Academic and Professional Services in Partnership Literature Review And

Academic and professional services in p artnership literature review and overview of results Leading the Student Experience Sarah Parkes, Julie Blackwell Young, Elizabeth Cleaver and Kenny Archibald Contents Section Page Foreword 4 Executive summary 5 1. Research focus 6 1.1 Identifying the issue for investigation 6 1.2 Research aims and objectives 6 1.3 Key research questions 6 2. A review of literature 7 2.1 Emergence of partnerships within HEIs 7 2.2 The third space 7 2.3 Leadership, management and spanning boundaries 8 3. Methodological approach 10 3.1 Research approach 10 3.1.1 Data collection methods 10 3.2 Phase one: A questionnaire survey to identify focus group institutions 10 3.2.1 Participants 10 3.3 Phase two (a): Focus groups in self-selecting institutions identified through survey 10 3.3.1 Participants 11 3.3.2 Method of analysis 11 3.4 Phase two (b): Institutional exemplars 12 3.4.1 Method of analysis 12 3.5 Phase three: A validation workshop 12 3.6 Some final reflections 13 4. Overview of results 14 4.1 Who is currently developing or has already developed successful partnership models for delivering and enhancing the student experience? 14 4.1.1 Survey results 14 4.1.2 Areas of Activity 18 4.2 Focus groups to explore the experience of working in or developing partnership models 19 4.2.1 Institutional drivers for partnerships 19 4.2.2 Drivers and benefits of staff involvement 19 4.2.3 Perceived benefits for enhancing the student experience 20 4.2.4 Challenges in partnerships working 20 4.3 Exemplars of practical interest 21 4.3.1 Newcastle University – ReCap 21 2 4.3.2 Manchester Metropolitan University – Enhancing the Quality of Assessment and Learning (EQAL) 23 4.3.3 University of Edinburgh – Project for Enhancing Student Support (PESS) 25 4.3.4 Newman University – Senior Academic Support Tutors 26 5. List of disclosed participating institutions 29 6. Bibliography 30 3 Foreword Marketisation of higher education, contrary to expectation, has not led to a highly differentiated sector. Students see that they are paying more for their education and consequently have greater expectations of their university experience. The reality for institutions is that they are having to spend more on attracting and retaining students, whilst financial drivers tend toward cost savings, efficiency and greater cost effectiveness. Institutions are convinced of the need to provide a high quality student experience but in the most cost effective way. However, many of the things that students expect and value in relation to their time at university involve more contact time with academic staff and greater personal support. There are many different models in the way such support can be delivered but students appear to be less inclined to accept support if it is delivered by professional staff (no matter how highly they are qualified) than by their own, disciplinary academic staff. This highlights the need for closer and more collaborative working between academic and professional staff on issues where the latter may be the more experienced but the former can provide the disciplinary discourse and context. This timely pilot study, whilst the authors recognise its limitations, provides an overview of the current state of collaborative working within a range of higher education institutions, explores the challenges and barriers faced in developing such working and provides some case studies to illustrate how this is being implemented in different institutions. The study has also resulted in a tool that can be used as a prompt to guide the development of collaborations between academic and professional staff. This study will act as a stimulus for higher education to break down the barriers between academic and professional staff and provide a holistic, high quality and cost effective approach to the student experience. Professor Lesley-Jane Eales-Reynolds BSc PhD PFHEA NTF Pro Vice Chancellor (Education), Kingston University 4 Executive summary Higher Education (HE) in England is currently experiencing a period of rapid, continuous change and uncertainty, caused in part by the new funding regime that has significantly increased student fees. Putting ‘students at the heart of the system’ through sector marketisation brings with it the additional expectation that students will demand more from their HE experience (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2011). With the rise in tuition fees failing to create the originally anticipated differentiation between HE providers (Patton 2011; Sedghi & Shepherd, 2011), Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have to find new ways of ensuring they sustain a competitive edge in order to recruit and retain their students. Furthermore, with HEIs relying on tuition fee income for institutional sustainability, it is increasingly important that HEIs enable the effective progression and success of their students. Notwithstanding the external factors that can occur and influence student retention, progression and success, this project focuses attention on those elements that are within the power of institutions to control or influence, such as further development and investment to align the academic, support and social dimensions of the student experience. This position is underpinned by the What Works? Student Engagement to Improve Student Retention and Success Model (Thomas, 2012) which posits that it is the successful generation of a sense of belonging in students that enables effective progression and success in HE. The model suggests this is best achieved through centralisation of the academic sphere to encompass interaction with professional services and social spheres of institutional activity. The intersection of these three spheres is considered to be the optimum site for the development of a sense of belonging in students. Evidence shows that when professional support - interactions with services and student development activities - are introduced and delivered through the academic sphere, students are more likely to engage and access them in the future (Thomas, 2012). Collaborative working by professional and academic staff at the intersection of these spheres has therefore emerged as being particularly important for student engagement, retention and success, and forms the basis of the investigations reported here. Leading the Student Experience: academic and professional services in partnership, identifies some of the key factors underpinning the success of such collaborations designed to enhance ‘the student experience’. This report presents a discussion of emergent themes arising from a small questionnaire survey; thirteen focus groups and interviews across ten institutions throughout England and Scotland, and a validation workshop with research participants. A variety of staff from a diverse range of institutions explored their experiences of engagement in such partnerships. The themes identified were further contextualised through analysis of four institutional exemplars that were felt to be of practical interest to the sector, whose activities ranged from improving personal tutoring arrangements to implementing rapid institution-wide change. This project has explored a range of collaborative activities between staff from academic and professional domains envisaged as crucial to enhancing ‘the student experience’. Common themes identified from our analysis indicate that such work can prove an effective method of self-improvement and enhancement through providing a holistic overview of systems and practices and therefore, enhance the experience of those systems and practices by students. For such collaborative work to be effective there must be support at the strategic level, with the contribution this makes to institutional sustainability recognised through clear mechanisms that reward and/or recognise the work of staff and students involved. Many research participants described the changing ways in which staff from different domains are increasingly working together as unsettling. It is important therefore that staff across the institution are supported in developing their understanding of the internal and external drivers for working together to enhance the experience of students, whilst recognising that sector and organisational change is often organic, complex and sometimes ‘messy’. At both the strategic and partnership level, effective collaborative developments are underpinned by the characteristics of honesty, openness and disclosure. The project led to the production of a ‘Toolkit’ to promote effective partnerships across academic and professional services to enhance ‘the student experience’. Drawing on the diversity of the student body and of experiences within it, the toolkit recognises a range of context specific activities and environments that students are likely to come into contact with while engaged in their studies. The ‘Toolkit’ should be seen as a facilitative resource that encourages institutions to consider such partnerships through a thematic self-reflection exercise. It focuses on those elements of the ‘student experience’ that are within an institution’s power to control and/or influence and those that are likely to benefit from successful working partnerships across academic and professional services. The project report and toolkit are likely to be particularly valuable to those working at the strategic level to lead and support collaborative practices that enhance the student experience and ensure institutional sustainability. They will also be of use to

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