Student Archetype cards to help academic teams think about the diversity of their students and what it means for practice

We know that our university offer needs to accommodate the diversity of our students. On 13th June, the Applied Learning Academic Interest Group considered what this means for developing an integrated approach to supporting applied learning and employability.

We did this by generating some student archetype models and then generated a list of barriers and enablers for each one.

Archetypes and working characteristics

Workshop participants were asked to think about the students they teach or support and from this to create a broad outline description of one of their students which they developed with others in the workshop. The whole workshop group then ‘toured’ a gallery of these archetype profiles, adding post-it note comments to indicate the opportunities and challenges for each archetype. After the workshop, the archetypes were developed and are now available as a set of printable Archetype cards cards or a Powerpoint version of the cards that can be developed to represent further archetypes.

The archetypes create a resource that demonstrates the diversity of our students and helps us to think about how we teach and support them.

The following archetypes were generated and are described in the attached profile cards.

• Brainiac
• Traditional student
• Full-time Vocational Male (FTVM)
• Young White Male from the Region (YWMR)
• Engaged Hard Worker (EHW)
• Higher Degree Apprenticeship (HDA)
• Local Commuter (LC)
• Part-Time Vocational (PTV)
• Returner
• EU International Student (EUIS)
• Class Clown (CC)

An exploration of student archetypes

Findings

Though we developed 12 archetypes, but the initial activity highlighted how many common archetypes we could have gone on to develop and the conditions that define their experience. Clearly, it is not useful to limit the way we think about and support our students and we must devise methods and systems that recognise the diversity of their contexts, motivations and aspirations if we are to understand applied learning and employability.

The post-it notes and the archetype sheets we produced in the workshop

When asked to imagine ‘student archetypes’ the group gravitated towards modes of learning, demographic indicators, and personality types. It is not easy to categorise students, even when we are trying to distinguish between them.
Participants frequently said “I know someone like this” but the discussion suggested students are expected to fit the course rather than the course accommodating the diversity of the students.

Conclusions

Generating archetypes is a valuable activity because it reveals those students who do not fit in a typical profile. Alternatively, the archetypes described here may provide a starting point for colleagues to reflect on their own students and how they are supported by their academics, their peers, and by those who have particular support roles. The archetype profiles developed here were produced in the context of employability and applied learning. Equally, they could be used to consider other aspects of curriculum and co-curriculum design.

There is some danger that we try to assign our students to archetypes. That is not the point and would not be helpful. However, the exercise is useful for challenging us to think about how we engage students.