Degree Attainment Gaps and New Research at Loughborough University

In this blog-post for the Centre for Academic Practice, Nuzhat Fatima, LSU Welfare and Diversity Executive Officer, discusses the Black and Minority Ethnic student attainment gap in UK higher education institutions, and introduces a new research project at Loughborough entitled ‘Experiences in the Classroom and Beyond: The Role of Race and Ethnicity’ What is theRead more

Designing and Delivering a Quality HE Curriculum – some takeaways

By Gabi Witthaus, Learning & Teaching Facilitator, School of Business & Economics, Loughborough University. On 3 March I attended the Inside Gov event in London, “Designing and Delivering a Quality HE Curriculum”, wearing my SBE Learning & Teaching Facilitator hat. Here I summarise my key take-aways from the day. Alan Palmer, Head of Policy andRead more

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”.

Read 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

GPA: An alternative to degree classifications?

It is well recognised that there are limitations and issues in the use of the UK honours degree classification system (e.g. current grade classifications do not provide sufficient information to distinguish between graduates). The adoption of a single GPA system, as commonly used in many countries, could provide key benefits including a finer granularity ofRead more

Attendance monitoring: the effect on the culture of learning

  Many Universities across the world are strengthening their class attendance policies. In the UK it is a legal requirement to monitor the ‘engagement’ of some types of international students, but many institutions have also extended this monitoring to all types of students. Drawing on university policy statements, a paper by Macfarlane (2013) identifies implicitRead more

Futurelearn

post image

Futurelearn has had widespread coverage in the media today as the first set of courses is made available for enrolment – and Loughborough is part of it. Find out more over on the E-learning Blog at https://blog.lboro.ac.uk/elearning/?p=2565 .Read more

Which?/HEPI, "The Student Academic Experience Survey"

post image

Which? has partnered with the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) to conduct “The Student Academic Experience Survey”, the findings from which were released last month. In addition to a Which? report that goes into some depth regarding a range of issues (including contact time, types of contact, feedback, attendance, private study, etc.), there is also a HEPIRead more

Graham Gibbs on study skills

post image

The third piece in this series – this time under the heading “Raising awareness of best-practice pedagogy” – has recently been published by the Times Higher Education. Once more, Graham Gibbs has presented us with another insightful and accessible article, this time asking what study skills consist of and whether they can be learned byRead more

1 2 3