The ESSA project, funded by the EU's Erasmus+ programme, is one year old.  Find out what we've been up to delivering the project across Europe...

Students are increasingly interested in university social responsibility when choosing the universities they want to study in. They want to have a positive impact on their communities, instead of replicating old models that do not work. NUS is part of the ESSA project - addressing this need. The project's key achievements to date include...

12 facilitators have been trained during a 5-day facilitator programme - these facilitators went on to train students back at their universities to become auditors in the ESSA project. Project partners and trained facilitators then produced a facilitator-training manual to support facilitors deliver their training.

Our project partners have also developed a student auditor-training programme, mixing online materials with face-to-face learning. Pre-course activities lead to an intensive six-day interactive training programme, followed by the audit and reporting. 23 students have so far participated in the student auditor-training programme. As well as taking partin training students also receive an audit manual to support them through completing the audit.  Guidance has also been created for universities who are being audited.

The first audit has been completed at the University of Edinburgh in April 2017 by 14 student auditors from Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania) and the University of Porto (Portugal). They were supported by 9 students from the host university (Edinburgh) and completed a 5-day audit that subsequently led to an audit report based on their findings.  Students who completed the training and audit, and submitted reflective reports will receive a Certificate in Social Responsibility Auditing (EQF Level 6, 5 ECTS credits).

Evidence available so far, from both surveys and a focus group review shows that students regarded the training as very informative, with an appropriate balance across the various topics that had to be covered. Student satisfaction levels have been impressively high with some students describing their overall experience of the training and the audit as transformative, and in a few cases even as the best experience to date in their university education!

Feedback such as this makes the ESSA project an important component for innovating in higher education, and drives us to continue our work which includes the second audit of the project in Kaunas in November 2017.

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