The report Ethnicity gender and degree attainment (2008) by the Equality Challenge Unit and the Higher Education Academy identified the need for systematic research into differential degree attainment to inform curriculum design and for this research to involve students and educators.
This project used quantitative and qualitative approaches to explore the degree attainment gap between black minority ethnic (BME) students and white students at two Midlands universities.
The research involved module leaders students education developers to formulate changes to raise attainment on modules with ethnically mixed populations. These changes were trialled and effects on variation in attainment analysed.
Key outputs include: identification of characteristics of successful attainment; subject and generic inclusive curriculum design principles; an ethically defensible framework for exploiting institutional data; BME student experience case studies and resource rich web pages.
This project was led by University of Wolverhampton.
Partner institution was Coventry University.
