Just because planned regulation on free speech has been paused doesn’t mean that tensions on campus are reduced or that the complexity of the issues driving those tensions is any less. One person’s free speech is another’s threatening environment, and higher education institutions will continue to come under fire for being perceived to be drawing the lines in the wrong places. We’ll assess the situation and look at practical options for managing the unmanageable.
Student-facing support teams are always exploring how to balance volume and complexity in responding to students’ pastoral support challenges. At the same time, institutions are trying to build an infrastructure of automated information, insight and support that can engage students and direct them to a range of sources of support at the point of need. This session will explore how AI powered technology can most meaningfully be deployed in creating additional capacity and capability for universities to handle student wellbeing and student voice.
Chair of the Dyson Institute and Pearson Education, former UCAS chief executive, serial NED and friend of the show Mary Curnock Cook pulls up a chair for a chat about what she’s learned from her various experiences in and outside higher education, and what it all means for the future of the sector.
There is a whole host of staff members responsible for surveying students on a whole host of topics. Asking students for feedback is an essential part of institutional workflows each year, not least because of the accountability demanded by external national surveys used for quality assessment. But knowing when and how to survey students is more complicated than it looks and surveys are deployed for a wider range of purposes.
Advancements in survey technology and data analytics have facilitated the increasing popularity of pre-arrival questionnaires. Likewise, module or cohort pulse surveys can indicate which students may be at risk, and make it possible to adapt provision to meet needs in a more “real time” manner. Plus, developing survey practice that actively engages students and ensures individuals feel listened to is essential. In this session we’ll unpick what we need to do to achieve these ends and how we can ensure there is strategic coordination, and embedding surveys across learning, teaching and the student life cycle.
Jonathan Grant hosts an expert discussion testing received wisdom on all the sacred cows of research: peer review, full economic costing, bureaucracy, and innovation infrastructure
Back by popular demand: the hard-thinking and straight-talking Selena Bolingbroke and Joe Cooper help you work up your best ideas for making higher education better and pitch against your peers for an investment of Wonkhebucks.
Working in higher education is very hard. It’s an endless stream of demands, challenges, opportunities, changing policy, and that nagging sense that it’s just impossible to find the capacity to day the day job. You’ve got wonderful publications like Wonkhe that go deep on the big topics but sometimes you need a bit more.
Wonkhe and Counterculture are working to bring ideas and policy solutions to even more higher education institutions. Bring your big challenges in work and we’ll work through a live workshop with other universities to bring you some clarity on what to do next.
You’ll leave this session with new ideas, new connections, and maybe even a new project that you want to commission some further work on.
The director of the UCL Policy Lab, political strategist and speechwriter joins us to discuss how universities can use their research and insight more strategically to shape government thinking.