Degrees of value depend on student engagement

In a recent post Chris Millward, Director for Policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), summarised the findings and recommendations of a Which? report into Higher Education, placing it within the context of the HEFCEs own work. Millward begins with a note of caution, contrasting the reports “relatively small” sample size (the undergraduate survey, conducted by YouthSight, on behalf of Which?, surveyed 1023 first and second year undergraduates online) to the National Student Survey (NSS), which last year received 320,000 responses of which 86% reported they were satisfied or strongly satisfied with their course. Even this figure, Millward concedes, still “leaves a significant minority who weren’t satisfied” and that while “there is good work going on…there is room for improvement”.

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Engagement through partnership

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The recently published Higher Education Academy (HEA) report by Mick Healey, Abbi Flint and Kathy Harrington entitled Engagement through partnership: students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education (York: HEA, 2014) makes for very interesting reading. In declaring that engaging “students and staff effectively as partners in learning and teaching is arguably oneRead more

HEFCE report compares A level success and degree attainment

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A recent HEFCE report follows 130,000 home A-level students who entered  university education in  2007-8. The report compares a number of factors which affect success at university, including: ethnicity, household income, state versus independent schooling, GCSE performance and overall school performance.  This current report builds on previous work and affirms the previous findings that, although students from independentRead more

Value for money? Student perceptions

Every winter the Government sets out the annual funding for higher education in a letter to HEFCE. This letter outlines the funds that are available for allocation, alongside any government priorities. One of the priorities in the latest letter is that the sector makes greater progress in delivering efficiencies, as “students will rightly expect valueRead more

Defining and developing your approach to employability

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Yvonne Hamblin (Employability Development Manager, Careers and Employability Centre), who inter alia manages the Loughborough Employability Award, has drawn our attention to a recent Higher Education Academy (HEA) publication entitled Defining and developing your approach to employability: a framework for higher education institutions by Doug Cole and Maureen Tibby. As the Association of Graduate Careers and Advisory Services (AGCAS) reports: “ThisRead more

new CEDE publication

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Entitled A national survey of UK HE STEM practitioners 2013, three Loughborough University colleagues – namely Melanie King, Claire Creaser and Janette Matthews – from the Centre for Engineering and Design Education (CEDE) have just published a report for the Higher Education Academy (HEA). As the online summary regarding this report states: “This survey ofRead more

HEA report: "Engagement for enhancement"

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The Higher Education Academy (HEA) report on the first year of a UK student engagement pilot project has just been published. Based upon questions which are utilsed in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) – see Tips for NSS(E) Survey Administration for a previous related T&L Blog posting – this kind of survey differs from theRead more

Robbins revisited

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Earlier this week, the Social Market Foundation (SMF) published Robbins Revisited: Bigger and Better Higher Education, a new publication by the Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts. As the SMF points out, it is half a century since “Robbins published his ground-breaking report on the key aims and principles for the future of Higher Education. TheRead more

HEA announce publication following research into teaching excellence

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The Higher Education Academy announced on 8th October that it is publishing the results of its research into teaching excellence. The statement by the Chief Executive of the HEA, Prof Stephanie Marshall that “…an agreed definition of what constitutes teaching excellence would be very useful in the sector” seems innocuous enough but raises important questions aboutRead more

Enhancing the student academic experience

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The Higher Education Academy (HEA) has just published the second volume in what is fast becoming a series of proven approaches to many of the issues and problems faced today by staff and students in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). In sum, if colleagues are looking for ideas over the summer regarding how they might build upon student engagement, thereby enhancing theRead more

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