10: A PLACCE for Belonging: The Power of Methodology to Illuminate Student Voice

University students’ sense of belonging continues to be a concern within the higher education sector. This chapter draws on a small-scale research project which aimed to develop a creative way to be able to listen to and learn from students about their sense of belonging at a course level. Working with a sample of undergraduate students, the project explored their perspectives on, and their experiences of, developing a sense of belonging at course level within a university. In this chapter, the authors present the collage and focus group discussion methods they used to generate and capture the students’ perceptions and experiences and discuss the analysis of the approach in terms of the potential to illuminate students’ reported sense of belonging at the individual and group levels. The authors draw on their own perspectives to outline the rationale for this approach and conclude with reflections and suggestions for future practice.