Education and Student Experience brings together the academic and academic-facing professional support services;
We also work closely with students, Students Union, academics and teams across the University and externally.
A new strategy for Education and the Student Experience provides an opportunity to build on the strengths that already exist in each area and integrate the academic and academic-facing professional services to deliver positive outcomes for all of our students.
Download our Education and Student Experience Strategy document by clicking the image below.
Follow our progress as we develop our strategy on our progress page.
My previous blog in March outlined a positive start to the new academic year, with a refreshed Personal Academic Tutoring Policy in place and investments in the Student Experience Enhancement Fund and Student Experience Ambassadors Programme to widen opportunities for students. I am pleased to share with you the further progress that has been made against the Education and Student Experience Strategy and would like to take this opportunity to thank all staff involved for their hard work.
Curriculum Change Programme
The Curriculum Change Programme launched in 2022 to promote course enhancements in three key areas: inclusive curriculum and assessment, mental wellbeing, and employability. Course teams undertook a mapping exercise to establish the current position and the outcomes were discussed at the Curriculum Planning Day in April, hosted by Faculty Associate Deans (Student Experience). This day also provided the opportunity for colleagues to consider some current challenges in these areas and to hear about innovative and creative practices at Bedfordshire to support course enhancement planning across the board. Smaller changes are being implemented via the course modification process this month and work will continue throughout the next academic year to embed more significant changes.
Retention and Success
The Retention Working Group has been busy reviewing the Personal Academic Tutoring scheme and the PAT policy for AY2022/23 has recently been approved at Academic Board. Supporting guidance is being developed to ensure that both staff and students are aware of their roles and to support staff in easily recording their interactions and making referrals for support.
The Student Success Framework is also in development, which will be published to staff and students early in the new academic year. This brings together all the avenues of personal and academic support that are available to students, from the point of accepting their place on a course to the lifelong graduate support provided by the Careers and Employability Service. The framework is being developed with the Student Journey Group, which is working to map the critical events in the student lifecycle and identify when a proactive offer of support may be most beneficial.
Access and Participation
For the AY2021/22, the 21 strategic measures of our approved Access and Participation Plan have been embedded within the activities of the various working groups and progress is monitored via the Education and Student Experience Delivery Board and the Access and Participation Steering Group. The Office for Students appointed a new Director for Fair Access and Participation in February this year and set out four key priorities to consider in our activities moving forwards, including strengthening our partnerships with schools to help raise pre-16 attainment, setting out how access to HE leads to successful participation on high quality courses and good graduate outcomes, and expanding our diverse pathways into HE.
Colleagues are preparing an update for the OfS demonstrating how we are addressing these priorities and to highlight any requested changes to our plan, for submission in July. Our current approved APP, strategic measures and accompanying action plan are available on the external website: www.beds.ac.uk/app
Learning and Teaching Excellence Conference
Finally, just to highlight that planning for the Learning and Teaching Excellence Conference is also well underway and in the coming weeks we will be able to share the programme of sessions for you to book your attendance. Please save the date – Tuesday 13th September – in your diary and keep an eye on emails for further information.
There is much great work that has been going on this academic year and planned for the remainder of the year that is contributing to the delivery of the Transforming Bedfordshire Strategy. Some key areas in the Education and Student Experience Portfolio are noted to follow.
Personal Academic Tutors and Feedback
We started the academic year with a revised Personal Academic Tutor Policy with a Handbook and Guidance for both Staff and Students, with associated training delivered by each Associate Dean, Student Experience in Faculties. Connected with this was the introduction of university wide feedback weeks with students supported by the use of Student Feedback Trackers to support their reflection and action planning from their assessment feedback; this was brought in to support our aims to improve assessment and feedback scores with the National Student Survey (NSS).
Our Student Experience
Further work this year to help improve overall student satisfaction has been our investment in Student Experience Ambassadors that we have employed to work on targeted activity to support key areas of School and Faculty work. The Library and Learning Resources Team have also benefitted from working with Student Experience Ambassadors where students have been working on activity to support future improvements to the design and service offer.
Schools in all Faculties have also made the most of the new Student Experience Enhancement Funding to support improvements to student satisfaction and graduate employability, organising and taking students on a wide range of trips and employability activities and events: from student visits to Photographers Gallery, Tate Britain and Dochouse; BETT Education Technology conference (London, ExCeL); field trips to Brecon/Snowdon where students have applied theory to practice; taking students to DHL Air UK based in East Midlands Airport and Midland Air Museum; and a “Witness for the Prosecution” student trip with follow up Mooting competition. All activities were focused on Level 6.
A second round of all staff opportunities in Oct/Nov 2021 were provided (in addition to the University-wide Open Café sessions earlier in the year) to provide insights for the development of the new Education and Student Experience Strategy, with on-going staff feedback providing updates for the final Strategy for approval at Academic Board in March 2022. Alongside the Education and Student Experience Strategy are five Strategic Action Plans that are being developed with a wide range of academic and professional service staff as part of the five new working groups: Retention Working Group; Employability Working Group; Teaching & Curriculum Working Group; EDI Student Success Working Group; and the Student Experience & Student Voice Working Group. Much exciting work is being planned to help support all staff in achieving improvements in the University's Super KPIs – continuation, student satisfaction, graduate outcomes, and in reducing the awarding gap.
Access and Participation
The University are delivering the approved Access and Participation Plan as set out for 2021-22 that can be seen on our website - https://www.beds.ac.uk/about-us/our-university/public-information/ofs/). Our new UoB Student Success Framework plays a key part in this and is being led by Juliet Fern, Executive Dean of Education, English and Sport, as Chair of the Retention Working Group. This Group is currently in the process of identifying all of the work that we do across the University to support student retention and success, in order to build on our current practice. In addition, the Group are reviewing our current PAT policy and process, and identifying how we can enhance PAT for September 2022, allowing time for training and development for staff before September 2022.
Our main goal is to develop and support Teacher, Teaching and Learning Excellence, wherever and however that is delivered.
We intend to achieve our goal through three main objectives:
(i) Developing a new Education and Student Experience strategy that itself has three core elements:
(ii) Improving student outcomes by enabling student access, participation, retention, and success
(iii) Securing existing, and developing new, sustainable UK academic partnerships, and collaborations.
Our objectives are underpinned by ways of working that place the student learning experience at the centre of everything we do and focusses on quality enhancement in everything we do.
One task we’ve already looked at is what three words best describe, education and the student experience at the University of Bedfordshire now and in the future?
We had a great response and thank you to everyone who took the time to respond.
The response have been collated as together as word clouds. Word clouds give a visual representation of the frequency with which individual words are used – the most frequently use words being the largest, the least frequently used, the smallest.
We will use this feedback to help inform our strategy and ways of working.
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