Higher Education faces increasing pressure to evidence how it provides a transformational experience for students and their life chances. This has resulted in an increased focus on proxies such as retention, progression, and graduate outcomes.
The sector has responded with a renewed focus on the role of teaching staff and curriculum issues such as assessment and feedback. However, a transformational experience is not simply reduced to what happens in the classroom and is not always easily quantifiable but rather about a whole institution approach to holistically supporting a student throughout their journey through higher education and the challenges they face along the way.
Dealing with the intangible inputs of student outcomes
This member project will showcase new approaches to creating an environment for success beyond the classroom.
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Projects Aims
This member benefit will explore how new forms of organisation and collaboration between academic and professional services colleagues can create important but difficult-to-quantify benefits to student outcomes. It will explore the challenges of making such changes but also how to make the intangible tangible through the sharing of best practice between members.
Project Outputs
The activity contained within this member project includes an introductory blog, the creation of a series of video case studies and webinars where these and the project theme can be explored.
Introductory blog
Charles Knight, Assistant Director, Knowledge & Innovation at Advance HE introduces this Member Project 2022-23 in this introductory blog.
The blog discusses what can be measured by higher education providers in terms of student outcomes and the difficulties of measuring success outside of the classroom.
The blog considers how new approaches and configurations of academics and professional services colleagues working collaboratively can enrich the student experience and act as a multiplier in terms of outcomes in hard-to-measure ways.
Video Case Studies – New ways of creating student success – Cases of success
This aspect of the project aims to compile a series of short video case studies provided by those whose work supports student outcomes in hard-to-measure ways. To achieve this, we are inviting all third-space professional staff (from library and career services to mental wellbeing practitioners) to record and share their stories of best practice and of forming partnerships to support student success beyond the classroom.
Webinar 1 - New ways of creating student success: Working in Partnership
The ability to create new opportunities for students often involves working with external partners from both an NGO and commercial background. Convening a panel that have a wealth of experience in the professional services to share their insights, this webinar is intended to provide pragmatic and practical guidance on how to form and manage such partnerships.
This webinar took place on 30 March
Webinar 2 - New ways of creating student success: A third space leadership perspective
The need to reconfigure our ways of working to support students is creating both opportunities and challenges for the university. This interactive panel features senior third space leaders (such as learning technologists, careers and library and student support) discussing how they transformed practice in their institution by creating relationships and networks across their institutions.
Date - 09:00 am BST, 24 April
Speakers include:
Webinar 3 - New ways of creating student success: Cases of success
This interactive webinar provides a selection of case studies of success in building new partnerships and ways of working to support students outside of the formal classroom experience. It will provide space for members to discuss practical ways to adapt what is discussed in their own institutions and context.
Date - 13:00 pm BST, 6 June 2023
Related services
Strategic positioning and portfolio evaluation consultancy
We are seeing a renewed focus from governments and regulators on good student outcomes using student progression, retention and graduate outcomes as measures of good degrees and value for money. An example of this is Condition B3 and the Projected Completion and Employment from Entrant Data (PROCEED) metrics from the OfS in England.
Resource allocation and the fitness of purpose of current portfolio and strategic positioning are key considerations for this. Advance HE is here to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses, review your portfolios and to develop strategies to improve your students’ outcomes against key sector benchmarks.
