As part of Diversity Month, One Book One Campus (OBOC) took place to get people engaged on diversity & inclusion issues, to promote reading and to foster a sense of belonging to the UU community. People were invited to read the same book, and follow different forms of engagement such as book clubs or simple engagement with colleagues regarding the book. In this project we analyse to what extent participants experienced various elements of OBOC as contributing to the three stated aims.

Background information and aim

In Fall 2022, the first UU-wide One Book One Campus (OBOC) took place as part of the Diversity Month, organized under the umbrella of the UU Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Office. Everyone at UU was invited to read the same book and join live reading groups/events, there was a creative contest, and a public interview with the writer, Bernardine Evaristo. The aims of OBOC were:

1. to get conversations going among staff and students about diversity & inclusion issues,
2. to foster students’ and employees’ sense of belonging to the UU community – one of the strategic goals of UU –, and
3. to promote reading as being part and parcel of academic life.

In this project we analyse to what extent participants experienced various elements of OBOC as contributing to these three aims.

Project description

We monitored and evaluated participation in OBOC at UU through (online and app) surveys, and participant observations, in order to gain insight into the motivations of participants, their experiences, and the principles and mechanisms of effectiveness, following a ‘realist evaluation’ approach (Realist Evaluation). The reading groups/small events were conducted using the method of shared reading (The Reader).

Preliminary results

Preliminary results show that more than a thousand people – students and employees of the UU (35/65% based on survey responses) – participated in OBOC in some way: by buying a book, attending a meet & read event or the (sold-out) public event with Bernardine Evaristo, by discussing the book in a smaller group or tipping off a colleague or fellow student. The shared reading sessions (Meet & read) were not well attended, though people who did attend were positive about how these meetings brought them into contact with other people and allowed them to exchange ideas. The survey held under participants shows very positive responses on the questions about how OBOC stimulated conversations about diversity. Respondents are also positive but to a slightly lesser extent about how OBOC contributed to the feeling of belonging to the UU community. With the methods we used it is hard to say to what extent the project contributed to increasing reading motivation: the majority of respondents were already motivated readers.

References

• Dowrick C, Billington J, Robinson J, Hamer A, Williams C. (2012) Get into Reading as an intervention for common mental health problems: exploring catalysts for change. Med Humanit. 2012 Jun;38(1):15-20. DOI: 10.1136/medhum-2011-010083 .
• Davis, P., Magee, F., Koleva, K., Tangeras, T.M., Hill, E., Baker, H. & Crane, L. (2016), What Literature Can Do: An investigation into the effectiveness of Shared Reading as a whole population health intervention (report)
• The Reader https://thereader.org.uk
• Realist Evaluation  https://www.betterevaluation.org/en/approach/realist_evaluation