include all students registered on a maths and stats module, with the aim of fostering both horizontal connections (students at the same stage of study) and vertical connections (students at different stages of study). We trialled a range of different options to maximise attendance, including timing, format, invitation method, and delivery platform. However, attendance remained low, and although those that attended seemed to enjoy the events, the continuation of the events in their current form was not a good use of academic time, particularly during periods of high workload for the organisers.

Whilst the social events, were not as popular as we had hoped, the project has still given us a wealth of information on how students feel about community through survey responses. Key findings revealed a significant gap between the importance students placed on community and their actual experience of it. While 76% of respondents felt it was important to be part of a community within their module, and 63% within their degree, only 44% and 22% respectively reported feeling part of such communities. These perceptions also evolved over time: students nearing the end of their studies placed greater value on community within modules and were more likely to feel connected than those at the start. Conversely, the importance of community with others on their degree declined as students progressed. Of particular concern were students on Stage 2 modules, who reported both the lowest importance placed on module community and the lowest levels of actual connection, this could highlight a potential area for targeted intervention.  For a detailed discussion of the survey finding see please see our published paper, How important is community to mathematics and statistics distance learners? 

Summary and Recommendations

• From survey responses, it is clear that students feel it is important to be part of a community; however, the majority do not feel they are part of a community.  
• The emphasis should be on building community within modules, since this was found to be most important to students, and was the focus of the majority of student suggestions on how to improve community
• Purely social events do not have the attendance numbers to be a viable way to support community.
• Text based communication was the most frequently mentioned method students have used to form communities and the most frequently suggested method of enhancing community. Consider ways of improving asynchronous social communication between students on modules, e.g. student buddy forums¹, module run WhatsApp groups², use of Discord³.
• Experiment with ways students can socially interact within modules, for example journal clubs⁴, space for interaction within tutorials⁵, tutorials purely aimed at collaborative work and other ways to embed collaboration within module, e.g. pair programming⁶.

¹See eSTEeM project: Online peer mentoring at scale: Benefits and impacts from a student buddy perspective | eSTEeM 

²See SCiLAB project: The Law School Peer Mentoring Project | The Scholarship Centre for innovation in online Legal and Business education (SCiLAB)

³ See Praxis project (currently in progress): Project - Creating harmony from Discord ™ (don’t forget to login to the scholarship exchange first).

⁴See eSTEeM project: Online journal clubs in distance higher education: an opportunity to develop skills and community? | eSTEeM

⁵See slides from the maths and stats seminar “Student interaction in tutorials” (13th Jun 2024) slides

⁶See eSTEeM report: Pair Programming as a tool to enhance teaching and learning of programming at a distance | eSTEeM

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