Focus Groups

The TASH team carried out a series of focus groups in 2008 with students and staff from thirteen university departments.  These were to help shape the developing resource to meet the needs of staff and students, and facilitate their engagement with the resource as soon as it was launched.

The main message to emerge was that the seven skills areas we have identified appear to cover student skills needs, although participants in the focus groups constructed and described these needs in rather different ways.  For example, students placed a very heavy emphasis on time management as a skill they required from the beginning of their studies; while it was identified by the TASH team as one skill for students, it wasn't necessarily given this central prominence.  The design and structure of the resource will therefore reflect this re-prioritisation.

Focus group participants also reinforced the fundamental role of TASH in providing a single starting-point for accessing academic skills resources.  As one student put it, "Occasionally I've felt there's almost too much [available to support students' skills development] - I don't know which one to go to get what I need".  Students also expressed a desire both to quickly find resources solving one particular need, and to spend longer working at more in-depth, reflective tasks.  For more information about how we are addressing this, please see the design section of this site.

A full report on the focus groups is available from the download box on the right.
Notes from individual meetings are also available from the same place.