by Tej Nathwani and Ghislaine Dell with a foreword and afterword by SRHE Network Convenors Tracy Scurry and Daria Luchinskaya Foreword As many of us working with graduate employment statistics will know, it’s difficult to find up-to-date large-scale data of graduates’ experiences of work. In the SRHE event Exploring graduate outcomes: Do we need to look beyond earnings and occupation?, Tej Nathwani (HESA) introduced a new graduate outcomes measure capturing subjective aspects of job quality, while Ghislaine Dell (Head of Careers at Bath University and member of the AGCAS Research and Kno ..read more

by Roz Collings It was University Mental Health day on Thursday 14th March 2024. This is a national UK project organised by Student Minds and University Mental Health Advisory Network, aiming to start a conversation to ensure university wide mental health is a priority.  I continue to be an advocate for whole institution wellbeing, enhancing focus on academics in policies and practice, as well as increasing impactful research regarding academic mental health so it was pleasing to see university staff being given a spotlight.. The mental health of students has long been a topic of interest ..read more

by Samantha Wilkinson Feedback has been heralded the most significant single influence on student learning and achievement (Gibbs and Simpson, 2004). Despite this, students critique feedback for being unfit for purpose, considering that it does not help them clarify things they do not understand (Voelkel and Mello, 2014). Despite written feedback being the norm in Higher Education, the literature highlights the benefit of audio feedback. King et al (2008) contend that audio feedback is often evaluated by students as being ‘richer’ than other forms of feedback. Whilst there is a growing body of ..read more

by Panagiota (Peny) Sotiropoulou At the beginning of February 2024, I attended the in-person workshop on Using Diary Method in Social Research, organised by the SRHE and facilitated by Dr Emily Henderson, Dr Zoe Baker and Dr Ahmad Akkad. Figure 1: Dr Zoe Baker presenting a group task during the workshop As a reflective, life-long learner, I think there is no bigger satisfaction than sharing lessons learned from attending professional development opportunities like this with a wider audience. So, in this blog, I will present my main takeaways from the day and how I adapted what I learned to fi ..read more

by Fabio R Aricò, Laura Harvey and Ritchie Woodard The pattern is familiar across many universities: more and more students are asking to be excused from attending classes, submitting coursework, and even sitting examinations, because of work commitments. Not long ago, these requests would have been dismissed as feeble justifications and lack of planning but, in the face of the cost-of-living crisis, this rising phenomenon is a signal that students are struggling to make ends meet and that ad-hoc institutional responses have not yet addressed this challenge (Jones (2022), OfS (2023)). During ..read more

by Neil Raven Much attention is now directed towards the role of evaluation in efforts to widening higher education participation. Indeed, the evaluation of interventions aimed at broadening HE access, and ensuring the success of those from under-represented groups once they are at university, is considered a priority by the Office for Students [OfS], (Blake 2022; OfS, 2023a; OfS, 2024). Various guidance documents prepared by the HE regulator, both for individual higher education providers (OfS, 2023b), and Uni Connect, the government funded collaborative outreach programme (OfS, 2022), set ou ..read more

by Paul Temple Remember the Metaverse? Oh, come on, you must remember it, just think back a year, eighteen months ago, it was everywhere! Mark Zuckerberg’s new big thing, ads everywhere about how it was going to transform, well, everything! I particularly liked the ad showing a school group virtually visiting the Metaverse forum in ancient Rome, which was apparently going to transform their understanding of the classical world. Well, that’s what $36 bn (yes, that’s billion) buys you. Accenture were big fans back then, displaying all the wide-eyed credulity expected of a global consultancy firm ..read more

by Claudio Morrison and Janroj Yilmaz Keles Introduction A paper for the Symposium on ‘Inequalities in HE during Covid-19’ (SRHE Conference, 6 December 2023, Birmingham) provides new evidence on the ‘social suffering’ that university students endure due to precarious employment. Based on findings from the project ‘Learning from Labour: Critical Pedagogy for Working Students’ carried out at Middlesex University in 2022-2023, the study explores the educational and employment challenges faced by working students in UK post-92 universities (MDX News, 2023). Researchers Janroj Keles, Claudio Morri ..read more

by Kathleen M Quinlan Around the world, there is a move toward making curricula more culturally sensitive, diversified, or decolonized. However, the impact of such curricula on students is not yet well understood. My colleagues and I sought to research effects of cultural sensitivity on students’ interest in their subjects, focusing primarily on students in professional education programs across 7 participating institutions. We presented this research at the 2023 SRHE conference. The full paper was published this month in Higher Education. We report briefly on the findings and significance of ..read more

by John Donaghy At the SRHE International Conference in December 2023, I was delighted to have the opportunity to present an insight into my doctoral thesis: ‘An Examination of University Paramedic Students’ Enculturation into the Ambulance Service.’ This was my first time at the SRHE conference, consequently the inevitable nerves were always with me. However, I had no reason to worry, the warm welcome and supportive environment with liked minded people was an excellent opportunity for me to ‘tell my story’.  My EdD viva in 2021 followed an ethnography over several years (starting in 2013 ..read more