Universities UK Research Articles

Grounded synergy: addressing the challenge to co-construct meaningfully collaborative, quality assured, transnational education (TNE) provision

The number of students studying through transnational educational (TNE) arrangements at UK higher education institutions (HEIs) has grown considerably over the last decade. Universities UK (2022), drawing on 2020/21 data, reported that 162 HEIs engaged in TNE arrangements with 228 countries. TNE provision encompasses diverse delivery methods, including dual awards, joint awards, double degrees, and franchised or validated arrangements. HEIs grapple with enormous operational complexities in delivering partnership course arrangements. One fundamental challenge is delivering partnership courses that reflect meaningful collaborative work between host and partnership institutions (producing more engaging, creative, and inclusive learning experiences), while also ensuring parity of high-quality educational provision between the institutions. This session was intended to facilitate discussion around how partnerships can navigate these complexities, build a climate of respectful and open dialogue, and successfully deliver high quality, innovative environments for all learners. In doing so, it centred around three core questions: How can HEIs involve partners in more meaningful, sustainable ways in educational provision? How might TNE work help HEIs understand their own internal partnerships more clearly? Where could or should TNE provision in higher education go from here?

Prevention of sexual violence and domestic abuse through a university bystander intervention programme: learning from a UK feasibility study

In response to evidence documenting the scale and impact of sexual violence (SV) and domestic abuse (DA) in universities, Universities UK (2016) recommend implementation of a UK based bystander programme, The Intervention Initiative (TII), as a key prevention strategy. However, a recent UK review (Gaffney et al, 2023) concluded that no studies have addressed implementation issues for university-based bystander programmes. Our study explored what is required for implementation of the TII in a UK university, rather than intervention effectiveness. The intervention was delivered to undergraduate students across three school cohorts: medicine, social work and sports coaching. The study draws on pre- and post-intervention surveys to explore SV and DA knowledge, attitudes, and bystander skills. Focus groups or individual interviews with students (n=11) and staff facilitators (n=10) explored experiences of implementation, delivery and participation. Students reported positive changes across several areas and some evidence of immediate impact on behaviours, suggesting potential for wider implementation across university contexts. Barriers included professionalisation of the application of the bystander intervention, resistance to an underpinning gendered evidence base and a lack of diversity and relatability in programme materials.

Responding to gender-based violence in higher education: changes as a function of Covid-19

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to comment on how responses to gender-based violence (GBV) in higher education (HE) changed as a function of COVID-19. Since the original lockdown directive was issued by the UK Government in March 2020, there was an acute awareness of the impact the stay-at-home order could have on prevalence and patterns of GBV, with technology-facilitated sexual violence and domestic abuse being of particular concern (Universities UK, 2020).Design/methodology/approachWe give the illustrative example of our learning (from 2020 to 2022) around how we have changed our approach to supporting survivors to access information and support, and the conduct of investigations during this period.FindingsFor HE Institutions who were quick and keen to embrace online teaching, there was a necessity to recognise that this change in learning environment may bring an increase in online forms of sexual misconduct, and additional challenges associated with supporting survivors who were often remote from university campus. Subsequently, and swiftly, responses to GBV in HE (including formal investigations where requested) needed to change to ensure those who were subjected to sexual misconduct could access support and information, in the knowledge that they would not be disadvantaged by bringing their reports forward during a time of global uncertainty.Originality/valueAn insight is provided on the changes adopted to respond to GBV on campus during the early pandemic, and the impact that these changes have had to the provision of specialist service delivery over two years on.

Working in Universities Through Covid-19: An Interpretation Using the Lens of Institutional Logics

In higher education institutions, as in other organisations, the Covid-19 pandemic has significantly affected the ways in which individuals work and resulted in the loss of pre-existing boundaries between work life and domestic life. UK universities are a multi-billion pound-sterling contributor to the UK economy and in 2020 the sector-representative body, Universities UK, made a request to the UK government for £2.2 billion to help to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. In spite of the dramatic impact on the lives of university staff, however, there has been little attempt made in the existing literature to try to understand their experiences, motivations and actions of working in academia through this unprecedented time. This paper reports the emerging findings of an initial tranche of interviews with 28 individuals working across 23 different UK universities and uses an institutional logics perspective to understand their experiences in the context of what was happening at the time. The findings indicate the continued importance of market, professional and managerialism logics but highlights the dominance of a hitherto-unidentified logic, the ‘students first’ logic. The findings also demonstrate the ways in which individuals negotiated the competing logics of family and professional and meshed them together in a unique covid-specific hybrid and identifies a complex interplay of the logics.

Challenging the lack of BAME Authors in a Psychology Curriculum

Decolonising psychology curricula faces substantial anti-racist inertia and a history of ‘using data limitations as an excuse not to push ahead’ (NUS & Universities UK, 2019; p.35). We report on a targeted curriculum decolonisation project at a British university. We quantitatively coded the identifiable ‘race’, gender and nationality of the authors set as reading at the beginning (in 2015–16) and three-years after the project began (in 2019–20). Our analysis revealed no significant change in the dominance of Globally Northern (95 per cent), white (95 per cent) and male (57 per cent) authors over time. Indeed, there were more White, male authors named John than BAME-female and male authors, of any name, collectively. We call on organisational bodies to promote decolonisation as part of course re-accreditation converging with staff’s interest.

Improving Graduate Futures and Employability Through Embedded Industrial Experience

The financial cost to individuals of higher education is now regularly exceeding £50k before maintenance in the UK; consequently, students are more concerned than ever that their degree should offer value for money when they enter the jobs marketplace. Overshadowed by long-term debt, lack of career options and job offerings with low salary, student numbers in the arts, languages, humanities and philosophy areas have suffered compared to most STEM disciplines (Universities UK, 2018). Computer science, I.T. and computing tend to buck this trend (HESA, 2020), and, with a drive toward reskilling the workforce for a more technology-focussed future, this suits Government strategy. However, graduate employers want to hire individuals who are well rounded and have experience; businesses identify that more general workplace experience is key. The subsequent sections describe a level 7 (Master’s) capstone project module, Commercial Development Practice, dedicated to fulfilling these employer requirements by focussing on project processes rather than project products. The practicalities of running this module and considerations that have been key for the successful application of this technique over the 14 years the module has been running are discussed. The curriculum, pedagogic approaches and assessment methods are presented. The evaluation of this approach, which analyses the impact and student experience and perception of the module using data gathered since 2015, has found that participants gain valuable skills, experience and confidence which leads to more employable graduates.

Making a #Stepchange? Investigating the Alignment of Learning Analytics and Student Wellbeing in United Kingdom Higher Education Institutions

In recent years there has been growing concern around student wellbeing and in particular student mental-health. Numerous newspaper articles (Ferguson, 2017; Shackle, 2019) have been published on the topic and a BBC 3 documentary (Byrne, 2017) was produced on the topic of student suicide. These have coincided with a number of United Kingdom Higher Education sector initiatives and reports, the highest profile of these being the Universities United Kingdom “#StepChange” report (Universities UK, 2017) and the Institute for Public Policy Research “Not By Degrees” report (“Not by Degrees: Improving Student Mental Health in the UK’s Universities” 2017). Simultaneously, learning analytics has been growing as a field in the United Kingdom, with a number of institutions running services predominantly based on student retention and progression, the majority of which make use of the Jisc Learning Analytics service. Much of the data used in these services is behavioral data: interactions with various IT systems, attendance at events and/or engagement with library services. Wellbeing research indicates that since changes in wellbeing, are indicated by changes in behavior, these changes could be identified via learning analytics. Research has also shown that students react very emotively to learning analytics data and that this may impact on their wellbeing. The 2017 Universities United Kingdom (UUK) #StepChange report states: “Institutions are encouraged to align learning analytics to the mental health agenda to identify change in students’ behaviors and to address risks and target support.” (Universities UK, 2017). This study was undertaken in the 2018/19 academic year, a year after the launch of the #StepChange framework and after the formal transition of Jisc’s learning analytics work with partner HEIs to a national learning analytics service. With further calls for whole institutional responses to address student wellbeing and mental health concerns, including the recently published University Mental Health Charter this study aims to answer two questions. Firstly, is there evidence of the #StepChange recommendation being adopted in current learning analytics implementations? Secondly, has there been any consideration of the impact on staff and student wellbeing and mental health resulting from the introduction of learning analytics? Analysis of existing learning analytics applications have found that there is insufficient granularity in the data used to be able to identify changes in an individual’s behavior at a required level, in addition this data is collected with insufficient context to be able to truly understand what the data represents. Where there are connections between learning analytics and student support these are related to student retention and academic performance. Although it has been identified that learning analytics can impact on student and staff behaviors, there is no evidence of staff and student wellbeing being considered in current policies or in the existing policy frameworks. The recommendation from the 2017 Stepchange framework has not been met and reviews of current practices need to be undertaken if learning analytics is to be part of Mentally Healthy Universities moving forward. In conclusion, although learning analytics is a growing field and becoming operationalized within United Kingdom Higher Education it is still in its reactive infancy. Current data models rely on proxies for student engagement and may not truly represent student behaviors. At this time there is inadequate sophistication for the use of learning analytics to identify student wellbeing concerns. However, as with all technologies, learning analytics is not benign, and changes to ways of working impact on both staff and students, wellbeing professionals should be included as key stakeholders in the development of learning analytics and student support policies and wellbeing considerations explicitly mentioned and taken into account.

Covid-19 and UK Universities.

Universities UK (UUK) has suggested that there may be very significant losses to higher education as a consequence of Covid‐19. However, losses are likely to be substantially lower than the potential losses estimated by UUK. But the magnitude of losses is very uncertain. The UUK’s proposal to restrict undergraduate enrolment per university to stop institutions poaching students is not in the interests of the most highly regarded universities, or that of students. Some rationalisation of the sector should be the price of further government support. Now is also the time to reconsider how university research is funded.

Os perigos do conceito de impacto no ensino superior (The dangers of the concept of impact in higher education)

Os perigos do conceito de impacto no ensino superior (The dangers of the concept of impact in higher education)

Online and Hate Harassment

Abstract The Universities UK Conference, on tackling online harassment, recently took place at the BCS offices in London. ‘It was clear from the speakers that we must do more as a society to safeguard the individual and prevent online harassment,’ writes Daniel Aldridge, Senior Policy Programme Manager at BCS

Changing the Culture? A Feminist Academic Activist Critique.

The Universities UK (UUK) Taskforce report, Changing the Culture, has been seen as a turning point in U.K. universities' responses to gender-based violence (GBV). Institutional changes have occurred as a response to grassroots feminist activism and resistance to GBV, focusing on sexual violence, harassment, and "lad culture" in universities. This article will argue that the neoliberal marketization of higher education, concurrent with the persistence of misogyny and patriarchy, creates an environment where GBV is normalized, and feminist voices are marginalized and silenced. Interviews with academics show support for victims/survivors on campus often falls to particular academic staff. When initiatives for change, led by institutional management, are limited to protecting the "reputation" of the university, it furthermore falls on academics to challenge not only GBV, but also the reactive and uncritical responses offered by institutions. We contend that national, institutional, and individual responses to GBV must consider the meaning of "cultural change" beyond policy reform, zero tolerance campaigns, and condemnation of GBV. Attempts to enact true cultural change must analyze the broader issue of sexism, its intersections with further structural issues, and the ways in which this plays out within the neoliberal institution to the detriment of students and staff.

‘I have a sense that it's probably quite bad … but because I don't see it, I don't know’: staff perspectives on ‘lad culture’ in higher education

ABSTRACT Concerns have been voiced about lad cultures in UK universities for approximately five years. The National Union of Students has been especially vocal in airing concerns, which more recently have been taken up by universities through bodies such as Universities UK. A small amount of work has explored students’ perspectives about, and experiences of, laddism. That research suggests that lad culture is particularly associated with groups of men in social contexts and involves excessive alcohol consumption, rowdy behaviour, sexism, homophobia, sexual harassment and violence. This paper is the first to explore staff perspectives: we draw on data from interviews with 72 staff across 6 universities to explore their perceptions of lad culture, including its prevalence, the contexts in which it occurs and the forms it takes. We argue that perceptions about the prevalence of lad culture are strongly influenced by how it is conceptualised and, relatedly, to whom it is visible.

Getting on to a PhD

Over the last decade, there has been a 25 per cent rise in the number of students applying for doctoral-level study across the UK (Universities UK, 2017). Prior to committing to a PhD, applicants must make an informed decision as to whether working towards a PhD is valuable for them in terms of personal and professional development. By answering some of the most frequent questions asked by PhD applicants, this article aims to demystify common myths associated with doctoral-level study

Campus Feminisms

Drawing from a long history of feminist writing grounded in personal reflection and informal dialogue between feminist thinkers, Cobb and Godden-Rasul present an email-based conversation with Jess Lishak, the outgoing Women’s Officer at the University of Manchester Students’ Union (2014–2016). The conversation draws on Cobb and Godden-Rasul’s experience as feminist academics engaged in critical institutional practice through such initiatives as editing the Inherently Human blog, organising the Inspirational Women of Law exhibition, and participating in university working groups on campus-based harassment and violence. In asking Lishak to reflect on her journey to feminism and her experiences of activism, the conversation ranges over such issues as personal influences and experiences, strategies for securing institutional support, encouraging student engagement with feminism, and campaigning tactics. The conversation developed out of a “Campus Feminisms” event in March 2016, which explored the rise of exciting new grassroots single-issue campaigns and political mobilisations by students in higher education, and was organised by Cobb and Godden-Rasul at Newcastle University, UK. Undergraduate and postgraduate students shared their personal struggles and achievements in bringing feminist ideas and campaigns to their university campuses. Lucy Morgan, the Gender Equality Officer at Newcastle University Students’ Union, offered inspiring reflections on her efforts to reinvigorate the ‘F’ word, in the face of simultaneous student apathy and backlash. Many of these campus-based mobilisations have demanded better institutional responses to sexual violence against women. At around the same time, Cobb was beginning a new role as the co-chair of the University of Manchester’s first Task & Finish Group on Sexual Violence and Harassment on Campus. This followed Universities UK’s decision to create a taskforce to consider options for improving institutional responses to student safety. In the process, Cobb crossed paths with Lishak, who had been appointed a member of the UUK Taskforce in light of her path-breaking students’ union work addressing violence against women. Since Lishak was an exemplar of this new feminist wave in higher education, one that was still inadequately understood by feminist academics despite often working side-by-side within the same institutions, the authors embarked on this conversation in order to better understand the relationship between academic and student feminist activism on campus. As Lishak makes clear in her own reflections, there is nothing inevitable about the synergies between these movements, but there is potentially a great deal that could be achieved through their closer engagement.

Mixed Methods Research

Researchers and practitioners alike now generally agree that research is a business in and of itself (Freshwater, 2012; Freshwater & Fisher, 2014). More explicitly, as a business, it is intimately linked with achieving excellence that leads to knowledge production. Knowledge production, in turn, is an entrepreneurial activity and one that is now explicitly aligned with the economy of many Western countries (see, e.g., Knowledge Society and the University of Western Australia, 2015; Universities UK, 2014). It is, in essence, both a marker of quality and excellence of the outcomes of research and innovation (knowledge generation), and a means of generating international impact through knowledge production and translation. In addition, estimations of research excellence and international research assessment exercises are becoming increasingly refined, as they endeavor to delineate research excellence through peer review of the international reach, significance, and most recently, the translation and impact of ‘‘world class’’ research (Hare, 2015; Higher Education Funding Council for England, 2014). Research exercises are primarily driven by metric measures of research performance, with indicators of excellence being determined at local, national, and international levels. Measures include research outputs (including, of course, publications in impact factored journals), numbers of postgraduate student completions, and levels of research council income. Other measures refer to the research environment and evaluations of esteem. Let us focus more intensely on the matter of research outputs, citation indices, and impact factors. In 2012, early in my term of office, I wrote about the development of impact measures in research and this with regard to quality thresholds. I also referred to the contested ground of journal impact factors, an inevitable measure of quality and esteem (Freshwater & Cahill, 2012). In this, my final editorial, after serving as co-editor of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research (JMMR) for a term of 4 years, the current team is pleased to announce that the impact factor for JMMR, in 2014, has increased to 2.186, from 1.675 in 2013. This has had the subsequent result of moving the JMMR up the rankings from 9/92 in Social Sciences (Interdisciplinary), to 7/95 in that same category. This is an important measure of not only the quality of the articles published in JMMR, but as importantly, a signal of the diligence, efforts, and high-level assessment of quality, by our reviewers, the associate editors, and the editors. I will say more about the role of editors shortly, for now let me turn to the notion of metrification, and the use of what I have referred to this in journal of algorithmic, or calculative, thinking (Freshwater, 2015). Heidegger once commented that calculative thinking might someday come to be the only way of thinking (Goleman, 2014). The capacity to sustain attention to an ongoing narrative is increasingly becoming the subject of much social science literature. Goleman (2014) writes of the tyranny of continuous partial attention, driven by the disruptive, and some would argue

Strategies of Higher Education Institutions Development in Great Britain

Abstract The current stage of higher education sector transformation in Ukraine has been indicated. The study of foreign experience, namely of Great Britain, and the use of positive aspects of such experience have been justified. Information sources of Universities UK (Universities UK Strategic Plan 2013-2018; Efficiency and Effectiveness in Higher Education: A report by the Universities UK Efficiency and Modernisation Task Group; Annual Report and Consolidated Financial Statements of UUK) and The Strategic Plan 2009-2015 of Lancaster University have been studied. Vision, mission, functions,pressing issues, strategic aims of the Strategic Plan of UUK for the next five years have been presented. The achievements of UKK for 2013-2014 in accordance with strategic aims have been outlined. The actions of the organization aimed at providing British universities with various supports have been presented. The constituents of Strategic Plan of Lancaster University for 2009-2015, namely vision, mission, sectors of development (International, Teaching, Research and Impact, Finance and Organisation, the Lancaster experience) and consequently successfully achieved results have been presented. Positive aspects of British experience in strategic development of higher education institutions have been defined. Perspectives for further researches in this area have been outlined.

Private Providers of Higher Education in the UK

A recent research report from Universities UK has analyzed the growth of private providers of higher education in the United Kingdom and questioned whether they are a threat to the publicly funded sector. Private providers form a mixed group, and it is impossible to generalize about them. In any event the coming years are sure to see a continuing growth in private provision for both domestic and international students.

How did it come to this?

The English Funding Council has announced its intention to invite tenders for the contract currently held by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), and the Australian government is promoting a Bill to curb the activities of the equivalent body, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency. This article compares the two agencies, and it draws upon debates and developments in Australia to interpret recent changes in QAA's relationship with universities focusing, in particular, on the significance of the UK Quality Code for Higher Education and the new single review method – Higher Education Review. The authors suggest that QAA's current crisis may have been precipitated by its failure to attend to the concerns of its members (Universities UK and the other representative bodies). The article concludes by proposing three basic principles which should govern the design of any new method for the review of UK higher education institutions.

What can higher education contribute to improving social mobility in the UK?

At a time when the UK may slowly be emerging out of what, for many in higher education, has been a period of ‘unprecedented change’ (Universities UK, 2012) in which institutions have found themselves having to balance increases in student expectations and demands against decreases in funding and resources, this special edition focuses on an issue that is becoming ever-more important – that of the relationship between social mobility and higher education. Drawing upon the findings of the Higher Education Academy’s March 2013 Conference: What can higher education contribute to improving social mobility in the UK?, the six papers gathered here give between them a clear indication of the proactive and synergetic manner in which the sector is responding to the resource and funding challenges which it currently faces.

The 25th Anniversary of BUA for the Assessment of Osteoporosis: Time for a New Paradigm?

The measurement of broadband ultrasonic attenuation (BUA) in cancellous bone at the calcaneus for the assessment of osteoporosis was first described within this journal 25 years ago. It was recognized in 2006 by Universities UK as being one of the '100 discoveries and developments in UK Universities that have changed the world' over the past 50 years. In 2008, the UK's Department of Health also recognized BUA assessment of osteoporosis in a publication highlighting 11 projects that have contributed to '60 years of NHS research benefiting patients'. The BUA technique has been extensively clinically validated and is utilized worldwide, with at least seven commercial systems currently providing calcaneal BUA measurement. However, there is still no fundamental understanding of the dependence of BUA upon the material and structural properties of cancellous bone. This review aims to provide an 'engineering in medicine' perspective and proposes a new paradigm based upon phase cancellation due to variation in propagation transit time across the receive transducer face to explain the non-linear relationship between BUA and bone volume fraction in cancellous bone.